VATICAN CITY (AP) ― Walking up to crowds, shaking hands with surprised bystanders in the street, mixing his formal speeches with off-the-cuff remarks, Pope Francis stamped his own style on the papacy Sunday. His humor and down-to-earth manner captivated those filling St. Peter’s Square in Rome to overflowing, and he worked the crowd in a way that had to give his security staff palpitations. Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno, in the square himself, estimated the crowd’s size at 300,000. “Brothers and si

BEIJING (AFP) ― China’s newly-installed President Xi Jinping said Sunday he would fight for a “great renaissance of the Chinese nation,” in his first speech as head of state of the world’s most populous country.Xi called for “arduous efforts for the continued realization of the great renaissance of the Chinese nation and the Chinese dream,” in a speech to delegates at the National People’s Congress parliament meeting in Beijing.Calls for such a revival in the world’s second-largest economy have

VATICAN CITY (AP) ― The focus of Pope Francis’ papacy began to emerge Saturday as he offered some intimate insights into the conclave that elected him pontiff, describing how he was immediately inspired to name himself after St. Francis of Assisi because he wants to see a church that is “for the poor.’’His comments provided further evidence that this first Latin American papacy would be one that looks beyond the confines of the church itself to the most disadvantaged, named for a 13th-century fr

BAGHDAD (AP) ― It’s been more than six years since a bomb ripped away the eyes from Shams Karim, killed her mother and left the little girl, now 7, blind and disfigured for life. Psychiatric drugs help control her outbursts of crying and screaming.Throughout Iraq there are tens of thousands of victims like her whose lives are forever scarred by the violence of war. Their wounds ― and those of tens of thousands of U.S. and other foreign service members ― may never entirely heal.In Baghdad, life g

JERUSALEM (AFP) ― Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu formally notified President Shimon Peres on Saturday that after 40 days of tortuous negotiations with potential coalition partners he had formed a new government and ensured himself a third term as prime minister.“As you know I was able to form a government,” Peres’ office quoted Premier Netanyahu as saying at a meeting in Jerusalem. “You gave me the task and I carried it out.”Netanyahu had a legal deadline of Saturday evening to form a government or

BEIRUT (AP) ― One of the highest-ranking military officers yet to abandon Syrian President Bashar Assad defected to neighboring Jordan and said in an interview aired Saturday that morale among those still inside the regime had collapsed.In another setback for the Assad regime, a leading human rights group accused Syria’s government of stepping up its use of widely banned cluster munitions, which often kill and wound civilians.The twin blows illustrated the slowly spreading cracks appearing in As