Friday Snippets and Soundbites

• Gospel Music Association week kicks off this weekend in Nashville, culminating with the Dove Awards ceremony on April 23. The awards show will be broadcast live on the Gospel Music Channel. The ec team will be hitting some of the showcases and artist interviews, so stay tuned for our take on the festivities. For more information on who's nominated for what, go here.

• Pope Benedict XVI arrived in the United States for his first official visit as the head of the Catholic Church. Upon his arrival in Washington, D.C., he met with the president, celebrated his birthday,http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif met with Catholic educators, held a private meeting with sexual abuse survivors, and celebrated an open-air Mass at Nationals Park. He arrived in New York City today, where he'll meet with the United Nations, visit Ground Zero, celebrate Mass in Yankee Stadium, visit a synagogue, and meet with leaders of other denominations. Read more about it here and here.

• A woman in Maryland gave birth to quadruplets—the even more fantastic part? Three of them are identical! The parents plan to introduce themselves and the boys in a press conference today. There are fewer than 100 documented cases of "identical triplets plus one" in the United States, hospital officials said.

• A couple in Dubuque, Iowa, decided to pay their neighbors back for all the pranks they'd played over the years. So when the neighbors left town for a wedding, they forked their yard. With 3,000 white plastic forks. When passers-by asked what was going on, they said they were "aerating" the yard. They have promised to help the neighbors clean up the mess. See the pictures here.