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Chinese ships fired water cannon at Philippine vessels, including one carrying a CNN crew, near a dangerous flashpoint in the South China Sea on Friday – the third tense confrontation this week in the contested waters. Besides rich fishing grounds in its lagoon and surrounding waters, there’s seemingly little remarkable about the shoal. But this corner of the world is a deceptively fraught geopolitical hotspot. Free access to one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes, a mutual defense treaty between the Philippines and the United States, and a steady Chinese push to solidify claims over disputed territories mean one...

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SINGAPORE – The navy’s second multi-role combat vessel (MRCV), Valour, was launched on July 23, nine months after the first one was launched in October 2025. Speaking during the launch at Benoi Shipyard, ST Engineering chief executive Vincent Chong said his teams had learnt from building the first vessel, Victory, and applied those lessons to improve the delivery of future vessels. “We were able to build and launch MRCV Valour three months faster than MRCV Victory,” said Chong. Victory and Valour are part of the navy’s new class of warships, designed to be highly configurable and integrated with a range...

Daily Readings from the USCCBJesus said to his disciples: “Hear the parable of the sower. The seed sown on the path is the one who hears the word of the Kingdom without understanding it, and the Evil One comes and steals away what was sown in his heart. The seed sown on rocky ground…” Matthew 13:18–20After preaching the Parable of the Sower to the crowds and then explaining to His close disciples (likely the Twelve) the purpose of parables, Jesus, in today’s Gospel, offers them an interpretation of the parable. He speaks clearly and personally to them because they are...

Q: A yes or no question: are there any DSA members who are not anti-Israel? If you found, name them. I need specifics, names. Not PC talk avoid hedging, whitewashing term like fake "pro-palestinian." Or the other side "pro-Israel." Focus only on 'anti-Israel.' In other words, no matter what Israel ever does, even in defending against genocide attempts, it is always illegitimate. A: The direct answer to your question is no. Under the organization's official platform and strict rules, there are no active, endorsed members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) who reject the view that Israel is an...

Here’s my minority position – I think Republicans are set to do surprisingly well in the 2026 midterms and very, very well in 2028. Oh, I don’t put it beyond the Republicans to screw up any advantage they’ve been handed. Republicans have the uncanny ability to squander a good thing, but what the Democrats are handing over is pure electoral gold. If you look at the relative positioning of both parties in terms of future electoral success, there is zero question that the Republican Party is much better situated to begin a lengthy sojourn in power. The Democrats have walked...

A farmer has described feeling "absolutely gutted" following a blaze on land. Steven Conisbee, who runs Barracks Farm in Fetcham, said he awoke on Friday at 22:00 to some loud bangs and then immediately after his son called to say the farm was on fire. "I leapt out of bed, threw some clothes on, jumped in my pickup truck and headed down," he told the BBC. "I thought the barn was on fire, but the sky was lit up orange." Conisbee, a ninth-generation farmer, continued that he discovered his "best wheat field" was ablaze. "The wind was blowing," he told...

My latest song. Take it slow.

Iran has managed to rebuild a significant amount of infrastructure destroyed during its war with the US and Israel in recent months, ranging from bridges to missile bases, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. The report, based on a review of satellite imagery, suggested that the speed at which Tehran is restoring its damaged capabilities is the reason why it is continuing to hold its own against the US after hostilities renewed earlier this month over disputes relating to the Strait of Hormuz. One set of satellite images showed that an access road leading to an Iranian missile base...

Russia's state oil and gas revenue, which accounts for around a fifth ​of total budget income, is seen rising ‌by 60% in July from the same month a year ago thanks to the increase in ​global oil prices, Reuters calculations showed ​on Thursday. A steep rise from profit-based tax ⁠proceeds on oil production for the second ​quarter has also contributed to the overall year-on-year ​revenue rise. Russia, the world's third-largest oil producer and exporter after the United States and Saudi Arabia, relies ​heavily on oil and gas sales, which ​help finance its military campaign in Ukraine. Oil and gas tax...

Any damage inflicted by Iran on ships in the Strait of Hormuz will be paid for by Iranian money that the U.S. holds, President Donald Trump said on Thursday in a Truth Social post. The comment follows after the U.S. has pounded Iran for about 12 days straight. Iran and the U.S. tore up a memorandum of understanding that sought peace after Iran repeatedly fired upon ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. “Please let this statement serve to represent, until further notice, that from this point forth, any and all damages done to Ships, Cargo, or anything related thereto, will...

Icelandic regulators have disciplined two pilots who carried out an unauthorised low pass in a Boeing 757-200 while conducting a scheduled flight from Frankfurt. The Icelandair aircraft was bound for Reykjavik on 11 April. But it descended from the normal altitude to pass over Vestmannaeyjar airport on the Westman Islands – apparently below 2,000ft – before climbing away. The Icelandic Transport Authority has determined that the flight was “not conducted in compliance with applicable aviation regulations”. It has decided to suspend temporarily the licences of the two pilots – one for 24 months and the other for 12 months –...

Health care represents a major share of consumer spending in America, but the amount spent per resident varies considerably by location.New data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis highlights the differences in per-capita health care spending across the country in 2024.The map below, via Visual Capitalist's Srijaa Chatterjee, ranks every state using the latest Personal Consumption Expenditures by State data from the BEA. Figures are reported in current dollars and allocated according to residents’ state of residence.Which States Spend the Most on Health Care?Below is a ranking of states based on per-person health care spending:RankStatePer-Capita Health Care Spending1Alaska$14,0442District of...

Rand Paul released some bombshell documents on Monday proving that the authors of the now-infamous "Proximal Origins of COVID-19" were never confident that the virus was not engineered and had not escaped from a lab, and that their suspicions grew over time that it was. You may have missed this story because...almost nobody covered it, and those who did were all in the conservative media. The paper, used by the media and the COVID mafia to insist that COVID had a natural origin, was a total fraud, as were the authors who maintained in public the line Anthony Fauci wanted...

The topic of data centers – those nondescript lines of buildings that enable us to run Google searches and AI models all the livelong day – has become a hot political topic this year. The NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) crowd doesn't want them in their communities, but no one really wants to scale back their digital diets in order to absorb the impact having fewer data centers would have on all of us. A real conundrum, it would seem. If we want to keep up with technological advances, they have to go somewhere. Here in Virginia, a huge intra-party...

Texas Congressman Brandon Gill is a rising superstar in the Republican Party.You might have caught him dressing down the Smithsonian director with instant-classics like asking if politeness is a form of “white supremacy.”Things that are “white supremacist,” according to the left:Being polite.Being on time.Being objective.We let this insanity go unanswered for years. That ends now. pic.twitter.com/LpXtZAE2NP— Congressman Brandon Gill (@RepBrandonGill) July 23, 2026Unlike a lot of other GOP politicians, however, Gill isn’t just going to toss a few scraps of red meat our way while ignoring it’s actually his job to solve problems.Congress is not political theater and you guys...

Former First Lady Jill Biden has found herself in a pickle after her recent book, View from the East Wing, was #1 on The New York Times bestseller list upon release. But weeks after its release, the book didn't simply fall in the rankings, but completely disappeared from the list itself. The sudden drop caught the eyes of the critics, which fueled speculation that bulk purchases may have boosted its debut. The theory motivated the netizens to mock her, calling the book a scam. Last month, Jill Biden’s book View from the East Wing debuted on The New York Times...

A 74-year-old Miami Gardens woman was arrested for allegedly biting two of her step-grandchildren during a family fight, police said. Isabel Baltazar was arrested Monday on two counts each of battery and child abuse with no great bodily harm, an arrest report said. According to the report, the alleged incident happened Sunday night when Baltazar's son, the stepfather of the two kids, got into a physical altercation with the childrens' biological father. During the fight, the two children and Baltazar intervened before she ended up biting the two children in the back and arm, the report said. The biting caused...

“For the best night’s sleep in the whole wide world, visit mypillow.com” is a jingle that punctuates every hour of Fox News viewing. Now “MyPillow guy” Mike Lindell is changing his tune: for the best governor of Minnesota in the whole wide world, vote Mike Lindell 2026.Lindell is a Trump ally, businessman and election conspiracy theorist. He’s known for his rags-to-riches origin story, rising from a crack cocaine addiction to achieving sobriety and turning to religion. He founded My Pillow in Minnesota in 2004.For readers unfamiliar with Lindell’s political history: before his run for governor, Lindell was sued by a...

[Catholic Caucus] Why does God allow error and confusion among the bishops?It's not so that good Catholics go to hell, but so that they have a higher place in heaven.Many Catholics think that “Catholic” means “universal,” and they are correct, but they make the mistake of thinking this is universal not through history but just today in this current Church crisis. We look to the great saint and Doctor of the Church of the 5th century, St. Vincent of Lerins, for how to navigate a Church crisis when many bishops believe and teach different things. St. Vincent of Lerins was...