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ous dictatorship.
• It's without dispute that Jose Mario Bergoglio, like most other Argentines, failed to openly confront the 1976-1983 military junta while it was kidnapping and killing thousands of people in a "dirty war" to eliminate leftist opponents.
• But the new pope's authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin, argues that this was a failure of the Roman Catholic Church in general, and that it's unfair to label Bergoglio with the collective guilt that many Argentines of his generation still deal with.
• "In some way many of us Argentines ended up being accomplices," at a time when anyone who spoke out could be targeted, Rubin recalled in an interview with The Associated Press just before the papal conclave.
• Some human rights activists accuse Bergoglio, 76, of being more concerned about preserving the church's image than providing evidence for Argentina's many human rights trials.
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• BEIRUT (AP) -- Syrian rebels routinely kill captured soldiers and suspected regime informers, human rights monitors said Thursday, warning of mounting war crimes committed by those trying to topple President Bashar Assad.
• Reports of rebel abuses come as the Syrian opposition appears to be gaining momentum in a 2-year-old conflict that, according to the U.N., has killed more than 70,000 people.
• Abuses by the Assad regime remain far more deadly, systematic and widespread, particularly attacks on civilians with imprecise battlefield weapons, including widely banned cluster bombs, the London-based group Amnesty International said.
• The frequency and scale of such attacks has increased in recent months, the group said in twin reports released Thursday. The reports detail the conduct of the regime and rebel fighters. Previous reports about regime abuses received wide coverage.
• Still, rebel fighters, who have generally enjoyed public sympathy in the West, must also be held accountable, said Cilina Nasser of Amnesty. "It's time for the armed opposition groups to know that what they are doing is very wrong, and that some of the abuses they committed amount to war crimes," she said.
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