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You stumble across them everywhere, in villages and cities, in the smartest neighbourhoods and the most run down. They lurk behind overgrown gardens, decaying beneath veils of moss and ivy. Crows and raccoon dogs make their homes in them; little children peer through their gates and imagine ghosts. They are the “witch houses” of Japan — mysterious tokens of social decay in one of the wealthiest societies in the world. Called akiya, or abandoned homes, they have spread like mould in the past few years. The last time the government made a count, five years ago, it found 8.5 million...

CNA Newsroom, Feb 7, 2023 / 14:50 pm In a new attack on the Catholic Church, the Nicaraguan dictatorship led by President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, sentenced three priests, a deacon, two seminarians, and a layman from the Diocese of Matagalpa to 10 years in prison. According to reports from the local newspaper La Prensa and the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH), the sentence was issued on Feb. 6 by Judge Nadia Tardencilla of the Second Criminal Trial District. The sentence consists of five years for the crime of “conspiracy to undermine national security...

A majority of members in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party are opposed to the legalization of same-sex marriageJapanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida dismissed a close aide following media reports accusing him of making derogatory remarks against sexual minorities. Masayoshi Arai who served as an executive secretary to Kishida had given out off-the-record comments to the press on Feb. 3 highlighting his reluctance to “not even want to look at” sexual minorities, The Asahi Shimbun reported on Feb. 4. Kishida told the press that Arai’s statements were absolutely against his government’s stance for an inclusive Japanese society. “My administration has made...

Columbia University received backlash online after a resurfaced video showed medical students reciting a revised version of the Hippocratic Oath that included tenets of critical race theory. The video, posted by nonprofit Mythinformed Milwaukee, shows the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons Class of 2025 during a White Coat Ceremony reciting an oath led by Lisa Mellman, M.D., a senior associate dean for student affairs and the Samuel Rudin professor of psychiatry. According to a news release on the Columbia University Irving Medical Center website, the August 2021 ceremony was the first time in the medical school’s 255-year history that...

I’m so pleased to share that The Climate Book is now available in the USA and Canada! I have gathered the wisdom of over one hundred contributors to highlight the many different crises we face and equip us with the knowledge we need to avoid a climate disaster. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/z2AD32Oac1— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) February 14, 2023This is the biggest story in the world, and it must be spoken as far and wide as our voices can carry and much further still. Thank you for your support!I will not earn money from this book as my copyright belongs to the Greta...

The shift to remote work is costing New York City more than $12 billion each year. Office workers are spending $4,661 less per person in the areas near their offices than before the pandemic began, according to a Bloomberg analysis of a Feb. 12 WFH Research study. The Big Apple has seen the largest reduction in spending across the country, with a deficit of $12.4 billion a year. "Less spending by workers in the central areas means a lot less sales tax revenue," Jose Maria Barrero, a professor at Mexico’s Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo and a member of the WFH Research...

Rep. Greg Stuebe seeks to prove that being a citizen requires more than just showing up. On Friday, the Sarasota Republican announced that he had introduced a bill to repeal certain provisions of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, more commonly known as the “Motor Voter” law.

Explanation: Is the heart and soul of our Galaxy located in Cassiopeia? Possibly not, but that is where two bright emission nebulas nicknamed Heart and Soul can be found. The Heart Nebula, officially dubbed IC 1805 and visible in the featured image on the upper right, has a shape reminiscent of a classical heart symbol. The shape is perhaps fitting for Valentine's Day. The Soul Nebula is officially designated IC 1871 and is visible on the lower left. Both nebulas shine brightly in the red light of energized hydrogen, one of three colors shown in this three-color montage. Light takes...

A New York state appeals court on Tuesday upheld an order finding Donald Trump in civil contempt for having failed to comply with a subpoena from New York Attorney General Letitia James in her probe of his business practices. In a 5-0 decision, the Appellate Division in Manhattan said James had established by "clear and convincing evidence" that Trump's response to the Dec. 1, 2021, subpoena was inadequate. The court said Trump's claim that a diligent search had failed to uncover relevant documents in his possession, without explaining what steps were taken to ensure nothing would be lost or discarded,...

The family of a mentally ill man who died in police custody claims their loved one froze to death after being restrained and placed in a walk-in freezer for hours. 'This is one of the most appalling cases of jail abuse the country has seen,' the 37-page federal lawsuit filed by the family alleges. Shocking video of Mitchell being carried out of the jail on January 26 shows the man being dragged and placed into a patrol vehicle before he was later declared dead. The video allegedly contradicts the sheriff's original statement that Mitchell was having a medical issue but...

Aid to Ukraine has evolved dramatically since February 2022, and there are few topics that have attracted more constant press coverage away from the battlefield itself. So today I [Perun] try and set out how aid has evolved, who the major contributors are, and the impact aid has had - and may have in 2023.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) just announced that their AI pilot program ACE has moved out of computer-simulated dog fights to flying real F-16s. The flights occurred at Edwards Air Force Base in California, and a safety pilot was on board the plane to take control if anything went wrong, but nothing did. Air Force Lt. Col. Ryan "Hal" Hefron, the DARPA program manager for ACE said, "We conducted multiple sorties [takeoffs and landings] with numerous test points performed on each sortie to test the algorithms under varying starting conditions, against various simulated adversaries, and with simulated weapons...

[Catholic Caucus] Cardinal Roche sabotaged the application of Summorum pontificum while bishop of LeedsCardinal Arthur Roche, prefect for the Liturgy, once again charges against the bishops who take advantage of the letter of Traditionis custodes so as not to exacerbate the prohibition of the Traditional Mass in their dioceses, demanding from them the "spirit" of what the Church wants. Holy Father. But he himself, being Bishop of Leeds in 2007, did everything he could not to apply Benedict's Summorum pontificum. Again the double yardstick.Shortly after Pope Benedict XVI promulgated Summorum Pontificum in 2007, we read in the Catholic World Report,...

I Married a Witch is a 1942 American fantasy romantic comedy film, directed by René Clair, and starring Veronica Lake as a witch whose plan for revenge goes comically awry, with Fredric March as her foil. The film also features Robert Benchley, Susan Hayward and Cecil Kellaway. "I Married A Witch" 1942 (Criterion Collection video)

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Politico is hyping Joe Biden's campaign to portray Republicans as wanting to make cuts to Social Security and Medicare. But they have very conveniently overlooked Biden's very forceful urging of a spending freeze (or "cuts") to those programs in the past. Ironically, Politico covered the controversy in 2020 which involved the accusations by presidential candidate Bernie Sanders that Biden supported Social Security cuts.First let us look at Politico Playbook's very convenient memory loss about Biden and Social Security cuts in their Monday story about Biden slamming Republicans for wanting to make those cuts even though the GOP has taken it...

Ukraine's leaders have been told that aid from the US may not last forever, an official from President Joe Biden's administration told The Washington Post this week.The senior official told The Post the Biden administration has a "very strong view" that continually approving large aid packages for Ukraine will be difficult with a Republican-led House."We will continue to try to impress upon them that we can't do anything and everything forever," said the official, referring to conversations the administration's staffers have had with Ukraine's leaders. The official was granted anonymity by The Post to talk about sensitive foreign policy matters.Biden...

In an interview with The Washington Post’s “fact checker,” former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper contends that Politico misled the public about a letter he and 50 other former intel officials signed during the 2020 presidential campaign warning that the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story could be Russian deception. “There was message distortion,” Clapper tells The Washington Post. “All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation. Politico deliberately distorted what we said. It was clear in paragraph five.” It was not clear, at all. The purpose of the letter, apparent...

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) blasted the IRS on Monday for allegedly conducting "government surveillance" on Americans following a Just the News report on the agency's invasive questioning of an election education nonprofit, as the House Oversight Committee requested to see the underlying documents.In action reminiscent of the Lois Lerner targeting scandal under the Obama administration when the IRS singled out conservative groups for audits, the Biden IRS last year subjected an election education nonprofit applying for tax-empt status to intrusive formal questioning the group believes infringed on its speech rights under the First Amendment.Just the News reported the story on...

'At the operational-tactical level, we did not think that within a year we would not be able to liberate the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. 'We did not think that there would be such heavy losses, although I then said there would be tens of thousands of dead on both sides. 'But everything turned out to be much worse.' Some estimates say the losses on both sides are now over 200,000, and rising fast. Russia alone is estimated to have lost as many as 140,000 since February last year. 'It was not expected that there would be such destruction: in fact,...