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In Doe v. Catholic Relief Services, (D MD, Aug. 3, 2022), a Maryland federal district court granted summary judgment in favor of plaintiff who was denied spousal health insurance coverage for his same-sex husband. Rejecting a church-autonomy defense, the court said in part: CRS insists that any judicial inquiry into this case inevitably requires an inquiry into matters of Catholic faith and doctrine. This is not so; this case concerns a social service organization's employment benefit decisions regarding a data analyst and does not involve CRS's spiritual or ministerial functions.The court held that Catholic Relief Services violated Title VII, and...

On August 2, 2022, celebrations dedicated to the Prophet Elijah's Day were held in the center of Moscow. This date also marked the 92nd anniversary of Russian Airborne Force. Prophet Elijah is revered as the heavenly patron of the Russian paratroopers. After the Divine Liturgy, celebrated in the Church of Elijah the Prophet, a show by the General V. Margelov Ryazan Higher Airborne Troops Academy cadets was held in the Red square, followed by an open-air concert named "For my Russia". The tradition of celebrating the "Elijah's Day" goes back to the XVI-XVII centuries. It was interrupted after the October...

The incident took place on the Fire Dragon ride at the leisure resort, which is near Gunzburg in Bavaria. Legoland said it had immediately started a full investigation and the ride will be closed for the time being. The company said the accident happened after one rollercoaster train stopped and another train "did not stop completely for until now unknown reasons and made impact". A total of 38 people were in both trains, the park said - with 31 of them suffering minor injuries. Of those, 14 went to hospital for further observation and one person needed further treatment.

California Governor Gavin Newsom unveiled a new water strategy on Thursday that plans for a future with 10% less water and shifts the emphasis from conservation to capturing more water that otherwise flows out to sea. The state has budgeted more than $8 billion in the past three years to modernize water infrastructure that Newsom said would generate enough water for 8.4 million households in a state of 40 million people. His plan calls for creating storage for 4 million acre-feet of water and recycling or reusing 800,000 acre-feet per year by 2030 in addition to more stormwater capture and...

Mary Trump, the niece of former President Donald Trump, said Thursday on MSNBC’s “The Beat” that her uncle never anticipated Attorney General Merrick Garland was a “ninja,” presumably for announcing the Justice Department is willing to unseal the search warrant and property receipt for the raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

C hrysler's Plymouth division had sand kicked in its face. Twice. First, when its all-new-fastback Barracuda's debut was completely eclipsed by the Ford Mustang, despite beating it to market by a couple weeks. Then, after redesigning the Barracuda for 1967 with dedicated sheetmetal that totally obliterated any traces of its Valiant origins, and adding a coupe and convertible, Plymouth's entry was again overshadowed, this time by the release of Chevy's first-ever Camaro. Chrysler execs were no doubt keenly aware that the still-new personal-coupe market didn't just generate sales, it garnered lots of attention for the makers of the category's hero...

The average home price in Canada is expected to fall 23 per cent by the end of next year, predicts Desjardins Economics, in a significant downgrade to its earlier forecast. “Canada’s housing market is correcting quickly, and faster than we anticipated in our downbeat June forecast,” Desjardins said. In the previous forecast, the Montreal-based financial services company predicted national home prices would fall 15 per cent during the same period.

Multiple polls show that vulnerable Democrats across the country are in danger of losing reelection three months from the midterm elections. The poll for Nevada’s Third Congressional District showed that the incumbent, Rep. Susie Lee (D), would lose to her Republican challenger, April Becker, according to an RMG Research poll of 400 likely midterm voters in the district from July 23 to 29. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 5.7 percent.

The FBI is dissolving before our eyes into a rogue security service akin to those in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. Take the FBI’s deliberately asymmetrical application of the law. This week the bureau surprise-raided the home of former President Donald Trump — an historical first. A massive phalanx of FBI agents swooped into the Trump residence while he was not home, to confiscate his personal property, safe, and records. All of this was over an archival dispute of presidential papers common to many former presidents. Agents swarmed the entire house, including the wardrobe closet of the former first...

Democrats keep smugly saying, ‘Nobody is above the law,’ when asked about the FBI raiding former President Trump’s home … it’s been obnoxious considering so many of them DO believe THEY are above the law. Nancy Pelosi was probably the most obnoxious with the appearance of insider trading, her husband’s DUI, and of course her trip to Taiwan with her son who may or may not have been there for business reasons. But you know, THEY’RE above the law. The rest of us peons? Not so much. Greg Price was good enough to drag TF out of these very Democrats...

Former White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Thursday on CNN’s “New Day” that someone very close to former President Donald Trump must have been the FBI informant. Keilar asked, “This is someone with knowledge inside who told the feds that there was additional material at Mar-a-Lago, directed them where it should be, clearly was concerned enough to tell them this information they should have besides the 15 boxes of material they got in the winter. Does that change your mind? Is that now sufficient when you have someone actually aligned with him drawing the attention of the...

Two recent news stories, seemingly unrelated, point to a question we must increasingly ask: How many institutions are controlled by the people they’re supposed to serve? The first is that Republican state attorneys general are going after investment fund BlackRock for misbehavior. Instead of managing money from state pension funds and other investors to earn the greatest return, BlackRock, they say, is investing to advance its management’s social and political goals. Under the rubric of environmental, social and governance (or ESG) policies, the fund managers are rating companies not on money-making criteria but on, well, environmental and social ones. The...

Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation. Experts in classified information said the unusual search underscores deep concern among government officials about the types of information they thought could be located at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and potentially in danger of falling into the wrong hands.

Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation. Experts in classified information said the unusual search underscores deep concern among government officials about the types of information they thought could be located at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and potentially in danger of falling into to the wrong hands.

[Catholic Caucus] Germany: The Synodal Path Contagion Infects the Whole Church For Sandro Magister on his Settimo Cielo blog of June 27, 2022: “There is an ever more palpable risk that the agenda of Germany’s ‘synodal path’ will end up in that other synod of the universal Church which the pope convened in 2021…and which have its culminating session in Rome in October 2023.”The Vaticanist notes the first effects of the synodal consultations at the local level: “as soon as the dioceses began to assess the state of mind of priests and faithful, it was clear right away what...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Aug. 11 asked a federal court to make public materials on the search warrant FBI agents obtained and executed on former President Donald Trump’s residence in Florida this week. Government lawyers asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart to unseal the warrant itself and some supporting materials, as well as a receipt listing items taken from the Mar-a-Lago resort. “The department filed the motion to make public the warrant and receipt in light of the former president’s public confirmation of the search, the surrounding circumstances and the substantial public interest in this matter,” Attorney...

~Favorite Song or Dance Songs~Rachel Platten - Fight Song *Video*Tones and I - Dance Monkey - *Video* op thread

Potential solutions include centralized charging strategies, better battery technology, and more hybrid vehicles.. ... The push to transition the national road fleet to electric vehicles (EVs) is on and while increasingly popular with buyers, experts in the transportation space are examining potential problems with mass EV adoption. One such issue involves EVs and evacuations during natural disasters. A report from Transportation Research published in ScienceDirect headlined “Can we evacuate from hurricanes with electric vehicles?” found that Florida—which often bears the force of hurricanes—may not have enough power to cope during an evacuation. “If the majority of the evacuating vehicles were...

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the nation should move away from restrictive measures such as quarantines and social distancing and focus on reducing severe disease from Covid-19. In new guidelines released Thursday, the agency no longer recommends staying at least 6 feet away from other people to reduce the risk of exposure -- a shift from guidance that had been in place since the early days of the pandemic. The shift is a sign of how much has changed since the beginning of the pandemic more than two years ago. Nearly the entire US population has...

The Secret Service detail protecting Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff has been spotted blocking access to handicap-designated parking outside a Whole Foods in Los Angeles. Emhoff was running errands on Wednesday in the Westside neighborhood of Brentwood when his two-vehicle motorcade blocked the accessible parking for about 20 minutes, a witness told DailyMail.com. As Emhoff did some shopping at Whole Foods, the two black Chevrolet Suburbans bearing Department of Homeland Security plates parked diagonally across a parking space designated for people with disabilities, photos of the incident show. Emhoff, who shares a home with Vice President Kamala Harris in Brentwood, was...