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In 1968, traveling with my family, we saw "The Last Supper" where DaVinci had painted it on the wall in Milan. The tour guide told us that when Napoleon was invading the Italian peninsula, his troops converted the room containing the painting into a stable for their horses. Also, the soldiers used the painting for target practice, with Jesus' face designated as the bullseye. The extensive damage was later repainted (and re-plastered I assume) after Napoleon was no longer "part of the picture" in Europe. (Hmmm ... snipers aiming at a beloved, famous person's head .... something dejavuish about that)....

In response to the recent claims that Crooks was part of a CIA MKUltra experiment, the CIA has issued a rare comment refuting the claims. A CIA spokesperson told Gizmodo, “These claims are utterly false, absurd, and damaging.” The spokesperson added, “The CIA had no relationship whatsoever with Thomas Crooks.

French Gates told the Times she decided to get involved in politics after the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, the half-century-old decision that had protected abortion rights. "I knew I had to speak out in favor of women's rights, and if there was a candidate who is against women's rights and says terrible things about women, there is no way I could vote for that person," she said. Melinda French Gates thinks the new generation of billionaire activists aren't doing enough. Gates also called Elon Musk's criticism of her political endorsements "silly." Gates says she will...

Donald Trump's assassination attempt made news all over the world. But shortly after the video was released, viewers started to get very suspicious of a woman sitting behind the presidential candidate due to her strange body language. But is her non-verbal communication REALLY a concern and what can her facial expressions and body language actually reveal? Join my guest, Chase Hughes (from The Behavior Panel) and I to find out now!

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukraine on Sunday said it struck an oil depot in southern Russia that supplies the Kremlin’s troops as Russian strikes in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, where Moscow claimed further gains, left five civilians dead and 15 others wounded. Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement Kyiv’s security services were responsible for a drone strike in Russia’s southern Kursk region that morning on an oil depot used to meet the needs of the Russian military, and contains 11 tanks with a total volume of 7,000 cubic meters (about 247,202 cubic feet), adding the attack prompted “powerful explosions...

On Friday, Trump spoke to a Turning Point USA Faith Believers Summit (i.e., an Evangelical Christian group). In the last minutes of his speech, according to Democrats, he announced that, if elected, he’ll end all elections, becoming a dictator for life. Of course, if you listen to Trump, he said something quite different: He will work to end election fraud so that, going forward, all true votes in America will be counted and Republicans can win, even if, as is usually he case, 40% of potential Evangelical voters stay home.The WaPo sums up the hysteria:Democratic lawmakers and Vice President Harris’s...

ans at the "Simpsons" panel at San Diego Comic-Con received an unexpected surprise Saturday when creator Matt Groening shared a video from Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, a self-described "superfan" of the series. In the clip, Harris laughed and said, "We must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom" -- a quote from the Oct. 1996 episode "Treehouse of Horror VII," which originally aired before the election between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. The appearance was fitting. In recent days, social media users have compared Harris to Lisa Simpson, and in particular the...

@Megatron_ron BREAKING: Iran has summoned the French ambassador for the offensive representation of Jesus Christ during the Olympics opening ceremony. Muslims consider Jesus a prophet of God. @Megatron_ron Iranian Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance: 'The insulting representation of Jesus Christ in Paris yesterday was completely offensive and crossed all red lines. France, a country with a major history of Christianity, must be ashamed of itself, and I implore our Christian people all over the world to speak out against this act – we resolutely condemn this'

The Department of Homeland Security has refused to follow a law mandating it take DNA samples from illegal immigrants taken into custody, which would identify violent criminals and child traffickers, employees told the U.S. Senate this week. Speaking to senators on Tuesday, three former officials presented evidence that DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had blocked their efforts to comply with a 2005 law, then retaliated against them when they sounded the alarm about the lawbreaking. “Given the enormous potential of DNA collection to facility solving crimes, we took our job seriously,” Fred Wynn said. Law enforcement experts...

Text messages, obtained exclusively by The Times, indicate that some law enforcement officers were aware of Thomas Crooks earlier than previously known. And he was aware of them. Nearly 100 minutes before former President Donald J. Trump took the stage in Butler, Pa., a local countersniper who was part of the broader security detail let his colleagues know his shift was ending. “Guys I am out. Be safe,” he texted to a group of colleagues at 4:19 p.m. on July 13. He exited the second floor of a warehouse that overlooked the campaign rally site, leaving two other countersnipers behind....

BlackRock began renaming environmental, social and governance (ESG) earlier this year. It’s now calling it “transition investing.” The company recently updated its climate and decarbonization stewardship guidelines. The document makes no mention of ESG, but it shows in many ways, the world’s largest investment manager with $10 trillion in assets under management is still pursuing many of the same goals. When the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted final rules regarding climate disclosures in March, critics were partially relieved that the most stringent aspects of the proposed rules weren’t included. The rule still faces a number of legal challenges by...

On a sweltering July afternoon in 1924, Eric Liddell walked onto the track in a Paris stadium carrying a trowel. Pinned to the front of his short-sleeved shirt was a piece of cloth bearing the number 451. When Liddell reached the track, he bent down and dug two small holes in the center of lane 6.Then he walked up to each of the other five competitors in the 400-meter dash final and shook their hands.Moments earlier, one of the British team’s masseurs had handed a note to the 22-year-old Scottish runner: “In the old book, it says, ‘He that honors...

Paris organizers defended the Olympics opening ceremony on Sunday amid backlash over the apparent mocking of The Last Supper during the performance. The opening ceremony drew condemnation from American leaders, world leaders, Christian groups and athletes alike over its depiction of one of the most revered events in Christianity. The ceremony’s segment appeared to resemble a depiction of The Last Supper, famously painted by Leonardo da Vinci. The performance ensemble included drag queens, a transgender model and a naked singer who was stylized to resemble the Greek god Dionysus. Paris 2024 spokesperson Anne Descamps spoke about it on Sunday.

VIDEO Border Czar Denialism on the part of much of the media just came to a screeching halt. Why? Mainly because of an INCREDIBLE video clip from Newsbusters exposing the media hypocrisy of denying that Kamala Harris was the BORDER CZAR and contrasting it with sound bites from the past from the same networks as the denialists proclaiming that Harris was indeed a... BORDER CZAR.The big turnaround by the media, obviously HUMILIATED by the Newsbusters clip, could already be seen on the CNN Sunday shows of July 28 as they openly acknowledged Harris as BORDER CZAR. Too bad for you,...

Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ Among recent movies, 280 percent more Republicans named The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe among their favorite movies. Thor, Soul Surfer, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Secretariat were also top "red" picks

Snip It's hard to tell today how the satire in The President's Analyst landed when it was released at the end of 1967. It's reputed to have bombed at the box office despite more than decent reviews; Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times compared it favorably as a comedy to The Graduate and Bedazzled (two contemporary satires that time has treated very differently), but I can't read Ebert's affable review ("modern and biting, and there are many fine, subtle touches") without suspecting that he was swept up in the groovy zeitgeist, unwilling to go all squaresville and rain on the...

Olympic Games organisers have said they are "sorry" that scenes in Friday's opening ceremony caused offence. A banquet sequence featuring drag artists in particular came in for criticism from Christian groups, who felt it parodied Leonardo da Vinci's painting 'The Last Supper'. That famous 15th Century work depicts a key biblical scene. The Catholic Church in France was among critics, saying the ceremony featured "scenes of derision and mockery of Christianity". A US telecommunications company, C Spire, said it would be pulling its advertising around the Olympic Games after being "shocked by the mockery of the Last Supper during the...

Orcas relentlessly battered a yacht in a “terrifying” two-hour attack that didn’t end until the $128,680 vessel sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. ... they were not playing at all, they knew exactly what they were doing. They knew the weak points of the boat, and they knew how to sink it... “Their sole intention was to sink the boat ... The five orcas circled the 39-foot sailing boat and took turns smashing it to bits .. in a coordinated assault Powell compared to the carnage of wolves. ... The pod of five first focused on the rudder,...

Grimes' grandmother - and her children's great-grandmother - is receiving palliative care and “yearns to see and hold Claire’s children one last time"Grimes has shared her mother’s appeal to Elon Musk for the children they share to be allowed to visit her 93-year-old mother – their great-grandmother – who is in end-of-life palliative care. Musk and Grimes have three children together – X Æ A-12, a boy born in May 2020, Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, a daughter born via surrogate in December 2021. In late 2023, it ws revealed they had a third child, Techno Mechanicus, known as Tau. In...

Members of the local SWAT team assigned to protect former President Donald Trump at his rally on July 13 have revealed that they had no contact with the Secret Service prior to an assassination attempt on the former president. The shooting occurred on July 13 when a would-be assassin opened fire at Trump while he was addressing supporters. During an exclusive interview with ABC News’ senior investigative correspondent Aaron Katersky, the officers detailed how a lack of communication and planning failures led to a critical delay in identifying and neutralizing the threat. “They told us they had no communication with...