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Ukraine rejected calls from Moscow and Washington to commit to engaging in peace talks with Russia next week, demanding to see Russian peace proposals before attending further negotiations. In nationally televised remarks on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said Kyiv is dedicated, in principle, to continued peace negotiations with Russia. However, he stopped short of agreeing to the proposed Monday peace talks in Istanbul. “We are ready for dialogue, but we demand clarity — clear and, most importantly, balanced proposals,” Mr. Yermak said.

Loretta Swit, the actress and animal activist forever known for her pioneering turn as the disciplined Maj. Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan on the acclaimed CBS sitcom M*A*S*H, has died. She was 87. According to a police report, Swit died just after midnight Friday of suspected natural causes at her home in New York City, her publicist, Harlan Boll, announced. Swit won two Emmys for her portrayal of the Army nurse — she was nominated 10 times, every year the show was on the air except the first — and appeared on 240 of the series’ 251 episodes during its sensational...

Neanderthals seem to have produced a remarkably consistent set of stone tools for hundreds of thousands of years. Two new studies suggest that this presumed lack of diversity and innovation might not be the whole story.Karen Ruebens, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton, analyzed more than 1,300 stone tools from European Neanderthal sites dated to between 115,000 and 35,000 years ago. She found that they belong to at least two distinct tool-making traditions. West of the Rhine River, Neanderthal hand axes are oval or roughly triangular, while to the east, they are rounded on one edge and flat on...

Climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and other activists will set sail Sunday for Gaza on a humanitarian ship aimed at protesting Israel's war on the territory, a French-Palestinian lawmaker said. The trip is organised by the Freedom Flotilla, a coalition of groups opposed to the blockade on humanitarian aid for Gaza that Israel imposed on March 2 and has only recently begun lifting. Rima Hassan, a European Parliament member also taking part in the trip, said the operation had "several aims: to condemn the humanitarian blockade and ongoing genocide, the impunity granted to the state of Israel and raise international awareness."...

The Senate will likely start moving next week on a bill to place strong sanctions on Russia because it is not moving forward toward agreeing to a ceasefire in Ukraine, Sen. Lindsey Graham, the legislation's sponsor, said Friday. "Enough of talking," the South Carolina Republican told reporters while visiting Ukraine's capital city of Kyiv, reports Bloomberg News. "I would expect next week that the Senate will start moving the sanctions bill ... there are House members that are ready to move and you will see congressional action." The sanctions bill, according to a draft seen by Bloomberg, includes a 500%...

CNN cut away from Joe Biden after he got in a female reporter’s face, suggested he’s not mentally stable and claimed he can “beat the hell” out of Jake Tapper. 82-year-old Biden delivered remarks at a Memorial Day Event in New Castle, Delaware, on Friday. This is the first time Biden has spoken publicly since his cancer diagnosis. Or rather, since Biden admitted he has metastatic cancer. Medical experts believe Biden may have been suffering from prostate cancer for years. Of course, Biden made the Memorial Day speech about himself and implied his son, Beau, died while serving in Iraq....

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Come July, common keys for houses, cars, boats, and motorcycles will be illegal in Minnesota, save for uncertain intervention from the state Legislature. That's when the state's ban on the manufacture, sale, or import of keys, toys, dishes, and other common items containing more than a tiny percentage of lead or cadmium goes into effect. The purpose of that law was to remove dangerous heavy metals from products that come into contact with children. The trouble is that almost all keys sold today have more lead than the new law's 0.09 percent limit on lead content. Locksmiths have been warning...

On Memorial Day, May 26, 2025, 805 Patriots, a patriotic group active in the communities north and west of Los Angeles in the 805 area code, conducted its annual Pacific Coast Highway Memorial Day Flag Run along Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) from Los Angeles to Point Mugu, about 40 miles to the west. A convoy of vehicles festooned with flags departed from the Los Angeles neighborhood of Venice and then headed west along PCH, where it merged with another convoy that formed up in Malibu. The convoy then proceeded westward down PCH for another 20 miles to Point Mugu for...

In a world increasingly shaped by political polarization, it’s easy to view ideology as a product of culture, community, or circumstance. But what if part of what influences our political beliefs lies not in where we were raised or what we’ve experienced—but in how our brains are wired to think? A new study published as part of the Genetics and Human Agency initiative suggests that intelligence—both measured through IQ tests and encoded in our DNA—may play a significant role in shaping political views. Drawing from data on over 300 biological and adoptive families, researchers found consistent links between higher cognitive...

A mother shot and wounded a convicted child molester after she found him allegedly trying to rape her 12-year-old daughter inside an Indianapolis motel room Saturday, according to reports. The mother walked in on Bruce Pierce, of Indianapolis, allegedly on top of her child as the preteen repeatedly said no, leading up to the gunfire at the Baymont Inn, court documents state. The young victim’s grandmother told police that Pierce had been talking with the 12-year-old online and over the phone, trying to persuade her to leave town with him, according to the documents obtained by WTHR Wednesday.

A new, highly transmissible COVID subvariant has been detected in California — heightening the risk of a potential summer wave as recent moves by the Trump administration threaten to make vaccines harder to get, and more expensive, for many Americans, some health experts warn. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced this week that he was rescinding the federal government’s recommendation that pregnant women and healthy children get immunized against COVID, effective immediately. Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, also said the agency will no longer routinely approve annually formulated COVID-19 vaccinations...

Officials had largely steered clear of arrests at immigration courts out of concern that they would deter people from showing up for hearings.A hearing on Tuesday at immigration court in Van Nuys, Calif., was supposed to be routine for a young family from Colombia, the first step in what they hoped would be a successful bid for asylum. To their surprise, the judge informed the father, Andres Roballo, that the government wished to dismiss his deportation case. Taken aback, Mr. Roballo hesitated, then responded: “As long as I stay with my family.” Moments later, as they exited the courtroom into...

BERLIN (AP) — A performance inside a Catholic cathedral in Germany earlier this month that featured raw, plucked chickens wrapped in diapers onstage — and the country’s president and the local archbishop in the audience — has prompted the church and municipal leaders to apologize that the show “hurt religious feelings.” The show, “Westphalia Side Story,” was part of a May 15 celebration to mark the 1,250th anniversary of Westphalia, a region in northwestern Germany. Video footage shows one woman and two shirtless men singing “Fleisch ist Fleisch” (“Meat is meat”) — apparently spoofing Austrian band Opus’ 1984 pop song...

SummaryVenezuelan, Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan migrants affected Trump administration revoked 'parole' status for migrants Biden gave 530,000 migrants this temporary legal status May 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday let President Donald Trump's administration revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants living in the United States, bolstering the Republican president's drive to step up deportations. The court put on hold Boston-based U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani order halting the administration's move to end the immigration "parole" granted to 532,000 of these migrants by Trump's predecessor Joe Biden, potentially exposing...

The Department of Labor on Thursday announced it has paused its Job Corps operations, cautioning that the program has issues with student safety and fiscal sustainability. “Job Corps was created to help young adults build a pathway to a better life through education, training, and community,” Department of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in a written statement. “However, a startling number of serious incident reports and our in-depth fiscal analysis reveal the program is no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve.” The Department of Labor just released its first-of-its-kind Job Corps Transparency Report, using data from program year...

On today's Morning Joe, MSNBC contributor regular Pablo Torre, a Harvard alum who comments on sports and politics, denied that Harvard is "merely a hotbed of liberalism." Torre's one bit of evidence in support of his claim was that the basic economics course at Harvard used to be taught by an economic adviser to President Reagan. The course is now taught by someone who quit the GOP in protest against Trump, and is a global warmist who advocates carbon taxes. In saying that Harvard is not "merely" a hotbed of liberalism, Torre apparently meant that the university is not exclusively...

I just got my online issue of the Missouri Conservationist today. When I was a kid, it was really good publication. I remember one particular writer specifically, Don Wooldridge, who always had interesting and relevant outdoors articles. The Conservationist has gone woke; now they are publishing articles about "neurodivergent anglers." A few decades ago the Missouri Department of Conservation got a one-eighth of one percent sales tax passed. They have been rolling in bucks ever since, and they spend it on nonsense.

The Democrat mayor of Jacksonville, Florida, Donna Deegan, via the City of Jacksonville’s Office of General Counsel, advised the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office not to enforce immigration law. “The Office of General Counsel of the, that was appointed by the Democratic mayor, sent a letter to the sheriff or email to the sheriff today telling him, do not enforce the state illegal immigration law and do not enforce the local illegal immigration law that we’ve been on this show talking about,” Jacksonville City Council President-Elect Kevin Carrico revealed when speaking to Florida’s Voice.