Easter celebrated around the world

Christians in the Holy Land and across the world are celebrating Easter, commemorating the day followers believe Jesus was resurrected in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.

The cavernous Holy Sepulcher church in Jerusalem was packed with worshippers Sunday. The site is where Christians believe Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected. Later, a Mass was celebrated in Bethlehem’s Nativity Church, built atop the site where Christians believe Jesus was born.

Catholics and others are celebrating Easter, whereas Orthodox Christians, who follow a different calendar, are marking Palm Sunday with processions.

At the Vatican, Pope Francis delivered the traditional Urbi et Orbi (to the city and to the world) blessing at the end of Easter Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square – a sort of papal commentary on the state of world affairs.

Columbia to release review of rape article

RICHMOND, Va. – News organizations following up on Rolling Stone’s horrifying tale of a gang rape at the University of Virginia exposed serious flaws in the report and the Charlottesville Police Department said its four-month investigation found no evidence that the attack happened – or that the man who allegedly orchestrated it even exists.

Now the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism is about to explain how it all went so wrong. The school’s analysis of the editorial process that led to the November 2014 publication of “A Rape on Campus” will be released online at 8 p.m. EDT Sunday.

The article focused on a student identified only as “Jackie” who said she was raped by seven men at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house more than two years earlier.

The article prompted protests on the Charlottesville campus, but the story quickly began to unravel. Other news organizations learned that the article’s author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, had agreed not to contact the accused men.

Three of Jackie’s friends denied the writer’s assertion that they discouraged the alleged victim from reporting the assault, and the man described as the person who led her to an upstairs room in the fraternity house to be raped could not be located.

Iran deal could have regional impact

CAIRO – On a basic level, the framework deal between world powers and Tehran will be judged by whether it prevents an Iranian bomb, but that will take years to figure out.

A more immediate issue is the projection of Western power. Supporters of the framework deal can argue that the U.S. and world powers extracted significant concessions from Iran, breaking a decade-long impasse and proving that diplomacy backed by tough sanctions can bring about positive change even in the Middle East.

But if, as critics contend, the agreement ends up projecting U.S. weakness instead, that could embolden rogue states and extremists alike and make the region’s vast array of challenges – from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Syrian civil war to the fighting in Libya and Yemen – even more impervious to Western intervention.

The United States wants to rein in Syria’s President Bashar Assad as his ruinous civil war grinds into year five. It would like to encourage more liberal domestic policies in Egypt and push Iraq’s leaders to govern more inclusively. Despite years of setbacks, the U.S. would still like to see a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Kenyan gunman was official’s son

GARISSA, Kenya – One of the gunmen who slaughtered 148 people at a college in Kenya was identified Sunday as the law-school-educated son of a Kenyan government official, underscoring the inroads Islamic extremists have made in recruiting young people to carry out attacks against their own country.

Abdirahim Mohammed Abdullahi, who was killed by security forces Thursday along with the three other militants who stormed Garissa University College, was the son of a government chief in Mandera County, which borders Somalia, Interior Ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka told The Associated Press.

The chief had reported his son missing last year and feared he had gone to Somalia, Njoka said.

Somalia’s al-Shabab militant group claimed responsibility for the bloodbath, saying it was retribution for Kenya’s sending of troops to Somalia to fight the extremists. The attackers separated Christian students from Muslim ones and massacred the Christians.

WWI inscriptions uncovered in quarry

NAOURS, France – A headlamp cuts through the darkness of a rough-hewn passage 100 feet underground to reveal an inscription: “James Cockburn 8th Durham L.I.”

It’s cut so clean, it could have been left yesterday. Only the date next to it – April 1, 1917 – roots it in the horrors of World War I.

The piece of graffiti by a soldier in a British infantry unit is just one of nearly 2,000 century-old inscriptions that have recently come to light in Naours, a two-hour drive north of Paris. Many marked a note for posterity in the face of the doom that trench warfare a few dozen miles away would bring to many.

“It shows how soldiers form a sense of place and an understanding of their role in a harsh and hostile environment,” said historian Ross Wilson of Chichester University in Britain.

Etchings, even scratched bas-reliefs, were left by many soldiers during the war. But those in Naours “would be one of the highest concentrations of inscriptions on the Western Front” that stretches from Switzerland to the North Sea, said Wilson.

Profile of co-pilot emerges, troubling

BERLIN – The profile that has emerged of Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz has become more troubling by the day.

In the hours after Flight 9525 crashed in the French Alps two weeks ago, Lubitz was regarded as one of 150 victims in an unexplained disaster. Two days later, he was the prime suspect of an unfathomable act.

By now, French and German prosecutors have little doubt that the 27-year-old intentionally slammed the Airbus A320 into a mountain, killing everyone on board, and there is growing evidence that his actions weren’t just a split-second decision but the result of days of planning.

The revelations have raised questions about who knew what, when and whether Lubitz could have been stopped.

The crash has prompted particular soul-searching in Germany. Seventy-two of those killed were German citizens, the worst air disaster in the nation’s history since the Concorde crash of 2000, in which 97 Germans died.

Associated Press