Taxpayer-funded family planning clinics must stop referring women for abortions immediately, the Trump administration says, declaring it will begin enforcing a new regulation hailed by religious conservatives and denounced by medical organizations and women's rights groups.

After all previously stocked items are gone, no more single-use plastic will be sold.

Father James Martin was among the religious leaders testifying to members of the Helsinki Commission, which monitors human rights worldwide, about a surge in reported hate crimes.

On a scale where 0 is best and 10 is worst, the U.S. score on individual and social group hostilities soared from 3.3 in 2007 to 8.4 in 2017 -- the most recent year studied -- which qualified as the highest in the region.

Members of the Dominican general chapter elected 51-year-old Father Gerard Francisco Timoner to be the master general of the worldwide religious order.

Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Cardinal Louis Sako is concerned by rising tensions between the United States and Iran, fearful that his country, Iraq, could be caught in the middle of any potential conflict. It has also made a proposed visit by Pope Francis to Iraq next year uncertain, he said.