BAGHDAD - A wave of car bombings across Baghdad's Shiite neighbourhoods and in the southern city of Basra killed at least 34 people on Monday, Iraqi officials said.

The attacks are the latest in a recent spike of bombings that has hit both Sunni and Shiite civilian targets over the past week. The bloodshed has raised fears of a return to the widespread sectarian violence of 2006-2007 that brought the country to the edge of civil war.

NEW YORK, N.Y. - The man who police say hurled homophobic slurs at a gay man on a Manhattan street before firing a single fatal shot to his head appeared in court Sunday to face a charge of murder as a hate crime.

Elliot Morales, who appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court, is also charged with criminal possession of a weapon and menacing, according to the complaint filed Sunday by the Manhattan district attorney's office.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis lamented that investment losses by banks trigger more alarm in the economic crisis than the struggle of people to feed their families, as he led a huge rally Saturday to invigorate the church's moral conscience, hours after he held talks at the Vatican about the economic crisis with Germany's leader.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Craig Zisk moves from TV to big screen with the story of a teacher played by Julianne Moore who sleeps with a former student.

NEW ORLEANS - As the official tally of those wounded in a Mother's Day parade shooting ticked up to 20 on Thursday, the suspect made his first court appearance in the case, remaining silent as a judge set his bond at $10 million.

CANNES, France - The Cannes Film Festival has had its first shock to the system, in the shape of Mexican director Amat Escalante's unsparingly violent drug war drama "Heli."

The story of the devastation wreaked by narco-violence on an ordinary Mexican family, the movie paints such a bleak picture that one journalist told its director Thursday that she had cancelled a planned trip to the country after seeing it.

Escalante said that wasn't the reaction he was hoping for.

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican is getting back into its centuries-old tradition of arts patronage with its first-ever exhibit at the Venice Biennale, commissioning a biblically inspired show about creation, destruction and renewal for one of the world's most prestigious contemporary arts festivals.

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican on Wednesday ordered a disgraced Scottish cardinal to leave Scotland for several months to pray and atone for sexual misconduct, issuing a rare public sanction against a "prince of the church" and the first such punishment meted out by Pope Francis.

TEMPE, Ariz. - An Arizona State University student who passed out and was left in a wheelchair in a hospital lobby with a Post-it note to tell doctors that he had participated in a drinking competition apparently put back about 20 shots of tequila.

Police are considering citing the student for underage drinking in what is the latest alcohol-related incident to involve ASU students in recent months.

PARIS - A celebration of Paris Saint-Germain's first league title since 1994 was cancelled Tuesday, a day after rioting during festivities in the French capital led to 21 arrests and injuries to more than 30 people.

"Thugs won't have the last word in Paris," Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe declared.

Fans threw stones and other objects at police, who replied by firing tear-gas canisters, and store and car windows near the Champs Elysees were smashed. Three police were among the injured.