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As I write this, it is late afternoon in Australia and after midnight on the American East Coast. I have put together some thoughts from two Anglican priest's homilies in the morning here, with ideas of my own and with images from the 1930's. Father Grant Edgecumbe this morning added the ideas: “Be Salt. Be light. Share a joke.” to tell his congregation of some ways to live out the reputed Assisi maxim: “Preach the Gospel ……… Use words if necessary." “Faith is relational.” said Father Michael Bowie in his homily in his national heritage church across a large city...

National security committee leaders in Congress are waging a public campaign to signal they support sending more advanced weapons to Ukraine–and faster than Biden is allowing.Republicans have launched a two-front campaign to pressure the Biden administration in the coming months into sending more advanced weapons to Ukraine, including some the president has so far been reluctant to provide. But the conservatives' push comes with the expectation of more and faster progress by Ukraine, as polls indicate declining support for the effort to arm Ukraine, particularly among Republicans. The first part of the dual campaign is to conduct closed-door classified information...

Zelenskiy said on Saturday that the situation on the front lines in the east of the country was getting tougher and Russia was throwing more and more troops into battle. Russian forces are slowly gaining ground in the Donbas region, encircling the city of Bakhmut north of Donetsk and battling to take control of a nearby road which is a major supply route for Ukrainian forces. They are also trying to capture Vuhledar, southwest of Donetsk.

The Arctic air that descended on the Northeast on Saturday brought dangerously cold sub-zero temperatures and wind chills to the region, including a record-setting wind chill of –108°F (–78°C) on the summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Temperatures got so low that authorities in Massachusetts took the unusual step of keeping the South Station transit hub open overnight so homeless people had a safe place to sleep. Several cities in the Northeast set or tied record low temperatures for the date, while the high winds brought down a tree branch on a car in western Massachusetts killing an infant....

Conner Flowers's Instagram tells the story of someone who was a doer. Whether he was playing pool with friends, soaking up the sun, or spending time with his family, Conner's social media presence is that of a life well-lived. Sadly, it was recently announced that Conner, brother to Southern Charm's Olivia Flowers, passed away at the age of 32. Here's what we know about his cause of death.

"She was our beautiful angel. Full of ambition, drive, passion and love. Her life was in front… the pain is unbearable. Make sure not to vaccinate anyone under the age of 24. There is no medical advantage and, in our case, total loss……"

After a Chinese balloon was discovered flying high in the sky in the U.S., the military shot down the balloon with a missile over South Carolina on Saturday. China responded to the military action threatening to “take further actions” and said it would be responding to “an obvious overreaction and a serious violation of international practice,” Associated Press reported.

A Pennsylvania family found shot dead in their backyard last week in what police say appears to be a suicide pact, included a mother and daughter who loved bowling and were devout Christian conservatives, people who knew them said. Morgan Daub, 26, and her parents, James Daub, 62, and Deborah Daub, 59, were found dead on the ground in the backyard of their home in York County, Pennsylvania, on the morning of Jan. 25, after police responded to a request for a welfare check from a neighbor. The West Manchester Township Police Department has since said that notes left inside...

The names, below, are a few of the 375,000 Confederate soldiers about whom Union soldier and president of the United States, William McKinley, said: . . . every soldier’s grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a tribute to American valor . . . And the time has now come . . . when in the spirit of fraternity we should share in the care of the graves of the Confederate soldiers . . . The cordial feeling now happily existing between the North and South prompts this gracious act and if it needed further justification it is found...

In yet another stunning move that barely registers as a shock anymore, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez labeled oxygen as a so-called “dangerous greenhouse gas” in a speech delivered to a climate-change skeptics group. “Oxygen is a very insidious gas,” said the self-described Democratic Socialist, who is surely no stranger to the radical notion. “It causes irreparable damage to our environment, with earth-poisoning properties that are only now beginning to be understood. We must take swift action in curbing its emissions and limiting the amount that individuals can encounter over their lifespans.”

For those who have had COVID-19 or who have been vaccinated against it, the World Council for Health (WCH) has issued a guideline for “spike protein detox” to eliminate the risk of developing long-term effects from the spike proteins. The World Council for Health is a non-profit initiative for the people, that is informed and funded by the people. “The World Council for Health brings to the table the world’s best health advocates, doctors, innovators, and activists fighting to achieve good health for all. We work collaboratively with 170+ organizations in 40 countries to advance public health knowledge and sensemaking....

OpenAI, the company behind the headline-grabbing artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, has an automated content moderation system designed to flag hateful speech, but the software treats speech differently depending on which demographic groups are insulted, according to a study conducted by research scientist David Rozado. The content moderation system used in ChatGPT and other OpenAI products is designed to detect and block hate, threats, self-harm and sexual comments about minors, according to Rozado. The researcher fed various prompts to ChatGPT involving negative adjectives ascribed to various demographic groups based on race, gender, religion and various other markers and found that the...

We’ll assume you’ve recently had your heart broken if you plan to spend Valentine’s Day crying into a glass of red wine and watching Bridget Jones’ Diary while eating ice cream straight from the tub. Even if that isn’t your current plan, we’ve all had a bad ex at some point in our lives....... ..... The San Antonio Zoo is offering a special Valentine’s Day greeting to all of your ex-partners who are living rent-free inside your head. The zoo will name a cockroach after your not-so-special someone for a pittance of USD$10 And if that isn’t a cold yet...

Medical professionals are warning the public about a dangerous fungal infection that is rapidly spreading across the country, particularly in the states of California and Arizona. There has been an increase in reported cases of rare Valley fever, and climate change may be to blame, according to doctors. Valley fever (also called coccidioidomycosis or “cocci”) is a disease caused by a fungus that grows in the soil and dirt in some areas of California and the southwestern United States, according to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). “People and animals can get sick when they breathe in dust that...

Will NOT vote for anyone but Trump! Either he is on the ballot in the 2024 general, or I will not vote for the office of president. Pass it on.

"If I had stayed, I would be witnessing bloodshed in Kabul,” Ashraf Ghani had said in a on a Facebook stream after fleeing. Ashraf Ghani, the former President of Afghanistan, accepted over $112 million from Qatar 'to not resist' the Taliban, Italian public broadcasting service (RAI) reported in its TJ 1 newscast. Ghani, an Afghan President who enjoyed US support, left Kabul as Taliban approached the Afghanistan capital on August 15, 2021. The report says Ashraf Ghani's envoy Ajmal Ahmadi, former president of the Central Bank of Afghanistan, received $114 million and $27 million to surrender to the Taliban. The...

Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) said that China is “exploiting” President Joe Biden’s “weakness” with the spy balloon hovering over America and declared that the United States’s “national security must not be compromised by Biden family payoffs.” Miller’s comments came in a tweet Friday morning as the Pentagon says the espionage device is expected to linger in United States airspace for a “few days,” as Breitbart News reported. The Congresswoman also called for the House of Representatives to “investigate why China is confident Biden will not respond to their hostile actions.” Tom Fitton, president of government watchdog group Judicial Watch, shared...

A federal law prohibiting marijuana users from possessing firearms is unconstitutional, a federal judge in Oklahoma has concluded, citing last year's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that significantly expanded gun rights.

President Joe Biden’s as big and self-serving a liar as George Santos — and about his record, not just his resumé. Asked Friday if he takes any blame for inflation, the prez erupted: “It was already there when I got here, man. Remember what the economy was like when I got here? Jobs were hemorrhaging. Inflation was rising. We weren’t manufacturing a damn thing here.” That’s three whoppers in 20 seconds. Lie #1: “It was already there when I got here, man.” Inflation was 1.4% when Biden took office. By April, after the passage of his $1.9 trillion “American Rescue...

[Catholic Caucus] Good Luck: Francis to Rigorously Ban Roman Rite Priestly OrdinationsFrancis' looming document to further combat the Roman Liturgy contains an explicit "ban" on the administration of the sacraments and sacramentals according to the Pontificale Romanum, reports Summorum-Pontificum.de (4 February) with reference to Roman sources.This means that baptism, marriage, confirmation and priestly ordination may only be performed in the Novus Ordo. The publication date is 3 April, the Monday of Holy Week and anniversary of the Constitution Missale Romanum, with which Paul VI invented the failed Eucharist.The ban on priestly ordination also applies to Roman Rite communities, including the...