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Fool's Ball: Conference Championships Your home for all things Fool's Ball! In Memoriam Danny Lee (BENDER2)

Ireland has “no plans” to suspend funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, the Tánaiste has said, after other nations have announced they are suspending funding. It comes after Israel’s foreign minister said the country will seek to stop UNRWA from operating in Gaza after the war after it accused several of its staff of involvement in Hamas’s 7 October attack. Australia, Italy, Finland, the Netherlands and Canada have decided to suspend financing of UNRWA, while Britain and the US will temporarily pause future funding. In a post on X, Micheál Martin said he has “full confidence” in Commissioner-General...

A global music star who is an ambassador of an anti-violence charity founded by King Charles has been filmed slapping and assaulting a band member. The shocking footage shows Pakistani folk singer Rahat Fateh Ali Khan – an ambassador for the King's British Asian Trust which tackles domestic violence – attacking a backing singer on a US tour. Khan, 49, who has eight million followers on social media, rained blows on the man with a slipper and dragged him around by his hair during the brutal attack at a hotel in Houston, Texas, last year. Last night he admitted the...

The interim ruling of the UN International Court of Justice on Friday, coming a day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, shames the memory of those who fought against genocide and of the 6 million Jews on whose ashes the Genocide Convention was built. The ruling entertains the notion that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. That assertion is not only absurd, but malicious — and purposely so. The Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” Any moral person knows this is not what is happening...

*** But first, here’s another political paradox: The Republican Senate underdog was helped by his three major Democratic opponents in a televised debate Monday night. That’s because they ganged up on him and flailed away. Garvey needs to attract enough Republican votes in California’s March 5 primary to finish second and qualify for the November general election ballot. And hardly anything unites a Republican candidate and the party faithful more than Democrats attacking that candidate. Trump has proved that. If Democrats don’t like Garvey, he must be the right candidate for the job, in the minds of many Republican voters.......

How can any elected official still support CAIR? The Council on American-Islamic Relations has been problematic for years. The organization’s ties to fundamentalist group the Muslim Brotherhood date back to the 1990s and have been a frequent point of criticism by politicians for nearly three decades. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. For years, allegations of terrorist links have been shrugged off by CAIR as anti-Muslim bigotry — a rebut long accepted by Democrats who have publicly embraced CAIR and its “mission” to combat Islamophobia in America.

New York’s venerable American Museum of Natural History and leading institutions across the country are shutting down major exhibits of Native American artifacts in response to new federal regulations limiting the display of cultural items. Under the guidelines announced recently by the Biden administration, museums must obtain permission from Native American tribes before displaying or performing research on cultural items, many of which were donated generations ago by archeologists who had stolen them after digging up sacred burial grounds. The policy led the museum to close two exhibits — the Hall of the Great Plains, which includes jewelry, tools and...

American-led negotiators are edging closer to an agreement in which Israel would suspend its war in Gaza for about two months in exchange for the release of more than 100 hostages still held by Hamas, a deal that could be sealed in the next two weeks and would transform the conflict consuming the region. Negotiators have developed a written draft agreement merging proposals offered by Israel and Hamas in the last 10 days into a basic framework that will be the subject of talks in Paris on Sunday. While there are still important disagreements to be worked out, negotiators are...

"You betrayed Han Solo!"Billy Dee Williams has recalled having to defend Lando Calrissian after catching heat from Star Wars fans for betraying Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back. Appearing on EW's Dagobah Dispatch podcast, the actor, who played Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars saga, spoke of the backlash he received following the release of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, after his character made a deal with Darth Vader that led to Solo being captured and frozen in carbonite. Fans were upset about Lando selling Solo out, and made their feelings known to the actor whenever he was...

Cameroon launched the world's first routine vaccine programme against malaria on Monday. It is one of 20 African countries planning to introduce the drug this year, according to global vaccine alliance Gavi. Here are some key facts. THE VACCINE The RTS,S malaria vaccine, developed by British pharmaceutical GSK (GSK.L), opens new tab and sold under the brand name Mosquirix, was backed by the World Health Organization in July 2022. It underwent trials in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. Advertisement · Scroll to continue It acts against P. falciparum, the deadliest strain of malaria spread by anopheles mosquitoes, and the most common...

Image Credit : National Geographic (Social) - RUBÉN SALGADO ESCUDERO Archaeologists have discovered an intact jade mask in the tomb of a Maya King at Chochkitam, a little-known Maya polity in northeastern Peten, Guatemala. Contemporary inscriptions indicate that Chochkitam was a royal city with a lineage traced back to Preclassic times. The site was first reported in 1909, with ongoing studies recording three main monumental groups connected by a long central causeway. In a recent announcement on National Geographic, excavations at Chochkitam have led to the discovery of an interlocking jade mask in the burial of a Maya King. Jade...

The fact-check outlet had previously stated Biden wore the hat in standard fashion. Misinformation hall-monitor website Snopes was forced to reverse a fact-check on Saturday after making the false claim the Joe Biden did not wear a hard hat backwards during a recent photo-op with construction workers. When Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) posted the photo of Biden to X with several other construction workers, users responded slamming Biden for wearing the hard hat backwards. One user zoomed into the photo and posted, "Why his hard hat is wore backward?" Others were quick to respond to Biden's often middle-class image that...

Elon Musk joined Donald Trump and Republican critics to denounce the contentious Senate border deal that President Joe Biden touted as the “toughest and fairest set of reforms.” “No laws need to be passed” to halt the US border crisis, Musk, the world’s richest person, posted on X — calling it “undeniable” that Biden has pursued an “open border” policy. “All that is needed is an executive order to require proof before granting an asylum hearing,” the Tesla and SpaceX CEO — a legal immigrant from South Africa — wrote Friday. “That is how it used to be.”

Think twice about a tropical getaway to the Caribbean this winter. The U.S. embassy in the Bahamas has released a security warning and travel advisory that the island nation is currently unsafe for tourists amidst 18 murders — “primarily” motivated by gang violence — in January alone. Safety concerns have reached a point of severity where U.S. officials say people shouldn’t even try to “physically resist” being robbed. “Murders have occurred at all hours including in broad daylight on the streets,” the embassy wrote in a release, also recommending the use of “extreme caution” on the eastern side of the...

Two people are facing dozens of charges each after authorities rescued 55 “starving and freezing” dogs and puppies from a Missouri property where the remains of 15 deceased canines were discovered, according to the local sheriff’s office. John Griffiths, 34, of Galena, Missouri, and 30-year-old Jessica Jean Johnson, were arrested and each face 28 counts of animal abuse, the Stone County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) said in a statement on Friday. “Concerned residents” called the sheriff’s office on January 19 to report animal abuse and neglect at a residence on Camp Clark Hill Road in Galena, Missouri, leading to the emergency...

The US Navy had to deliver some bad news last October. Like the other armed service branches, they missed their recruiting goals again. And they missed all of them. By a lot. The enlisted ranks goal for fiscal year 2023 had been 37,700, but they came up more than 7,000 short of that. They missed the enlisted reserve goal by more than 2,000 and fell short by hundreds in the goal for new officers. This forced them to raise the goals for 2024 even higher. But how do they plan on accomplishing that feat?Sadly, they have resorted to the same...

As my colleague Nick Arama reported on Saturday morning, left-wing, virtue-signaling, multimillionaire actress Alyssa Milano had the intestinal fortitude on Thursday to ask her fans to help pay for her son's traveling baseball team's trip to Cooperstown, N.Y., home of Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame. My son’s baseball team is raising money for their Cooperstown trip. Any amount would be so greatly appreciated. You can read more about the team and make a donation here:Why all the gall— Wait. We're talking about Alyssa Milano. Never mind.My son’s baseball team is raising money for their Cooperstown trip. Any amount would...

San Francisco Mayor London Breed is facing criticism over a $1.7 million toilet that was announced over 15 months ago — and still has not been installed in the city. "The toilet project broke down the minute taxpayers realized the city was planning an event to celebrate $1.7 million in state funds that local politicians had secured for the lone 150-square-foot structure," The New York Times reported. "That’s enough to purchase a single-family home in San Francisco — with multiple bathrooms." California Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened to pull the funds for the toilet project after the story was initially made...

Biden's border is a disaster and that the month of December saw the highest number of illegal immigrants ever showing up at our southwest border -- a staggering 302,034 of them. That figure doesn't even include all those who got away. You would also know that the president has been trying to neuter Texas' right to defend itself from the onslaught and that he's suddenly changed his tune about the seriousness of the situation after three years of making it easier for illegals to cross into the country. It's an election year, after all, and people are actually paying attention.X...

As we noted this morning, Sen. John Fetterman’s (D-PA) penchant for bucking the Democratic Party line might no longer be a one-off thing. It could be a trend. We now have a handful of issues where he is decidedly against the brass, and it’s refreshing. While I wish the GOP had supermajorities in both chambers, that’s not the case, and we need some Democrats to do stuff. Since his 2022 election, Fetterman has voiced his pro-Israel ties, declared himself no longer a progressive, likening them to a bunch of crazies, and said that we have a severe crisis at the...