Nation, world briefs 6/22/2015

Cyclist attacked by men with machete

LOS ANGELES -- Los Angeles police say a man is expected to survive after being pulled off his bicycle and attacked by four suspects, one wielding a machete. Officer Lilliana Preciado says the suspects got out of a green sedan and assaulted the bicyclist early Sunday in the Pico-Union area. She says during the attack, one of the suspects began hacking at the victim with a machete. The victim was able to run away. The suspects returned to the green sedan and drove away. City News Service says the victim's exact condition was not released, but the man is expected to survive.

Hunt for escapees shifts to Pennsylvania

FRIENDSHIP, N.Y. -- Investigators tracking two murder convicts who escaped from a northern New York prison scoured a rural area near the Pennsylvania border Sunday, saying an unconfirmed but credible report of a sighting had shifted the search across the state. About 300 law enforcement officers searched the neighboring New York towns of Amity and Friendship, where two men who resembled the convicts were spotted Saturday near a railroad line that runs along a county road. While state police called the sighting unconfirmed, the hunt that had focused for two weeks around a prison near the Canadian border was expanded quickly to a rural, mountainous area 350 miles away, dotted with sheds, trailers, summer homes and other potential hideouts. "We will search under every rock, behind every tree and structure until we are confident that area is secure," New York State Police Maj. Michael J. Cerretto said during a news conference Sunday.

Pope: 'Powers' did nil to stop death camps

ROME -- Pope Francis on Sunday denounced what he calls the "great powers" of the world for failing to act when there was intelligence indicating Jews, Christians, homosexuals and others were being transported to death camps in Europe during World War II. He also decried the deaths of Christians in concentration camps in Russia under the Stalin dictatorship that followed the war. The pope's harsh assessments came in impromptu remarks during his visit to Turin, northern Italy, when he told young people he understands how they find it hard to trust the world. "The great powers had photographs of the railway routes that the trains took to the concentration camps, like Auschwitz, to kill the Jews, and also the Christians, and also the Roma, also the homosexuals," Francis said, citing the death camp in Poland. "Tell me, why didn't they bomb" those railroad routes? Referring to concentration camps that came "a little later" in Russia, Francis wondered aloud: "How many Christians suffered, were killed" there? Lamenting the cynicism of world players in the 1930s and 1940s, Francis said: "the great powers divided up Europe like a cake." He cited what he called the "great tragedy of Armenia" in the last century. "So many died. I don't know the figure, more than a million, certainly. But where were the great powers then? They were looking the other way," the pope said.

-- From wire reports