In the news

President Barack Obama will meet with Pope Francis in the Vatican in March during a four-day European trip that includes a nuclear-security summit in the Netherlands and a U.S.-European Union summit in Brussels.

Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, said in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual letter that by 2035 no nation will be as poor as any of the 35 that the World Bank now classifies as low-income.

Rob Ford, the Toronto mayor who acknowledged last year that he smoked crack “in one of my drunken stupors,” acknowledged to reporters that it was him in a new video that emerged showing him swearing and slurring his words in a fast food restaurant while apparently trying to imitate a Jamaican accent.

U.S. Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican re-elected to a second term in 2010 despite ties to a prostitution scandal, announced in an email to supporters that he will be a candidate in the 2015 governor’s race.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, both members of a Russian punk-rock band who were recently released from prison, will appear at an Amnesty International concert to be held in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Feb. 5.

Prince Harry reunited at a London news conference with his fellow antarctic adventurers, who included a dozen injured servicemen and actor Dominic West of the HBO series The Wire, who said the prince specialized in building latrines during last month’s trek.

Ezra Klein, an analyst, columnist and pundit who runs The Washington Post’s Wonkblog, will leave the newspaper, taking two of his colleagues with him, according to a memorandum that said Klein is “looking to start his own news organization.”

Miguel Mejia-Ramos, 28, who was wanted in connection with the stabbing deaths of his wife and two young daughters over the weekend in Queens, was arrested in Texas, the New York Police Department said.

Kelvin McFarland, 43, who ran a Southern California “boot camp” for troubled youngsters, was sentenced to nearly 4½ years in prison for child abuse and kidnapping and for sexually assaulting two girls.

Isaac Herzog, Israel’s opposition leader, told foreign journalists that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fully appreciates the wisdom of making peace with the Palestinians, but expressed doubt as to whether Netanyahu “has the guts to do it.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/22/2014

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