The Vatican Plot: Italian authorities say they have broken up a terrorist cell that once had direct contact with Osama bin Laden and in 2010 plotted a suicide attack on the Vatican.

Today the Italian State Police carried out raids in seven provinces, including what they say was the cell’s headquarters on the island of Sardinia. The police said some of the suspects were involved in a 2009 Pakistan market bombing that killed and injured more than 300 people.

Nation: After sitting on her nomination for more than five months, the Senate yesterday confirmed Loretta Lynch to be the next Attorney General, and the first black woman to hold the job. It didn’t come without political jockeying and vociferous opposition.

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said, “I wanted to see a new Attorney General who would be faithful to law, but her answers made that impossible.” Cruz then skipped the vote, the only senator to do so.

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy said, “I can only hope that Senate Republicans will show her more respect as the attorney general of the United States than they did as a nominee.

The Cable Bill: Comcast is giving up its $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable after hitting a regulatory meat grinder. The merger of the two cable television giants would have given the company more than half the cable customers in the country.

Pillow Talk: Former CIA Director and Army Gen. David Petraeus dodged prison yesterday when he was sentenced to two years of probation and a $100,000 fine for giving classified information to the biographer with whom he was having an affair. His bunker romance with Paula Broadwell and the revelation that he revealed too much wrecked his career and golden boy image.

And the book certainly wasn’t worth all the trouble.

Ferguson: The family of Michael Brown, the teenager killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. last summer, is suing the city for wrongful death. The family wants at least $75,000. The suit also names former Officer Darren Wilson, whose shooting of Brown was ruled justified.

100 Years: Armenia today marked the 100^th anniversary of the Ottoman Empire massacre of 1.5 million Armenians during World War I. Turkey for many years refused to even admit the deaths and to this day refuses to acknowledge that it was genocide. The US government still does not refer to it as genocide for fear of offending an important ally.

The Obit Page: Sawyer Sweeten, one of the child stars of the long-running sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond with Ray Romano, committed suicide with a gun yesterday on the porch of his family’s Texas home. He was just 19.

Sweeten and his twin brother Sullivan started appearing on the show in 1996 when they were just 16 months old. Their older sister Madylin also played one of the children. Romano said in a statement, “He was a wonderful and sweet kid to be around. Just a great energy whenever he was there.”

McTeary: The evening hospital soap Grey’s Anatomy last night killed off one of its original characters and the central romance of the show when Patrick Dempsey’s “Dr. Derek Shepherd” died of injuries in a car crash. Unable to speak, the brilliant neurologist can’t tell his doctors he needs a brain scan and dies of head injuries.

Shepherd’s departure in one way or another was not unexpected. Producer Shonda Rhimes said that after 10 years Dempsey had become a “diva” on the set and it was clear his character had become terminal.

No Joke: About a dozen American Indian actors have walked off the set of the Adam Sandler movie “The Ridiculous Six” being shot near Las Vegas, New Mexico. The actors said the script repeatedly insulted Native American women and elders and misrepresented Apache culture, although most of the actors were Navajo. For example, two of the women’s names were “Beaver’s Breath” and “No Bra.”

It goes without saying it isn’t funny because it’s an Adam Sandler movie.

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