News Briefs

“It’s not true, it’s not right, it’s not just to say that Islam is terrorist,” Pope Francis said on the plane from Krakow to Rome on July 31. • On July 25, the leader of Egypt’s Coptic Christian Church warned of increased attacks on Christians—37 sectarian attacks since 2013—saying national unity is being “defaced.” • The head of the Orthodox Christian Church on Cyprus said he will petition European and U.S. diplomats to lift an embargo against Syria, which, he said, collectively punishes the Syrian people instead of helping to oust President Bashar Assad. • “I am a proud Democrat and I am also very proudly pro-life,” said Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana when he was presented with the first Governor Casey Whole Life Leadership Award by the Democrats for Life of America on July 27. • Lawmakers in the Mexican state of Veracruz have approved a state constitutional amendment banning abortion and “defending life from the moment of conception until natural death.” • A federal appeals court declared that a North Carolina law violated the U.S. Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act by targeting black voters “with almost surgical precision.”