WORLD
LONDON — British singing sensation Susan Boyle said Wednesday she feels humbled and honored by the opportunity to sing for Pope Benedict XVI during his tour of Britain.
The unlikely pop star who shot to global fame after she sang on the TV show "Britain's Got Talent" will perform hymns and sing with an 800-strong choir at an open-air papal Mass in Glasgow's Bellahouston Park on Sept. 16, the Roman Catholic Church said.
MEXICO CITY — The discovery of 72 slain Central and South American migrants on a ranch just south of the U.S. border provides a horrific reminder of the brutality of human trafficking in a country dominated by drug cartels.A wounded Ecuadorean who escaped the killing ground in Mexico's Tamaulipas state told authorities the migrants' abductors identified themselves as Zetas, a drug gang whose control of parts of the state is so brutal and complete even many Mexicans avoid traveling its highways.Migrants running the gauntlet up Mexico to reach the U.S. have long faced extortion, violence and theft. But reports have grown of mass kidnappings of migrants, who are forced to give the telephone numbers of relatives in the U.S. or back home who are then required to transfer ransom payments to the abductors.In an April report, Amnesty International called the plight of tens of thousands of mainly Central American migrants crossing Mexico for the U.S. a major human rights crisis. The report called their journey "one of the most dangerous in the world" and said every year an untold number of migrants disappear without a trace.
CALCUTTA, India — Hundreds of nuns, bishops and volunteers celebrated a Mass today marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mother Teresa, the selfless nun who dedicated her life to serving the sick and poor in India.Many crowded Teresa's grave in the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity, the order of nuns she founded in 1950 in the eastern Indian city of Calcutta.
