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Africa that threatens to wipe out the continent's dwindling elephant herds.
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Crowd overflows from St. Peter's Square for Pope's Easter Mass under sunny skies
• VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Celebrating Easter Sunday, Christianity's most joyous day, Pope Francis stood under sunny skies before a flock so numerous they overflowed the flower-bedecked St. Peter's Square.
• Even before Mass began in late morning, more than 100,000 tourist, Romans and pilgrims, young and old, had turned out for the Mass. Many more streamed in throughout the ceremony.
• The broad boulevard leading from the square to the Tiber river filled up with the faithful and the curious, trying to catch a glimpse of the pontiff at the altar under a canopy erected on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica.
• A rainstorm had lashed Rome on Saturday night, with thunder competing with the sound of hymns when Francis led a vigil service in St. Peter's Basilica. Dawn brought clear skies and warm temperatures for Easter, the culmination of Holy Week, the day which marks the Christian belief that Jesus rose from the dead after his crucifixion.
• This year the Roman Catholic church's celebration of Easter coincided with that of the Orthodox church and some of the hymns at the Vatican Mass were in Russian.
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French journalists freed from Syrian captors return home to joyful families, ransom queries
• PARIS (AP) -- Four French journalists kidnapped and held for 10 months in Syria returned home Sunday to joyful families, a presidential welcome and questions about how France managed to obtain their freedom from Islamic extremists.
• The four -- Edouard Elias, Didier Francois, Nicolas Henin and Pierre Torres -- were freed by their kidnappers a day earlier at the Turkish border. They were captured in two separate incidents last June.
• At an emotional welcome ceremony at Villacoublay military airport outside Paris, President Francois Hollande saluted their return as "a moment of joy" for France.
• "This is a day of great joy for them as you can imagine, for their families ... but it is a day of great joy for France," he said.
• Hollande saluted Turkish authorities for helping in the journalists' return but did (Continued on page 20)
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