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18 December 20224th Sunday of Advent Cathedral Saint Gatianus of Tours Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Violet. Year: A(I).First readingIsaiah 7:10-14 ©The maiden is with childThe Lord spoke to Ahaz and said, ‘Ask the Lord your God for a sign for yourself coming either from the depths of Sheol or from the heights above.’ ‘No,’ Ahaz answered ‘I will not put the Lord to the test.’ Then Isaiah said:‘Listen now, House of David:are you not satisfied with trying the patience of menwithout trying the patience of my God, too?The Lord himself, therefore,will give you a sign.It is this: the maiden is...

Former FTX Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried is expected to appear in court in the Bahamas on Monday to reverse his decision to contest extradition to the United States, where he faces fraud charges, a person familiar with the matter said on Saturday. The 30-year-old cryptocurrency mogul was indicted in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday and accused of engaging in a scheme to defraud FTX customers by using billions of dollars in stolen deposits to pay for expenses and debts and to make investments for his crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research LLC.

San Francisco's mayor is asking municipal departments to find significant savings as the embattled city braces for a $728 million budget deficit, predicted for the next two fiscal years. With some of the lowest office occupancy rates in the country, thanks to the tech companies that make the city's lifeblood retreating to remote work, San Francisco has seen residents move to the suburbs - pushed also by rising crime. The city's income from property taxes and office rates has plummeted, causing sleepless nights in City Hall. London Breed, the mayor, on Thursday asked municipal departments to identify ways to reduce...

A Texas woman was tasered after telling a cop in Walmart to 'respect' her. The unidentified woman, wearing a light-colored tank top and black pants, demanded a cop 'respect' her as she stood just inside a Walmart store in Dallas. It is unclear what started the disagreement between the two, but the woman is standing next to an overturned product stand that appeared to hold freshly baked cookies. 'You're going to respect me whenever I f**king [unintelligible] in this place,' the woman said in the video. 'Yeah, you will.' The cop responds: 'Get down on your knees.' Moments later, he...

On this date in 1954, Eugen Turcanu and 16 other Romanian political prisoners were executed at Jilava prison. Turcanu et al were noted as the truncheon arm of one of 20th century’s more blood-chilling torture programs, the Pitesti experiment. (Named for the facility where it began, Pitesti prison.) As if taking Orwell’s 1984 as a paragon instead of a grim dystopian warning, the Pitesti experiment subjected several thousand political and religious dissidents to a savage course of ideological re-engineering. The object was to beat and brainwash undesirables into model Communists. “Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation,” Orwell’s torturer-apparatchik O’Brien...

Archbishop Paglia: Financial Reform?On December 14, The Pillar reported the following: Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia diverted hundreds of thousands of euros allocated to support missionary and charitable works while he served as president of the Pontifical Council for the Family. Paglia used much of the money to finance building projects in Rome, including the renovation of his personal apartment. . . .According to multiple independent sources with knowledge of the events, Archbishop Paglia confirmed in a 2015 memo to Holy See financial officials that hundreds of thousands of euros had been paid to an Italian construction contractor instead of going to...

Representative James Comer (R., Ky.), the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said Friday the FBI “needs to be dismantled” after the latest installment of the “Twitter files” revealed the bureau was in constant contact with Twitter before Elon Musk took over. The FBI exchanged more than 150 emails with former Twitter Trust and Safety head Yoel Roth between January 2020 and November 2022, journalist Matt Taibbi reported on Friday. Roth’s team worked to censor the New York Post‘s October 2020 report on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Ronna McDaniel knows she is in trouble. She went on The War Room to discuss the race for RNC chair. She is being challenged by Mike Lindell and Attorney Harmeet K. Dhillon. Bannon asked her if she would be open to debating Lindell and Dhillon – she said she would only do it in front of the 168 members of the RNC.

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.