"I hope that this visit will be an embrace of consolation and of encouragement to all Christians in the Middle East," the pope said.

After going nearly 12 years without executing an inmate, Arkansas now has executed three in a few days—including two in one night.

A rally hosted by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont for a Nebraska Democrat prompted a flurry of questions about the party's pro-choice orthodoxy.

The plight of Palestinians uprooted by Israeli-Arab wars is one of the world's longest-running refugee crises, and a solution for millions of refugees and their descendants appears distant.

At Rome's Basilica of St. Bartholomew, a shrine to modern martyrs, Pope Francis presided over an evening prayer service April 22, honoring Christians killed under Nazism, communism, dictatorships and terrorism.

Two days of massive protests on the streets of Caracas against the government of President Nicolas Maduro spilled into a violent night in several parts of the city, with residents in El Valle witnessing repetitive gunfire, street barricades set aflame and more than a dozen businesses looted.