News Briefs

As the United Nations reported that 480,000 people have fled after months of fighting in Iraq’s Anbar province, suicide bombings and clashes between security forces and militants killed 36 people on May 30. • Security forces in Afghanistan on June 6 were questioning three Taliban members arrested in connection with the disappearance of Alexis Prem Kumar, S.J., but have so far not located the Indian Jesuit, who was kidnapped on June 2.• Returning to Istanbul after his historic meeting with Pope Francis in Jerusalem, Patriarch Bartholomew made the surprise announcement on May 29 that the two church leaders had agreed to “celebrate together a gathering in Nicaea in 2025,” which Vatican officials hastened to describe as a “commemoration,” not an effort to convene a third Council of Nicaea. • The North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation voted in early June to encourage the “lifting of the restrictions regarding the ordination of married men to the priesthood in the Eastern Catholic Churches of North America.” • U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on June 5 that he is deeply concerned after Israeli authorities approved 1,400 new housing units in settlements on the occupied West Bank.