Welcome to the 21st civilized century.

For the first time since the World War II era, the number of people forced from their homes worldwide has surged past 50 million, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday. MORE

Increasing numbers of French Jews are leaving for Israel, citing dim economic prospects and a sense of being caught between an increasingly influential far right and militant Islam. More than 5,000 are on track to leave this year, the most since after the Six-Day War in 1967.

Israel, seeing the influx as a success, is doubling down on its efforts to attract Europeans, planning to dedicate $29 million over two years to bring in new immigrants. MORE

“I am not an anti-Semite,” French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala says with a devilish grin near the start of his hit show at this city’s Théâtre de la Main d’Or.

Then come the Jew jokes. MORE

Many people, even fanatical advocates of solar power, are unaware quite how close we are to reaching a critical milestone in the industry. Within a fairly short space of time, solar generated electricity will be fully cost competitive with coal-powered electricity – at least if the governments of the world’s two largest energy consuming nations have their way. MORE

Reports in the Mexican press say that Francis is weighing a visit to the steel fence the U.S. erected along the Arizona border to keep out immigrants and drug smugglers — an event that would be reminiscent of his stop last month at the security wall that Israel built to separate it from the Palestinian territories. U.S. Catholic leaders celebrated Mass at the border in Nogales in April on behalf of immigration reform. The pope’s visit would come during his expected September 2015 trip to the U.S. MORE

No one can argue that Pope Francis deserves a little break. Since taking office in March 2013, the 77-year-old Argentinian has been on the move almost nonstop greeting his adoring public and reforming the Vatican’s many troubled institutions.

But an announcement by the Vatican’s news service on Monday that the pope will be drastically curtailing his schedule by suspending his popular Wednesday audiences in July and skipping his daily Mass at the Casa Santa Marta, where he lives, has many in Rome wondering if the pope is really OK. MORE

A Stockton man claims he got severely ill and nearly died after swimming in a popular lake, losing 28 pounds in just one week.

“I couldn’t move; I couldn’t look around, like I was a zombie,” Lopez said. Now, there’s no sign of his life-threatening ordeal where he says his fever spiked to 107 degrees.

He says he was hospitalized for days after swimming at the reservoir. “I couldn’t eat nothing, I was laying there like this,” he said, adding he didn’t think he would survive. MORE

Border Patrol officials are swamped by the number of minors crossing illegally into the United States and frustrated that they can’t turn away known Mexican gang members.

Chris Cabrera, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 3307 in the Rio Grande Valley, said that confirmed gang members in Mexico — including those from Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) — are coming into the country to be reunited with their families, National Review reported Friday. MORE

A homeless ex-convict is being held on $1 million bond, accused of beating a priest with a metal rod in his residence at a Phoenix church and then wrestling away a handgun owned by the clergyman before fatally shooting the man’s assistant. MORE

In a hilarious appearance on John Oliver’s HBO show, the famous physicist muses that robots could “outsmart us.”  don’t want to frighten you. I’ll leave it to Stephen Hawking to do that.

The famed physicist made an appearance last night on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” and had a deep and meaningful conversation with host John Oliver. Well, at least Hawking’s side of the conversation was deep and meaningful. MORE

Last week’s Pew Research Center report detailing the partisanship that increasingly defines American life showed the average American is much more likely to choose to live near people of similar ideological bents. Liberals like living in urban areas, within walking distance of shops and neighbors. Conservatives prefer the wide-open spaces outside the city that puts more distance between themselves and the next-closest house. MORE

CDC: Cases Confirmed In 15 States, Including N.Y., With 25 In Florida Alone – First there was West Nile virus. Now health experts are warning about another virus carried by mosquitoes. MORE

Residents of Pilger braced for a massive cleanup after a storm with dual tornadoes tore through their tiny northeast Nebraska town, killing a 5-year-old and damaging more than half of the community’s structures. MORE

President Obama announced on Monday evening that US ground troops ‘equipped for combat’ are being sent to Iraq – just days after claiming that no American soldiers would be deployed to the war-torn country.

In a letter to Congress, the president said American troops will be returning to Iraq only three years after they left and their deployment began on Sunday. MORE