News Briefs

On Nov. 13, the U.S. State Department designated Nigeria’s Boko Haram network a terror organization, bowing to months of pressure to act against the radical Islamist group which has killed hundreds of people, especially among Nigeria’s Christian communities. • Working people struggling to support themselves and their families should be protected from so-called payday loan lenders, said Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, Calif., chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, in a Nov. 13 letter to the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. • Ana and Jose Aguayo, a brother-and-sister team from the Northwest Arkansas Worker Justice Center, received the Catholic Campaign for Human Development’s Cardinal Joseph Bernardin New Leadership Award on Nov. 11 for their efforts on behalf of low-wage workers. • Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, a Dominican priest and New Testament scholar, died in the early hours of Nov. 11 in Jerusalem. • In a tour on Nov. 9 of areas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo held only days before by M23 rebels, Bishop Theophile Kaboyi Ruboneka of Goma called on citizens to consolidate a peace “acquired at the price of blood.”