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ALBANY — The parent company of St. Peter’s Health Partners, one of the Capital Region’s largest employers and one of two dominant health care providers in the region, has mandated that all of its employees get a COVID-19 vaccination.The news came down Thursday from Michigan-based Trinity Health, the national not-for-profit Catholic health care system that operates St. Peter’s.“At this point the colleagues within our system who are refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccination and don’t receive an approved exception, whether it’s for strongly held religious beliefs or medical condition, those colleagues will no longer be employed by our organization," said...

If you are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, you don’t need a booster shot to protect against the Delta variant, the US government says. The CDC and the FDA teamed up to issue a reassuring statement after Pfizer announced it was developing a booster shot against what is now the country’s dominant strain. The Thursday evening press release said inoculated Americans were “protected from severe disease and death, including from the variants currently circulating the country.”

Over July Fourth weekend, according to CNN, at least 233 people were killed and 618 others were injured in more than 500 shootings across the country. Unbelievably, those tragic statistics actually represent a 26% decrease from July Fourth weekend in 2020. But overall, violent crime in 2021 across the nation -- and especially in major urban corridors -- has only increased over 2020's horrific baseline. Nationwide murder rates in 2021 to date show a roughly 25% annual increase over 2020, and that number spikes to roughly 30% in our large cities. In New York City, there has been a 32%...

Here in Northeastern Oklahoma, the radio station that had carried Rush all these years, KRMG 102.3 FM, located in Tulsa, filled that same time slot with a show hosted by a cat named Mark Kaye (sp?), syndicated out of (one believes) Fort Lauderdale, Florida after Rush died. It turns out that Mr. Kaye is a witty dude and all that, but his show is pretty much a game show. Make fun of Biden, play stupid radio games. All the time. Makes Hannity sound professional.Something must be going on behind the scenes with Mr. Kaye because his show often isn't there,...

A man was killed and another was wounded in a shooting outside an East Oakland liquor store during a memorial vigil for a homicide victim, authorities said.

Pages, websites that repeatedly publish or share false news will see "overall distribution reduced and be restricted' in other ways," says warning. Facebook is warning users against sharing a study that found dangerously high carbon-dioxide intake in masked schoolchildren, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics. "Pages and websites that repeatedly publish or share false news will see their overall distribution reduced and be restricted in other ways," the warning says when users paste the link on Facebook, before confirming they want to share it. It's giving the same warning and threat of account restrictions to...

"LEAVE YOUR LIFE OF SIN" . JOHN 8 New International Version, emphases added Abrdgd: the complete text is in your Bible . Resources to CLICK: To read JOHN 8 in full To hear MAX McLEAN reading it To hear a DRAMATIZATION of it To see an ANIMATION of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John Harmony of the Gospels 2 8 A. D. Bible Timeline LUKE 8:2-11 At dawn [Jesus] appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a...

Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday called it a “tremendous personal benefit” to have led New York state amid the coronavirus crisis — during which he scored $5.1 million for his pandemic memoir. In a speech to his fellow governors that was loaded with presumably unintentional double meanings, Cuomo told them that they all “have a new credibility.” “Very few people were going through what we went through and we went through it together,” he said. “And speaking for myself, it was a tremendous personal benefit.” Cuomo’s controversial book deal is the subject of pending probes by federal and state officials...

"Critical race theory" has become the latest "Republicans pounce" story. Liberal media outlets are upset that this is being debated before school boards. On July 7, CNN reporter Elle Reeve complained "relentless propaganda from some conservatives created a panic that white people, and especially white children, are under attack." Perish the thought. There is zero doubt that after all the overwrought journalistic elevation of George Floyd's death into a "landmark" historical event that exposed "systemic racism," the schools would follow. The so-called "hard conversations" -- one-sided "anti-racism" diatribes about how America remains hopelessly, structurally racist -- are happening in classrooms...

LOS ANGELES - A man climbed a four-story church in Boyle Heights on Wednesday night and lit fire to a cross before jumping from roof to roof in an attempt to evade police. Dramatic video from SkyFOX shows the unidentified man jumping from rooftop to rooftop not once, but three different times.

On this date in 1850, a Persian merchant who claimed to be the Islamic messiah was shot in Tabriz for apostasy. The Bab — the handle means “Gate”; he was born Siyyid `Alí Muhammad — started preaching as a young man in 1844 and attracted a following unwelcome to the orthodox Shi’a clergy and the powers that were. The Bab would claim to be “that person you have been awaiting for one thousand years”: the Mahdi. And in a John the Baptist-like pose, he would also pledge to be preparing the way for another, “He whom God shall make manifest,”...

During a portion of an interview with BET set to air on Friday that was broadcast on Thursday’s “CBS This Morning,” Vice President Kamala Harris responded to a question on whether she’d compromise by agreeing to voter ID provisions to pass voting legislation by stating that we shouldn’t downplay the impact voter ID laws could have. Because to some, voter ID means, “you’re going to have to Xerox or photocopy your ID to send it in to prove that you are who you are.” And many people live where “there’s no Kinko’s, there’s no OfficeMax near them.” Journalist Soledad O’Brien...

Liberal MP William Amos says he mistakenly appeared naked twice during virtual House of Commons proceedings because of issues with “hyperactive multitasking” and a “lack of focus” and not because of any “mental health disorder.” “I put everyone in such an embarrassing situation, but I want to clarify that though those two incidents were embarrassing, they do not define me. These were not circumstances driven by personal gain, ill intent, unethical or a morally reprehensible act,” Amos said in French according to clips posted by local media outlets in his Pontiac, Que. riding. Amos, who was flanked by his wife,...

Major League Baseball is heading into the all-star break. Next week, it will hold its home run derby on Monday and the all-star game on Tuesday. Both events, and various others, will be held in Denver, Colorado, not Atlanta, Georgia as originally scheduled. MLB pulled the game from Atlanta because the Georgia legislature passed election integrity reforms that Democrats don’t like and contend are racist. MLB thus inserted itself into a political disagreement and sided with the Democrats. MLB is promoting the derby and the game hard. It’s counting on Japanese sensation Shohei Ohtani to sell both. He’ll be hitting...

Students at a South Korean university can earn a digital currency called Ggool when they use the toilet. Their excrement is turned into renewable energy to power the building. Professor Cho Jae-weon at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology designed an eco-friendly toilet called BeeVi—a portmanteau of bee and vision. The toilet connects to a lab that uses excrement to produce biogas and manure. It powers devices in the building such as a gas stove and a boiler. "If we think out of the box, faeces has precious value to make energy and manure. I have put this...

Last week Dan Bongino talked about the pointlessness of arguing with the left. He said something like “We think the left are simply people with bad ideas while the left thinks we are simply bad people…” He went on to say that while pointless in terms of trying to convince the person with whom you’re “arguing”, it’s worthwhile because others, who may be open minded and paying attention, might be persuaded. This was driven home to me via a Facebook discussion that started out with a friend’s cartoon suggesting CRT is an innocuous addition to the teaching of American history...

July 9, 2021 Friday of week 14 in Ordinary Time The reliquary of the Martyrs of Gorkum at the Franciscan church of St Nicholas in Brussels. Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Green.First readingGenesis 46:1-7,28-30 ©'I can die, now that I have seen you alive'Israel left Canaan with his possessions, and reached Beersheba. There he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. God spoke to Israel in a vision at night, ‘Jacob, Jacob’, he said. ‘I am here’, he replied. ‘I am God, the God of your father’, he continued. ‘Do not be afraid of going down to Egypt, for...

Surgeon who operated on young Italian vaccine victim ‘I have never seen anything like this’ Camilla Canepa was operated on by Gianluigi Zona, director of the neurosurgical and neuro-traumatological clinic of the San Martino hospital: “I had never seen a brain that was affected by such an extensive and severe thrombosis.” The neurosurgeon on duty in San Martino that night was Alessandro d’Andrea, who also called the chief physician to his side at the operating table. “We decided to have a decompression craniotomy, in which the skull is opened to relieve internal pressure.” Zona recounted the experience: “All venous sinuses...

We live in a world dominated by science, but most people don't understand its most essential characteristic: establishing standards of evidence to keep us from getting fooled by our own biases and opinions. -Maintaining standards of evidence is the most important and least appreciated idea in science. -Modern science was established in the late Renaissance when networks of researchers began working out best practices for linking evidence with conclusions. -In the face of science denial and attempts to create a post-truth society, we have to protect the primacy of standards of evidence in science and society. I talk a lot...

The top three elected leaders of the Greenville county Republican party jointly resigned their offices on Thursday afternoon, citing an inability to work with the grassroots conservative activists currently dominating the direction of the local party. The trio of county leaders were at their posts for less than three months … and their ouster is the latest major development in what has become a pitched battle for the heart and soul of the South Carolina Republican party (SCGOP), as well as the mantle of “conservatism” is this ostensibly bright red state. The resignations of party chair Jennifer Black, vice chair...