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PARIS (AP) – Three men will stand trial next year after a silver steward employed at the official residence of the French president was arrested this week for the theft of items of silverware and table service worth thousands of euros, the Paris prosecutor’s office said. The Élysée Palace’s head steward reported the disappearance, with the estimated loss ranging between 15,000 and 40,000 euros (($17,500-$47,000). The Sèvres Manufactory – which supplied most of the furnishings – identified several of the missing items on online auction websites. Questioning of Élysée staff led investigators to suspect one of the silver stewards, whose...

US forces have boarded the Bella 1, a US‑sanctioned, Panamanian‑flagged crude tanker bound for Venezuela, marking the third interception near the country this month after the Skipper on Dec. 10 and the Centuries on Saturday. US forces have intercepted yet another oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, boarding the Bella 1 as it sailed toward Venezuelan waters to load crude, according to people briefed on the operation, in the latest escalation of President Donald Trump’s effort to starve Nicolás Maduro’s government of oil revenues. The Bella 1, a Panamanian‑flagged vessel already sanctioned by Washington, was stopped in the southern...

If you have been following this blog closely, you know that I have been participating, along with two excellent colleagues, in the rate proceeding of our local utility, Con Edison. A rate proceeding is the mechanism by which a utility goes before a regulatory body, in our case the New York Public Service Commission, seeking to increase the rates charged to consumers. Our purpose in the proceeding has been to object to and disrupt having the ratepayers charged for the building of infrastructure in pursuit of the futile and infeasible “climate” goals of our deluded politicians. One of the rules...

The maker of the popular Jim Beam bourbon whiskey says it will halt production at its main site in Kentucky for all of next year. The distillery will stay closed while the firm takes "the opportunity to invest in site enhancements," it told the BBC in a statement on Sunday. "We are always assessing production levels to best meet consumer demand and recently met with our team to discuss our volumes for 2026." Distillers in Kentucky - famous for its bourbon - face uncertainty, in part, due to US President Donald Trump's trade policies. The brand is owned by Japanese...

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) released a report in 2024 detailing updated data about traces involving Privately Made Firearms (PMF), sometimes referred to as “ghost guns” in the media. The data covers traces from 2017 through 2023. ATF also publishes overall trace data for firearms for the covered years. The total number of firearms traced in the seven years 2017-2023 was 288,0257. Of those, PMF traced are 92,702, or 3.2% of the total. The number of PMFs traced has been growing. In 2023, 5.4% of the total firearms traced were PMFs. Of the total homicides involving...

As leaders equivocate and extremists unite left and right, open season on Jews spreads across the West—unchecked, unnamed, and certain to grow deadlier. Jews celebrating Hanukkah were just slaughtered by Muslim gunmen on an Australian beach, in an imitation of the October 7 massacres. At Brown University, two students were killed and nine wounded by an allegedly Muslim shooter. An inert Europe is canceling Christmas celebrations out of fear of threats of violence from Muslim minorities. In the West, when an Islamist shoots a Jew, politicians often offer two bizarre remedies: gun control or a task force to tackle Islamophobia....

America’s “deaths of despair” - fatalities from drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, and suicide - have climbed for more than two decades, reaching levels unseen in modern times. The long-run trend is stark. After mid-century stability, the curve bends sharply upward after 2000, driven first by drugs and later joined by alcohol and suicide. The data, drawn from the Senate Joint Economic Committee’s “Long-Term Trends in Deaths of Despair” report shown below, are clear. The deeper question is why. COVID made a bad situation worse. Lockdowns and restrictions stripped away social contact, church gatherings, family support, and purpose. Economic uncertainty due...

A school bus driver who was terminated after she posted a sign saying student passengers could only speak English said she had not meant to be "racially insensitive." Diane Crawford, 66, had posted a sign in the window of her bus earlier this year that said: "Out of respect to English-only students, there will be no speaking Spanish on this bus." Days later, she was informed that her contract with Rohrer Bus had ended. The company had contracted her services to serve the Juniata County School District in Pennsylvania for over a decade. Crawford told local news station CBS 21...

🇺🇸Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem 🇮🇱(12/22/25)[Prayer]Countdown To ChristmasLuke 1:5-25The Birth of John the Baptist Foretold 5 In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. 6 Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. 7 But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old. 8 Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before...

Amazon has apologized after a third-party delivery driver was caught on home security video allegedly stealing a family’s cat in a Los Angeles suburb earlier this month. The incident happened Dec. 11 in Lakewood, according to a report from KTLA-TV. Diane Huff-Medina shared video footage showing an Amazon Flex worker delivering a package to her home. The man was seen placing the package at the front door and taking a photo to confirm delivery. Moments later, the family’s cat, Piper, approached the delivery driver. Piper, a Siamese mix, appeared friendly as the man crouched down to pet her. According to...

* Elaborate rock murals along the U.S.-Mexico border, dating back over 4,000 years, depict a sophisticated cosmological worldview shared by indigenous cultures. These murals feature human-like and animal-like figures alongside symbolic motifs representing creation myths, cyclical time and multidimensional realities. * Despite spanning 175 generations, the Pecos River Style (PRS) rock art maintained strict iconographic rules—black paint first, followed by red, yellow and white—demonstrating a structured visual language rather than random decoration. * The murals align with pan-indigenous beliefs, such as layered universes and portals between worlds. A Huichol shaman recognized the figures in the 2000s, confirming continuity with modern...

A prenatal diagnosis is often accompanied by the pressure to abort, leaving most parents feeling unsupported by the medical community and society at large. In our series “Stories of Prenatal Diagnosis,” we share testimonies of parents who received a diagnosis while pregnant and their personal experience in handling it. Today’s story is from Jacquelyn Smith. A few small changes were made to improve clarity and flow. If you are interested in sharing your experience with prenatal screening, please complete this survey. What conditions did your screening results indicate? The sonogram indicated chromosomal abnormalities, which they believed to be trisomy 13...

Leftists excuse perpetrators and vilify victims. What started as a joke is no longer a laughing matter: Leftism is a mental illness whose sufferers include an inordinate number of narcissists and psychopaths. Anybody who has endured a leftist mob knows this to be true. In the name of “racial justice,” “climate justice,” “trans justice,” “justice for ‘Palestine,’” or whatever other cause du jour the woke-sters have adopted as the next life-or-death “social justice” fad, leftists block drivers on busy highways, scream in the faces of wary pedestrians, set fire to businesses and cars, and terrorize civilians. They threaten and harass...

“Is that Fale Pea?” a Seattle police officer asks another. “Yeah, you know him? “He’s notorious for random assaults on Third,” the officer says.

We’ve reported extensively on the shenanigans at CBS News, the network that was forced to fork over $16 million in July to settle Trump’s lawsuit concerning their deceptive editing of a Kamala Harris interview a month before the 2024 presidential election. Much drama ensued at the outlet as veteran diehards continued to insist that resisting Trump and spewing anti-American rhetoric was part of their job description. Give credit, however, to David Ellison, Chairman and CEO of Paramount (Skydance Corporation), who brought on independent journalist, former NY Times opinion editor, and nowadays free thinker Bari Weiss to oversee the hopelessly biased...

Vice President JD Vance had two choice words for racist troll Nick Fuentes and others like MSNBC host Jen Psaki, who have made revolting comments about the second lady: “Eat s–t.” “Let me be clear. Anyone who attacks my wife, whether their name is Jen Psaki or Nick Fuentes, can eat s–t,” Vance told UnHerd in an interview published Sunday. “That’s my official policy as vice president of the United States.” Fuentes, a 27-year-old, far-right white supremacist and Holocaust denier, called Vance a “race traitor” for being married to Usha Vance, the daughter of two Indian immigrants, and has used...

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A county run by a construction industry magnate with a net worth to rival Trump's, a magnate whose tainted son-in-law keeps getting re-elected Sheriff on the Republican ticket with never any serious opposition in the primary. A county illegal aliens stick to like iron shavings to a magnet, because there's tons of construction jobs just waiting for them here and law enforcement (there's an oxymoron for ya) looks the other way, and where the cost of labor for that magnate I was telling you about is negligible because of his cheap labor pool protected by the son-in-law. Try visiting one...

Millions of Americans want to move to Canada. While few have actually left the country after Trump’s latest victory, they fantasize about living under a leftist government with free health care. And during the recent debates about ObamaCare’s self-destructing subsidies, every self-respecting liberal vehemently denounced America’s backward ‘paid’ health care. Every civilized country has free health care, they insist. Just look at Canada. Canada does have free health care in the sense that there are government insurance systems that cover “medically necessary services” funded by paying 70% more in taxes than Americans. This ‘free health care’ comes with a 3...