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"Always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all" (Phil. 1:4). Intercessory prayer is a powerful tool in the hands of a righteous person. There's the story of a special nurse who knew the importance of intercessory prayer. Each day she used her hands as instruments of God's love and mercy toward those in her care, so she found it natural to use her hand as a scheme of prayer. Each finger represented someone she wanted to pray for. Her thumb was nearest to her and reminded her to pray for those who were closest and dearest....

Nikki Haley released a political ad this morning in preparation for her 2024 run against President Trump. Jack Posobiec shared the video below on Truth Social. Haley, the former Governor of South Carolina and United Nations Ambassador under President Trump has said he will announce her run for the Presidency the day after Valentine’s day on February 15th.

A man died after a shooting in Phoenix on Saturday evening, authorities said. Officers responded to the area of 12th Street and Highland Avenue just before 6:30 p.m. to calls of a shooting, the Phoenix Police Department said in a press release. A man with a gunshot wound, later identified as 24-year-old Aaron Duwan Frazier Jr., was found and transported to a local medical facility. He was pronounced dead at the hospital, authorities said. According to police, an adult male was fueling his vehicle at a gas station in the area. Frazier approached the man with a gun and attempted...

When Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida convened a round-table discussion about the news media this week, he spared no effort to play the part, perching at a faux anchor’s desk in front of a wall of video screens while firing questions to his guests like a seasoned cable TV host. But the panel’s message was as notable as its slick presentation: Over the course of an hour, Mr. DeSantis and his guests laid out a detailed case for revisiting a landmark Supreme Court decision protecting the press from defamation lawsuits. Mr. DeSantis is the latest figure, and among the most...

Explanation: The two prominent clouds in this Chilean Atacama Desert skyscape captured on January 21 actually lie beyond our Milky Way galaxy. Known as the Large and the Small Magellanic Clouds they are so named for the 16th century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, leader of the first circumnavigation of planet Earth. Famous jewels of southern hemisphere skies, they are the brightest satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. The larger cloud is some 160,000 light-years, and the smaller 210,000 light-years distant. While both are irregular dwarf galaxies in their own right, they exhibit central barred structures in the deep wide-angle view....

WASHINGTON — There are evenings when things feel almost normal at the Exchange Saloon, a pub across the street from the White House once popular with federal employees, thousands of whom work in the surrounding buildings. On those days, the bar is crowded with patrons sharing work gossip and munching on burgers or wings. The bartender struggles to hear an order placed above the din of laughter and conversation. As evening deepens, the after-work crowd swells. Such evenings are rare. Improbably, the Exchange survived the lockdowns, restrictions and disruptions that marked the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic, only...

David McIntosh the president of the Club for Growth lobbying group that represents the interests of U.S. multinationals and Wall Street finance players, has organized another “donor retreat” session; where ‘donor retreat’ is the assembly of the Republican big club operatives who manipulate and control the Republican big club candidates, aka the establishment. The multinationals, led by CfG, are assembling to coordinate plans with, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Mike Pence, Glenn Youngkin and Mike Pompeo. .... Snip.... All preceding 2024 entrants are intended to weaken the America-First candidate through a series of planned, organized and media assisted unrelenting attacks. The...

Recent data predicts that 45% of women between ages 25 and 44 will be single and childless by the time 2030 rolls around. The number of single women in the U.S. is expected to rise 1.2% every year.

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...