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The total lunar eclipse of May 26, 2021 is the first in nearly two and a half years. It occurs within hours of the closest perigee of the year, making the Moon appear about 7% larger than average. The total phase will be visible near moonset in the western United States and Canada, all of Mexico, most of Central America and Equador, western Peru, and southern Chile and Argentina. Totality occurs just after moonrise along the Asian Pacific Rim. The eclipse can be seen in its entirety in eastern Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands, including Hawaii. Time Wednesday,...

WASHINGTON — Democrats have rushed to support New Mexico state Rep. Melanie Stansbury’s bid to succeed Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in what is considered a safe Democratic seat, new campaign finance disclosures show. Stansbury raised almost $1.2 million in roughly six weeks as contributions flooded in from Democratic House leaders, labor unions and special interest groups after weeks of appeals from party leaders warning that the race was “critical” and a loss would be “devastating.” “This is the first big test for House Democrats in 2021,” read one such missive, from California Rep. Adam Schiff. “We cannot let Republicans flip...

She's known worldwide for her climate-change activism, but now Sweden's Greta Thunberg is targeting the way your food is produced. "Our relationship with nature is broken. But relationships can change," Thunberg said in a video she posted Saturday to mark the International Day of Biological Diversity. "Millions have died from COVID-19, Zika, Ebola, West Nile Fever, SARS, MERS. Up to 75% of all new diseases come from other animals. Because of the way we farm and treat nature, cutting down forests and destroying habitats, we are creating the perfect conditions for diseases to spill over from one animal to another...

The Philadelphia 76ers were among the teams hosting playoff games over the weekend that saw an increase in fan capacity in their arenas. The 76ers welcomed more than 11,000 at the Wells Fargo Center for their Game 1 matchup against the Washington Wizards. Philadelphia won the game 125-118. "I can’t believe that was 10,000, 11,000 [people]. There’s no way. I think we’re counting like the Republicans because it felt like 30,000 people in the stands. They were amazing," 76ers coach Doc Rivers said. "Let’s keep it going. It’s so nice to have that at home. (excerpt)

Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard pressed the case for a digital dollar, saying Monday that a cryptocurrency backed by the central bank could provide a variety of benefits. Providing financial services to the nearly 1 in 5 Americans considered “underbanked” is one of the advantages Brainard cited in a speech to a conference presented by Coindesk. She also cited the safety of a Fed-backed system, as well as improvements in efficiency and cross-border payments, or transactions between people in different countries. While stressing the importance of moving forward carefully, Brainard said the Covid-19 pandemic strengthened the need for a system...

While the world was distracted with the rampant spread of a novel coronavirus, 2020 also witnessed an explosion in another deadly pathogen that could pose a threat to global public health. H5N8, a subtype of highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAIV), was identified decades ago, but during 2020 a series of emerging and ongoing H5N8 outbreaks in avian populations across dozens of countries have led to the death or slaughter of millions of birds worldwide. "The affected geographic regions have been expanding continuously, and at least 46 countries have reported highly pathogenic H5N8 AIV outbreaks," virus researchers Weifeng Shi and...

The forgiveness of a significant chunk of the nation’s student loan debt has seemingly been just around the corner since Joe Biden’s election victory in November. Four months into his term, the pressure remains on Biden to follow through on a campaign promise to forgive $10,000 in federal student loans for every borrower. Meanwhile, an answer to a bigger question could come as early as next week: whether the president has the power to wipe out five times as much student debt. That would give millions of Americans a much smaller overall debt load. But, in a new interview, Biden...

More than 300,000 people died in India on Monday as a result of the coronavirus, though a crippling surge in infections seemed to be easing in major cities but was swamping the poorer countryside. The achievement was announced by India's Health Ministry at a time when slowed vaccine supplies have hampered the country's battle against the pandemic, causing many people to miss their vaccines, and an unusual yet deadly fungal infection involving COVID-19 patients has doctors concerned.

Last week, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees came under fire for “viewpoint discrimination” over its decision not to offer tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, who will join UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism in July. An anonymous source reported that the decision was “a very political thing.” But politics needn’t have come into it at all. For one thing, the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees has a long history of granting tenure to left-leaning faculty members—if the political make-up of the school is anything to go by. But more important is Hannah-Jones’ own record. Her history of shoddy...

A black equal rights activist is in a critical condition in hospital after being shot in the head in south London yesterday. Police are appealing for information after Sasha Johnson, 27, was found with life-threatening injuries in Southwark at about 3am on Sunday morning. In a statement on its Facebook page, the Taking The Initiative Party, a new political group she was part of, said: "It is with great sadness that we inform you that our own Sasha Johnson has sustained a gunshot wound to her head. "Sasha has always been actively fighting for black people and the injustices that...

MEMORIAL OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY, MOTHER OF THE CHURCH JOHN 19:25–34 Friends, today we celebrate the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church. We hear in today’s Gospel that, as he was dying on the cross, Jesus looked to his mother and the disciple whom he loved, and he said to Mary, “Woman, behold, your son,” and then to John, “Behold, your mother.” We are told that “from that hour the disciple took her into his home.” If Mary is the one through whom Christ was born, and if the Church is indeed Christ’s Mystical Body,...

Secretary of State Blinken is the right man for the job. If the job is to conduct foolhardy, self-destructive foreign policy and then brag about it. That’s exactly what he did when he affirmed the commitment on behalf of the administration to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal(JCPOA). The Iran deal was garbage and we all knew it. It was pure Pod Save America, know-it-all fist bump diplomacy and of course, it was idiotic and counterproductive. While we appeased Iran at every turn, they raised hell all over the region. So, of course we’re doing it again. Which brings us to...

The coronavirus pandemic continues to recede in America — as the average number of new cases and deaths plummeted to levels not seen in around a year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Sunday that the rolling seven-day average of daily new coronavirus cases had dropped to 24,315 nationwide. The last time the average was that low was on June 15 of last year, when the CDC reported a seven-day average of 23,304 new cases.

Members of the 1776 Commission, which President Joe Biden disbanded on his first day in White House, are reportedly set to meet again with a renewed focus on combating the teaching of U.S. history based on the Marxist critical race theory. The advisory commission was established by the Trump administration in November 2020 to celebrate and promote the principles enshrined in the nation’s founding documents. It is commonly seen as a response to The New York Times’ controversial 1619 Project, which argues that the United States was founded as, and remains today, a racist nation. Nearly four months after its...

Cohen did a workmanlike job, but 'Jeopardy!' should have postponed the Tournament of Champions until the show's eventual new permanent host is in place.In the middle of a season in which the show looks to replace its late legendary host Alex Trebek, “Jeopardy!” began its Tournament of Champions last Monday. In it, 15 top winners from the last year’s worth of episodes compete for a $250,000 prize. Brayden Smith, one of the last multi-day champions under the Trebek regime, died earlier this year before the tournament’s taping; Cohen honored his life during Friday’s episode.Guest hosting this year’s tournament: Buzzy Cohen,...

University of Illinois trustees voted to remove the name of the longest-serving U.S. Supreme Court chief justice from the University of Illinois-Chicago law school after a task force said John Marshall's history as a slave owner and trader "render him a highly inappropriate namesake for the law school.” The University of Illinois at Chicago merged with the private John Marshall Law School in 2019 to create the city's first public law school, named UIC John Marshall Law School. It will be renamed the UI-Chicago School of Law effective July 1, the News-Gazette reported. The task force report issued in February...

“The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’ becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine,”- Paul Krugman, slamming the internet in 1998"Bitcoin Is Evil"- Paul Krugman, NYT Op-Ed Dec 2013“Bitcoin isn’t a new innovation; it’s been around since 2009, and in all that time nobody seems to have found any good legal use for it. It’s not a convenient medium of exchange; it’s not a stable store of value;...

FOX NEWS CHANNEL NAMES RACHEL CAMPOS-DUFFY CO-HOST OF FOX & FRIENDS WEEKEND. Lawrence Jones Elevated to Enterprise Reporter Across “FOX & Friends” Franchise

Billionaire philanthropist and left-wing megadonor George Soros is donating $500 million to Bard College a small liberal arts college in New York. According to a Bard College press release, the grant — “which is among the largest ever made to higher education in the United States” — will facilitate “Bard’s exemplary educational and social initiatives, establish the College’s most substantial endowment ever, and set the stage for a $1 billion endowment drive.” The college announced that it raised $250 million for its endowment and is seeking to raise another $250 million going forward. Bard College President Leon Botstein stated that...

Senator Tom Cotton accused Anthony Fauci of ‘playing word games’ regarding his involvement with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and attempting to cover his tracks where the origins of COVID are concerned.Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Cotton said that Fauci could be involved in a “genuine scandal”.“It is imperative that the NIH come clean and tell us exactly what happened,” Cotton said, adding “Well, I think that a lot of these so-called experts and scientific bureaucrats are trying to cover their tracks.”Speaking of the ‘gain of function’ research at the Wuhan lab, which was in part funded by the NIH,...