A video purporting to show British jihadists urging Western Muslims to join them in Iraq has been released on social media.  The footage - which has not been independently verified - apparently features Britons and Australians fighting for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Sunday’s gathering of the pope, Peres and Abbas saw delegations of Rabbis (mostly Israeli) and Muslim Imams (mostly Palestinian) sitting in one section of the spacious Vatican garden while high ranking Catholic clergy sat in one long line in another side of the garden.  Facing them, at some distance, to the left and right of the pope, were Abbas and Peres – all three in stately chairs spaced almost embarrassingly well apart.

From the earliest days of his papacy, when he walked slowly into a grand reception hall in the Apostolic Palace for his first meeting with a curious diplomatic corps, Pope Francis has promoted a fairly conventional foreign policy agenda: fight poverty, pursue peace, bridge ecumenical or interreligious divisions and protect the environment. 

The outcome of India's national election — a resounding triumph for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party — has put the United States in an awkward position. The BJP's Narendra Modi will soon be India's prime minister. In 2005, Washington revoked his U.S. visa, citing a law banning visits by foreign officials responsible for egregious violations of religious freedom. 

Hours after a Sudanese court sentenced his pregnant wife to death when she refused to recant her Christian faith, her husband told CNN he feels helpless.  "The fact that a woman could be sentenced to death for her religious choice, and to flogging for being married to a man of an allegedly different religion, is abhorrent and should never be even considered," Manar Idriss, Amnesty International's Sudan researcher, said in a statement.

Dozens of women in Iran are flouting state-imposed dress rules with online, often anonymous photographs showing them dropping their headscarf for a moment.  In only 10 days, a Facebook page titled “Stealthy Freedoms of Women in Iran” has received more than 100 such photos and 146,000 expressions of support.  The page’s organizers say they want to fuel debate on the government-mandated hijab head-covering, which is often enforced by local militias with beatings or detention for women suspected of following loose Western ways.