Speaking off the cuff after his weekly Angelus blessing in St. Peter's Square, Francis spoke about the mafia for the first time since he became pontiff two months ago.

High profile killings by the Italian mafia have declined since the 1990s, but through activities such as prostitution, extortion and drug trafficking they still wield a heavy influence over the country and its economy.

Italy's main crime groups - the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta and the Camorra from around the southern city of Naples - have a joint annual turnover of 116 billion euros ($150 billion), according to the United Nations.

That is more than the annual sales of Italy's biggest company, oil giant Eni.

Francis recalled the example of the Sicilian anti-mafia priest Giuseppe Puglisi, who was killed by gunmen in 1993 outside his home in the island's capital of Palermo, and was beatified on Saturday .

"My thoughts are with the suffering of women, men and also children who are exploited by the many mafias who make them slaves, through prostitution, through many social pressures," he said.

"They cannot do this, they cannot make our brothers slaves, we must pray to the Lord to make these mafiosi convert to God."

In one of his most famous addresses in Agrigento, Sicily, in May 1993, John Paul angrily called on mafiosi to "repent, because one day you will face the judgment of God".

Earlier, Francis made his first visit to a Rome parish when he said Mass outside a church in the northern fringe of the city, joking with local children during the service.

"You can understand reality better from the outskirts than the center," he said in front of the modern, red brick church of Saints Elisabeth and Zachariah, a far cry from the vast 16th century Basilica of St. Peters in the Vatican.

During the service the pope, who is bishop of Rome, held a light-hearted question and answer session with children about the roles of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

"Whoever gets it right will win the derby," he said, in a reference to the Italian soccer cup final to be played later between Rome's two rival teams, AS Roma and Lazio. ($1 = 0.7734 euros)

(Reporting by Gavin Jones; Editing by Alison Williams)

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Eurogamer on Tuesday managed to have a lengthy chat with a Microsoft PR rep in an effort to clarify Microsofts policies surrounding buying and selling Xbox One games. There are still plenty of open questions, but the blog managed to clear the air in a number of key areas.

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First, games will be available for purchase on discs just like Xbox 360 games. The main difference is that games will not be played off the discs. Instead, they will be installed directly to the Xbox Ones 500GB hard drive, though new games can be played immediately as they install from the discs.

Once installed, games are registered and tied to a users Xbox Live account. They can be played only by that user and other users in his or her household. If a gamer wants to take that disc to a friends house and play that game on someone elses console, he or she will have to log into Xbox Live on the other persons console.

As the game is played on the new console, it will be installed on the hard drive and will remain installed after the game owner logs out and leaves. If the owner of that console wants to continue playing the game, he or she will be prompted to purchase it online at full retail.

The bits are on your hard drive, Microsofts Phil Harris told Eurogamer. At the end of the play session, when I take my disc home or even if I leave it with you if you want to continue to play that game [on your profile] then you have to pay for it. The bits are already on your hard drive, so its just a question of going to our [online] store and buying the game, and then its instantly available to play.

The big question mark that remains is how Microsoft will handle reselling used games. Logic dictates that once a player is done with a game, it can be unregistered from his or her Xbox Live account and then resold, but Microsoft hasnt confirmed anything at this point.

We will have a system where you can take that digital content and trade a previously played game at a retail store, Harrison said. Were not announcing the details of that today, but we will have announced in due course.

The potentially good news, however, is that Microsofts Xbox Support team seemingly slipped and , contradicting earlier rumors.

Finally, as we confirmed on Tuesday, .

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At 1140 GMT commercial banks quoted the currency of east Africa's third largest economy at 2,595/2,605 to the dollar, stronger than Tuesday's close of 2,600/2,610.

"The shilling's upward movement (strengthening) is from a sell-off by some of the banks to cope with a bit of tightness in liquidity," said Sage Daniel Muganza, trader at Centenary Bank.

The local currency is up 3.6 percent against the greenback in the year to date and has traded largely on a firm footing since a 14-month low of 2,715/2,725 in early January.

"There were probably some inflows from foreign investors into the auction, thus the positive sentiment for the shilling," said Faisal Bukenya, head of market-making at Barclays Bank.

Results of a 100 billion shilling Treasury bill auction released by Bank of Uganda on Wednesday showed the yield on the 91-day Treasury bill rose slightly to 9.364 percent from 9.310 percent at the previous sale.

Debt auctions often generate some support for the shilling because foreign buyers have to convert their hard currency holdings to pay for successful bids.

Weve been here before and have overcome the challenge.

During the early 1930s, thewas at its meanest. Economic desperation combined with Prohibition-era crime to produce murder rates that would not be seen again until the 1970s. Millions lost hope becausehad seemingly lost its way.

Serious and influential people wondered whether theshould give up on democracy altogether. Some held up foreign despots as role models. Say,could run this country with his eyes shut, wrote humoristin February 1933. In fact, thats the way our Congress has been running it. Meanwhile, the movie Gabriel Over the scored big at the box office with its favorable depiction of a fictional president assuming dictatorial power.

A few weeks after the movies premiere, however,took office. His confident demeanor immediately started to reassure Americans. Together with strong majorities in Congress, he launched policies , for instance that revived optimism about the countrys direction, even though the Depression would linger for years.

In the late 1970s, the nation again seemed to be careening out of control. The decades woes including stagflation and gas lines were not as horrible as the Depression, but they were bad enough to spawn anxiety that the countrys governing system was not up to the job. Once again, Washington heard talk about radical surgery on institutions. There was no support for dictatorship this time; instead, leading writers such asandargued that America should move toward a parliamentary system, in which the party that wins the legislative branch also takes the executive branch in other words, no divided government.

Then came the 1980 election and the . The Gipper hardly put an end to Americas problems, but as with FDR, his successes and eternal optimism quieted the calls for scrapping the Founders system. Forty-eight years after FDR launched Social Security, Reagan reached a legislative agreement to keep it alive for decades to come.

A few years ago, international crises and economic disaster reignited fears about American democracy. For a moment, it seemed as ifmight follow in the Roosevelt-Reagan tradition by restoring faith in the system. He and a Democratic Congress won enactment of a massive economic stimulus and far reaching health-care law.

But millions saw these actions as blunders, not triumphs. In 2010, they rebuked the president by electing a Republican majority in the House. The federal government was now divided and polarized. Despite deepening public frustration, the 2012 election kept the same parties in charge of the same institutions. Whereas FDR and Reagan scored reelection landslides far greater than their first victories, Mr. Obama made history by winning a second term while losing vote share.

Now the days of hope and change are well over, underscored by a series of controversies and accusations the , , wiretapping swirling around the president. Legislative agreements on big issues are scarce. Some blame gerrymandered voting districts in the House, while some blame the filibuster in the Senate. Others go further: One prominent law professor wrote a provocativecommentary titled Lets Give Up on the Constitution.

Procedural reforms may well deserve consideration, but Americans are fooling themselves if they think they can contain political gridlock with parchment barriers. Government is divided because we the people are divided on key issues.

Any measure that would make headway against the deficit such as cuts in entitlement programs or broad-based tax increases will light up grass-roots opposition. Americans remain conflicted on health care because any policy under the sun is going to mean sobering tradeoffs of cost, access, and quality.

Even when there is consensus on a big issue, it may not run deep. The great majority of Americans support background checks for all gun sales. But according to Gallup polls, they rank gun control 11th out of 12 national priorities.

When public opinion is divided or irresolute, its no surprise that democratic government may seem indecisive.

The Constitution is neither a suicide pact nor a guarantee of despair. On certain issues, creative lawmakers can still cobble together coalitions of diverse interests. Such a process may be under way with immigration reform. In this case, the search for common ground has gotten a boost from circumstances beyond the control of American politicians. As Hispanic Americans continue to gain political clout and as economic and demographic trends inhave apparently helped to halt mass migration, the strain on US immigration policy has been eased.

On broader concerns, political change will come when voters move decisively in one direction or the other. It happened in 1932 and 1980, and it could happen again provided candidates provide real choices and winners follow through on what they say. is the Roy P. Crocker professor of American politics atand coauthor of .

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Tyson, who recently toured his one-man autobiographical stage show, "Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth," will give voice to his cartoon character on the "Mike Tyson Mysteries" crime-solving series.

Tyson, 46, will be aided by a magical tattoo on his character's face and a foul-mouthed pigeon as a partner on the 15-minute show, Adult Swim said. Tyson in real life owns racing pigeons.

The network, which is known for its zany youth-oriented programs, did not say when the show would premiere.

Some plot lines include attempting to defeat a super computer at chess and why an author/werewolf cannot finish a novel, Adult Swim said.

Tyson, who became better known for his erratic behavior and 1992 rape conviction than for his skill in the ring, has seen his reputation rise following a cameo in the 2009 hit comedy "The Hangover."

Tyson retired from boxing in 2006 and began a second career in entertainment, including a 2011 television documentary series about his flock of racing pigeons.

Adult Swim is owned by Turner Broadcasting System Inc, a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Philip Barbara)

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Mobile News on Thursday reported that the HTC Firsts launch has been canceled in the United Kingdom. Facebook, which is footing the bill for HTCs new handset, reportedly made the decision and allpreorders will be canceled.

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The HTC First has been pulled and will never go on sale in the UK, the . Sales in the US were poor and Facebook has taken the decision not to give it a more widespread release.

Engadget followed up on the report and got the following statement from Facebook:

Following customer feedback, Facebook has decided to focus on adding new customization features to Facebook Home over the coming months. While they are working to make a better Facebook Home experience, they have recommended holding off launching the HTC First in the UK, and so we will shortly be contacting those who registered their interest with us to let them know of this decision. Rest assured, we remain committed to bringing our customers the latest mobile experiences, and we will continue to build on our strong relationship with Facebook so as to offer customers new opportunities in the future.

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So, when-ish will the War on Terror end? It's going to be a while — maybe long after Obama has left office. "A Pentagon official suggested last week that the current conflict could continue for 10 to 20 years," the Times reports. Last year, facing the possibility that Obama could lose the 2012 election, the administration began working onfor the drone program. So while Obama is justifying the use of drone strikes at a time when they've come under , he might also be establishing new norms ahead of a possible President Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or whoever.

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Obviously Obama trusted his own administration to control the drone program without these rules. In his new book, , the Times's Mark Mazzetti reports that Obama's "kill list" was the product of an early effort to "an early attempt... to establish procedures for the conduct of a secret war that most believed would last years beyond" Obama's administration. But the rules weren't totally binding. Mazzetti writes that "as much assome officials tried to keep strict criteria about who could be added to the kill list, those criteria were sometimes eased." According to Mazzetti and Daniel Klaidman's book , when General James Cartwright asked Obama why the CIA was "building a second Air Force" with its drone fleet, Obama replied ""

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In his speech, Obama will also address what to do with some terrorist suspects caught overseas instead of killed by drones: the people in Guantanamo Bay. He'll pledge to renew efforts to close the detention facility, and appoint a State Department official to oversee shrinking the population there. Guantanamo — where 170 people are held without trial in perpetuity — is a relic of a previous administration that is disturbing on the grand civil liberties scale and at the tiny human scale. Just like drones. Obama is paying Bush's favor forward with a theoretical end to perpetual war without borders.

The archdiocese sent a subpoena to President Barack Obama's administration in February asking for documents from White House staff, including Obama himself, for use in a church lawsuit against the contraception mandate.

Citing the burden involved and calling a subpoena of the president's office inappropriate, the White House asked a federal judge to toss out the subpoena on April 4.

A notice filed in U.S. District Court in Washington late on Monday said the archdiocese agreed to withdraw its subpoena. It did not say why.

A lawyer for the archdiocese declined to comment on Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Justice Department, which represented the White House in court, had no immediate comment.

The archdiocese is continuing its lawsuit in Brooklyn federal court challenging the Obama administration's health policy requirement that employers generally include coverage of birth control in health insurance plans they offer workers.

The Catholic Church teaches that artificial birth control is sinful because it violates natural law.

Part of the 2010 healthcare law championed by Obama and congressional Democrats, the birth control mandate has some exceptions for religious employers but the New York archdiocese said it expected to incur nearly $200 million each year in penalties if it refuses to comply.

(Reporting by David Ingram; editing by Andrew Hay)

reached the hardest-hit neighborhoods of Moore this afternoon as lightning and hail continued to batter the devastated city. The survey process is subjective, but team members rely on a checklist of 28 tornado damage indicators to estimate wind speeds and the degree of damage.

The National Weather Service's (NWS) four survey teams also found several areas of damage rated as EF-4 along the tornados path, according to the Facebook page of the NWS office in Norman, Okla. The preliminary ranking could still be revised in the coming days, as crews continue to assess the damage.

Tornadoes are ranked on the . An EF-0 rating is reserved for minor damage, and an EF-5 is considered the most severe, with winds topping 200 mph (322 km/h).

The Moore tornado excavated a path up to 1.3 miles (2 kilometers) wide along a 17-mile-long (27 km) stretch of central Oklahoma, the NWS said. The twister touched down 4.4 miles (7.1 km) east of Newcastle at 2:45 p.m. CDT and ended 4.8 miles (7.7 km) east of Moore, a southern suburb of Oklahoma City, at 3:35 p.m. CDT. []

At first, the tornado caused little damage on the ground. But the storm ramped up quickly, intensifying to EF-4 levels in about 10 minutes and in just about 4 miles (6.4 km), the NWS said. The storm , with winds of up to 200 mph (322 km/h) by Interstate 44 near Moore.

There have been 58 F5 or EF-5 tornadoes in the United States since 1950, according to the NWS. The rating scale was updated in 2007 to more closely align wind speeds with storm damage.

The United States has more than 1,000every year, and only 1 percent of those ever reach EF-5 strength, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

"In any given year, you will have maybe a dozen EF-4s and maybe one EF-5," said Bob Henson, a meteorologist and science writer for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

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As Oklahoma begins to recover from the devastating storms, both senators are rejecting comparisons to the disaster funding legislation in the wake of Hurricane Sandy that they both opposed. Coburn said that he wouldn't support supplementary disaster aid unless such additional spending is offset elsewhere in the budget.  Inhofe reiterated that the Sandy aid bill was filled with wasteful spending.

"There's an old saying in Oklahoma. You've got to get to the right of your opponent and stay there," said Bill Shapard, the CEO of SoonerPoll, an Oklahoma-based polling firm. "So everyone in Oklahoma that runs for office is trying to out-conservative the other."

The senators' positions come after an acrimonious debate over funding for Sandy relief, when lawmakers from the affected states turned livid that the aid bill was pulled from the floor because of conservative opposition. Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer even  conservatives would feel differently about an aid bill if it were needed in their states.