The move was welcomed by the US which had urged the two countries to settle their differences.

Seoul announced its decision on Friday, just hours before the pact was due to expire.

Tensions between South Korea and Japan go back decades but have recently led to a series of tit-for-tat measures.

The tensions have historical roots, and the two countries became embroiled in a deepening trade and diplomatic dispute this year.

The intelligence pact, known as GSOMIA (General Security of Military Information Agreement), allowed the two countries to share information about North Korea’s military and nuclear activities directly with each other.

Without it, information would have had to go through their joint-allies in Washington, slowing the process down.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) met with South Korea’s Prime Minister Lee Nak-Yeon to encourage peace, conversations and discussing the churches role in Korea at the 68th General Assembly of the National Council of Churches in Korea.

WCC general secretary Rev Dr Olav Fykse Tveit said about the visit to Korea: “Over the decades, WCC has been privileged to accompany and support the prophetic witness of the churches of South Korea and of the NCCK in these and other contexts.”

WCC director of international affairs Peter Prove told Premier:

“I think everybody’s hope is…

The university chaplain, the Very Rev Fr Sebastian Jones, said that no Catholic could remain a member of an organisation that upholds “the promotion of, and material support for, the procurement of abortions”.

He added: “For a Catholic to participate in such an organisation would risk them incurring excommunication.”

The students’ union said it recognised its responsibility to uphold freedom of speech and to allow students to take a stance on sensitive issues.

“If students vote in favour of a position, it does not mean that students who have opposing views are censored or their views are not welcome,” it said.

Cardiff University Students’ Union adopted an official pro-choice stance last Thursday.

The chaplain said that Catholic students and those opposed to abortion would be unable to hold offices in societies or voice “opinions that while acceptable by civic society… are to be surprised at Cardiff University”.

He likened their plight to the historical discrimination experienced by Catholics barred from holding public office until the 1880s.

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Rev Joseph Francis, the President of the Christian Alliance Churches in Iraq, told SAT-7 worship and prayer show Keep on Singing, “The crisis has awakened our hearts as believers to pray for our precious nation. We encourage all believers to pray for us.”

Pastor Francis said that churches are holding continuous prayer nights and told viewers, “The people are in a state of protest against corruption… seeking their rights, their freedoms, civil rights, and justice.

“We are close to the protesters and following the events closely,” he added. “We offer help, support, love and the message of Jesus Christ among the supporters and security forces.”

Mass anti-government protests erupted in October in Baghdad and other central and southern cities of Iraq, provoked by corruption, unemployment and poor public services.

Speaking from Iraq, Salwan, a TV director and writer, told how he had gone to the protests five or six times.

He said: “They are peaceful and positive, but the country is shooting people and using tear gas extensively. They are arresting activists and kidnapping them.”

Salwan paid tribute to the courage of demonstrators and tuk-tuk drivers who ferried injured people from the Baghdad protests. He was especially encouraged by their unity despite their different religious and political backgrounds.

“We want to live in peace and security,” he said. “I hope to see…

Willie Bessi Devis was playing with friends near a waterfall in Barana when he came across the tag of Private First Class Dale William Ross, who served during the Second World War.

Private Ross was reported killed in action in the Guadalcanal campaign – one of more than 7,000 Allied losses – with Willie’s discovery leading to his remains being found and returned to Oregon for a burial 77 years on.

Charles shook the boy’s hand and exchanged words with the youngster following a ceremony on Commonwealth Street, where he laid a wreath in remembrance of the scouts and coastwatchers who served during the conflict.

Willie, who attended the private’s funeral in Ashland, Oregon, in September, said the waterfall was one of his favourite places to play.

“My friend was running and I saw it in the ground. I took it to show my father, who said it was a dogtag,” he added.

Willie and his father Henry returned to the jungle trail and found a second tag and bones and kept them safe, while another local Lloyd Onorio used social media to find relatives of the private.

Members of the Ross family came to the Solomon Islands and DNA testing by the US Army later found the remains on Guadalcanal to be those of the missing private.

The Old Guard Riders – a veterans assistance organisation – gave Willie a leather waistcoast and his own dogtags, while Henry said he was “very proud” of his…

Francis blasted the demise of arms control treaties while visiting Nagasaki, the site of the second of the two 1945 US atomic bombings on Japan.

After laying a wreath of flowers and praying at the foot of the memorial to the victims, Francis said the place stands as a stark reminder “of the pain and horror that we human beings are capable of inflicting upon one another”.

“Convinced as I am that a world without nuclear weapons is possible and necessary, I ask political leaders not to forget that these weapons cannot protect us from current threats to national and international security,” he said.

The mood was sombre and silent, darkened by the downpour that drenched the terraced fields and rice paddies of Nagasaki and the thousands of Japanese who came out in plastic raincoats to witness the second pope to pay his respects to victims of the bomb.

Francis visited Nagasaki, and later Hiroshima, at the start of his three-day trip to Japan aimed at emphasising his call for a global ban on atomic weapons.

Nagasaki was the perfect place to begin his visit, the birthplace of Christianity in Japan and ground zero of the bomb.

The Holy See was among the first countries to sign and ratify the new UN nuclear prohibition treaty, and Francis himself has gone further than any pope before him in saying not only the use, but the mere possession of atomic weapons is “to be…

Thousands of Thais welcomed Francis as he travelled to St Peter’s Parish, a Catholic community outside Bangkok, to pray at the sanctuary of Thailand’s first martyred priest.

There, he told a few hundred priests and nuns that he read “with some pain” that for many Thais, Christianity is “a religion for foreigners”.

He said: “This should spur us to find ways to talk about the faith in dialect, like a mother who sings lullabies to her child.

“With that same intimacy, let us give faith a Thai face and flesh, which involves much more than making translations.”

Children dressed as monks and nuns, as well as real-life religious and ordinary Catholics, cheered him as he passed through the crowd outside the church in his Popemobile and later on foot.

It is the first time in a generation that Thais have seen a Pope up close, after John Paul II became the first pontiff to visit Thailand in 1984.

Pornnutcha Kruprasert, a 14-year-old training to be a nun from southern Prachuap Khiri Khan province, said she was “excited and delighted” to see the Pope.

“The Pope always has good thoughts for all youths,” she said cheerfully. “We can bring his teachings into real life.”

After meeting with clergy and nuns, Francis met with members of his own Jesuit order and bishops from across Asia to encourage them to spread the faith as their…

The man was filmed reading anti-Jewish bible passages to two young boys in skullcaps while they were travelling with their family on the Northern Line.

Chris Atkins took the video after catching the Tube heading south on the Charing Cross branch of the line at midday on Friday.

“I’ve lived in London for 20 years and you’re used to people ranting on the Tube – it was only after a minute I realised, ‘hang on this is really, really antisemitic’,” the 43-year-old journalist told the PA news agency.

“It was the children that really got me and everyone else, he was just screaming at these children. It was horrific in every sense.

“He seemed to be a very committed Christian and believed this was the word of God – that it said in the bible Jews killed Jesus and they are all slave masters.

“It’s the kind of stuff you see on Twitter a lot… but to hear someone actually say it unashamedly was shocking.”

Wearing a cap and hoody, the man is seen in the video threatening a man off-camera after he tries to intervene and a woman in a hijab also confronts him.

“The Muslim woman didn’t take any s*** from him and really, really took him to task, very firmly and persistently,” Mr Atkins said.

“In this day and age we are told how intolerant everyone is and all religions hate each other and there you had a Muslim woman sticking up…