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[Catholic Caucus] Did Padre Pio Offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the Diocese of Pittsburgh?Editor’s Note: This article begins our new article series A Week with Padre Pio to begin AdventIn Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.During World War II, an American GI from the Diocese of Pittsburgh, Joseph (Joe) Peluso, first visited Padre Pio on October 6, 1944 at his monastery in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy. Joe attended the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered by Padre Pio on many occasions, and after 45 visits to see Padre Pio, Joe’s unit was transferred to France...

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Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is likely the person "most surprised" by ex-Marine Daniel Penny's "not guilty" verdict, George Washington Law professor Jonathan Turley told Fox News shortly after the jury's decision. "[The acquittal] was not entirely expected because this is not, obviously, how District Attorney Bragg had planned this," the constitutional scholar said Monday on "The Faulkner Focus."

Vladimir Putin has been dealt a significant geopolitical blow with the downfall of Bashar al-Assad, whose regime in Syria the Russian president had committed considerable funding and military resources to propping up. Assad fled Syria and has claimed political asylum in Russia, Kremlin-backed media reported, his now exiled status depriving Moscow of a key regional ally. Russia's military assets in Syria are now under threat, such as its naval base in the port city of Tartus, which gave the Kremlin a presence near NATO's southern flank in the Mediterranean Sea. -snip- Pro-Moscow military bloggers have expressed concern over the future...

Authorities have detained Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old from Towson, Maryland, as a person of interest in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, following a rigorous search by police.Thompson was assassinated outside a hotel in Midtown Manhattan last Wednesday. The shooter, described by police as calculated, used a suppressor-equipped firearm, striking Thompson multiple times before fleeing. New York police revealed surveillance images showing a suspect near the crime scene. Thompson’s family reported prior threats made against him. According to law enforcement sources reviewing his online activity, Mangione is known for...

Liz Cheney, a former member of the partisan January 6 Committee, said Monday that she should not go to jail for allegedly destroying 117 of the panel’s files. President-elect Donald Trump accused members of the partisan panel on Sunday of destroying committee evidence that he said exonerated him from allegations of wrongdoing. The accusation came after Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), who led the House Administration Committee’s oversight investigation, said in January his computer forensic investigators discovered that 117 files went missing, presumably deleted or encrypted by the panel’s members.

Iowa Senator Joni Ernst's husband Gail claimed in divorce papers she cheated on him with a soldier while she served in the National Guard in the early 2000s.. Gail, 65, blasted Joni in attempt to receive alimony payments, lawyer fees and remove her from their home in Red Oak, Iowa, citing 'bizarre behavior'.. He claims the Republican politician, 48, 'walked around the house nude, laid out nude on the back patio, and attempted to crawl into bed naked with him at night'.. The former military man claims he was like a single parent raising their daughter Libby because Joni's career...

A group of special-needs students was denied service at Cracker Barrel in Maryland, with the mother of an autistic boy expressing outrage after the restaurant's manager told them not to come back. Stacey Campbell said her non-verbal son Jojo, 9, was refused sit-down service at the restaurant in Waldorf on Tuesday along with 10 other special-needs children. Jojo was on the trip with his school's community-based instruction (CBI) program, which gives special-needs children the opportunity to go on field trips and participate in educational activities. According to an email from a teacher, the kids and the seven adults with them...

The terrible cost of betraying Catholic doctrine under the guise of unityAlmost one hundred years ago, Pope Pius XI saw so clearly that the false ecumenism that has thrived for the past sixty years would lead to the grave evil of religious indifferentism.Pope Francis with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar in 2019In his 1928 encyclical on religious unity, Mortalium Animos, Pope Pius XI warned the Catholic Church about the evils of seeking Christian unity through a process other than encouraging non-Catholics to become Catholic. As we can see from his clear teaching below, he foresaw that the errors of false...

Most Americans don’t understand the risks of renewable energy or view traditional energy sources like oil and gas as essential to their livelihoods, a new poll found, as a Republican trifecta in Washington prepares to pass an extensive energy agenda early next year. As many as 57% of US voters are not aware that the “United States is at an elevated risk of energy shortfalls,” compared to 43% who were well privy to elevated risks of energy shortages, according to a poll from the American Energy Institute exclusively shared with The Post. About two-thirds of US grids have been vulnerable...

President-elect Donald Trump is refusing to accept the presidential salary again — just as he did in his first term — he told NBC’S Kristen Welker. When asked if he was planning to take the presidential salary, Trump said, “I’m not going to accept a salary, no.” “I’m giving up a lot of money. You know? You know, it amazed me that, and maybe this isn’t right, but other than George Washington — and they’re not sure about that — every President has accepted their salary, except me,” Trump said. Welker then asked if Trump accepted the pension, to which...

NY BLM leader Hawk Newsome calls for “Black vigilantes” to step up in response to Daniel Penny’s acquittal We need some black vigilantes. People wanna jump up and choke us and kill us for being loud? How about we do the same?”

Russia maintains its military bases and embassy in Syria after the overthrow of the government of Bashar al-Assad. The agreements with Turkey are obvious. But to what extent? The observer argues about this Pravda.Ru Lyubov Stepushova.Judging by the news feed on December 9, the Russian military bases in Syria are working, the evacuation of the contingent is not underway. The embassy in Damascus is also working full-time. It was not looted like the Iranian one. On the military base of the Navy in Tartus and the Khmeimim airbase signed an agreement with Syria for 50 years. Power in Syria was...

President-elect Donald Trump has suggested that Mexico and Canada should become a U.S. state if they want to continue receiving subsidies from their neighboring country. The president-elect had made a similar remark regarding Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had reportedly told the president-elect during a November 29 meeting at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida that the tariff plans would devastate Canada's economy. The Republican is said to have jokingly suggested, "Maybe Canada should become the 51st state" in response.

Billionaire Bill Gates has provoked a widespread and escalating backlash after he admitted that he’s been using India as a “kind of laboratory” to test his “vaccines” and conduct other experiments on Indian citizens.Gates made the remarks during a recent interview with fellow Jeffrey Epstein-linked billionaire Reid Hoffman.The Microsoft co-founder gloated during the interview that he uses India as “a kind of laboratory to try things.”Gates claims that his experiments on Indians will ensure that people are “better off” in the future.“And it’s kind of a laboratory to try things that then when you prove them out in India you...

A man in the Altoona, Pennsylvania, area is being questioned Monday in connection with last week's UnitedHealthcare CEO killing in Manhattan, in part because he was found with a gun similar to the one used in the shooting, according to two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News. The sources say it is too soon to determine if his case is connected to the death of Brian Thompson, but they are investigating it as a potentially significant development. According to the sources, customers at a local McDonald's thought he looked suspicious and called police. Arriving officers noticed a fake...

I’ve long been a fan of language learning. In college, I studied abroad for a year to learn French. Later, I spent a year traveling with a friend picking up Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese and some Korean. I’ve learned a bit of my wife’s native language, Macedonian, and worked through some phrasebooks while traveling in Italy and Japan.With advances in artificial intelligence and machine translation, it’s easy to wonder whether language learning still makes sense.My answer is: For monolinguals who live within their own country and have no desire to travel or immerse themselves in a foreign culture—probably not. But...

Daniel Penny, the veteran who used a chokehold on subway rider Jordan Neely, has been acquitted in Neely's death. Jurors acquitted Penny of criminally negligent homicide, which could have put him behind bars for up to four years, in Neely’s chokehold death aboard a crowded uptown F train in May 2023, The New York Post reported. Manslaughter, the top charge against Penny, was tossed on Friday after jurors twice said they couldn't reach a unanimous verdict.

The notorious leader of New York’s BLM chapter caused outrage outside the Daniel Penny trial by slurring the former Marine, saying “the KKK got another victory,” after the judge in the case dropped the top charge of manslaughter. Hawk Newsome, after the jury deadlocked Friday, told reporters anyone who thinks Penny is innocent has “racism in their heart”, and suggested at least one juror in Penny’s case could be a “white supremacist hold out”, according to a report from the Daily Mail. “Logically, if you pick a white supremacist jury specialist, and you pack a jury with white people, obviously...

Amazon’s cloud computing arm Amazon Web Services Tuesday announced plans for an “Ultracluster,” a massive AI supercomputer made up of hundreds of thousands of its homegrown Trainium chips, as well as a new server, the latest efforts by its AI chip design lab based in Austin, Texas. The chip cluster will be used by the AI startup Anthropic, in which the retail and cloud-computing giant recently invested an additional $4 billion. The cluster, called Project Rainier, will be located in the U.S. When ready in 2025, it will be one of the largest in the world for training AI models,...