Pope Francis has criticized countries that talk of wanting peace in Syria, yet continue to supply arms to the warring sides.

The Pope did not name any names, but said in a video message to a charity group holding a conference on Syria: "While the people suffer, incredible quantities of money are being spent to supply weapons to fighters. And some of the countries supplying these arms are also among those that talk of peace.

"How can you believe in someone who caresses you with the right hand and strikes you with the left hand?" he added.

According to international estimates, the war in Syria, currently in its fifth year, has claimed more than 400,000 lives, and a further 11 million have been displaced. As a conflict, it has created the biggest international refugee crisis since World War II.

On the 4th of July, countless Facebook users donned their digital pitchforks and torches and praised the arrest and felony charge against 22-year-old Bryton Mellott. His crime? Posting a picture of himself with a burning American flag.

A short time after he posted the photo on Facebook, Mellott was swarmed with online attacks and threats from countless individuals who have no concept of freedom of speech. Shortly after the threats to Mellott began pouring in, the Urbana police department's phone began ringing of the hook with calls for his arrest — so police responded.

Sgt. Andrew Charles, with the Urbana police told the News Gazette they arrested Mellott because of all the threats against him and his place of employment, Wal-Mart.

Independence, liberty, freedom. Ideas worth celebrating, for sure, only intangible constructs of the human mind, therefore, their meanings can change along with the times. And since people are extremely adaptable creatures, we rapidly normalize to ever-evolving societal and cultural conditions and values. What people consider to be 'freedom' today, is nothing similar to what it was even a couple of generations ago.

Here are 4 celebrated, historic liberties that people have long enjoyed, yet are undergoing a dramatic metamorphosis in an evolving world.

1. ) The Freedom to Travel

The idea that human beings should be free to roam the earth without permission or threat is now dated. Prior to the 1930's you needn't a driver's license to operate a motor vehicle or carriage in America. Traveling without a passport used to be commonplace as well.

A derailed train has spilled approximately 1,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide in San Antonio, Texas, according to reports. The train was carrying 60,000 gallons of the poisonous, highly-corrosive chemical. A nearby area was temporarily evacuated.

Five train cars overturned on Sunday afternoon, according to the San Antonio Express-News, near the intersection of Loop 410 and Interstate 35. As many as 6,000 people were evacuated from Traders Village, a large flea market and carnival area just south of Lackland Air Force Base.

The United States flag is the most violent symbol in the world. It makes me feel sick, and ashamed.

"It's almost impossible to find space to heal when the [divorced spouse] US flag is stuck on the side of every business, bumper, and flagpole in sight." - Three Tour Afghanistan Veteran Jacob George

I was probably seven years old before it really sunk in that everybody in my town was not really celebrating my birthday on July 4. It was an exciting day with parades, picnics, fireworks and, in my case, special birthday parties and gifts. I lived much of my young life with the extra boost of having been born on the day that our earliest political framers supposedly signed the Declaration of Independence, an historical act of defiance against monarchial colonial rule from distant England. I remember proudly carrying the U.S. American flag in one of the July 4th parades in my small, agricultural town in upstate New York. And for years I felt goosebumps looking at Old Glory waving in the breeze during the playing of the national anthem or as it passed by in a parade. How lucky I was to have been born in the greatest country in the history of the world, and blessed by God to boot. Such a blessing, such a deal!

It wasn't until many years later, while reading an issue of the armed forces newspaper Stars and Stripes in Vietnam that I began thinking and feeling differently about the flag and what it represents. There was a story about an arrest and jailing for flag burning somewhere in the United States. I had recently experienced the horror of seeing numerous bodies of young women and children that were burned alive in a small Delta village devastated by napalm. Since the pilots had "successfully" hit their targets, they were feeling good and had received glowing reports that would bode well in their military record for promotions. I wondered why it was okay to burn innocent human beings 9,000 miles from my home town, but not okay to burn a piece of cloth that was symbolic of the U.S. policies intentionally burning villagers to death with napalm. Something was terribly wrong with the Cold War rhetoric of fighting communism that made me question what our nation stood for. There was a grand lie, an American myth that was being fraudulently preserved under the cloak of our flag.

A picture of a tired-looking Jeremy Corbyn standing on a London bus has resurfaced, sparking a passionate online debate about the Labour leader's future.

The photograph was taken in August last year, long before the Labour leader faced a motion of no confidence and two thirds of his party launched a coup against him.

It was uploaded to Facebook again on Saturday evening by Amar Alam and has since gone viral for a second time.

"This is Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, not in a Rolls Royce or another fancy car, but rather on a public bus home after a long day of campaigning," Alam wrote.

"He has the lowest expenses of any Parliamentarian and lives by the very principles he talks about, unlike most politicians, including the 172 MPs that stabbed him in the back," he added.

Police: 3 attacks may be linked

Authorities in San Diego say there may be an assailant burning and attacking homeless people in their sleep. Two men are dead and one is lying in a hospital bed with life-threatening injuries after a string of deadly attacks during a 25 hour period in San Diego County, authorities said.

On Sunday morning, police received several 911 calls from witnesses saying they saw a man on fire, running down the train tracks alongside Interstate 5, according to CNN affiliate KSWB. The charred body of a male was later found so badly burned that authorities couldn't tell whether he had suffered any trauma prior to being set ablaze, San Diego Fire-Rescue Department spokesman Lee Swanson said. At about the same time, witnesses reported seeing another man in his late 40s to early 50s darting across the freeway away from the train tracks carrying a gas can, said Lt. Manny Del Toro with the San Diego Police.

Two similarly brutal attacks took place early Monday morning, police say.

Authorities found two victims in different locations with severe trauma injuries to the torso, according to a San Diego Police Department statement. One of the two died before authorities arrived on scene.

A British businessman serving a 10-year jail term for making bogus bomb detectors has been ordered to forfeit cash and assets worth nearly £8m.

James McCormick, from Langport, Somerset, made a fortune selling his detectors to Iraq and other countries.

At his Old Bailey trial in 2013, Judge Richard Hone QC said that McCormick's fraud had undoubtedly cost lives.

Now the same judge has ordered that his cash, properties and a luxury motor cruiser should be taken from him.

In total the proceeds of crime order amounted to £7,944,834.

Mr. Wiesel,

I read your statement about Palestinians, which appeared in The New York Times on August 4^th. I cannot help feeling that your attack against Hamas and stunning accusations of child sacrifice are really an attack, carefully veiled but unmistakable, against all Palestinians, their children included. As a child of Holocaust survivors—both my parents survived Auschwitz—I am appalled by your anti-Palestinian position, one I know you have long held. I have always wanted to ask you, why? What crime have Palestinians committed in your eyes? Exposing Israel as an occupier and themselves as its nearly defenseless victims? Resisting a near half century of oppression imposed by Jews and through such resistance forcing us as a people to confront our lost innocence (to which you so tenaciously cling)?

Unlike you, Mr. Wiesel, I have spent a great deal of time in Gaza among Palestinians. In that time, I have seen many terrible things and I must confess I try not to remember them because of the agony they continue to inflict. I have seen Israeli soldiers shoot into crowds of young children who were doing nothing more than taunting them, some with stones, some with just words. I have witnessed too many horrors, more than I want to describe. But I must tell you that the worst things I have seen, those memories that continue to haunt me, insisting never to be forgotten, are not acts of violence but acts of dehumanization.

Elie Wiesel, the Auschwitz survivor who became an eloquent witness for the six million Jews slaughtered in the Second World War and who, more than anyone, seared the memory of the Holocaust on the world's conscience, died Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 87.

Menachem Rosensaft, a longtime friend and the founding chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Survivors, confirmed the death in a phone call.

Wiesel was the author of several dozen books and was a charismatic lecturer and humanities professor. In 1986, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But he was defined not so much by the work he did as by the gaping void he filled.