Pope Francis will use his first full day in Colombia to send a message of unity, planting a tree of peace and saying a Mass to preach reconciliation in a nation bitterly divided after five decades of war. Francis received a tumultuous welcome on Wednesday afternoon. Screaming crowds mobbed the popemobile carrying the leader of the world s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics as it made its way slowly from the airport to the Vatican Embassy in central Bogota. Faithful threw flowers and held up children to be kissed.

The U.S. military killed three members of Islamist militant group al Shabaab in an airstrike in Somalia conducted with government forces, the U.S. Africa Command said on Wednesday. Tuesday s strike took place in Bay region, some 75 km west of the capital, Mogadishu, and also involved help from peacekeepers from the African Union Mission in Somalia.

The share of Americans who identify as white and Christian has dropped below 50 percent, a transformation fueled by immigration and by growing numbers of people who reject organized religion altogether, according to a new survey released Wednesday. Christians overall remain a large majority in the US, at nearly 70 percent of Americans. However, white Christians, once predominant in the country’s religious life, now comprise only 43 percent of the population, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI, a polling organization based in Washington. Four decades ago, about eight in 10 Americans were white Christians.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday appealed to Myanmar s authorities to put an end to the violence in Rakhine state and take steps to provide Muslim Rohingyas there with "a normal life." Nearly 125,000 mostly Rohingya refugees have crossed the border to Bangladesh in recent weeks, fleeing a security sweep by Myanmar forces who have been torching villages in response to attacks by Rohingya militants. "The grievances and unresolved plight of the Rohingya have festered for far too long and are becoming an undeniable factor in regional destabilization," Guterres told reporters.

Syria s army faced fierce resistance from the Islamic State (IS) militant group Tuesday as it battles to break an Islamist militant siege on the government enclave of Deir Ezzor, a local journalist and monitor said. The Islamist militant group has already lost more than half of its nearby bastion of Raqa to attacking US-backed forces, and the loss of Deir Ezzor city and the surrounding oil-rich province would leave it with only a handful of isolated outposts.

Fighters from a US-backed coalition battling the Islamic State group in Syria walk among heavily damaged buildings in Raqa s Old City as snipers on upper floors monitor The smell of decay rises from bodies of IS militant killed in the battle for the key district as Syrian Democratic Forces field commander Ardlan Hasake patrols in an "We pushed Daesh out of the whole of Raqa s Old City. It was their strategic centre and their main base for foreign fighters," he says, using an Arabic acronym for IS group.

Fierce clashes between the Islamic State group and pro-regime forces in central Syria have left over 150 fighters dead in 24 hours, mostly jihadists, a monitor said Sunday. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 120 IS fighters "were killed in clashes in and around the town of Uqayribat in the eastern Hama countryside... along with at least 35 regime troops and loyalist militiamen."

More than 10 soldiers died on Sunday and several others were wounded when Al-Qaeda-aligned Shabaab militants stormed a base in southern Somalia, security sources said. The militants drove a truck loaded with explosives to the main entrance of the base in Bulogadud, about 70 kilometres (40 miles) from the port town of Kismayo and then attacked the soldiers.

Twenty Christian families have requested political asylum in Australia, which is being considered at present. It will be a good thing to offer these families a chance at a new life, he underlined. Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Twadros II, stated that Egypt has been suffering from economic and education problems since the outbreak of the January 25 and June 30 revolutions.

Pope Francis travels to Colombia this week to encourage a fledgling peace process that ended half a century of war between a succession of governments and the guerrilla group FARC but has left the country deeply divided. Francis, making his 20th foreign trip as pontiff and his fifth to his native Latin America, will spend five days in the country, visiting the capital Bogota and the cities of Villavicencio, Medellin and Cartagena.

Civilians caught up in the battle for the Syrian city of Raqqa are paying an "unacceptable price" and attacking forces may be contravening international law with their intense air strikes, the top United Nations human rights official said on Thursday. A U.S.-led coalition is seeking to oust Islamic State from Raqqa, while Syrian government forces, backed by the Russian air force and Iran-backed militias are also advancing on the city.

Two million Muslims gathered at Mount Arafat on Thursday for a vigil to atone for their sins and ask God s forgiveness as the annual haj pilgrimage reaches its climax. Pilgrims clad in white robes spent the night in an encampment around the hill where Islam holds that God tested Abraham s faith by commanding him to sacrifice his son Ismail and where the Prophet Mohammed gave his last sermon.

Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II arrived in Australia on Wednesday for his first-ever visit to the country, where he will lay the foundation stone for a new church building, state-news agency MENA reported. Pope Tawadros flew to Australia from Japan, where he inaugurated the first Coptic Orthodox church in the Asian country.

Egypt s state gazette on Wednesday published the names of 296 individuals who have been added to the state s terror list by court order, including two leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood. On 24 July, a Cairo criminal court ruled that the 296 people be added to the national terrorist list for three years, as they had all been found guilty of engaging in attacks or planning attacks on the state s institutions and security forces.

A convoy of Islamic State fighters and their families reached an exchange point in eastern Syria on Tuesday, a Hezbollah military media unit said, where they will be transferred into IS-held territory under a ceasefire deal. The convoy of buses and ambulances left the Lebanon-Syria border region on Monday under Syrian military escort after a ceasefire took effect on Sunday.

Egypt s army killed seven terrorists in North Sinai, including two who were highly dangerous, an army spokesman said on Monday. The army also destroyed 14 terrorist hideouts, where they found military uniforms, communication devices, computers, weapons and improvised explosive devices, and materials to manufacture bombs.

Iraqi forces engaged in heavy fighting Monday near Tal Afar with the last pocket of Islamic State group militants in the northern province of Nineveh. An AFP journalist saw fierce clashes pitting Iraqi government forces and allied militia against IS group militants in the town of Al-Ayadieh 15 kilometres (10 miles) north of Tal Afar.

Lebanese soldiers in Islamic State captivity since 2014 are almost certainly dead, a senior security official said on Sunday, just hours after the army announced a ceasefire to hold talks over their fate. The ceasefire halted the fighting in an Islamic State enclave at the Syria-Lebanon border, where the militants have been fighting the Lebanese army on one front and Hezbollah with Syrian troops on the other. Islamic State has held nine Lebanese soldiers captive since 2014, when it briefly overran the northeast border town of Arsal with other militants - one of the worst spillovers of the Syrian conflict. The fate of the troops had been unknown since then.

Egypt s Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II has inaugurated the first Coptic Orthodox church in Japan during his visit to the country, the first of its kind by a Coptic pope, state-run MENA news agency reported on Sunday. The church was established in 2016 to serve Egyptian, Ethiopian and Eritrean Coptic communities living in the East Asian country.

In a first-of-its-kind visit, Pope Tawadros II, of the Coptic Church in Alexandria, inaugurating the first Coptic Church in Japan. The pope arrived at Japan’s Osaka Airport on Saturday for the occasion, according to state-run news agency of MENA. Pope Tawadros inaugurated the church Sunday morning, following a full year of construction. The church will serve number of Coptic families with Egyptian, Ethiopian and Eritrean nationalities.

The spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq says the militants are "completely surrounded" in the town of Tal Afar and "are being killed." U.S. Army Col. Ryan Dillon says the IS militants in the town are being deprived of their resources and at the "cusp of yet another defeat."