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Newly elected Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., has described his severe hearing disability as causing him to hear the voice of the teacher from the "Peanuts" cartoon when listening to people speak, the New York Times reported. Fetterman suffered a stroke in May 2022 while campaigning for Pennsylvania's open Senate seat, causing him to have cognitive issues, including a problem with auditory processing. The senator, who is in the hospital after experiencing lightheadedness Wednesday, has also struggled to adjust to life in the Senate, given the challenges of recovering from his stroke and the need for technological tools to help him...

Europe’s synod meeting calls for ‘courageous decisions’ on role of womenEurope’s synodal continental assembly appealed Thursday for “courageous decisions on the role of women within the Church.”According to the assembly’s final document — which is in draft form and is not expected to be finalized for weeks — participants at the meeting in Prague supported the greater involvement of women “at all levels, also in decision-making and decision-taking processes.”The text did not specify what it meant by “courageous decisions” or which “decision-taking processes” it was referring to.Some delegates, notably from Germany, had urged the assembly to endorse the ordination of...

Asher Menachem Paley, the eight-year-old boy who was seriously injured in yesterday's terrorist ramming attack in the Ramot neighborhood of Jerusalem, succumbed to his injuries on Shabbat, Shaare Zedek Medical Center announced. Shaare Zedek reported that the child was brought to the hospital in critical condition while undergoing CPR. Teams from the trauma unit fought for hours to save his life, but were ultimately unsuccessful. Asher's six-year-old brother Yaakov Yisrael was also killed in the attack and was laid to rest yesterday before the start of Shabbat. The boys' father was moderately injured, and their ten-year-old brother was lightly injured...

Fernand Iveton (or Yveton) was guillotined on this date in 1957, for Algeria. An pied-noir gas worker, Iveton (English Wikipedia entry | French) attempted to bomb the Algerian Gas Company in support of the National Liberation Front, to which he also belonged. Wishing to commit his sabotage sans bloodshed, he timed the bomb to detonate when the plant would be empty … but under close surveillance, he was stopped in the act of setting it on the evening of November 14, 1956. Iveton’s tenderness for his countrymen’s lives was not reciprocated by the military court which, acting with frightful emergency...

Improved forecast echoes IMF prediction that Russia will overtake Germany and UK in 2023The Russian economy should pick up again in the middle of the year, the Central Bank announced on Friday, revising its latest forecasts upwards. The outlook is much better than many had anticipated. Speaking to reporters, Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina said the better-than-expected GDP forecast is due to the upward revision of previous estimates and “Bigger budget outlays than reflected in our October forecast.”Signs of economic recovery in Russia emerged late last year, with GDP showing positive momentum in the third and fourth quarters, the...

“A Righteousness That Won’t Work and One That Will” (Matthew 5:21-37) Last week’s Gospel reading ended with these words of Jesus, from Matthew 5, verse 20: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” And really, those same words could serve as the beginning of today’s reading, which starts at verse 21. For today Jesus will give examples of the supposed righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees--a surface righteousness that will not get you into the kingdom of heaven--so that then you will be ready to receive the only righteousness...

The family of an Oakland baker and former publisher who espoused anarchist beliefs believe that the thieves who killed her in a daylight robbery and assault shouldn't go to jail and her death shouldn't be used to argue for more police.

There is no neutral ground in the universe; every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counter-claimed by Satan. C.S. Lewis One of the most fundamental elements of warfare is understanding who your enemy is and why they do what they do. Understanding who they are gives you insight into knowing what motivates them, what is important to them, and what end state they are hoping to achieve. This might seem like a moot point given the subject of today's reading, but I'm fairly certain most born-again Christians have little idea of what they are really up...

[Catholic Caucus] Roche’s gamble — and the Vatican law of powerIn the implementation of 'Traditionis custodes,' Cardinal Arthur Roche has been criticized for an approach that seemed to arrogate authority to his office, beyond the motu proprio's text.In the years since Pope Francis promulgated Traditionis custodes, it has fallen to Cardinal Arthur Roche, prefect of the Vatican’s liturgy office, to interpret the pope’s policy, and to engage with the diocesan bishops tasked with implementing the policy in their local churches.As the Dicastery for Divine Worship oversees that process, Roche has been criticized for an approach that seemed to arrogate authority...

The Kremlin on Friday confirmed a report that Russian leader Vladimir Putin will give his long-delayed 2022 annual address to the Federal Assembly on February 21, 2023, a date chosen to coincide with the anniversary of his attack on Ukraine. The address is reportedly to be followed up with a “large-scale concert and rally event at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium” the next day.

Estimates say it killed 830,000 people.Humans have documented earthquakes for nearly 4,000 years. Of those recorded, the deadliest occurred in China. On January 23, 1556, a powerful quake rocked the province of Shaanxi and the neighboring province of Shanxi, killing an estimated 830,000 people.Historical records often refer to the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake as the Jiajing Great Earthquake because it occurred during Emperor Jiajing’s reign in the Ming dynasty. The approximate death toll comes from local annals that also tracked 26 earthquakes in the region. In those records, the earthquake is starkly different from others: they describe leveled mountains, floods, fires...

[Catholic Caucus] The Word that is NEVER Spoken How stupid does Bergoglio think we are?After reading countless Bergoglio pronouncements over the last 10 years, one grows weary of this aging Argentine who insists on channeling aging New Agers like Marianne Williamson and Deepak Chopra. His empty and trite pablum denigrates the Church of Jesus Christ. Lest we forget, his earliest pontifical rants polluted church teaching with edicts that air conditioners are evil and eco sins are the new rage.And so it continues….Cardinal George Pell aptly described the Bergoglio 2023 Synod on Synodality documents as “this potpourri, this outpouring of New...

Armed with a wooden stick, a bucket and a headlamp, Philippine construction worker Johnny Manlugay hunts every night for the eggs of sea turtles on the pristine beaches of the northern province of La Union. The 55-year-old can easily spot nesting sites, having been trained in his youth by his grandfather how to track the animals and their eggs, which his family traded at the time or ate. But his egg-stealing days are over. Now Manlugay has turned his skills to helping protect marine turtles on the provincial beaches favoured by the endangered Olive Ridley species to build nesting sites.

At least 24,596 people have been confirmed dead after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck southern Turkey and north-western Syria on Monday, with multiple aftershocks. Griffiths said he was launching a three-month operation for Turkey and Syria to help pay for the costs of operations there. Griffiths also told Reuters he hoped in Syria aid would go to both government and opposition-held areas, but that things with this regard were “not clear yet”. Responding to criticism of the UN’s response to the urgent need in Syria after the earthquake, he added: “I think if I was standing in the middle of...

A Bank of England and HM Treasury publication The way we use money is changing. This Consultation Paper sets out our assessment of the case for a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) – a so-called ‘digital pound’. It has been overseen by the joint Bank-HM Treasury CBDC Taskforce that was announced in April 2021. At this stage, we judge it likely that the digital pound will be needed in the future. It is too early to decide whether to introduce the digital pound, but we are convinced preparatory work is justified. The digital pound would be a new form...

A GOP Florida congresswoman ripped a profile of her by the Washington Post as error-filled and “incredibly racist,” and the paper was forced to issue a correction — for claiming the lawmaker was once a Democrat. Freshman Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who represents the state’s west coast, said the paper misrepresented basic facts about her life and falsely suggested she had leaned into her Hispanic heritage for political gain. “Holy s— the Washington post just tried to claim my dad was never incarcerated, left out comments from my mom, said I was a registered Democrat, and did not report a...

Super Bowl LVII: Live Thread Your home for all things Fool's Ball! In Memoriam Danny Lee (BENDER2)

A leak in a fuel pipeline facility in California forced a shutdown of deliveries of gasoline and diesel from the Los Angeles area east to areas including Las Vegas and Phoenix, but officials said Friday they believed supplies would not immediately be affected. Pipeline operator Kinder Morgan told The Associated Press the leak was discovered Thursday afternoon at a company station near Los Angeles and that its CALNEV and SFPP West pipelines were shut down while the Houston-based pipeline operator worked to resolve the issue. It did not say how much fuel leaked or when service would be restored. The...

[Catholic Caucus] Francis: No Rehabilitation for Innocent Cardinal ComastriThere was a huge uproar when, in June 2020, Francis commissioned the Fabric of Saint Peter, then under Cardinal Angelo Comastri, which is responsible for the maintenance of St. Peter's Basilica.With this act, Francis humiliated Comastri by presenting him to the public as a "thief."But two years and six months later, the Vatican prosecutor has still not found anything that was criminally relevant, writes SilereNonPossum.it (February 9).So, Cardinal Comastri turned to Francis and said: "Can I call the press, at least now, and explain that everything is clean?" But Francis categorically forbade...

The ability to solve problems with multiple tools is a rare talent in the animal kingdom, but according to new research, cockatoos are the first birds on the block to carry and use a tool kit to suit their needs. Using 10 Goffin’s cockatoos, researchers from Austria and the UK made their discovery after carrying out three experiments as published in the journal Current Biology Friday. Goffin’s cockatoos are small white parrots native to the Tanimbar Islands in Indonesia. They were chosen after the researchers spotted them using a “tool set” in the wild. In this study, cockatoos from the...