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Los Angeles archdiocese won't provide religious exemption from Covid vaccinesThe Archdiocese of Los Angeles has said it is not providing religious exemption letters to individuals who object to receiving a vaccination against the coronavirus.In a terse statement, the archdiocese said it “recommends that all members of the Catholic community who can receive a COVID-19 vaccine should do so. The Archdiocese is not providing individuals with religious exemption letters to avoid vaccination against COVID-19. Please see the information and links below to understand why the Archdiocese does not consider the COVID-19 vaccine to be morally objectionable and why it encourages all...

Are things bad in America when the Taliban Lectures us on Free Speech? Taliban Lectures America on our Lack of Free Speech

MANILA, Philippines — People vaccinated against COVID-19 could avail of flu and pneumonia shots “anytime or a week after” their first dose or second dose regardless of the coronavirus jab brand. Dr. Donald Ray Josue, vaccines medical director of GSK Philippines, said last Wednesday that getting flu shots may potentially have benefits against COVID-19. He said that COVID-19 patients who were vaccinated against flu had less severe symptoms and were less likely to consult emergency departments in health facilities.

If you've never seen a TFIGLobal political commentary video, this would be a good intro.

Concerns regarding recently instituted or expected mandatory vaccination policies for COVID-19 by various governmental and institutional authorities, including Catholic health care systems and universities, have been voiced by the Catholic Medical Association, the National Catholic Bioethics Center and the bishops of Colorado. These statements either critique the mandates themselves, casting them as a form of authoritative overreach, or call for wide allowance of religious/moral exemptions. There is, however, no sufficient moral reason for Catholics to request such an exemption. Furthermore, as Pope Francis has affirmed, there may be a moral obligation to be vaccinated for COVID-19 unless one has a...

An Alabama doctor is taking a bold stance in the efforts to get more people vaccinated against COVID-19. Dr. Jason Valentine, a physician at Mobile’s Diagnostic and Medical Clinic Infirmary Health, posted a photo on his Facebook page showing him posed next to a sign that says “effective Oct. 1, 2021, Dr. Valentine will no longer see patients that are not vaccinated against COVID-19.” Since posting the sign, Valentine wrote that three unvaccinated patients asked where they could get a vaccine. … Valentine said he is currently in the process of mailing a letter to patients about his decision. He...

The owner of Ben & Jerry’s is angling to block an Israeli ice-cream distributor from knocking off its brand in the West Bank — the latest back-and-forth since the company’s controversial move last month to withdraw from the region, The Post has learned. London-based Unilever — whose Ben & Jerry’s subsidiary announced on July 19 it would stop selling ice cream in “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” saying it’s “inconsistent with our values” — is now threatening legal action against a group that said it plans to roll out “Judea and Samaria’s Ben & Jerry’s” ice cream to the West Bank. A...

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle said Tuesday they were “devastated” and “left speechless” by the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan amid President Biden’s withdrawal of US troops. “The world is exceptionally fragile right now. As we all feel the many layers of pain due to the situation in Afghanistan, we are left speechless,” the Megxit duo wrote. Taliban members patrol the streets of Jalalabad city, Afghanistan on August 17, 2021, as the Taliban takes control of Afghanistan after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. Prince Harry served in the British Army and was deployed to Afghanistan twice. They also weighed in...

Shark biologist John Chisholm shared photos of multiple sharks seen on Monday, including one feeding off a dead humpback. “Several white sharks sighted today off MA including one enormous individual feeding on a dead humpback whale,” he wrote on Facebook. “The two others seem tiny in comparison. One of the smaller ones is towing a recently deployed tag.” The shark feeding off the whale is estimated to be larger than 17 feet, the Facebook post stated. Videos of the whale were also shared on Captain John Boats’ Facebook page, which is a tour company. “We started off with a couple...

In all my many years of blogging MSM outbursts against Republican presidents, I've never seen anyone angrier than Richard Engel about Biden's Afghanistan fiasco. Well, there was Keith Olbermann. But for present purposes, let's leave aside the clinically disturbed. In a piece with which Morning Joe opened today's show, Engel absolutely unleashed on the Biden administration. Rolling heartbreaking footage of desperate Afghans clinging to a US military plane as it taxied toward takeoff, Engel quoted a US military official saying the situation is "100-times worse than the humiliating American pullout from Saigon."Get the rest of the story and view the...

Could your next lawyer be a robot? It sounds far fetched, but artificial intelligence (AI) software systems - computer programs that can update and "think" by themselves - are increasingly being used by the legal community. Joshua Browder describes his app DoNotPay as "the world's first robot lawyer". It helps users draft legal letters. You tell its chatbot what your problem is, such as appealing against a parking fine, and it will suggest what it thinks is the best legal language to use. "People can type in their side of an argument using their own words, and software with a...

NATO has frozen all financial aid to Afghanistan now that the country has fallen under Taliban control, the leader of the alliance said Tuesday. The international community has spent two decades training, equipping, and paying the salaries of local Afghan forces, in addition to supporting the elected government. But now that government leaders have fled and the Taliban has taken control of the entire country, that aid has stopped, NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday in a press conference. “We have of course suspended all...financial and other kinds of support to the Afghan government because there is no Afghan government...

The Atlanta Falcons have become the first and only NFL team to have a 100% COVID-19 vaccination rate among players, the team announced Monday, weeks before the start of the regular season. The team had reached a 92% vaccination rate on July 23 and now, every player on the team is inoculated against the virus. "Each player will now enjoy the benefits of being able to work out and eat together," the team's website said. "They won't have to test daily, won't have to wear masks around the facility and won't have to quarantine following a close contact with someone...

NBC anchor Chuck Todd said Tuesday on “MSNBC Live” that the United States’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan will damage President Joe Biden’s image of competency. Jackson asked, “Why were we so caught off guard here? Chuck, what do Afghans need to hear from the administration broadly this morning?” Todd said, “From the point of view of Afghans…how long is this process of evacuating Afghans going to last, how open will we be to bringing out more Afghans who want out? Where are we going to take them? How is the process worked? Are we cutting red tape? All of those...

Stocks fell in afternoon trading Tuesday, as data showed the coronavirus pandemic is still holding back the U.S. economy. Americans cut back on their spending last month as a surge in COVID-19 cases kept people away from stores. Retail sales fell a seasonal adjusted 1.1% in July from the month before, the U.S. Commerce Department said Tuesday. It was a much larger drop than the 0.3% decline Wall Street analysts had expected. According to Tuesday’s report, spending fell at stores selling clothing, furniture and sporting goods. At restaurants and bars, spending rose nearly 2%, but the rate of growth has...

Below is my column in The Hill on recent reports of grand jury testimony in the Durham investigation. The implications of the grand jury — and the eventual report — have rattled folks in the Beltway this week . . . for good reason. Here is the column: This week Texas Rangers infielder Brock Holt became a baseball legend when he went to the mound and threw an “eephus,” a high-arching, off-speed pitch, in a game against the Athletics. It is believed to be the slowest pitch recorded in MLB history, and A’s batter Josh Harrison stood in disbelief as...

It's a case of an athlete who submitted regularly to the Athlete Biological Passport, who was outspoken against doping, but whose career has now ended because of the ban. Unfortunately for Compton, the test determined the source was exogenous. Also unfortunately for Compton, the news of the CIR result came five months after she'd given the sample, making it highly unlikely she could provide proof it came from a contaminated supplement or food. Compton told Cyclingnews she suspected some beef she'd had for dinner the night before the doping control was to blame. The meat was not organic and, in...

The first returns from the delayed census of 2020 are in, and they have made for celebratory headlines in the mainstream media. Big takeaway: Between 2010 and 2021, the white American population declined in real and relative terms, with more deaths than live births, as the white share of the U.S. population fell from 63 percent to under 58 percent. As The Washington Post reported, between 1990 and 2020: Black Americans held at roughly 12 percent of the population. Hispanics doubled their share from 9% to almost 19 percent, and Asians went from less than 3 percent to more than...

While US support for the ANA has declined over the past year, the primary issues involved distribution rather than a lack of abundance. The problem of corruption among the Afghan elite turned out to be a bigger problem than a simple siphoning away of vast stores of wealth; it cut at the very sinew of the national government, preventing Kabul from mobilizing military force at a time of critical need. Nor was this purely an Afghan problem; US contractors played a crucial role in facilitating the corruption across the Kabul government. Armies fight for any number of reasons, from the...

wo French mayors in Beziers and Hayange have called on police not to enforce vaccine passport controls in cafes or restaurants. Fabien Engelmann, mayor of Hayange and a member of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN), asked local police not to enforce the coronavirus health pass in the commune, arguing that the domestic vaccine passport was anti-freedom. “It is not the job of the municipal police, nor the national police, to carry out checks to determine whether or not they have the right to drink coffee or eat something,” Mr Engelmann said on Tuesday, according to Actu. “Some municipalities use...