An attack targeting a bus carrying Coptic Christians left 24 people dead on Friday, Egyptian authorities said.

State TV reported gunmen opened fire as the vehicle traveled on the road to the St. Samuel Monastery in Minya province, which is located about 140 miles south of Cairo.

Christians make up around 10 percent of Egypt's mostly Muslim population of 83 million. They have long faced discrimination, but in recent years they have found themselves increasingly targeted by Islamist extremists.

Experts told NBC News in April that the violence leveled against them was "the worst it has ever been."

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/egypt-attack-coptic-christians-killed-bus-heading-monastery-n764981?cid=eml_nbn_20170526

Army tanks packed with soldiers rolled into a southern Philippine city Thursday to try to restore control after ISIS-linked militants launched a violent siege that sent thousands of people fleeing for their lives and raised fears of extremists gaining traction in the country.

At least 21 people have died in fighting that erupted late Tuesday, when the army raided the Marawi hideout of Isnilon Hapilon, who is on Washington's list of most-wanted terrorists and has a $5 million bounty on his head.

But the operation quickly went wrong. Militants called in reinforcements and swept through the streets, torching buildings, taking a Catholic priest and his worshippers hostage and sealing off much of the city to the outside world.

President Rodrigo Duterte declared 60 days of martial law on Tuesday across the southern third of the nation, an area that includes Marawi but extends well beyond it. Mindanao is home to 22 million people.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/philippines-isis-abu-sayyaf-maute-marawi-rodrigo-duterte-emergency/#

Police in Chechnya have been reportedly cracking down on gay men. Some have been imprisoned and tortured. David Greene talks to a representative of the Russian LGBT Network, which is helping the men.

More than a hundred gay men have been rounded up by the police in the Russian republic of Chechnya. That's according to reporting by the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. So far, the Kremlin has turned a blind eye to this, though German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week urged Vladimir Putin to intervene.

There is an NGO that has been working to get gay men who've been targeted out of Chechnya. It is the Russian LGBT Network. And I spoke with that group's communications manager via Skype. We should say we are not using her name because of the sensitive and dangerous nature of her work. She started by telling me how these men have been treated.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Well, they're telling us that they are beaten. Sometimes some people are beaten to death. And also people are saying that they're tortured with electric current, they are not fed properly and they don't have any water.

Audio interview and transcript here:

http://www.npr.org/2017/05/09/527540962/russian-lgbt-network-steps-up-efforts-to-get-gay-men-out-of-chechnya

Complete list here:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/04/us/politics/house-vote-republican-health-care-bill.html