• Pope Francis, at the end of his weekly general audience Wednesday, greeted an Afghan family he met during a visit earlier this month to a refugee camp in Greece and who he helped resettle to Italy because the youngest child needs medical care. During the general audience, the pope again urged European countries to share the responsibility of welcoming in migrants. "All you need to do is open a door. The door of the heart. Let's not miss doing it this Christmas," he said. Francis had stressed that message during his Dec. 2-6 visit to Cyprus and Greece, most poignantly when he met with refugees at a camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. It was his first trip back to Lesbos since he brought back a dozen Syrian refugees aboard his plane at the end of a 2016 visit. While there, he learned of the health care needs of the 1½-year-old Afghan boy. The Vatican has not identified the family or say what medical care he needs. The boy had scrambled onto the steps of the Vatican audience hall and was sitting there when the pope arrived for the encounter Wednesday morning.
• A congressional committee has opened an investigation into the promoter of the Astroworld music festival in Houston where 10 people were killed during a crowd surge and attendees were packed so tightly that many could not breathe or move their arms. On Wednesday, the House Oversight and Reform Committee sent a letter to Live Nation Entertainment Inc.'s president and chief executive officer, Michael Rapino, seeking information about the company's role in the Nov. 5 festival and concert by rap superstar Travis Scott. The youngest of the 10 victims was 9-year-old Ezra Blount. The others who died as headliner Scott took to the stage ranged in age from 14 to 27. Some 300 people were injured and treated at the festival site and 25 were taken to hospitals. The committee is seeking details about security, crowd control and mass casualty incident planning; details about any pre-show briefings by Live Nation or is subsidiaries on any safety concerns raised before the concert; and what steps the concert promoter will take to prevent injuries or deaths at future events. "Recent reports raise serious concerns about whether your company took adequate steps to ensure the safety of the 50,000 concertgoers who attended Astroworld Festival," the committee said in the letter. The committee is requesting that Live Nation provide documentation on the questions by Jan. 7 and that it provide a briefing to committee members by Jan. 12. Such a briefing to the committee would be behind closed doors and not open to the public. A Live Nation spokeswoman did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment.
Travis Scott performs on day one of the Astroworld Music Festival at NRG Park on Friday, Nov. 5, 2021, in Houston. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP)