A 67-year-old second generation Irish woman, with a criminal record for theft has been charged with siphoning $1m in donations while working in a finance office of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, Church officials have confirmed.

The Bolivian government is considering a plan to resume cultivation of the raw ingredient in cocaine in a remote jungle basin, allowing farmers to cultivate small plots of the crop in a move aimed at averting nationwide strikes and unrest.