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U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) has identified 238 fraudulent cases of individuals claiming to be related in order to secure entry into the United States. Illegal aliens from Central and South America have been exploiting children to take advantage of loopholes in U.S. immigration policy. In April, the Family Fraud Initiative was launched by ICE, in conjunction with Homeland Security Investigations and U.S. Border Patrol, to investigate individuals posing as family members when applying for asylum in the United States. Under the policy known as "catch and release," families with minor children arriving to the United States are released...

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NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER South African sisters address violence against migrant women Oct 21, 2019 by Doreen Ajiambo JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA — Covering her face with her black jacket in her sitting room in Jeppestown, a suburb of Johannesburg, a Malawian woman tells how she was sexually and physically assaulted by her attackers on Sept. 2 during xenophobic violence that left at least 12 people dead. NEW: GSR in the Classroom is a supplementary curriculum that adapts GSR articles for use in Catholic middle and high schools and faith formation programs. Learn more. A machete-wielding gang, believed to have targeted foreign-owned...

Damon Lindelof created a re-imagining of Alan Moore’s The Watchmen on HBO...to portray redneck racists versus black vigilantes. The premiere episode on Sunday, “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice,” introduces disjointed elements of this parallel present day universe. Racism is the center of this retelling. The story starts with a flashback to the 1921 Tulsa race riots. Gunshots echo everywhere while people on fire run away screaming in terror. Members of the KKK, all in white, stampede through the streets. This is very different from The Watchmen of comic lore, which focused more on nuclear and international threats....

In 2016, Mari Copeny wrote a letter to President Barack Obama to ask him for help addressing a problem in her hometown. Copeny, a resident of Flint, Michigan, wanted Obama to visit the city to address the ongoing water crisis. "I've been doing my best to march in protest and to speak out for all the kids that live here in Flint," Copeny wrote, referring to the city's tainted water supply due to government corner-cutting. She added that she was going to travel to Washington, D.C., for the congressional testimony of Rick Snyder, then the Michigan governor. At the time,...

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney confirmed he has a secret Twitter account, which was opened in 2011, shortly after he announced he was running for president. The senator discussed the account in an interview with The Atlantic but did not reveal what his name was at the time. After the interview, however, Slate was able to determine it was the locked account of Pierre Delecto, with the handle @qaws9876.

The annual meetings of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund (IMF) held Oct. 14–20 in Washington ended with increased pessimism about the global economic outlook. The U.S. economy, however, is “holding up relatively well,” despite rising trade worries and uncertainty across the globe. IMF last week warned about a “synchronized slowdown” in the world economy, with nearly 90 percent of the countries now experiencing slower growth. The fund slashed its global growth forecast for 2019 to 3 percent, the slowest pace since the 2008 financial crisis. The weakness in growth is driven by a sharp slowdown in manufacturing...

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Former Fox host Greta Van Susteren blasted Fox News anchor Chris Wallace for claiming that a “well-connected” Republican, who spoke anonymously, told him there is a 20 percent chance that enough Senate Republicans may vote to remove President Donald Trump during an impeachment trial. In order to remove a president, more than two-thirds of the Senate would have to vote during the trial. “There seems to be a growing number of Republicans in Congress who are, if not breaking with the president, distancing themselves from the president,” Wallace said on the show on Sunday. “You had Mitch McConnell, the Senate...

With three polls showing her in the lead, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) may soon eclipse former Vice President Joe Biden as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. That’s great news for Republicans, because Warren has a problem: The central message of her campaign is that the economy is working for the very wealthy but it is not working for ordinary Americans. Unfortunately for her, ordinary Americans disagree. A Marist poll asked voters whether “the economy is working well for you personally.” Nearly two-thirds of Americans said yes. This includes large majorities in almost every demographic group. Sixty-seven percent of...

HONG KONG — Hong Kong protests intensified on Sunday as protesters and police resorted to new tactics after a ban on face coverings went into effect and a planned pro-democracy rally was declared unlawful. Protesters wore masks in defiance while waving American and British flags and singing the protest movement's anthem. Police fired tear gas and sprayed water cannons loaded with a caustic blue-dye to clear roads and identify protesters.

The southwest U.S. border might be quieter now than it was this spring at the height of the migrant crisis, but south of the Rio Grande the Mexican state is disintegrating.Last Thursday in the city of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, a battle erupted between government forces and drug cartel gunmen after the Mexican military captured two sons of jailed drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. The elder son, Ivan, was quickly freed by his men, who overpowered government forces and secured his release. Ivan then launched an all-out siege of the entire city in an effort to...

Hong Kong officials apologized to Muslim leaders Monday after riot police sprayed a mosque and bystanders with a water cannon while trying to contain turbulent weekend pro-democracy demonstrations in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. The city’s leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, and the police chief visited the Kowloon Mosque to apologize to the chief imam and Muslim community leaders. Officials were scrambling to minimize the fallout from Sunday’s incident at one of the city’s most well-known religious sites. The government said in a statement that Lam “extended an apology for the inadvertent spraying.” Authorities called it an accident, but a bystander’s...

The People’s Republic of China destroyed a church that reportedly could seat 3,000 people and detained its pastors, according to a human rights organization.China Aid, an international nonprofit Christian human rights group based in Texas, reported the incident in a statement released Saturday. According to the group, Chinese authorities provided no legal papers to justify the demolition.The church was located in Funan, Anhui province. Its pastors, Geng Yimin and Sun Yongyao, were detained under suspicion of “gathering a crowd to disturb social order.”China Aid President Bob Fu said in a statement that the incident was “yet another clear example showing...

Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by John Paul Jones. Click puzzle (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. John Paul Jones was noted for being the country's first significant Naval commander, mirroring George Washington's Army command during the Revolutionary War. All hints, along with the answer, are provided in the first reply comment below, using filtered font to prevent accidental spoilers. Please refrain from disclosing the full answer in comments to prevent spoilers.To solve the puzzle: Enter the letters in the top half (letter columns) of the puzzle into the white squares...

So much for populism, eh? In a cycle where his party’s candidates for president openly debate on the preferred method for eating the rich, Bloomberg reports this morning that Mayor Pete Buttigieg got lots of direction from them to start his campaign. And not just any ol’ rich guy, but arguably the poster child for American oligarchs — at least to the Democrats in the 2020 sweepstakes: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recommended colleagues as potential hires for Pete Buttigieg’s campaign soon after the South Bend, Ind. mayor launched his presidential bid in mid-April.Buttigieg campaign spokesman Chris Meagher confirmed to...

Abortion rates have dropped again in Colorado, and heath authorites are crediting increased access to birth control statewide. Pharmacists have written thousands of prescriptions for the birth control pill since 2017, when Colorado became only the third state in the nation to allow women to get prescriptions for oral contraceptives at the pharmacy instead of only from a doctor. State and federal dollars are funding free and low-cost IUDs — intrauterine devices that prevent pregnancy for five years or more — for low-income women and teens who visit community health clinics across the state. Another contributing factor: the so-called morning-after...

The 700 U.S. troops formerly stationed in Syria and withdrawn by the president just prior to Turkey's invasion will go to western Iraq and conduct counter-ISIS operations from there, according to Defense Secretary Mark Esper.Despite Trump's promise to bring the troops home, they will simply be shifted several hundred miles west. While Esper is mum about their specific mission, the location will allow for continued support for allies fighting ISIS and counter-terrorism operations in Iraq.ABC News: His comments were the first to specifically lay out where American troops will go as they leave Syria and what the counter-IS fight...

The Solomon Islands in the South Pacific are a militarily crucial location for any Pacific power interested in threatening the continent of Australia.  That's why the fighting at Guadalcanal, one of the Solomons, was so fierce during World War II.  At that time, the expansionary Pacific power was Japan, while today it is China, but the strategic value of the Solomons remains the same.That's why alarm bells are going off in Canberra over this news, coming from Andrew Tillett of the Australian Financial Review (paywalled): Revelations a Chinese company linked to a state-owned enterprise is trying to lease an entire island in the Solomon...

Pollsters are at it again, pushing sketchy polls, not to reflect public opinion, but to shape it. This is called propaganda, a popular tool for dictators who want to control the information flow from an all-powerful government to their subjects, the people. What once passed for journalism is now mostly propaganda, an effort by major media organizations to insert themselves into the political process, to push their agenda, even if it means throwing any pretense of journalistic principle and integrity to the wind. Look at the Project Veritas undercover videos of CNN for the latest example. Polls of any type...