The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is looking to create a "Google Earth" of every financial transaction of every American, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) warned today in a Senate speech opposing confirmation of Richard Cordray as CFPB director. 

"This bill (creating the CFPB) was supposed to be about regulating Wall Street. Instead, it's creating a Google Earth on every financial transaction. That's right: the government will be able to see every detail of your finances. Your permission - not needed," Sen. Enzi said. 

"They can look right down to the tiny details of the time and place where you pulled cash out of an ATM," Enzi warned. And, there's nothing you can do about, since Americans don't have the ability to "opt out" or prohibit the government from collecting their personal financial data, Enzi said: "You can't tell 'em to stay out of your records. 

In its latest attempt to keep up with the times the Vatican has married one of its oldest traditions to the world of social media by offering "indulgences" to followers of Pope Francis'  tweets.

The church's granted indulgences reduce the time Catholics believe they will have to spend in purgatory after they have confessed and been absolved of their sins.  The remissions got a bad name in the Middle Ages because unscrupulous churchmen sold them for large sums of money. But now indulgences are being applied to the 21st century.

Why have apparitions of the Mother Mary appeared across the Muslim world in recent decades, and why was St George celebrated just as much in 19th century Anatolia as he is in modern Britain? Margaret Coffey explores the inter-religious saints that have bound together different faiths in shared ceremony and respect.

In 1968, when Egypt was experiencing something of a political, social and economic crisis, the image of the Virgin Mary was seen above the dome of a Coptic Christian church in the Cairo suburb of Zeitun.

Mary's image was seen first in April 1968, a month after workers had gone on unprecedented strike in another Cairo suburb, by two Muslim watchmen at a garage across the road from the church. The apparitions recurred for five months, for hours on end, and more than a million and a half people claim to have seen Mary during this time. There was no verbal message received, but many Egyptians interpreted the apparitions as a message about Egyptian unity and peace, and as testimony to the power of the spiritual realm. 

Again, in December 2009, a Muslim neighbour of a Coptic Church in Giza, Egypt's third largest city, claimed to have seen a light over the Church from the vantage point of the coffee shop over the road. Over the following days, 200,000 people, Christian and Muslim, shared his observation-and took it as a sign of difficult times to come, when unity would be a challenge to the Egyptian people.

A Pentagon report states that China, Iran and North Korea are aggressively developing nuclear missiles capable of striking the United States and proliferation among these nations of technology is rife, the British newspaper Daily Mail reported Friday.

The Department of Defense report, the findings of which were first published by the Washington Times, confirms the assessment of US intelligence agencies that Iran is set to test an intercontinental ballistic missile as early as 2015. 

"Iran has ambitious ballistic missile and space launch development programs and continues to attempt to increase the range, lethality, and accuracy of its ballistic missile force," states the assessment produced by the Department of Defense's National Air and Space Intelligence Center. 

The report also determines that the number of Chinese land-based nuclear missiles able to hit the US "could expand to well over 100 within the next 15 years" and that North Korea has already deployed its new road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, known as the Hwasong-13.

If you're a part of a specific denomination or religious sect, Living Interfaith Church of Lynnwood is probably unlike anything you've seen before. The house of worship, based in Lynnwood, Washington, is run by the Rev. Steven Greenebaum, 65, and, as per its name, the church offers an "interfaith" experience. So, what, exactly, does that mean?

Rather than focusing solely upon Jesus, Muhammad or other central religious figures that are specific to certain faiths, the Living Interfaith Church focuses upon a more interconnected sentiment - one that brings together people of any and all theological views. 
Not simply mixture of people who come together to worship and celebrate their own heritage and religious culture, the house of worship claims that its interfaith nature is an actual "faith" in its own regard.

Here's how the church defines its theology:  Interfaith is a faith that embraces the teachings of all spiritual paths that lead us to seek a life of compassionate action. Interfaith, as a faith, does not seek to discover which religion or spiritual path is "right." Rather, it recognizes that we are all brothers and sisters, and that at different times and different places we have encountered the sacred differently.

Interfaith celebrates our differing spiritual paths, recognizing it is our actions in this world that count; that we are called to engage the world, and to do so with compassion and with love.