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The Trump administration announced on Wednesday $11.1 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, the largest ever U.S. weapons package for the island which is under increasing military pressure from China. The Taiwan arms sale announcement is the second under U.S. President Donald Trump's current administration, and comes as Beijing ramps up its military and diplomatic pressure against Taiwan, whose government rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims. The proposed arms sales cover eight items, including HIMARS rocket systems, howitzers, Javelin anti-tank missiles, Altius loitering munition drones and parts for other equipment, Taiwan's defence ministry said in a statement. "The United States continues to...

Explanation: What's large and blue and can wrap itself around an entire galaxy? A gravitational lens mirage. Pictured here, the gravity of a massive elliptical galaxy (luminous red galaxy: LRG) has gravitationally distorted the light from a much more distant blue galaxy. More typically, such light bending results in two discernible images of the distant galaxy, but here the lens alignment is so precise that the background galaxy is distorted into a horseshoe -- a nearly complete ring: an Einstein ring. Although LRG 3-757 was discovered in 2007 in data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the image shown...

VIDEOIn 2026 the FIFA World Cup Soccer arrives in the USA. That will be the time when native born Americans PRETEND (if they are polite) to be interested in Soccer or what the rest of the world calls Football. Watching these Brits suffering extreme meltdowns over absurdly (and typically) low scoring soccer games is amusing to watch. It has convinced me that growing up watching either American football vs soccer somehow wires your brain differently. The way soccer flows with its absurdly low scores just does NOT appeal to Americans who expect higher scores in a game that flows entirely...

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A Republican push to make drilling cheaper on federal land is creating new fiscal pressure for states that depend on oil and gas revenue, most notably in New Mexico as it expands early childhood education and saves for the future. The shift stems from the sweeping law President Donald Trump signed in July that rolls back the minimum federal royalty rate to 12.5%. That rate — the share of production value companies must pay to the government — held steady for a century under the 1920 Mineral Leasing Act. It was raised to 16.7% under...

"Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban declared “dead” the proposals to seize the $247 billion in frozen Russian assets within the European Union and use them to finance a reparations loan for Ukraine. Orban, a right-wing nationalist who has warm relations with Russia, and is also one of U.S. President Donald Trump’s closest political allies in Europe, made the remark to reporters on Thursday morning as he entered a European Council meeting for crunch talks on the assets issue."

As the manhunt for the Brown University shooter entered its sixth day Thursday, sources say police in Providence, Rhode Island, recovered live rounds from the shooting scene.

A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked a Trump administration policy that sought to require members of Congress to submit requests a week before visiting and inspecting Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities. U.S. District Court Judge Jia Cobb ruled that the policy likely violated an appropriations law passed by Congress saying that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, cannot use funds to require lawmakers in Congress to "provide prior notice of the intent to enter a facility" to conduct oversight. That DHS policy, announced in June, said members of Congress should file requests to inspect ICE facilities...

A tow-truck driver in Florida is facing felony charges after being accused of towing a car that had a little girl inside. The incident was caught on surveillance video. The car’s owner told police he was inside a restaurant in Sunrise, Florida, for only two minutes before the tow truck came and took his car and he ran out of the business to try and stop the truck’s driver. The car was in a fire zone where there were no parking signs, WPLG reported. The video shows the owner of the car running to the tow truck driver, telling him...

Daily Readings from the USCCBWhen Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home. Matthew 1:24The human person is a fascinating subject of study. Throughout the ages, countless philosophers, theologians, and social scientists have sought to understand the complexities of human nature. Within the Catholic philosophical tradition, Saint Thomas Aquinas stands out as an influential and trustworthy teacher on this topic. Aquinas teaches that while a person sleeps, the external senses are inactive. However, sense images within the imagination can still be active to varying degrees, depending on the...

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Pope Leo XIV tapped Bishop Ronald A. Hicks of Joliet, Illinois, to lead the influential Archdiocese of New York, replacing Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who led New York's 2.8 million Catholics for 16 years.

Heavily armed Australian police swooped on a group of men heading to Bondi Beach on Thursday after intelligence suggested they could be planning a “violent act” days after 15 people were slaughtered at a Hanukkah event there. The suspects were nabbed in two cars with out-of-state license plates in Sydney’s south-west just days after two ISIS terrorists shot up the famed beach. Chaotic footage captured SWAT teams searching and cuffing five bloodied men after authorities rammed their vehicle in the broad-daylight sting. A weapon may have been uncovered from the car, sources told the Sydney Morning Herald. Police also swooped...

Yesterday, the FBI delivered to the Senate Judiciary Committee emails relating to the search of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. Senator Charles Grassley has released what I take to be all of the responsive documents. Comments you may have seen on the emails are correct: the FBI didn’t think there was probable cause to search Trump’s home, but Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice insisted. The FBI thought they should communicate with Trump’s lawyer and likely be able to reach an agreement. Garland’s DOJ refused. The FBI pointed out that President Trump likely had a good legal argument on the documents; DOJ...

Heavily-armed tactical police have swooped on a group of men believed to have been on their way to Bondi Beach - revealing they were acting on information a “violent act” was possibly being planned. (Snip) It is unclear whether the group of men arrested posed any danger to the public, and unclear why they were headed for Bondi however in the current climate law enforcers are taking no chances. A witness said it was “frightening to see so many police with huge weapons in the area” especially after what had happened in Bondi. “This is not something you see every...

A Jewish New Yorker described Tuesday how he was stabbed just centimeters from his heart by a hateful sicko — who made a chilling promise before lunging at him on a Brooklyn street. “I’m going to kill a Jew today,” the knife-wielding goon seethed before launching the antisemitic attack, said victim Elias Rosner, 35, in an interview with The Post on Wednesday. Rosner, a member of the Lubavitch Hasidic community in Crown Heights, had just left the temple on Tuesday afternoon when he came across the still-at-large attacker spewing antisemitic slurs. “I was waiting in a crowd of Jewish people...

Mercosur and the Green Deal have become the symbols of fierce citizen discontent. A placard on a tractor that reads “Without agriculture you die” seen during a farmers’ protest in Brussels, Belgium on December 18, 2025 - Javier Villamor / europeanconservative.com. Brussels woke up once again this Thursday to the roar of agricultural engines. Coinciding with the opening of the final European Council meeting of the year, thousands of farmers and livestock breeders returned to the EU capital to denounce what they see as the European Union’s systematic neglect of the primary sector—now further exacerbated by political pressure to finalise...

The team said they are not asking for state taxpayer dollars, but are still seeking a commitment to local infrastructure and reasonable property tax certainty.

In a TSA announcement, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem sternly warns, "You will need a REAL ID to travel by air or visit federal buildings." European politicians go much further, reports Stossel TV producer Kristin Tokarev. They're pushing government-mandated digital IDs that tie your identity to nearly everything you do. Spain's prime minister promises "an end to anonymity" online! Britain's prime minister warns, "You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID." Queen Maxima of the Netherlands enthusiastically told the World Economic Forum that digital IDs are good for knowing...

Inflation is only at 2.6% year-over-year. This means that nearly 100% of the cost of tariffs has been eaten by the foreign manufacturers and importers. Which is exactly what I’ve been arguing would happen. Let me explain what is happening: The notion that tariffs would be passed onto customers has always been laughable on its face, once you understand that manufacturing is only 20% to 40% of the price of an item for sale. The rest includes advertising, warehousing, transportation and sales markup. (Importers have high transportation costs to get the product to America, but that’s all part of replacing...

CHRISTMAS BIBLE-ART EPISODE #6 of 33 MARY VISITS HER COUSIN ELIZABETH L U K E CHAPTER 1 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and ELIZABETH WAS FILLED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT. In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as...

We’ve been here before: congressional Democrats and Republicans sparring over the future of the Affordable Care Act. But this time there’s an extra complication. Though it’s the middle of open enrollment, lawmakers are still debating whether to extend the subsidies that have given consumers extra help paying their health insurance premiums in recent years. The circumstances have led to deep consumer concerns about higher costs and fears of political fallout among some Republican lawmakers.