News Briefs

In an letter to Secretary of State John Kerry on April 11, Bishop Richard E. Pates of Des Moines, Iowa, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, urged the Obama administration to expedite a review of U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, so the president can sign it in early June. • Vietnamese authorities say the Christian leader Hoang Van Ngai committed “suicide through electric shock” while in police custody on March 17,” an assessment rejected by family members who charge that he was beaten to death. • On March 8 Colorado lawmakers approved legislation to allow undocumented immigrant students to pay in-state tuition at Colorado’s public colleges and universities. • President Obama on April 11 posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor to the Rev. Emil Kapaun, an army chaplain during the Korean War who died in a prisoner of war camp in 1951. • Returning to Mogadishu after a six-year absence, “I found concrete signs of hope, even if the new state institutions are not yet in full control of the situation,” said Giorgio Bertin, bishop of Djibouti and apostolic administrator of Mogadishu.