WASHINGTON (CNS) — While U.S. voters went to the polls Nov. 2 to elect a president, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was in a French hospital bed, his delicate health symbolizing the fragile nature of Israeli-Palestinian relations. In Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region, meanwhile, Sudanese government troops were violating international law by forcibly removing from makeshift camps thousands of black Sudanese left homeless by the conflict. The removal was another indication of government complicity with Arab militias accused of genocide against black Africans. Before U.S. President George W. Bush could sleep on his victory in winning a second term, the rest of the world was serving notice that his foreign policy challenges go beyond the Iraqi conflict and the war against terrorism. "The plate is full. Just read the newspapers," said Walter Mead, a specialist on the history of U.S. foreign policy at the independent Council on Foreign Relations. Mead and other foreign policy experts said that the Iraqi situation and the war on terrorism so dominated foreign policy discussions during the campaign that there was not enough time to adequately debate other important matters.

KENSINGTON, Md. (CNS) — Firas Shomaly was sitting at a small table in the Holy Redeemer School library in Kensington. He was showing the fourth-graders sitting with him a map of Israel but he couldn’t find his Palestinian home town of Beit Sahour. "This must be an old map," he said and pointed to Bethlehem. "It’s near Bethlehem," he explained. Eager to talk about his Palestinian home, the 13-year-old Shomaly described the unrest in his country. "It’s a hard life," he said. "It’s a difficult life. So scary." On their way to the United States, six students from the Latin Patriarchate school group, a conglomerate of 50 private schools in the Palestinian territories, were stopped at a checkpoint in Tel Aviv, Israel. Shomaly said the Israeli soldiers singled him out. They took him to a room, made him take off his clothes and searched him. "I’m always scared," he said. The visiting group of six students and one vice principal were sponsored by the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation, which works to spread the news to American Christians of the Christian Palestinians’ plight.

DNA leads to exoneration

ST. PAUL, Minn. (CNS) — It reads like the plot of a crime thriller: A man is falsely accused of a brutal murder. He proclaims his innocence but is sentenced to death. After many years in prison, with the help of DNA evidence and a passionate lawyer, he is exonerated and ultimately finds the real killer — a man with whom he had spent years in prison. But this story is no work of fiction. It happened to Kirk Bloodsworth, a crab fisherman from Maryland. Bloodsworth and Maryland attorney and novelist Tim Junkin were at Hamline University in St. Paul this fall to promote Junkin’s book, "Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA" (Shannon Ravenel Books, $24.95) and talk about the death penalty issue. Bloodsworth said his faith in God kept him from giving up hope throughout two trials and appeals and nine horrific years labeled as a child rapist and killer in the Maryland Penitentiary.

FORT WORTH, Texas (CNS) — It’s easy to understand how Sister Antonia Brenner could adapt so effortlessly to the noise, chaos and fighting she encounters daily inside the walls of La Mesa Penitentiary in Tijuana, Mexico. The 77-year-old nun and prison minister is the mother of seven children. Nurturing young souls to adulthood "prepared me for anything," said the petite, spunky woman who is an example of a growing number of late vocations in the church. A few years ago, Sister Antonia founded the Servants of the 11th Hour — an order of "second career" nuns. The former Beverly Hills, Calif., resident took vows as a missionary sister at age 50, after a divorce ended a long marriage and her children were grown. For the past 27 years, she has lived among the more than 2,500 male and female inmates incarcerated at La Mesa Penitentiary. "I’ve been in prison all these years, and I haven’t met anyone who wasn’t worth the little bit I have to give them," she said during a convention on late vocations held earlier this year in Fort Worth and sponsored by Region 10 of Serra International. The region includes Texas and Oklahoma.

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Catholics will make up 29 percent of the 109th Congress when it convenes in early January, with a slight rise in the number of Catholic Republicans and a similar drop in the number of Catholic Democrats. With 128 representatives and 24 senators identifying themselves as Catholics in a survey by Congressional Quarterly, Catholicism remains the largest single religious affiliation claimed by members of the new Congress.