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In this Saturday, March 9, 2013 photo, Shams Karim, 7, cuddles with her grandmother in Baghdad, Iraq. It's been more than six years since a bomb ripped away her eyes, killed her mother and left the little girl blind for life. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

BAGHDAD (AP) -- It's been more than six years since a bomb ripped away the eyes from Shams Karim, killed her mother and left the little girl, now 7, blind and disfigured for life. Psychiatric drugs help control her outbursts of crying and screaming.
 
Throughout Iraq there are tens of thousands of victims like her whose lives are forever scarred by the violence of war. Their wounds - and those of tens of thousands of U.S. and other foreign service members - may never entirely heal.
 
In Baghdad, life goes on much as it has since the Ottoman sultan ruled these parts. Porters force loaded carts through narrow bazaars as amateur breeders' beloved pigeons swoop overhead. The calls to prayer from turquoise-domed mosques provide a rhythm to the day.
 
Yet the legacy of a war that began a decade ago remains very much a part of life here too. Bullet holes still pockmark buildings, and towers wrecked by American missiles and tank shells have not fully been rebuilt. Iraqi soldiers in body armor corral cars into road-clogging checkpoints, their fingers close to the trigger, ever wary of the next attack. At 1 a.m., a curfew shuts down the capital's streets, many still lined with blast walls.
 
SWISS TOURIST GANG-RAPED IN CENTRAL INDIA
 
NEW DELHI (AP) -- A Swiss woman who was on a cycling trip in central India with her husband has been gang-raped by eight men, police said Saturday. The attack comes three months after the fatal gang-rape of a woman aboard a New Delhi bus outraged Indians.
 
Authorities detained and questioned 13 men in connection with the latest attack, which occurred Friday night as the couple camped out in a forest in Madhya Pradesh state after bicycling from the temple town of Orchha, local police officer R.K. Gurjar said.
 
The men beat the couple and gang-raped the woman, he said. They also stole the couple's mobile phone, a laptop computer and 10,000 rupees ($185).
 
The woman, 39, was treated at a hospital in the nearby city of Gwalior, Gurjar said.
 
POPE EXPLAINS NAME, URGES `CHURCH FOR THE POOR'
 
VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The focus of Pope Francis' papacy began to emerge Saturday as he offered some intimate insights into the conclave that elected him pontiff, describing how he was immediately inspired to name himself after St. Francis of Assisi because he wants to see a church that is "for the poor."
 
His comments provided further evidence that this first Latin American papacy would be one that looks beyond the confines of the church itself to the most disadvantaged, named for a 13th-century friar who renounced a wealthy, dissolute lifestyle to embrace a life of poverty and simplicity and go out in the countryside to preach a message of joy and peace.
 
"Let me tell you a story," Pope Francis began in a break from his prepared text during an audience for a few thousand journalists and Vatican communications officials in the Vatican's auditorium.
 
Francis then described how during the conclave he was comforted by his friend, Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, as the votes were going his way and it seemed "a bit dangerous" that he would reach the two-thirds necessary to be elected.
 
When the threshold was reached, applause erupted in the frescoed Sistine Chapel.
 
"He (Hummes) hugged me. He kissed me. He said, `Don't forget about the poor!'" Francis recalled.
 
"And those words came to me: The poor. The poor. Then right away, thinking of the poor, I thought of Francis of Assisi. Then I thought of all the wars as the votes were being counted, until the end. Francis is also the man of peace. That is how the name came into my heart: Francis of Assisi."
 
The pope said some have wondered whether his name was a reference to other Franciscan figures, including St. Frances de Sales or even the co-founder of the pope's own Jesuit order, Francis Xavier. But he said the inspiration was Francis of Assisi.
 
 

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