POPE FRANCIS yesterday devoted his Easter Urbi et Orbi address to one of the world’s escalating and seemingly intractable problems — religious persecution and intolerance.

The British graduate unmasked as “Jihadi John” was bullied at school, his former headteacher has revealed.

US President Barack Obama urged countries to tackle violent Islamist militancy around the world and rejected as “an ugly lie” suggestions that the West was at war with Islam.

The slaying of hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent Nigerians has not garnered the sort of outrage the Paris attacks did. Why is this so, asks Áine Carroll

CAMPAIGNER Richard Leakey has returned to the Maasai Mara, and one of the first social calls he makes is to the local Maasai elders.

A worldwide search is underway for the most wanted woman.

Kenyan security forces remain locked in a stand-off with terrorists in a Nairobi shopping centre nearly 24 hours after the gang opened fire in the building, killing at least 39 people.

American extremist Omar Hammami, who was reported killed in Somalia after he fell out with the al-Shabaab rebel group’s top commander, switched a mundane life in Alabama for a spot in the global jihad, with a $5m (€3.75m) bounty on his head from the US.

The ongoing violence in Egypt is playing into the hands of al-Qaeda and gives the group an opportunity to recruit new members as it denounces Western ideologies and democracy, writes Myra MacDonald

Check out some of this year's winners from the World Press Photo awards for 2012.

The crisis that is looming in the Sahel region of Africa threatens millions with hunger, and comes as world leaders convened this week for their Rio + 20 UN Summit to review how sustainable development can achieve poverty eradication in the world.

While seeking a better life, refugees can find life in direct provision centres hard, writes Noel Baker

FIGHTING erupted yesterday in Mogadishu between government troops and al-Shabaab insurgents a day after the rebels said they were leaving the Somali capital and the government declared it controlled most of the city.

Tens of thousands of Somalis are feared dead in the world's worst famine in a generation, the United Nations said.

One of four men charged accused of plotting a suicide attack on an Australian military base angrily denied he was a terrorist today and accused the country’s troops of killing innocent people overseas.

Australian police said today that they have thwarted a terrorist plot in which Somali extremists planned to invade a military base and open fire with automatic weapons until they were shot dead themselves.

Police in Australia said today they had foiled a suicide bomb plot after arresting four men who were allegedly planning commando-style attacks on at least one army base.

One of the British sailors held captive by Somali pirates on a hijacked oil tanker made light of his ordeal and said the hostages’ families “don’t have too much to worry about”.