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The Presbyterian Church (USA) plans to launch a new initiative called the Center for Repair of Historical Harms, which aims to advance historical justice for minority communities that the denomination has reportedly mistreated over the generations.The center, which remains under development, recently named its first director, the Rev. Anthony Jermaine Ross-Allam, who formerly served as associate pastor for social justice at Oak Grove Presbyterian Church in Bloomington, Minnesota.Ross-Allam told Presbyterian News Service the center will be "an organized way to go about the business of repairing the harm that the PC(USA) has done to Indigenous peoples and to Afro-Americans and...

"Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven." "For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death." Matthew, Chapter 18 1 At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? 2 And Jesus called a little...

New data prove it. On Wednesday, the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) quietly dropped a bombshell. For months, the state has avoided releasing much-needed data on individuals who were arraigned in New York before lawmakers passed bail reform. But newly available data confirm what critics have long argued: bail reform was followed by a significant increase in criminal reoffending. It’s worth explaining the new data in detail. Until now, analysts not privy to government databases had to use data on arraignments in New York State published by the Office of Courts Administration. Those data currently cover...

The new commander of Russian forces in Ukraine acknowledged on Tuesday that his troops were under broad pressure and faced hard choices, as the Russian-appointed governor of occupied Kherson province announced a partial evacuation. "The situation in the area of the 'Special Military Operation' can be described as tense," Sergei Surovikin, an air force general named this month to command Russia's invasion forces, told the state-owned Rossiya 24 television news channel. -snip- Russian forces in Kherson have been driven back by 20-30 km (13-20 miles) in the last few weeks and are at risk of being pinned against the right...

An electric vehicle (EV) owner who takes road trips between Cheyenne and Casper in Wyoming has revealed that his first trip of 178 miles took a staggering 15 hours to complete in his electric Nissan Leaf. “It was very difficult. For example, [it took] 15 hours to get from Cheyenne to Casper,” Alan O’Hashi told Cowboy State Daily, adding that this particular trip wasn’t taken in the beginning of the EV era. It was in May 2022. One month later, O’Hashi was able to complete the road trip in about 11 hours, he said. To put it into perspective, the...

Explanation: Could the stem of our Milky Way bloom into an auroral flower? No, not really, even though it may appear that way in today’s featured all-sky image. On the left, the central plane of our home galaxy extends from the horizon past the middle of the sky. On the right, an auroral oval also extends from the sky's center -- but is dominated by bright green-glowing oxygen. The two are not physically connected, because the aurora is relatively nearby, with the higher red parts occurring in Earth's atmosphere only about 1000 kilometers high. In contrast, an average distance to...

Boston University issued a statement Tuesday defending its research of a COVID-19 Omicron strain when they took the variant’s spike protein and attached it to the original COVID-19 strain, leading to a higher mortality rate in a certain species of mice, triggering concern among lawmakers.“The Omicron S-bearing virus robustly escapes vaccine-induced humoral immunity, mainly due to mutations in the receptor-binding motif… while Omicron causes mild, non-fatal infection, the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe disease with a mortality rate of 80 percent,” the preprint study said.One lawmaker, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), said that the research entailed “lethal gain of function virus...

SINGAPORE: After hearing that his ex-girlfriend was getting married, a man went to the groom's home in the early hours of their wedding day in order to start a fire. Surenthiran Sugumaran, 30, pleaded guilty on Tuesday (Oct 18) to one count of mischief by fire, with a second charge of wrongful confinement taken into consideration for sentencing. The court heard that Surenthiran discovered through an Instagram post that his ex-girlfriend was getting married the next day. SNIP At about 4.40am, Surenthiran locked the victim's main gate with a bicycle lock, before pouring petrol onto a shoe rack outside the...

This school year has seen the most relaxed COVID-19 restrictions since the pandemic began, with optional and self-directed testing, a lift in the mask mandate and an near-full return to in-person instruction. ... “With the university lifting its guidelines and making it up to the individual, they’re making an already not accessible place less accessible,” Karen Wang ’24, who is a Student Accessibility Services peer liaison, said. “I find it really disturbing that people who don’t mask say that they care for their community, but your actions show you’re working within an ableist framework.” ... Colin Loria ’26 told the...

A Florida man stabbed his wife to death and then cut his own neck in a horrific murder-suicide in front of their three young children Monday, officials said. Deputies from the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office responded to a home in Deltona just after 6 p.m. after a neighbor told them that a 10-year-old boy ran to his house for help because his stepfather had stabbed his mother. The neighbor told cops he entered the residence and found a woman and a man on the floor — along with two unharmed children — before calling 911.

Researchers at Rockefeller University in New York found people who have higher levels of certain acids on their skin are 100 times more attractive to the female Aedes aegypti, the type of mosquito responsible for spreading diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever and Zika. The findings, published Tuesday in the journal Cell, could lead to new products that could mask or alter certain human odors, making it harder for mosquitoes to find human blood and potentially curbing the spread of disease. SNIP Experts have found people seem to become more attractive to mosquitoes when they're pregnant or after they've...

Video description: I just drove through downtown L.A. What is saw shocked me to the core. 3rd world conditions on *every* block. Tent cities. Filth. Drugs. People digging through, living in and eating trash. Broken lives everywhere. This is not America. See for yourself...

Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker is tied with Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in Georgia’s Senate race, a Tuesday Landmark poll found. Warnock held 46.1 percent of the vote, compared to Walker’s 46 percent. Libertarian Chase Oliver held 3.4 percent support. Only 1.6 percent remained undecided.

The leadership of a Texas megachurch has decided to leave The United Methodist Church without a congregational vote, which defies denominational rules on dismissal. St. Andrew United Methodist Church of Plano, which has approximately 6,500 members, recently announced that the church is going to disaffiliate with the UMC, the second-largest Protestant denomination in the country. "St. Andrew will disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church (UMC), but not affiliate with any other existing Methodist denomination. St. Andrew will remain Methodist with the same Wesleyan theology that we have always believed," the announcement reads. "St. Andrew will be named St. Andrew Methodist...

For months, the Left in the United States told us to get the vaccine to prevent transmission of COVID. The vaccine was touted as efficient, effective, and a key to saving lives because it stopped the virus from spreading. But last week, while giving testimony to the European Parliament, Pfizer executive Janine Small admitted that Pfizer did not test to determine whether the vaccine would prevent the spread of COVID. This admission debunked essentially everything the Left told people about vaccination and showed the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” narrative was nothing but another Democratic lie. “So, there are no misunderstandings:...

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan complained that Trump didn't act on a top conservative priority. "He and I fought about Medicare and entitlement reform all the time," Ryan said Wednesday. Trump largely ditched the GOP goal of safety-net cuts, but some conservatives still float the move. Paul Ryan has one big complaint about former President Donald Trump: He wasn't willing to pursue cuts to the safety-net programs Ryan had championed for years. "He and I fought about Medicare and entitlement reform all the time," the former GOP House speaker said Wednesday at a book event at the American Enterprise Institute,...

The NBA will have new COVID protocols in place for the 2022-23 season. The policy had been developed over several weeks during the 2022 offseason and was agreed to by the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA). “It looks like we’ll be on our normal track in terms of when the season starts, in terms of our protocols around the game, particularly around the health and safety of our players,” said NBA commissioner Adam Silver at the league’s Board of Governors meeting in July. “I have learned over the last 2 1/2 years not to make any predictions when it comes...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Nearly half of California domestic violence offenders failed to complete a required program designed to prevent future assaults and judges failed to impose new sanctions almost every time, the state auditor said Tuesday. California requires domestic violence offenders who are placed on probation to take year-long batterer intervention classes. But auditors found that nearly half did not complete them. County probation departments did not report more than half the violations to the courts. And the courts did not impose any additional punishment to enforce the requirement in 90% of the cases where judges were told of...

Dear Miss Manners: My husband and I are expecting our second child. When I delivered our son, before the pandemic, there were no restrictions on visitors at our hospital, and any required and routine vaccinations were not an issue, despite known political differences among our family members. Now, things have changed. My husband’s father, sister and her entire family refuse to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, despite several cases in the family — including our son, who was too young to be vaccinated and ended up at the hospital via ambulance. My husband and I are both very confrontation-averse, but...

This is arguably the world's biggest rotten-tail project, a place called Xiong'an that was considered a partial replacement for Beijing. It’s located in Hebei province, a neighboring province to Beijing, and was a personal dream of the Chinese Communist Party Leader Xi Jinping. Unfortunately, the project, which was billed as a "millennium project and a major national event," fell apart after only five years, demonstrating a complete crash of Xi's dream.The world's biggest rotten-tail project:Xiongan's failure is destined under the CCP red systemChina Insights | Premiered October 15, 2022