Pope Francis opened Holy Week services with Palm Sunday Mass for some 70,000 gathered in St. Peter’s Square, dedicating prayer to the 150 people killed in the Germanwings plane crash in France.
John Moynihan, 34, a decorated Boston police officer shot point-blank in the face when he approached a stopped car during an investigation, was upgraded to stable condition after surgery to remove a bullet lodged below his ear, police said.
Martin O’Malley, Maryland’s former governor and a potential Democratic candidate for president, said on ABC’s This Week that the U.S. needs a fresh perspective on its problems and criticized the Clintons and Bushes, saying the executive office is “not some crown to be passed between two families.”
Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Co., said there is a “higher than 90 percent chance” she will seek the Republican nomination for president.
Islam Karimov, 77, the longtime president of Uzbekistan who is likely to win his re-election bid against three nominal rivals, awaited results as the Central Asian country’s election commission reported 91 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.
Boris Mezdrich, director of the Novosibirsk State Opera and Ballet Theater, was fired by Russia’s culture minister after the Orthodox Church said his modern staging of Richard Wagner’s 19th-century opera Tannhauser was offensive to Christians and reflected values of a decadent West.
Joanna Leigh, 41, of Boston is set to appear in court for indictment on charges of falsely claiming she was injured in the Boston Marathon bombing and fraudulently collecting tens of thousands of dollars from funds set up to help victims of the attack.
Robert Chouest, 31, of Cut Off, La., will get a new trial after a jury deadlocked on a murder charge in the fatal shooting of Shawn Galjour, 41, whom Chouest said he mistook for an alligator after he had a few beers, used crystal meth, took eight pain pills and smoked crack cocaine.
Stephen Ward of Hurricane, Utah, removed oversized genitalia from a statue of a bull at his Barista’s restaurant, making it clear to city officials that he was “doing it for me” and not bowing to community pressure after the copper sculpture caused an uproar among his neighbors.