Globe Trot: Attacks continue on Coptic Christians in Cairo

Christians at St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo came under attack yesterday. Almost three-dozen people were injured and one may have been killed, according to Morning Star News, in an attack that took place even as mourners were attending a funeral service for four Copts killed last week in an anti-Christian rampage. Police also did nothing as the attackers scaled the walls of the cathedral compound. Morning Star News witnessed one police officer sitting in a riot-control vehicle who fired a tear-gas grenade into the cathedral compound.

Blind Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng is scheduled to testify on Tuesday before the same U.S. congressional committee he testified to a year ago via cell phone from China. It will be Chen’s first personal appearance on Capitol Hill since his dramatic escape from brutal and illegal house arrest last April and the subsequent high-stakes U.S.-China negotiations he launched after seeking refuge at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

Despite pledges of emergency humanitarian aid to Blue Nile state in Sudan, including $150 million from the United States, rebels and others on the ground say food and other necessities are not getting through to those in need. The UN has dramatically increased its assessment of the number of people affected by conflict in this border area between Sudan and South Sudan to more than 1 million people—with 110,000 Sudanese citizens are in dire need of urgent aid.

Insurgents in southern Afghanistan killed a U.S. diplomat and five other Americans, as the Taliban resurges ahead of the U.S. pullout. Four State Department employees also were injured, one seriously, in the attack.

North Korea has warned foreign embassies in Pyongyang that it cannot guarantee their safety from the threat of conflict after April 10, and has advised them to consider pulling their staff out of the capital.