News/International

LAGOS, Nigeria - In an effort to curtail the spread of Ebola, the Archdioceses of Lagos and Abuja instructed their priests to suspend all forms of physical contact during Mass, including the traditional sign of peace.

VATICAN CITY - As he dispatches a top aide to wartorn Iraq this week, Pope Francis made his most impassioned plea yet for the world to halt the “slaughter” of Christians and other religious minorities by Islamic extremists.

BEIRUT - Mideast Catholic and Orthodox patriarchs denounced the "total international silence" on the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and called for Muslim religious authorities to issue fatwas, or legal edicts, banning attacks against Christians and "other innocents."

Suffering, violence and persecution have always been central to Christian experience. This is the religion that adopted the ultimate Roman instrument of torture, used to not only kill but humiliate its victims, as its central image.

In northern Nigeria, mounting fears of militant female suicide bombers have raised calls to ban the hijab, or the veil that covers the head, chest and, in some cases, the entire body.

A Winston-Salem, N.C., diner will no longer dish out discounts along with dinner to praying customers.

NEW YORK - If the story of the Garden of Eden is such a common cultural reference point, what more can be said about it?

Prominent American conservative voices are criticizing the decision to bring two medical missionaries who contracted Ebola back to the United States for treatment.

BEIRUT - Lebanon's Maronite Catholic bishops underscored their "full confidence" in the country's military and security forces as the Lebanese army battled Islamist militants' incursion into Lebanon near the border with Syria.

It may go down as one of the shortest-lived peace accords on record.