News Briefs

“There is a need for immediate action similar to what took place in Kobani,” said Bassam Ishak, president of the Syriac National Council of Syria, urging coalition airstrikes to aid Christian and Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State militants on Feb. 26. • On Feb. 25 a Greek Orthodox seminary in Jerusalem was damaged by arson and “anti-Christian” graffiti were found at the scene of what Israeli police said could be a hate crime. • The Rev. Jean-Paul Kakule Kyalembera, a diocesan priest in Congo’s North Kivu province, was shot to death on Feb. 25 in an apparent attempted robbery. • The Federal Communications Commission’s vote on Feb. 26 to safeguard net neutrality was welcomed by Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Communications, who called the Internet “a critical medium for religious speech,” since other media are “closed to noncommercial religious messages.” • Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron of Detroit led employees of the archdiocese into a new chancery building in downtown Detroit’s Capitol Park on Feb. 9. • The National Demographic Survey of American Jewish College Students, released in February, found that 54 percent of Jewish students experienced anti-Semitism on campus in the first six months of the academic year 2013/14.