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U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison to the White House on Friday, praising the 'long-cherished and unwavering friendship' and 'exceptional alliance' the two nations have enjoyed for more than a century. 'Last year our nations commemorated "100 years of Mateship" since our gallant servicemembers fought together in World War I,' Trump boasted, after the two men reviewed troops, witnessed a 19-gun salute, posed for selfies with people on a rope line and heard their national anthems. A fife and drum corps in replica Revolutionary War-era uniforms marched across the lawn, led by a drum major carrying...

Pope Francis made a strong new push for globalism on Thursday, calling for a supranational, legally constituted body to enforce United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and implement “climate change” policies. Speaking to members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, the Pope said: “When a supranational common good is clearly identified, there is need for a special legally constituted authority capable of facilitating its implementation.” “Think of the great contemporary challenges of climate change, new slavery and peace,” he told members of the Pontifical Academy, who are meeting this week at the Vatican for a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With new abortion cases on a fast track to the U.S. Supreme Court, the nine justices will get an opportunity within weeks to take up legal fights over Republican-backed laws that could lead to rulings curbing a woman’s ability to obtain the procedure. The big question is not so much whether the court, with its 5-4 conservative majority that includes two justices appointed by President Donald Trump, will take up an appeal that could permit new restrictions on abortion rights, but when it will do so, according to legal experts. The court’s new nine-month term starts on...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem (Old Testament) Daniel 10 Daniel’s Vision of a Man 10 In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia, a revelation was given to Daniel (who was called Belteshazzar). Its message was true and it concerned a great war.[a] The understanding of the message came to him in a vision. 2 At that time I, Daniel, mourned for three weeks. 3 I ate no choice food; no meat or wine touched my lips; and I used no lotions at all until the three weeks were over. 4 On the twenty-fourth day of the first month, as I...

Andrew Kim Taegon was the first native-born Catholic priest in Korea. He was sired in a family that had supplied numerous martyrs to the glory of Jesus Christ, including his father, Saint Ignatius Kim, and his uncle, Saint Paul Chong Hasang. As a child, Andrew's intelligence impressed a French missionary priest in Korea, and he was sent by his father to Macao to learn Latin and other Western subjects. He later studied for the priesthood and would be ordained in 1844 in Shanghai. After his ordination, he secretly returned to Korea to serve the Catholic community there—a dangerous mission considering...

The US media coverage of the Israeli election has misrepresented the results of Tuesday’s vote. This isn’t necessarily deliberate. Israeli elections are inscrutable for most foreigners, particularly for Americans who are used to the clarity of the presidential system and two-party system. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not lose and his challenger, former IDF chief of general staff and Blue and White faction chief Benny Gantz did not win. Despite the fact that Blue and White won 31 seats in the 120-seat Knesset to Likud’s 31 seats, Gantz cannot form a government under any circumstances. He cannot build a majority...

quite disturbing to learn that, contrary to what the press had .. assured us about a supposedly disgruntled aircraft mechanic who got caught trying to disable a Boeing 737, the guy had ISIS video on his cell phone. ... Doesn't everyone with labor beefs against his boss have ISIS video murders on his cell phone? ... Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani might just have been motivated by ISIS's brand of Islamism, not a woikin' man's desire for more overtime. The gullible media reported it otherwise, always eager to look the other way on Islamist terror. ... Alani's phone also had a...

Mayor Bill de Blasio finally pulled the plug on his ill-fated presidential bid that failed to draw more than 1 percent support in national polls — but brought plenty of ire from New Yorkers who elected him to run the country’s largest city. “I feel like I’ve contributed all I can to this primary election and it’s clearly not my time so I’m going to end my presidential campaign,” de Blasio said on “Morning Joe” Friday, over four months after launching his long-shot campaign on May 16. The 58-year-old — notorious for his tardiness at official city events — said...

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” 2020 presidential candidate South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) stated that fellow 2020 candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has been “extremely evasive” on whether her Medicare for all plan will raise taxes for the middle class. Buttigieg said, “Senator Warren is known for being straightforward, and was extremely evasive when asked that question, and we’ve seen that repeatedly. I think that if you are proud of your plan and it’s the right plan, you should defend it in straightforward terms. And I think it’s puzzling that when everybody knows the answer to that...

Several Democrats running for their party’s nomination in 2020 are backing a policy of easing school discipline, arguing that they want to stop a “school-to-prison pipeline” that hurts minority students. But according to Andrew Pollack (no relation), whose daughter, Meadow, was among the victims in the Parkland school shooting last February, those policies allow potentially dangerous people to keep a clean record, letting them pass firearm background checks.

Last week, a Native American botanist argued that the genetic modification of crops is a form of rape. Perhaps the next step in the #MeToo movement involves returning to the low crop yields before the Green Revolution, which saved billions of lives by making food more available through genetic modification, among other things. Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist, member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at SUNY-Syracuse, called corn "one of our deepest and oldest relatives." In an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio, she humanized corn as the "Corn Mother,"...

Tariffs on Chinese goods ‘could go to 50 per cent or 100 per cent’, Michael Pillsbury says. But the American leader is not pursuing ‘cold war 2.0’, and US-China decoupling would be a ‘consequence of no agreement’ by Beijing, he says. The United States is set to ramp up the pressure on China if a trade deal is not agreed soon, a key White House adviser said... Described by US President Donald Trump as “the leading authority on China”, Michael Pillsbury said in an interview in Hong Kong on Thursday that Trump had been “remarkably restrained in the pressure he...

TGIFF! Its Fiddle Friday and we feature Dale Potter with There's an Old Spinning Wheel (1982). THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

She has won awards and accolades, and has been feted internationally for her scientific work, but now a woman hailed as one of Greece's youngest and brightest minds has come under more intense scrutiny than ever before. The rise and possible fall of Eleni Antoniadou, 31, has become the subject of intense discussion among Greeks. For years she has been giving interviews portraying herself as a researcher working for Nasa; an expert on regenerative medicine; a maker of cutting-edge artificial organs; a passionate activist against organ trafficking; and a trainer of astronauts. But it seems that not a single Greek...

The following message from T. Boone Pickens was written prior to his passing on September 11, 2019. Mr. Pickens’ website and social media accounts are now being maintained by T. Boone Pickens Foundation team members. ========================================================================================= If you are reading this, I have passed on from this world — not as big a deal for you as it was for me. In my final months, I came to the sad reality that my life really did have a fourth quarter and the clock really would run out on me. I took the time to convey some thoughts that reflect back...

Three Democratic candidates for president — Julián Castro, Cory Booker, and Marianne Williamson — have declared support for the idea of slavery reparations. A number of others have said they’d vote for a bill sponsored by Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee (D., Texas) to create a “commission to study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans.” Still other candidates have been vague (Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Beto O’Rourke), while Elizabeth Warren has called for a “national, full-blown conversation about reparations in this country.” Oh, a conversation. A Washington Post piece examining the tensions between black Americans on the question offers a glimpse...

Hundreds of thousands of young people worldwide on Friday are participating in the Global Climate Strike as organizers say it is expected to be the biggest day of protests ever surrounding the issue of climate change. The protests kicked off in Australia, where organizers said more than 300,000 people gathered in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and other cities. Melbourne hosted the largest demonstration, with more than 100,000 climate activists attending, CNN reported the organizers as saying. The strike has been largely organized and shared by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who started #FridaysForFuture climate strikes on her own in August 2018...

I wrote the other day about the intention within bioethics to destroy Catholic healthcare. Today, a court ruling from California proves my point. A Catholic hospital known as Dignity Health refused to perform a hysterectomy on a transgendered male, as against Catholic moral teaching. The patient sued for discrimination, but the case was dismissed on the basis that the hospital was legally following its faith principles. Alas, a Court of Appeals reversed, reinstating the case to the active docket. Why am I not surprised? Dignity Health’s faith-based policies require that the institution “protect and preserve the bodily and functional integrity”...

Heavy rainfall from now-downgraded Imelda wreaked havoc Thursday for much of Southeast Texas, where officials are dealing with impassable roadways, downed trees, power outages, hundreds of high-water rescues and in one small town, a hospital evacuation. At least two deaths have been linked to the storm. A man pulled from a submerged van in east Harris County died, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said in a tweet. In Jefferson County, a man was electrocuted and drowned while trying to move his horse, according to authorities there. As of Thursday evening, Houston police recovered more than 200 abandoned vehicles from city roadways, and...

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who vowed to take on "bully" President Trump, has officially dropped out of the packed 2020 presidential race. He announced the end of his campaign on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Friday morning. "I'm gonna end my presidential campaign, continue my work as mayor of New York City and I'm gonna keep speaking up for working people and for a Democratic party that stands for working people," de Blasio said during his morning appearance. In an opinion piece for NBC News, de Blasio conceded that after several months of campaigning, he had "reached the point...