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EW ORLEANS (AP) — President Donald Trump turned sports fan for an evening as he watched No. 1 Louisiana State University and No. 3 Clemson battle it out in the College Football Playoff championship.

Its been made official that there was a terrorist attack on the United States December 6th at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida. The attack that killed three and wounded eight was perpetrated by Saudi Air Force Lieutenant Mohammed Saeed Alshamrami who was undergoing military training. The confirmation today came not from the President of the United States, nor the Secretary of State nor the Secretary of Defense, but from Attorney General William Barr..... Special Commentary Back before 9/11 terrorism was seen as strictly a law enforcement matter in the days of President Bill Clinton. Now it looks like...

The debate starts at 9 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 14. The event will air on CNN, CNN International and CNN En Español and will be livestreamed at desmoinesregister.com and CNN.com. Last Democratic presidential debate of 2019 Chris Carlson | AP South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren during the Democratic debate in December. What is the lineup for the January Democratic debate? The six candidates sharing the stage will be: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren Former Vice President Joe Biden Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg Billionaire businessman Tom Steyer

Gun permit applications surged nearly 1,000 percent in New York’s Jewish community since the December 28, 2019, attack on Hasidic Jews in a rabbi’s home. The Washington Examiner reports that the surge is clear in Rockland County, the very county in which the rabbi’s home was attacked. The Rockland County Clerk’s office reported the “nearly 1,000 percent increase in gun permit applications in the week following the Dec. 28 attack.” Erik Melanson, owner of Rockland County’s Precision Gunsmiths, said, “A lot of people are worried, especially the large Hasidic and Jewish community in Rockland County. I have had rabbis come...

A cyclist who is still recovering from serious injuries months after being hit by a truck in Huntington Beach is getting a lot of help from an unlikely new friend: the driver who struck him. Tom Sovilla, left, and Jack Keith, right, are seen in a photo posted to a GoFundMe account. Tom Sovilla, left, and Jack Keith, right, are seen in a photo posted to a GoFundMe account. The crash that altered the lives of Tom Sovilla and Jack Keith happened along the Pacific Coast Highway on May 25, 2019, according to the two men, who shared their unusual...

Abby Huntsman announced on Monday she’s quitting “The View” to join her father, Jon Huntsman Jr., on his Utah gubernatorial campaign. But Page Six is told that the campaign isn’t the real reason for her exit from the ABC fixture, which has recently been rocked by a breakdown in the relationship between Meghan McCain and her fellow panelists. “It’s an unhealthy environment — just the way that things are handled during shows and how people deal with each other,” said an insider familiar with Huntsman’s thinking. “It’s intense.” “Abby made an issue [to executives] about the overall environment. She’s felt...

The real problem with nationalism, the kind that President Trump campaigned on, is that it offers true and therefore intolerable normality in a clown world. It is normal to want to stay out of foreign wars, to preserve your religion, language, people, and culture.

Attorney General William P. Barr declared on Monday that a deadly shooting last month at a naval air station in Pensacola, Fla., was an act of terrorism, and he asked Apple in an unusually high-profile request to provide access to two phones used by the gunman.Mr. Barr’s appeal was an escalation of a continuing fight between the Justice Department and Apple pitting personal privacy against public safety. “This situation perfectly illustrates why it is critical that the public be able to get access to digital evidence,” Mr. Barr said, calling on technology companies to find a solution and complaining that...

Whether you like it or not, there’s plenty of evidence that the God of the Bible does not sanction same-sex relationships. You may not interpret the Good Book that way. Perhaps you’ve got reasonable theological reasons for it.

Assessing a politician’s life often requires looking again at the contradictions they tried to resolve, finds Ross Ahlfeld as he remembers Tanzania’s first president Julius NyerereThere are only really three essential components to create the perfect conditions for an edifying pilgrimage—an interesting destination, a decent packed lunch and a right good read for the train. Ideally, your book should be a devotional or a breviary of some kind, especially if you are travelling to a location of some spiritual significance. Having all three of these ducks in a row, I recently set out for Edinburgh, munching on a pork luncheon...

Hackers affiliated with the Russian military have taken aim at Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company at the center of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, according to the New York Times. Hacking attempts began in early November against the company on whose board former Vice President Joe Biden’s son sat, The Times reported. At the same time the House was investigating a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during which Trump asked Zelensky to investigate the Bidens. Security experts told the Times the hackers’ findings, as well as what they were looking for, remain unclear, but...

Aboriginal people had a deep knowledge of the land, said historian Bill Gammage, an emeritus professor at Australian National University who studies Australian and Aboriginal history. They can feel the grass and know if it would burn well; they knew what types of fires to burn for what types of land, how long to burn, and how frequently. Aboriginal techniques are based in part on fire prevention: ridding the land of fuel, like debris, scrub, undergrowth and certain grasses. The fuel alights easily, which allows for more intense flames that are harder to fight. The Aboriginal people would set small-scale...

Churches appear to be less indispensable to small communities than they themselves are inclined to think. The Dutch Catholic weekly Katholiek Nieuwsblad reached that conclusion after long-term research into the effects of church closure on village communities. The research of the Dutch Catholic weekly shows, among other things, that the pace at which churches are disappearing from the countryside will only increase in the coming years. It often results in painful closures or mergers, but the local village communities also seem to recover surprisingly quickly. The various social functions of the parishes are often taken over by local social organizations...

The 37-year-old clergyman was ordained on 3 January. His vocation came when others graduate from seminaries. He has worked with the youth ministry and wishes to continue as a spiritual guide for mature vocations. He also wants to help fellow Christians face societal challenges like land disputes.Dhaka (AsiaNews) – Fr Philip Tushar Gomes, 37, is the first priest from Bakshanagar, a village in Dhaka division, since Christianity came to the area 250 years ago. The new clergyman was ordained on 3 January in the presence of Mgr Shorot Francis Gomes and 500 Catholics. “God selected me to work for his...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) sent a public warning shot on Monday night, saying that if Republicans support Democrats' impeachment witness requests then he will force votes during the trial on calling witnesses conservatives want to hear from. "My colleagues can’t have it both ways. Calling for some, while blocking others," Paul tweeted referencing a Politico report on a similar private warning his gave GOP colleagues against supporting Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer's request that former national security adviser John Bolton testify. "If we are going to give a platform to witnesses the Dems demand, I look forward to forcing votes...

The Theology of Benedict XVI: A Protestant AppreciationEdited by Tim PerryLexham Press, 272pp, £20.99/$25.89The theology of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is not the easiest thing to get a handle on. There is, first, the sheer volume of it. During his tenures as a theology professor, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and pope, Benedict wrote more than 70 books, three papal encyclicals, three apostolic exhortations, and countless articles, addresses and homilies. Second, there is such a wide variety of themes treated that it is difficult (if not impossible) to peg Benedict’s theology to any of the...

A coalition of mostly left-wing groups Monday rejected a bipartisan call for the immediate nomination and confirmation of six new members of the Federal Election Commission. The FEC has only three active members on its six member board, rendering it unable to meet its four member quorum to enforce campaign finance laws.

Surrounded by three coyotes in the backyard of his family's Highland Park home Monday night, a brave cat named Max held his own and tried to fight them off all by himself -- and the tense standoff was captured on video. Maya Gurrin and her husband were watching a movie in their home on Crestwood Way when they noticed a shadow of a tail through the window. The went outside to check it out and were stunned to find a group of coyotes in their yard. “I just kind of scream and lunge at them, and then they run away,...

While speaking to reporters on Monday, Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) said that he is keeping an open mind on which witnesses he wants to hear from in the Senate impeachment trial, and wants to hear from former National Security Adviser John Bolton. Romney said, “I support the Clinton impeachment model, which is a vote on witnesses later. But as to which witnesses I’d want to hear from, and so forth, that’s something which I’m open to until after the opening arguments.” He added that Bolton is “someone who I would like to hear from, and presumably, I’d get the chance...

Sam Whittet, 24, left Peter Roberts with a fractured skull and bleed on the brain after flying into an uncontrollable rage in December 2016A vicious thug who killed a Good Samaritan with a single punch in a booze-fuelled rage has been jailed for just two years and eight months. Sam Whittet, 24, went on a violent rampage at a working man’s club after an evening drinking on December 10, 2016. A court heard he flew into an “uncontrollable rage” during which he punched a 15-year-old boy who had his back turned to him in completely unprovoked attack. Whittet then became...