Vincent Lambert, who suffered serious brain damage more than 10 years ago, died after years of court battles.

Opening the Vatican tombs of a princess and a duchess July 11 in a search for the remains of a young Italian woman missing for more than 30 years, the Vatican found no human remains at all.

The complex process of examining bones and extracting DNA will be crucial in determining whether the remains in a small Vatican cemetery belong to Emanuela Orlandi, a young woman who disappeared in 1983, a Vatican-appointed forensic anthropologist said.

Family, friends and hundreds of service members in uniform remembered the heroism and self-sacrifice of Luis Alvarez during an emotional funeral Mass.

We do not anticipate young mothers dying at a moment devoted to birth, and yet we know it happens. We know about death, and yet we are caught unawares by it.

Like many people raised in an abusive environment, I also married a man who treated me with the disrespect and violence that I had been accustomed to.