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Pope Leo visited Istanbul's Blue Mosque on Saturday, removing his shoes in a sign of respect but not appearing to pray in his first visit as leader of the Catholic Church to a Muslim place of worship during his four-day visit to Turkey. The first U.S. pope bowed slightly before entering the mosque and was led on a tour of the expansive complex, able to hold 10,000 worshippers, by its imam and the mufti of Istanbul. Leo, walking in white socks, smiled during the 20-minute visit and joked with one of his guides, the mosque's lead muezzin - the official...

Donald Trump is reportedly eager to engage in business deals with Vladimir Putin as a way to end the war in Ukraine - hoping to bring billions of dollars from the Russian economy into America. A report in The Wall Street Journal details how Trump's team - including his son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff - have been negotiating with Russia on how to 'bring their $2 trillion economy in from the cold'. Witkoff reportedly hosted Kirill Dmitriev - Putin's 'handpicked' negotiator - and Kushner at a waterfront Miami Beach estate to draw up a plan to end...

According to waste water testing done by SLO County Public Health, there were 60 positive influenza cases in November in the county, up from 36 in October. The California Department of Public Health says seasonal flu, or influenza, cases are increasing, especially for places like Southern California and the Bay Area.

When it comes to talking to Gen Z men the right is beginning to sound a bit like the left: You can’t get ahead. The whole world is stacked against you. You’re the real victim here. Podcaster Ben Shapiro recently said as much at a recent event, when he called out conservatives for inculcating young men with a “nihilistic” worldview rather than giving them the “tough talk” they need. “I think that the right is actually weirdly feminizing young men by giving them a victimology to buy into,” Shapiro said at the Jewish Leadership Conference. “This notion that you, as...

Americans should know we already gave socialism a chance. The only reason we get to celebrate Thanksgiving with lots of food is because the Pilgrims learned (the hard way) that socialism doesn’t work. When they came to America, they first tried sharing land. Gov. William Bradford decreed that each family would get an equal share of food, no matter how much they worked. The results were disastrous. Few Pilgrims worked hard, claiming “weakness and inability,” wrote Bradford. “Much was stolen.” The same plan in Jamestown led to starvation, the death of half the population, even cannibalism. Learning from their mistakes,...

President Donald Trump said on Nov. 27 that the United States could eliminate income taxes over the next couple of years due to revenue generated from tariffs. Trump made the remarks during a Thanksgiving call with U.S. service members, saying the tariffs he imposed on foreign nations have generated substantial revenue and pushed companies to build their manufacturing facilities in the United States to avoid tariff costs. “We’re taking in hundreds of billions of dollars like we’ve never done before. And some of that’s going to go back in a form of a sort of dividend to our people, but...

Ousted Oxford Union president-elect George Abaraonye has issued an apology to the family of Charlie Kirk after celebrating when he was shot. The 20-year-old PPE student at University College, Oxford, sparked outrage in September when he wrote in a WhatsApp group of Union members: 'Charlie Kirk got shot, let's f****** go', and posted a similar message on Instagram.The comments came just months after Abaraonye sat opposite Kirk, one of the most prominent pro-Trump voices in American politics during a heated Oxford Union debate.He now claims his reaction came before the seriousness of the incident became clear.'I had very little context...

The Bay Area Afghan community is condemning the shooting of two national guard troops in Washington, D.C, allegedly by an Afghan national. But they are also raising concerns that their entire community is being demonized and held accountable in the aftermath of the shooting.

A woman was slashed with a razor during the Tuesday evening rush hour on a Bronx subway train, the latest in a series of violent incidents across New York City’s transit system, according to police, as reported by The New York Post. The attack occurred around 5:30 p.m. aboard a northbound 2 train as it passed through the Pelham Parkway station. Authorities said the victim was speaking with someone when an unknown woman inserted herself into the conversation, sparking an argument. Would-be chain thief slashes woman with razor on NYC train in latest transit chaos: cops https://t.co/7NvBNzo3NO pic.twitter.com/nukz0Tr5rv— New York...

Wait, is being rude a felony now? Apparently it is, at least in (of all places) Florida. The New York Post reported Saturday that “three men stormed a University of South Florida parking garage and harassed Muslim students during dawn prayer on Tuesday — an incident captured in videos that showed the group shouting slurs, waving bacon and crowding worshipers as they bowed.” For that “all three face a felony count of disturbing schools and religious assemblies under Florida’s hate-crime enhancement statute, along with misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and disrupting a school or lawful assembly.” Wait a minute. They...

The number of new international college students in the United States has plunged by double digits, a new report by the Institute of International Education reveals — even as domestic student numbers continue to rise. Enrollment has fallen by 17 percent this fall after a shift that could cost the US an estimated $1.1 billion and eliminate 23,000 jobs nationwide, according to the analysis. The sharp decline in foreign students follows a series of Trump administration moves to tighten immigration rules, including reduced access to student visas. Schools were urged to limit the number of foreign students they admit, while...

Americans have grown sour on one of the longtime key ingredients of the American dream. Almost two-thirds of registered voters say that a four-year college degree isn’t worth the cost, according to a new NBC News poll, a dramatic decline over the last decade. Just 33% agree a four-year college degree is “worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more money over their lifetime,” while 63% agree more with the concept that it’s “not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of...

In an interview with The Atlantic, Andriy Yermak, President Zelensky's chief of staff, who helped negotiate the updated proposal, reiterated that position: 'Not a single sane person today would sign a document to give up territory. 'As long as Zelensky is president, no one should count on us giving up territory. He will not sign away territory. The constitution prohibits this. Nobody can do that unless they want to go against the Ukrainian constitution and the Ukrainian people.' Donald Trump is said to be preparing to recognise Russian control over Crimea and other occupied Ukrainian territories in a bid to...

President Donald Trump is reportedly delaying his healthcare plan after House Republicans pushed back on his idea to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told Trump that the subsidy extension is a no-go for many Republicans in Congress. The Wall Street Journal reported that the speaker “cautioned the White House that most Republicans don’t have an appetite for extending enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies , according to people familiar with the matter, showing how hard it will be politically to stave off sharp increases in healthcare costs next year for many Americans.”This comes after the...

For millions of Americans relying on Social Security, small changes to the formula that calculates annual benefit increases can have an outsized impact. Social Security checks are a cornerstone of retirement income for over 50 million Americans, and Congress is now considering legislation that could reshape how those benefits adjust for inflation. It comes as Americans of all ages continue to navigate rising costs. In October, the Social Security Administration (SSA) announced that benefits would grow by 2.8 percent in 2026 through the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). Yet for many retirees, even modest increases barely keep pace with the real...

Standing at the podium in the White House, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was, instead of answering questions about the Trump administration, answering questions about her own family. The mother of Leavitt’s nephew was detained by ICE this week. Bruna Caroline Ferreira, “a criminal illegal alien from Brazil,” allegedly overstayed a tourist visa that expired in 1999 according to the Department of Homeland Security. No doubt an embarrassing moment for the usually forthright Leavitt, it also crystallized how the shockwaves of Trump’s immigration are being felt across America. Now, I’m an upstanding citizen, thank you very much. I can’t say I...

During last week’s excruciating Oval Office make-nice between an insultingly buddy-buddy American President and a fraudulently obsequious New York City mayor-elect, the contest was over which pol was the more patronizing. At one point Trump graciously granted his petitioner permission to call him a “fascist” while clearly implying the guy’s OTT campaign rhetoric had been embarrassing. Donald Trump sat regally on his throne, patting Zohran Mamdani’s arm while commending “Attaboy!” as if petting a golden retriever that had fetched a ball. For his part, Mamdani stood mutely by the Resolute desk with cartoonish humility, hands over crotch. This cowed performance...

Whatever happened to Britain, or the UK, or England, or whatever they’re calling it? We can’t even agree on what it’s called. But what happened to England, the England that, if you’re over 50, you grew up learning about, the England that controlled the world, the England that ran the largest empire in human history at the end of World War One? Britain, which is an island in a pretty inhospitable climate, controlled literally a quarter of the Earth’s surface – and not controlled in the way the United States controls the rest of the world with an implied threat...

Those who worry about how to cope with China’s leadership in technology—and there are plenty of them—think hard about electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels and open-source artificial intelligence. For such people, we have some bad news. This week we report how China is rapidly pressing ahead in two other frontier technologies, autonomous vehicles and new drugs. As these industries spread around the world, they will exemplify the power of Chinese innovation. China’s progress in each of these important areas has been staggering. A robotaxi revolution is gathering pace, which could reshape transport, logistics and everyday urban life. The country’s autonomous...

A Korean spa in New Jersey has been ordered to implement “gender identity-friendly” policies and educate staff on “non-discrimination” after being sued for refusing to allow a male into the women’s nude section. The man, Alexandra “Allie” Goebert, first launched the discrimination suit against King Spa in 2022. King Spa is a wellness facility modeling itself after a jimjilbang, a traditional Korean health center which requires nudity in some areas. For that reason, the nude areas of the spa had been strictly sex-segregated. As previously reported by Reduxx, the incident involving Goebert first occurred in August of 2022 when he...