Happy Friday! As always, your weekly roundup:
Extremist violence against both Muslims and Christians in Nigeria killed more than 60 people on Sunday, including worshippers in a mosque who came to hear a cleric known for preaching about peaceful coexistence of all faiths.
The Confederate battle flag that has flown at the South Carolina State House for more than 50 years will soon be gone after lawmakers capped a tension-filled session early on Thursday and voted to remove it from the grounds of the State Capitol.
Pope Francis on Wednesday praised Bolivia’s social reforms to spread wealth under leftist President Evo Morales and urged the world not to view prosperity as material wealth, which he warned only breeds corruption and conflict.
The California "End of Life Options Act," otherwise known as SB 128 or "right to die," was pulled from an Assembly Committe on Health hearing Tuesday as the bill's lead authors say they need more time to convince colleagues who are struggling with the decision and may hold it until next year.
Former President Jimmy Carter said in an interview that he thinks Jesus would approve of gay marriage. “I think Jesus would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else, and I don’t see that gay marriage damages anyone else,” Carter said.
A much-heralded Colorado effort credited with significantly reducing teen pregnancy and abortion rates is searching for new funding after GOP lawmakers declined to provide taxpayer dollars to keep it going.
The Wall Street Journal's homepage experienced an outage on Wednesday amid similar troubles at the New York Stock Exchange and United Airlines. The outage came at a curious time, just hours after United Airlines grounded all their flights across the country due to computer problems, and mere minutes after trading was halted on the New York Stock Exchange. More importantly, all of this sent Stephen Colbert into full-on panic mode.
Palestinians young and old have jumped on a trend for taking “selfies” at Al Aqsa, the 8th century Muslim shrine in Jerusalem, both as a personal memento and for relatives prevented from visiting the ancient compound.
And now for the papal rapid fire roundup
This week, Pope Francis:
- Went to South America.
- Is a video game star.
- Didn't do cocaine.
