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DONETSK OBLAST – Just days before heading back to fight in the Battle of Bakhmut, a Ukrainian soldier Volodymyr, 54, said he felt ill-prepared."When they drive us to Bakhmut, I already know I'm being sent to death," Volodymyr told the Kyiv Independent during his brief stay in Kramatorsk, a city in Donetsk Oblast some 25 kilometers west of the front line.Volodymyr, an infantryman from the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, said he struggled to eat after fighting in Bakhmut for months. He looked shaken as he talked.For two months, Volodymyr's unit was tasked with guarding Bakhmut against small Russian assault groups creeping...

Jerry Falwell Jr. is suing Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, claiming his former employer has withheld $8.5 million in retirement benefits that were previously promised to him. The son of the school’s founder and conservative activist Jerry Falwell Sr., Falwell has been credited with bringing Liberty University back from the brink of financial collapse while serving as its president from 2007 to 2020. However, Falwell’s tenure at the school ended amid scandal and controversy in 2020 after Falwell posted an image to social media of himself alongside a woman with their pants unbuttoned and unzipped. The image was meant to...

HOUSTON (AP) — Texas officials on Wednesday announced a state takeover of Houston’s nearly 200,000-student public school district, the eighth-largest in the country, acting on years of threats and angering Democrats who assailed the move as political. The announcement, made by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s education commissioner, Mike Morath, amounts to one of the largest school takeovers ever in the U.S. It also deepens a high-stakes rift between Texas’ largest city, where Democrats wield control, and state Republican leaders, who have sought increased authority following election fumbles and COVID-19 restrictions. In a letter to the Houston Independent School District, Morath...

Hello, everyone. This post is for Metmom who cannot post at this time due to the snow and winds having toppled a pole with power transformer near her driveway. She and husband cannot get off their property due to the lines being across their driveway. Her internet is down, to boot, of course. There is a widespread power outage in her area, and there's no idea how long it's going to take to get things going. Metmom is asking for a quick fix to this problem, as we can all understand. It's ok for a while, then it gets to...

Seven million people could die of diseases linked to excessive salt consumption before the decade's end unless governments immediately pass tighter restrictions on salt, a report by the World Health Organization warned this month. Its authors are calling on governments to implement stricter sodium targets for food, mark salt content more clearly on packaging and boost public awareness of the health dangers posed by eating a lot of salty food."Excessive sodium intake is the top risk factor for an unhealthy diet, and it is responsible for 1.8 million deaths each year," said Francesco Branca, director of the WHO's Department of...

Students at the all-women Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, have voted in favor of opening admissions to all nonbinary and transgender applicants, including “trans men.” Biological males have been admitted to the college for years if they claim to be female — the concern now is biological women who claim to be males as well as those that claim to be beyond the binary concept of gender. On Tuesday, students voted in favor of a referendum calling for Wellesley College to change its admissions policy. The referendum also called for changing the school’s language around sex, such as using the...

With the massive influx of illegal immigrants and growing threats of jihadist activities, the United Kingdom now sees the volume of terrorism acts committed by youth on an alarming rise. A recent statistic reveals, the number of young people arrested on suspicion of terrorism related offenses in the UK continues to rise. Figures released by the UK Home Office outline how police made 166 counterterrorism arrests in last year to December 31, 2022. Of those arrested, 32 were under 17 – an 11 percent increase compared to the previous calendar year. Counter Terrorism Policing’s Deputy Senior National Coordinator Richard Smith...

It started with young women half-joking about being angry with the feminist movement for “liberating” women so they now have to get up to go to work to pay their own bills. The BBC made a skit off the back of this complaint that, while meant as a joke, ended up being a perfect way that described how many women felt about their “liberation.” They say the left can’t meme, but this skit proves they can do so ironically. ... Then a trend on TikTok began emerging that gained traction very quickly. It was women simply posting their daily lives...

Just one member of Silicon Valley Bank's board of directors had a career in investment banking, while the others were major Democratic donors, it has been revealed. Tom King, 63, was appointed to the board in September after previously serving as the CEO of investment banking at Barclay's. He has had 35 years of experience in investment banking. But he is the only one on the board with a career in the financial industry, while others are a former Obama administration employee, a prolific contributor to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and even a Hillary Clinton mega-donor who prayed at...

President Biden traveled to Monterey Park, California, the site of a mass public shooting that left 11 dead in January, to announce new executive actions on gun control. He touts the proposals as necessary “to reduce gun violence and make our communities safer.” But California already has all the gun control laws that Biden put forward, and yet it has a higher per capita rate of mass public shootings than the rest of the country. Measures already in place include background checks on all transfers of firearms, “red flag” gun confiscation laws, and an assault weapon ban. Even if Biden’s...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Payments of $5 million to every eligible Black adult, the elimination of personal debt and tax burdens, guaranteed annual incomes of at least $97,000 for 250 years and homes in San Francisco for just $1 a family. These were some of the more than 100 recommendations made by a city-appointed reparations committee tasked with the thorny question of how to atone for centuries of slavery and systemic racism. And the San Francisco Board of Supervisors hearing the report for the first time Tuesday voiced enthusiastic support for the ideas listed, with some saying money should not...

Eintracht Frankfurt fans clashed with police after arriving in Naples despite being banned from Wednesday's Champions League last-16 match with Napoli. Away fans were barred from the second leg after incidents in the first leg last month. But a police car was set on fire by a group of hundreds of supporters and smoke bombs and flares thrown at officers, who responded with tear gas. Italy's deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini wrote on Instagram: "These are not fans, they are criminals, thugs. I wonder if they would make the same mess in Germany?"

Mercyhurst University is conducting an investigation after a video emerged appearing to show one of their student-athletes pushing a disabled student’s wheelchair down the stairs at a local nightclub. According to Fox News, a video showed Carson Briere, who plays on the school’s hockey team and is the son of the Philadelphia Flyers interim general manager Daniel Briere, walking up the stairs with a friend. After talking to another man, the two of them appeared to take the wheelchair from the corner and roll it down the stairs. The wheelchair apparently belonged to a disabled young woman, who is also...

Is the humanities degree going the way of the dodo bird? An article in The New Yorker, “The End of the English Major,” posits as a eulogy for the bustling humanities programs of yesteryear, citing dwindling investment and a generational shift toward science and technology and degrees that can be monetized. Faculty members at the Graduate Center, however, say that while the article is a clarion call, the death of the humanities is exaggerated. The desire and need to study the human past remain strong. Scholars shared their views on the current state and future of the humanities: Tanya Agathocleous,...

A Vermont religious school that withdrew its girls’ basketball team from a playoff game because a biological male who identifies as a transgender student was on the roster of the opposing team is now banned from future tournaments. The Vermont Principals’ Association announced Monday that Mid Vermont Christian School’s decision to forfeit its Feb. 21 game because it believed a trans player “jeopardizes the fairness of the game and the safety of our players” makes it “ineligible” to play in any of its tournaments — for any sport — going forward. The VPA is the governing body for Vermont school...

Matthew 5:17-19 Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus declares that he has come to fulfill the Law.The same Jesus who railed against the hypocritical legalism of the Pharisees also said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” And the same Jesus who threatened to tear down the temple in Jerusalem also promised to “raise it up” in three days.The point is this: Jesus certainly criticized the corruption in the institutional religion of his time, but he by no means called for its wholesale dismantling. He...

Imagine quickly reducing the effects of drunkenness or alcohol poisoning with a single jab: that's the premise of new research in mice, using the hormone fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21) as the treatment. It seems that FGF21 increases alertness in the brain, fighting against certain effects of intoxication – such as drowsiness and a lack of coordination – without fundamentally changing how alcohol is broken down in the body. The liver produces the hormone in both mice and humans, suggesting these results could apply to us, too. Ultimately, it could be used to rouse people suffering from alcohol poisoning or...

(Above what appears to be Antifa breaking into the Capitol first before any Trump supporters arrive on Jan 6) According to attorney Joe McBride who uncovered the report, the government knew MAGA was coming to DC and so they entrapped them. It was all a setup. The report is included in the first tweet below from Jan 6 attorney Joe McBride. They knew MAGA Republicans were coming to protest, so they entrapped them. pic.twitter.com/9buZhunNgm — Joseph D. McBride, Esq. (@McBrideLawNYC) March 11, 2023 MyPillow's New Mattress Topper 2.0 - "Saved Me From Having To Buy A Whole New Mattress" McBride...

Explanation: This was a sky to show the kids. Early this month the two brightest planets in the night sky, Jupiter and Venus, appeared to converge. At their closest, the two planets were separated by only about the angular width of the full moon. The spectacle occurred just after sunset and was seen and photographed all across planet Earth. The displayed image was taken near to the time of closest approach from Wiltingen, Germany, and features the astrophotographer, spouse, and their two children. Of course, Venus remains much closer to both the Sun and the Earth than Jupiter -- the...

Moody’s Investors Service placed First Republic Bank and five other US lenders on review for downgrade, the latest sign of concern over the health of regional financial firms following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Western Alliance Bancorp., Intrust Financial Corp., UMB Financial Corp., Zions Bancorp. and Comerica Inc. were the other lenders put on review by Moody’s. The credit rating company cited concerns over the lenders’ reliance on uninsured deposit funding and unrealized losses in their asset portfolios.