On Wednesday the Bishop Of Rome addressed 11,000 ticketed guests on the South Lawn of the White House, during which he pontificated on the dire importance of exhibiting religious tolerance. During his hour-long speech, a smiling Pope Francis was quoted telling the White House guests that the Koran, and the spiritual teachings contained therein, are just as valid as the Holy Bible, and should therefore be respected as such.
“Jesus Christ, Jehovah, Allah. These are all names employed to describe an entity that is distinctly the same across the world. For centuries, blood has been needlessly shed because of the desire to segregate our faiths. This, however, should be the very concept which unites us as people, as nations, and as a world bound by faith. Together, we can bring about an unprecedented age of peace, all we need to achieve such a state is respect each others beliefs, for we are all children of God regardless of the name we choose to address him by. We can accomplish miraculous things in the world by merging our faiths, and the time for such a movement is now. No longer shall we slaughter our neighbors over differences in reference to their God.” Source
President Obama urged students to open up their digital life to the federal government, if they wanted to be protected by the government, calling the current privacy expectations from Americans unrealistic. “People have a whole new set of privacy expectations that are understandable. They also expect though that since their lives are all digitized, that the digital world is safe, which creates a contradictory demand on government,” he said. 
Apple has quietly bought and leased a bunch of buildings and named them after Greek deities, according to a report today in the Silicon Valley Business Journal based on documents filed with city governments. A lot of the buildings seemingly relate to Apple’s reported plans to build an electric, possibly self-driving, car. 
Meet the teenage ‘werewolf’ who is covered from head to toe in thick, three inch long black hair. Hirsute Muhammad Raihan, 13, has turned down medical treatment for his ultra rare condition because he thinks it’s a blessing from God. The boy is revered as a Hindu deity in his Indonesian village because of his unusually hairy physique. 
Rwandan buses are among the first in Africa to switch to cashless payment. Chris Matthews asks what will become of the bus conductor. Snaking through the green streets of Kigali, as a stream of motorbike taxis, known as motos, fly along the hilly roads, the 109 bus is making its familiar route west to the suburb of Gikondo. 
Bangkok, Thailand, Apr 12, 2016 / 12:04 am (
Bob Iger, Rupert Murdock, Michael Bloomberg and Bill Marriott are just a few of the corporate execs working to help cities become sanctuaries for migrants – legal and illegal – while offering money to propagate a rosy view of immigrants’ impact on the economy. 
LOS ANGELES — Lou Engle of The Call is again raising concerns after a Roman Catholic leader prostrated at his feet on Saturday in declaring that he wanted to “kiss his feet” in an act of reconciliation between Christians and Catholics, and Engle returned the act by likewise kissing the man’s shoe. 
VATICAN CITY (RNS) The wide-ranging papal document on the Catholic Church and modern-day families that the Vatican released on Friday (April 8) was expected to be the culmination of a two-year gantlet of unusually frank discussions — a chance for Pope Francis to finally settle the fierce debates, and even dark warnings of schism, that his effort to open dialogue on contentious topics had unleashed.