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this Saturday of the signing of the armistice that ended hostilities in the Korean War.
• The ship is North Korea's greatest Cold War prize, a potent symbol of how the country has stood up to the great power of the United States, once in an all-out ground war and now with its push to develop the nuclear weapons and sophisticated missiles it needs to threaten the U.S. mainland.
• Many of the crew who served on the vessel, then spent 11 months in captivity in North Korea, want to bring the Pueblo home. Throughout its history, they argue, the Navy's motto has been "don't give up the ship." The Pueblo, in fact, is still listed as a commissioned U.S. Navy vessel, the only one being held by a foreign nation.
• But with relations generally fluctuating in a narrow band between bad to dangerously bad, the United States has made little effort to get it back. At times, outsiders weren't even sure where North Korea was keeping the ship or what it planned to do with it.
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• RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) -- Pope Francis will bless the Olympic flag, visit a slum and address upward of 1 million young Roman Catholics in Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach on Thursday, as Latin America's first pope continued his inaugural international trip as pontiff.
• The Argentine-born Francis also planned to meet with several thousand countrymen at a cathedral in what promised to be an emotional event.
• During his homily at a public Mass on Wednesday, Francis made a plea for Roman Catholics to shun materialism, then he met with drug addicts and denounced the "dealers of death" who fuel their suffering.
• On his first full day of activities in Brazil, Francis traveled from one of the most important shrines in Latin America, Our Lady of Aparecida, to what he called a "shrine of human suffering" -- a hospital in Rio that treats substance abusers.
• Both encounters had a common theme that the humble pope has stressed during his young papacy: a denunciation of the "ephemeral idols" of money and power and a need for the Catholic Church to focus on the poor and outcasts of society.
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