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THIRD WEEK OF ADVENT Matthew 1:1-17 Friends, today we read the opening lines of Matthew’s Gospel—the first words that one reads in the New Testament. They are a listing of the genealogy of Jesus, the forty-two generations that stretch from Abraham to Christ. If the Word truly dwelt among us, then he was part of a family that, like most, was fairly dysfunctional—a mix of the good and bad. And this is such good news for us.Let me highlight just two figures from Jesus’ family. First, Ruth, who was not an Israelite but rather a Moabite, a foreigner. Some of...

A Damariscotta mom demanded the resignation of several public school officials at a school board meeting Wednesday following her discovery that a school social worker had begun secretly transitioning her 13-year-old daughter’s gender. In an emotionally charged address to the school board, Amber Lavigne said a Central Lincoln County School System (CLCSS) social worker at Great Salt Bay Community School in Damariscotta provided a chest binder to her daughter — a gender transitioning device the employee encouraged the young girl to keep secret from her parents. Lavigne said she’d never met the social worker — Samuel Roy — and had...

VIDEOTake a look at Good Morning Britain host Richard Madeley attempt to interview union leader Mick Lynch about rail strikes leading into Christmas. Actually it is pretty much a one sided interview since Madeley sounded like he was interviewing himself with Lynch only barely able to get a word in edgewise.This could go down as the WORST television interview disaster since Brock Linehan interviewed Bob Hope.

Early in the pandemic, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly praised President Donald Trump for the expedited development and rollout of a coronavirus vaccine. The governor’s office pushed for $480 million in pandemic resources, including media campaigns promoting the shots, according to state budget documents. And DeSantis, a Republican, even lauded the Biden administration for helping to expand access to vaccines. “We’re having more vaccine because of this, which is great,” DeSantis said of a federal program shipping shots to pharmacies in February 2021. But this past week, DeSantis threw himself into misleadingly disparaging the vaccines, convening skeptics to buck guidance...

Multiple property owners in one of San Francisco’s most fraught, historical neighborhoods have banded together to complain to local officials about the “deteriorating” state of the area. An unknown number of Tenderloin businesses are demanding the city of San Francisco refund about a year’s worth of taxes and remove alleged drug dealers from the neighborhood, they said in a December petition. The group, the Tenderloin Business Coalition, claims that “open air drug dealing” and weak law enforcement have directly impacted businesses and pushed the neighborhood to the brink of collapse. “Our streets are dominated by criminals who prey on the...

Friendliness and kindness are some of Golden Retriever dogs' characteristics. These eager-to-please family dogs are known for their joyous and playful approach to life, a puppyish behavior they maintain into adulthood. This was the case for an adult Golden Retriever named Tofu from Detroit, Michigan. The sweet pup looked surprised and reacted in the sweetest way possible after seeing a window cleaner outside his apartment building.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — At the direction of the FBI, the National Archives has released all of the government's documents related to John F. Kennedy's assassination - except for the document that says the FBI killed President Kennedy. "We are happy to finally declassify all of the JFK documents, with one tiny exception," said FBI Director Christopher Wray. "We hope this will put to rest all of those silly conspiracies about how the FBI planned the whole thing, and I really hope no one ever asks us about this again." The release from the National Archives comes as the FBI has...

North Carolina’s Supreme Court narrowly struck down the state’s photo voter identification law, ruling the policy “was motivated by a racially discriminatory purpose” — in a rushed decision handed down two weeks before Democrats lose their majority on the elected panel. “The right to vote is a fundamental right, preservative of all other rights. If the right to vote is undermined, it renders illusory all ‘other rights, even the most basic,’” wrote Justice Anita Earls in Friday’s 4-3 party-line ruling. “A law enacted with the intent to discriminate on the basis of race is unconstitutional even if no voter ultimately...

Explanation: Get out your red/blue glasses and check out this stereo scene from Taurus-Littrow valley on the Moon! The color anaglyph features a detailed 3D view of Apollo 17's Lunar Rover in the foreground -- behind it lies the Lunar Module and distant lunar hills. Because the world was going to be able to watch the Lunar Module's ascent stage liftoff via the rover's TV camera, this parking place was also known as the VIP Site. Fifty years ago, in December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon, while colleague...

Recently a claim has gone viral about a decision by the Oxfordshire, England county council to divide the city into sectors that can be traversed by walking in 15 minutes or less, and then restrict residents’ travel from one sector to others to no more than 100 days a year—except by special permit available by application and at a price. The actual facts of the plan are, frankly, difficult to ascertain. The council has placed a formal document about it online. The document is nearly impenetrable. No wonder reports are highly conflicting—and, I’m pleased to say, generally exaggerated. There are...

Former President Donald Trump has backed House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in his bid for speaker while saying that McCarthy’s opponents should fall in line. “I support McCarthy,” Trump told Breitbart News on Dec. 15. “Look, I think this: Kevin has worked very hard,” Trump added. “He is just—it’s been exhausting. If you think, he’s been all over. I think he deserves the shot. Hopefully, he’s going to be very strong and going to be very good and he’s going to do what everybody wants.” McCarthy, 57, has been in the House GOP leadership since 2009, during his second...

The White House is warning of a surge of illness this holiday season, as the country deals with the simultaneous uptick of three, highly contagious respiratory viruses. Hospitals across the country are filling up with patients suffering from flu, RSV and COVID. William Brangham reports.

Threesomes look like a good idea on paper. Executing them successfully on the other hand is a different story. There are a lot of things that can go wrong, especially if you don’t know the people you’re inviting into the arrangement. A Florida man found this out the hard way after two women he met for a threesome ended up robbing him. He met the two women at a rooftop bar in the early morning hours of December 4. The group exchanged numbers and setup plans to meet later that morning. According to the police report, the man picked the...

David Lifton, best-selling JFK author, died at age 83 on December 5. LIfton is best known for his 1980 best-seller Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, which used extensive interviews to make the case that President Kennedy’s body was altered before the presidential autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital to conceal wounds from more than one direction.

Goldman Sachs plans to lay off as many as 4,000 employees as it struggles to meet profitability targets and retreats from its gamble on Main Street banking, people familiar with the matter said. Managers across the firm have been asked to identify low performers for what could be a cut of up to 8% to its workforce early next year, the people said, with some cautioning that no final list has been drawn up. Those cuts appear to be much deeper than ones taking place at other Wall Street firms like Citigroup, which is letting go of dozens of staffers...

BEIJING/SHANGHAI, Dec 17 (Reuters) - Hearses bearing the dead lined the driveway to a designated COVID-19 crematorium in the Chinese capital on Saturday while workers at the city's dozen funeral homes were busier than normal, days after China reversed tight pandemic restrictions. In recent days in Beijing the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant has hit services from catering to parcel deliveries. Funeral homes and crematoriums across the city of 22 million are also struggling to keep up with demand as more workers and drivers testing positive for coronavirus call in sick.

A Border Patrol intelligence alert warns the situation along the southwest border is expected to worsen as tens of thousands of migrants prepare to move to the United States border from southern Mexico. According to a source within CBP, the report, sent via official email, advises more than 40,000 migrants in southern Mexico may soon head north. The report, reviewed by Breitbart Texas, indicates more than 30,000 migrants are believed to be staged in the Mexican State of Chiapas along the Mexico/Guatemala border. The destination of these migrants was not revealed in the alert according to a source within U.S....

A former Russian commander and prominent military blogger has given another scathing assessment of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in which he described how Vladimir Putin's troops had already been dealt a "strategic defeat" by Ukraine. Igor Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, is an army veteran and former intelligence officer who played a key role in Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the conflict in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. He is among a number of milbloggers who give candid accounts of Russia's war effort that are far removed from the picture portrayed by Kremlin-backed television channels. On his Telegram...

Iranian authorities have arrested actress Taraneh Alidoosti, the star of the 2016 Oscar-Award-winning film “The Salesman,” on charges of spreading falsehoods after she posted on Instagram that the country’s recent execution of Mohsen Shekari was a “disgrace to humanity.” Iranian state media IRNA said Alidoosti was detained because she failed to provide “documentation in line with her claims,” one week after she expressed solidarity in an Instagram post with a man executed in recent anti-government protests, multiple outlets reported Saturday.

With at least 505 confirmed kills during the Winter War of 1939–40 between Finland and the Soviet Union, Simo Häyhä (1905–2002) has been labelled the deadliest sniper in history. Here, Tapio Saarelainen shares the story of the Finnish sniper and how he achieved his nickname 'White Death'... During his 98-day reign of terror, Häyhä was unseen and unheard, yet was all the while targeting Russian soldiers with deadly accuracy, once even killing 25 men in one day. With snipers presenting such a high-value targets on the battlefield, Simo’s reputation as a marksman soon reached the Russian front lines; they referred...