President Obama is asked about the new pope while visiting Capitol Hill.

Tonight, the singer formerly known as Snoop Dogg sits down with Piers Morgan for an enlightening and informative interview on poverty, guns in America and his own fascinating transformation.

The artist, who now goes by Snoop Lion after spending some time in Jamaica, talks with the "Piers Morgan Tonight" host about his past ownership of guns and guns in America today.

"I went into a situation with the law where they came through my house and took all the guns out of my house and put my family through a whole lot of unnecessary abuse and whatnot," Snoop Lion says. "I just felt like I had got to the point in my career and my life where I didn't need guns in my life, because I didn't project that energy. I felt like I was positive and peaceful."

Snoop Lion's written a song called "No Guns Allowed" that will be released in April on his new album "Reincarnated." He talks about how he was inspired after the recent shootings:

"It affected me to where I wanted to say something and I wanted to make some music to try to help the next person who was thinking about loading a gun, going into a school and then shooting and maybe helping him put that gun down and think about what he was doing or what she was doing before they did that."

Tune in this evening at 9 as the "big cat" tells Morgan, "We are guilty as Americans of promoting the gun as one of the most highly touted things that you can have in your life, whether it's good or bad."

At least 2,800 dead pigs have been fished from a Shanghai river since Friday, but authorities insist that tap water in the city is still safe to drink.

State news agency Xinhua said labels tagged to the pigs' ears indicated they came from the upper waters of the Huangpu River, which flows through the center of Shanghai and is a source of the city's drinking water.

It's not clear why the pigs had been dumped in the river, though local media reported earlier this month that a disease had killed thousands of pigs in a village south of Shanghai.

"We will continue to trace the source, investigate the cause, co-operate with neighboring areas and take measures to stop the dumping of pigs into rivers," the Shanghai Municipal Agricultural Commission said in a statement posted on their website on Monday.

READ: China pledges to tackle pollution crisis

As of Sunday, water quality on the Songjiang section of the river, where most of the pigs were found, remained normal and the incident has had "no significant effect on tap water supply," the commission added.




This horrific incident was only made public when residents started posting pictures on Weibo
Xue Manzi

However, local residents and users of of the popular Twitter-like microblog service Sina Weibo have expressed concern that the dead pigs would make the city's tap water unsafe to drink.

"Huangpu river is the source of drinking water for more than 20 million Shanghai residents. And this horrific incident was only made public when residents started posting pictures on Weibo," business investor Xue Manzi said in a post on his account.

The agricultural commission said it had tested organ samples from the pig carcasses and the results suggested the animals had contracted a type of porcine circovirus.

According to Professor Fred Leung, who specialises in animal diseases at Hong Kong University, this is a fairly common disease in pigs and not usually fatal on its own.

Pictures showed sanitation workers with sticks retrieving the bloated bodies of small pigs caught up in reeds and debris at the side of the river.

A local newspaper in Jiaxing, a city in Zhejiang province south of Shanghai, reported on March 6 that tens of thousands of pigs had died of an animal disease in a major pig farming village in the past two months.

"According to our records, 10,078 pigs died in January, another 8,325 died in February. More than 300 pigs die everyday in our village, and we barely have any space left to dispose of the dead pigs," a local villager was quoted by the paper as saying.

Chen Yi, a veterinarian at the Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told the Global Times newspapers that farmers are required by law to dispose of dead animals at community disposal sites or bury them with disinfectant.

CNN's Zhang Dayu reported from Beijing

President Obama appears to have taken a noticeable, yet brief, hit in public support coinciding with the federal budget sequester that took effect March 1. He averaged 49% approval for the week ending March 3, down from 51% the prior week.



The short-term effect of the sequester on Obama's approval rating is apparent in Gallup's three-day rolling averages.



Obama averaged 51% job approval in Gallup Daily tracking from Feb. 26-28 -- Gallup's three-day average immediately prior to the sequester. The budget sequester went into effect as scheduled on March 1 after Obama and Republican leaders met but did not reach an agreement to delay it. Then, in the first two days of the sequester, March 1-2, Obama's approval ratings were quite a bit lower, bringing his three-day averages for Feb. 28-March 2 and March 1-3 down to 46%.

However, his March 3 and March 4 approval ratings were higher, and Gallup's latest three-day average approval rating -- based on March 2-4 polling -- is 49%, nearly back to Obama's previous level. If the current trend continues, Obama would move back to 50% or above in Wednesday's daily update.

Obama Had Been at or Above 50% Since October

Obama's approval ratings have been consistently at or above 50% for some time. He averaged 51% approval in February, and has been at 50% or higher each month since October. Prior to that, Obama endured a more than two-year stretch with mostly sub-50% approval ratings, beginning in March 2010. The lone exception during that time was a 50% average for May 2011, after U.S. Navy SEALs killed 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden in a raid.



On a weekly basis, Obama's approval ratings had been 50% or higher each week since October.

Implications

Gallup Daily tracking allows for unique measurement of the federal budget sequester's impact on Americans' most important political and economic attitudes. In addition to Obama's approval rating, Americans' confidence in the economy has been affected negatively since the forced budget cuts went into effect. Although Obama's approval rating seems to be recovering from a short-term hit, Americans' economic confidence remains down. Gallup's three-day rolling average Economic Confidence Index score for March 2-4 is -27; it has not been lower since last September.

Of course, the sequester has just started, and its biggest effects may not become apparent for a while. Indeed, Gallup finds that half of Americans are currently unsure about the effects of the cuts on the economy and on themselves, personally, though the remainder of Americans are more negative than positive. Thus, while Obama may have recovered from a short-term decline in his public support, his approval rating will likely remain in a precarious state until he and Congress can reach accord on federal spending and the budget deficit.