Pope Francis said he plans to embark on a retreat for spiritual renewal with his top advisers near Rome, spending time on reflection, meditation and prayer to help correct “so many of the defects we all have.”
Carl Mueller, the father of Kayla Mueller, the 26-year-old aid worker who died while being held by Islamic State militants, told NBC’s Today show that while he understands the practice of not paying ransom to terrorists, he believes the U.S. “put policy in front of American citizens’ lives.”
R.K. Pachauri, 75, chairman of the United Nations’ climate change panel, will skip the group’s next meeting, saying he is returning to India to cooperate with a police investigation into sexual-harassment allegations by a 29-year-old former co-worker.
Musallam al-Barrack, a former opposition lawmaker in Kuwait, received a reduced two-year sentence from an appeals court after he was found guilty of insulting the country’s ruler in 2012, when he called on the emir not to “drag the country into a dark abyss.”
Joakim Medin, 30, a Swedish journalist who was captured by Syrian government forces while working in a Kurdish part of the country, has been released after spending a week in an isolation cell.
Carl Don Floyd of Tulsa was sentenced to three years’ probation, pleading guilty to aiming a laser pointer at a police helicopter.
Stephen C. Stern, a former police officer in Hearne, Texas, who was fired after he fatally shot a 93-year-old woman and has claimed he acted in self-defense because she refused to drop her gun, has returned to law enforcement, volunteering for a county precinct.
Fred Czerwonka, the superintendent at St. Joseph School District in Missouri, will have his contract terminated, the School Board voted, after a state audit found that in the past eight years, at least $25 million in unapproved funds had been handed out to administrators.
Victoria Ann Gonzalez, 21, and Shawna M. De La Paz, 33, were arrested in a traffic stop on Interstate 40 by Oklahoma state troopers, who discovered about 300 pounds of marijuana in the bed of their pickup.