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• The meeting with a half-dozen victims, announced on Monday, is being organized by Cardinal Sean O'Malley, the archbishop of Boston. It will mark the first such encounter for the pope, who has been criticized by victims for not expressing personal solidarity with them when he has reached out to other people who suffer.
• "On this issue we must go forward, forward. Zero tolerance," Francis said, calling abuse of children an "ugly" crime that betrays God. He said the meeting and a Mass at the Vatican hotel where he lives would take place early next month.
• The Archdiocese of Boston said in a statement that the details of the meeting haven't been finalized yet, and that O'Malley "looks forward to supporting this effort by Pope Francis in whatever manner will be most helpful." The Archdiocese said the meeting is expected to take place "in the coming months."
• David Clohessy, executive director of the main U.S. victims' group, Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said the pope has shown himself to be capable of making real change in other areas such as church governance and finance but hasn't done so in dealing with sex abuse by Catholic clergy.
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• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congress is stepping up pressure on the White House to confront Russia over allegations that it is cheating on a key nuclear arms treaty -- a faceoff that could further strain U.S.-Moscow relations and dampen President Barack Obama's hopes to add deeper cuts in nuclear arsenals to his legacy.
• Butting heads with Russian President Vladimir Putin over compliance with a 26-year-old treaty to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons is not something that fits into Obama's "reset" with Russia, which already was stalled after Russia granted asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. But the issue has been simmering for a few years and Republicans on Capitol Hill want Obama to address it head-on.
• It's unclear why the administration, which has raised the issue with Russia through diplomatic channels, doesn't want to publicly blow the whistle on Moscow's alleged violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed in 1987. The treaty banned all U.S. and Russian land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 300 miles and 3,400 miles.
• There are several theories: The U.S. doesn't want Russia to pull out of the treaty altogether, which would be embarrassing for a president who, shortly after taking of

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