The Vatican has released the first photo of Pope Francis since his hospitalization. The photo shows Francis at the chapel in Rome’s Gemelli hospital.

He is seen wearing a stole, a vestment worn to concelebrate Mass.

The Vatican announced on Sunday, for the first time since his hospitalization a month ago, that Francis concelebrated Mass at the chapel in Rome’s Gemelli hospital.

Concelebration means to be among the priests presiding over the Mass. This would mean Francis has gone beyond just participating in Mass or receiving the Eucharist as he has been doing in the past weeks.

The Vatican said the pope continued with his treatments and therapies, worked and did not have any visitors on Sunday.

The 88-year-old pontiff has been battling pneumonia at the hospital in Rome, in what is his longest stay since his election as pope 12 years ago.

Earlier on Sunday, Francis thanked well-wishers for their prayers as he faces what he calls a “period of trial,” in the text of his weekly Angelus prayer that was sent in advance to the press.

Just after 5:30 a.m. ET, dozens of schoolchildren gathered in the hospital piazza to show their support holding up yellow and white balloons — the colors of the Holy See — and shouted out “viva il papa,” outside the hospital.

The children gathered prayed the Angelus together, and then a group of them entered the hospital with balloons and flowers.

“I thank you all for your prayers, and I thank those who assist me with such dedication. I know that many children are praying for me; some of them came here today to ‘Gemelli’ as a sign of closeness. Thank you, dearest children! The Pope loves you and is always waiting to meet you,” the Pontiff said in the text.

“Let us continue to pray for peace, especially in the countries wounded by war: tormented Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Myanmar, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” the Pope added.

The Pontiff remains in stable condition but still requires medical treatment, the Vatican press office said Saturday.

The need for non-invasive mechanical ventilation — which Francis has been receiving at night — has gradually reduced as he continues high-flow oxygen therapy during the day, the Vatican said.

Despite his hospital stay, the pope has signaled his plans to remain in the post, approving a new three-year reform process for the Catholic church.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

At least 59 people died and around 150 were injured after a fire tore through a nightclub in North Macedonia, with the country’s interior minister blaming pyrotechnics.

Hundreds had gathered at the ‘Pulse’ nightclub in the town of Kochani, east of the capital Skopje, to watch local act DNK perform when the blaze broke out in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Interior Minister Panche Toshkovski, announced the casualties at a press conference on Sunday, saying on stage effects triggered a blaze that quickly spread.

“The fire was caused by pyrotechnics used for lighting effects at the concert and activated the sprinklers,” he said. “Most likely, sparks caught a part of the ceiling that was made of flammable material, causing the fire to spread to the entire discotheque in a short period of time, creating thick smoke.”

Video from inside the venue shows a band performing as pyrotechnic devices shoot out sparks at the front of the stage.

One concert-goer, 22-year-old Marija Taseva, told local television channel Kanal 5 that as she tried to escape the blaze, she fell to the ground and people ran over her, Reuters reported.

“Everyone was trying to save themselves,” Taseva said, adding that she lost contact with her sister in the chaos. “We can’t find her in any hospital,” she said.

At least 152 people who were injured in the tragedy were taken to hospitals across the country, state media outlet MIA reported, citing the country’s health ministry. Dozens of victims are being treated for second-degree burns on their hands and faces, Vlatko Zahariev, head of the city of Shtip’s hospital said, according to MIA.

Police detained the owner of the nightclub on Sunday morning, MIA reported, as the country’s Justice Minister, Igor Filkov, said that all those involved in the tragedy will be held responsible. Four people are wanted by police in connection to the disaster.

North Macedonian Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski said it was a “difficult and very sad day.”

“The loss of so many young lives is irreparable, while the pain of our families, our close ones and our friends is immeasurable,” he wrote on X.

Leaders from across Europe have taken to social media to express their condolences for the disaster, including Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, and Antonio Costa, President of the European Council.

Angela Aggeler, the US ambassador to North Macedonia, also posted about the incident on X, writing Sunday that her “heart breaks” for the victims of the tragedy and offering the US embassy’s assistance and resources.

The disaster is one of the deadliest nightclub fires to have taken place in at least a decade. In 2015, a crowded nightclub in Bucharest, Romania was engulfed in flames after pyrotechnics were set off during a concert, killing 64 people.

Two years earlier, more than 240 people died after a fire broke out at a nightclub in Santa Maria, Brazil. Pyrotechnics were also being used inside the club when the fire started.

This story has been updated with additional information.

New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is heading to Paris and London on Monday to seek alliances as he deals with US President Donald Trump’s attacks on Canada’s sovereignty and economy.

Carney is purposely making his first foreign trip to the capital cities of the two countries that shaped Canada’s early existence.

At his swearing-in ceremony on Friday, Carney noted the country was built on the bedrock of three peoples, French, English and Indigenous, and said Canada is fundamentally different from America and will “never, ever, in any way shape or form, be part of the United States.”

A senior government official briefed reporters on the plane before picking up Carney in Montreal and said the purpose of the trip is to double down on partnerships on with Canada’s two founding countries. The official said Canada is a “good friend of the United States but we all know what is going on.”

“The Trump factor is the reason for the trip. The Trump factor towers over everything else Carney must deal with,” said Nelson Wiseman, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto.

Carney, a former central banker who turned 60 on Sunday, will meet with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Monday and later travel to London to sit down with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer in an effort to diversify trade and perhaps coordinate a response to Trump’s tariffs.

He will also meet with King Charles III, the head of state in Canada. The trip to England is a bit of a homecoming, as Carney is a former governor of the Bank of England, the first noncitizen to be named to the role in the bank’s 300-plus-year history.

Carney then travels to the edge of Canada’s Arctic to “reaffirm Canada’s Arctic security and sovereignty” before returning to Ottawa where he’s expected to call an election within days.

Carney has said he’s ready to meet with Trump if he shows respect for Canadian sovereignty. He said he doesn’t plan to visit Washington at the moment but hopes to have a phone call with the president soon.

Sweeping tariffs of 25% and Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st US state have infuriated Canadians, and many are avoiding buying American goods when they can.

Carney’s government is reviewing the purchase of US-made F-35 fighter jets in light of Trump’s trade war.

The governing Liberal Party had appeared poised for a historic election defeat this year until Trump declared economic war and repeatedly has said Canada should become the 51st state. Now the party and its new leader could come out on top.

Robert Bothwell, a professor of Canadian history and international relations at the University of Toronto, said Carney is wise not to visit Trump.

“There’s no point in going to Washington,” Bothwell said. “As (former Prime Minister Justin) Trudeau’s treatment shows, all that results in is a crude attempt by Trump to humiliate his guests.”

Bothwell said that Trump demands respect, “but it’s often a one-way street, asking others to set aside their self-respect to bend to his will.”

Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, said it is absolutely essential that Canada diversify trade amidst the ongoing trade war with the United States. More than 75% of Canada’s exports go to the US.

Béland said Arctic sovereignty is also a key issue for Canada.

“President Trump’s aggressive talk about both Canada and Greenland and the apparent rapprochement between Russia, a strong Arctic power, and the United States under Trump have increased anxieties about our control over this remote yet highly strategic region,” Béland said.

One nationalist influencer called it “truly gratifying.” Another said he was laughing his head off. And a state-media editorial hailed the demise of what it called the “lie factory.”

Chinese nationalists and state media could hardly contain their schadenfreude after President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday to dismantle Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Asia (RFA) and other US government-funded media organizations that broadcast to authoritarian regimes.

For years, the Chinese government and its propaganda apparatus have relentlessly attacked VOA and RFA for their critical coverage of China, particularly on human rights and religious freedom.

And now, the Trump administration is silencing the very institutions that Beijing has long sought to undermine – at a time when China is spending lavishly to expand the global footprint of its own state media.

In an editorial Monday, the Global Times, a pugnacious Communist Party-run newspaper, denounced VOA as a “lie factory” with an “appalling track record” on China reporting.

From its coverage of alleged human rights abuses in the far western Xinjiang region to reporting on South China Sea disputes, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the coronavirus pandemic and the Chinese economy, “almost every malicious falsehood about China has VOA’s fingerprints all over it,” the editorial claimed.

“As more Americans begin to break through their information cocoons and see a real world and a multidimensional China, the demonizing narratives propagated by VOA will ultimately become a laughingstock of the times,” it added.

VOA’s China coverage stretches back decades. During the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protests, its Chinese-language radio broadcasts became a critical source of uncensored information for the Chinese people. (VOA discontinued its Chinese radio broadcasts in 2011 but its Chinese language website remained online as of Monday.)

RFA, founded in 1996, broadcasts to China in English, Chinese, Uyghur and Tibetan-language services, catering to ethnic minorities whose freedoms the Chinese government has long been accused of suppressing.

RFA CEO Bay Fang called the US grant cutoff “a reward to dictators and despots, including the Chinese Communist Party, who would like nothing better than to have their influence go unchecked in the information space.”

On Chinese social media, nationalist influencers celebrated the demise of VOA, which has placed all 1,300 staff on administrative leave, and of RFA, which said it may cease operations following the termination of federal grants.

“Voice of America has been paralyzed! And so has Radio Free Asia, which is just as malicious toward China. How truly gratifying!” wrote Hu Xijin, a former editor-in-chief of the Global Times and prominent nationalist commentator.

“Almost all Chinese people know the Voice of America, as it is a symbolic tool of US ideological infiltration into China,” Hu wrote in a post on microblogging site Weibo, where he has nearly 25 million followers. “(I) believe that Chinese people are more than happy to see America’s anti-China ideological stronghold crumble from within, scattering like a flock of startled birds.”

Another nationalist commentator accused VOA and RFA of being “notorious propaganda machines for color revolutions,” referring to protests of the 2000s that toppled governments in the former Soviet Union and the Balkans.

“I’m laughing my head off!” they said.

Others cheered Trump, who during his first term in office was nicknamed “Chuan Jianguo,” or “Trump, the (Chinese) nation builder” by the Chinese internet, in a mocking suggestion that the US president’s isolationist foreign policy and divisive domestic agenda was helping Beijing to overtake Washington on the global stage.

“Thank you, Comrade Chuan Jianguo and Elon Musk, please take care and stay safe,” a Weibo user said on Monday.

Musk, the billionaire adviser to Trump who has been spearheading sweeping cuts to the US government, has used his social media platform X to call for VOA to be shut down.

“This news marks the end of an era,” said another comment on Weibo on Sunday.

The White House defended Trump’s executive order in a statement Saturday, claiming it “will ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.”

But as the US-funded stations dial down, China is busy amplifying its own messages to the world.

Under leader Xi Jinping, China has drastically expanded the reach and influence of its state media outlets as part of its push to gain “discourse power” in a world it sees as unfairly dominated by the Western narrative.

In 2018, Beijing announced the creation of a giant media conglomerate by merging three existing state-run networks aimed at overseas audiences to better combine resources. Its name? Voice of China.

After months of tension, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would seek to remove the chief of the Shin Bet security service, Ronen Bar.

Netanyahu met with Bar and informed him that he would propose his removal to the government this week, the prime minister’s office said on Sunday.

Netanyahu is believed to have majority support in government to remove Bar, but the move could be subject to appeals by Israel’s Supreme Court.

In a statement, Bar said that he intends to fulfill certain responsibilities before leaving his position.

“The duty of trust owed by the head of the Shin Bet is first and foremost to the citizens of Israel – this perception is what underlies all of my actions and decisions,” Bar said, “The Prime Minister’s expectation of a personal duty of trust whose purpose contradicts the public interest is a fundamentally wrong expectation.”

In a video statement released on Sunday, Netanyahu said his “ongoing distrust” of Bar led to this decision.

“At all times, but especially in such an existential war, the prime minister must have full confidence in the head of the Shin Bet,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu added that removing Bar would be necessary for achieving Israel’s war goals in Gaza and “preventing the next disaster.”

The prime minister has frequently criticized the agency, placing blame on its leaders for the security lapses that led to the Hamas October 7, 2023, attacks that killed more than 1,200 people.

Shin Bet, which is in charge of monitoring domestic threats to Israel, conducted an internal investigation that determined that the agency had “failed in its mission” to prevent the attacks.

In its investigation, Shin Bet also leveled implicit criticism at Netanyahu, saying that in the years leading up to its October 7 attack, Hamas was enriched by Qatari payments that were blessed by the Israeli government.

Its report also said that Hamas decided to attack when it did in part because of internal divisions in Israeli society fueled by Netanyahu’s attempts to pass judicial changes, which led to massive protest.

The agency also reportedly opened an investigation recently into members of Netanyahu’s office for inappropriately lobbying on behalf of Qatar – something his office denies.

Netanyahu also removed Bar and the head of the Mossad, David Barnea, from the negotiating team engaging in indirect talks with Hamas.

Opposition politicians criticized Netanyahu and suggested that Bar’s firing would be a politically motivated move.

“For a year and a half, he saw no reason to fire him, but only when the investigation into Qatar’s infiltration of Netanyahu’s office and the funds transferred to his closest aides began, did he suddenly feel an urgent need to fire him immediately,” opposition leader Yair Lapid said.

National Unity Chairman Benny Gantz said it would be a “direct violation of the state’s security and the dismantling of unity in Israeli society for political and personal reasons.”

Several far-right members of the government applauded Netanyahu’s intent to fire Bar on Sunday.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that it is a “necessary step” and that it would have been appropriate for the Shin Bet leader to “take real responsibility and resign on his own initiative more than a year ago.”

Israel’s former National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who had disputes with Bar over the treatment of Palestinian prisoners and other issues, asserted that Netanyahu’s decision shows “there is no place in a democratic state for officials who behave politically against me and against elected officials.” Ben Gvir has repeatedly called for Bar’s firing.

A mother and her daughter hunch down by the windows of their attic as armed men gather outside the gate. They try not to make a sound. But in the video that they furtively recorded of this fraught moment, it’s clear they can barely control their panicked breathing.

Earlier that day, on March 7, the patriarch of the Khalil family had assured them that they were not in danger. The forces aligned with Syria’s new Islamist government who had descended on their village of al-Sanobar were only going after people affiliated with the recently toppled dictator Bashar al-Assad, he reasoned.

“We haven’t done anything wrong,” his relative recalled him saying as they watched fighters storming their neighbors’ home from their windows. Hours later, she said the patriarch was dead, his lifeless body splayed out on the patio next to his son’s corpse.

The killings at the Khalils’ home, recounted through video and survivor testimonies, was one of many similar incidents that played out across Alawite communities in Syria’s coastal region earlier this month.

The attacks against Alawites raise questions about whether interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa can fulfill his promise to rule Syria in an inclusive way, ensuring the protection of minorities, and stop any insurgent factions from becoming a serious threat to the country’s prospects for peace.

The latest cycle of violence began when Assad loyalists staged a bloody ambush on forces aligned with Syria’s new Sunni Islamist government on March 6 in what appeared to be a coordinated attack. It was Syria’s worst violence since Assad was toppled last December and it prompted a deadly reprisal in the Latakia and Tartus provinces that the new government described as an effort to contain remnants of the former autocratic regime.

The state blamed the mass killings on rogue elements. Al-Sharaa set up a fact-finding committee to investigate the killings and has vowed to hold the culprits to account.

‘They called us Alawite dogs’

Human rights watchdog, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), said more than 800 people were killed in attacks following the ambush. Other rights groups say the number is even higher.

Assad loyalists have staged several smaller attacks on government forces since then, according to authorities.

Survivors said the attacks in Pine village began in the early hours of Friday, March 7, a day after the initial ambush by Assadist loyalists was reported.

In the days that followed, another video surfaced on social media showing him singing, with bodies littered behind him. “We’ve come to you. We’ve come to you with the taste of death.”

“The sword of the people of Idlib wants only you,” he sings, referring to the territory in northern Syria that was ruled by al-Sharaa’s now dissolved Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), before the forces wrested control from the old regime and became the de-facto government. HTS fighters now compose most of the country’s General Security forces.

In his Facebook profile picture, the fighter is seen in fatigues embroidered with what appears to be HTS insignia. Three military experts said the patch on his shoulder was consistent with several HTS units, but the photograph was too blurry to determine the specific brigade.

“At first, they went to homes and confiscated mobile phones they were able to find… and then they left the village. Then they returned and ransacked our home. Then they left,” she added between tears. “And then a third time, they entered the house and demanded that all the men step outside.”

“My father and my two brothers. My father was a 75-year-old retired teacher… they shot my father in the head… they shot my brother in the heart.”

She said another brother, who was injured by a bullet to the right side of his body, pretended to be dead while he bled out. As night fell, he attempted to escape. According to the woman, the fighters shot him six times as he limped through the fields.

Her mother was sitting in shock and grief between her dead male relatives when, she said, one armed fighter pulled a gun to her head and called her an “‘Alawite dog.’”

“God’s will saved me,” he added. “I begged them to release my brother, but no one listened.”

Collecting the bodies

Another verified video showed at least 29 bodies in two shallow graves, where an excavator appeared to be refilling one of them with soil.

The villagers said they were still trying to give their loved ones a burial in accordance with Islamic rites.

“Without a doubt, we will give our dead a proper religious burial,” said the survivor whose father and brothers were killed. “But for that we will need to return to the village, and we are too afraid to return.”