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Nov 17, 2025 - World

Hosts of the pro-MAGA Real America's Voice network accused Pope Leo XIV of a "woke turn" after a meeting with Hollywood stars did not include conservatives like Mel Gibson."It's time to stay awake, not woke," host Terrence Bates noted on Monday. "That is where Pope Leo the 14th just hosted a private meeting with Hollywood A-listers, Spike Lee, Kate Blanchett, Judd Apatow, all there. But noticeably not there: Conservatives like Mel Gibson, Clint Eastwood, Jon Voight, and James Woods.""I grew up in Catholic churches," co-host Gina Loudon explained. "My heart just breaks for the good people I know who are Catholics who have had to endure now two popes in a row, I've lost count, is it three popes in a row? All the popes since Pope John Paul essentially have been just— not what the average Catholic that I know believes, right?""What in the heck is this guy doing?" she asked. "What a mockery of God's faithful in the Catholic Church to be worried about getting to rub elbows with Hollywood elite? It sickens me, to be honest.""A hundred percent, I agree with everything you said," co-host David Brody agreed. "Why, just because he's the pope, I mean, all of a sudden there has to be this reverence because he's the pope?"According to Brody, the pope was "doing stuff that's just not biblical in many ways.""We can go down the list if you want to talk about the LGBT aspect of it, or how about blessing a block of ice?" he continued. "I feel bad for the Catholics that are just like, you know, would like to see a pope actually speak out on the traditional biblical values that are not only time-honored and cherished but are actually factual and accurate and biblical.""Don't put him on a pedestal," Bates added.

Nov 17, 2025 - World

Comments made by Pope Leo and a widely spread attack on President Donald Trump by Catholic bishops on his harsh immigration policies should give his administration pause that the ground beneath them is shifting — and not in a good way, it was warned Monday.The hosts of “Morning Joe,” noted the Pope calling the treatment of undocumented immigrants a “grave injustice” and combined that with a statement from America’s Roman Catholic bishops asserting, “We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care.”That led MS NOW's Joe Scarborough to tell his panel, ”One of the most remarkable things I've seen is Pope Leo, Catholic bishops, doing something unbelievably radical. I'm sure the White House thinks this is radical Republicans. They are quoting Jesus Christ, and they are quoting Jesus Christ from the pulpit, and they are showing how un-Christ-like these ICE raids are, where they're ripping children from their mothers' hands.”“They are going into schools.,They are tearing teachers out. I mean, this is the Catholic bishops and Pope Leo. This is a game changer.” “I know, I know, people have people outside the faith community may not understand this, but this is a game changer,” he added. “And Pope Leo saying, ‘Oh, really? You call yourself pro-life just because you're against abortion, but you support this inhumane treatment of immigrants?’ No, no, no, those those two don't square up.” - YouTube youtu.be

Nov 16, 2025 - World

On Oct. 29, just before meeting China’s President XI Jinping, Donald Trump posted on his social media network Truth Social that “because of other countries [sic] testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.”The US stopped testing nuclear weapons in 1992 — that is, detonating nuclear warheads. It regularly tests “delivery vehicles,” the missiles that would be used to carry the nuclear weapon to its intended target. The most recent of these tests took place early on Wednesday, Nov. 5, when an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, on the coast of California. It’s possible that Trump simply does not understand the difference between these two things.Observers speculated that Trump’s nuclear test announcement was a response to Russia’s recent test of its Burevestnik missile, which is nuclear-capable — meaning it could carry a nuclear warhead, though it did not during the test — and powered by nuclear energy. Some pointed out that it would be the Department of Energy, rather than the Pentagon, that would carry out a test detonation of a nuclear weapon. Trump’s use of the phrase “on an equal basis,” given that China and Russia are not detonating nuclear weapons, was comforting to some.Whatever he meant, it’s worth considering how this latest episode of existential terror imposed from above highlights what depths of apocalyptic misbehavior are now considered normal when it comes to how nuclear weapons countries behave toward one another.The missile Russia tested was designed to deliver a nuclear weapon without being intercepted by missile defense systems, using nuclear power to extend its flight time much longer than non-nuclear powered missiles. The Russian government also claimed to have tested its Poseidon torpedo, also nuclear-capable and nuclear-powered, and designed to be used in coastal waters to create a huge wave of irradiated water that would wash ashore.Neither of these, nor the ICBM test, amount to a “nuclear test.” But, should the US conduct a test explosion of a nuclear warhead, it would be adding to the environmental burden that has led to nearly half a million deaths, by one scholarly estimate, from the over 1,000 test nuclear detonations the US has carried out. (This is about half of the over 2,000 total tests carried out worldwide between 1945 and 2017.) The health and environmental effects of this testing are ongoing, and the United States hasn’t come close to cleaning up after its earlier nuclear tests.To take just one example, waste from tests conducted in the Marshall Islands is still sitting in the Runit Dome, a cracking concrete structure on Runit Island in the Enewetak Atoll that is under constant threat from worsening storms as a result of climate change. US nuclear testing has rendered Marshallese ways of life untenable for the long term, with no real prospects for full remediation on the horizon. (ICBM tests launched from Vandenberg are aimed at the Marshall Islands’ Kwajalein Atoll, a less dramatically destructive but still significant burden on a place that has long paid a high price for the maintenance of US nuclear weapons.)Still, even if Trump is responding to recent nuclear tests that didn’t happen, this is largely in keeping with how nuclear-armed countries tend to justify changes in their nuclear policy as reciprocal responses to unprovoked aggression, no matter what the facts are. What’s more certain, however, is that if the US tests a nuclear weapon, Russia and China are far more likely to begin testing nuclear weapons of their own, as Russia has already threatened. This would lead to more environmental damage, more health consequences across the globe, and more normalization of nuclear explosions as part of the business of doing politics.It seems as if much of the press has lost sight of the actual stakes here. The Washington Post‘s coverage of Trump’s announcement, for one, skipped over all the reasons a nuclear test might actually be undesirable and instead merely named “far-reaching consequences for relations with adversaries” as the real thing its readers should be worried about. If that is indeed the main concern, conducting multiple missile tests a year that signal the US’s willingness to use ICBMs should be viewed for what it is — a gesture that keeps nuclear war on the mind of governments around the world as a real possibility, a norm of global politics rather than a collective fate that must be avoided at all costs.The reality is, Americans share the unfortunate situation of everyone else in the world of being first and foremost potential victims of nuclear weaponry, vulnerable to the whims of the leaders they have theoretically empowered to control the country’s thousands of nuclear weapons, nearly all of which are much, much more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear arsenals have been maintained using advanced computer modeling for decades. The fact that nuclear test explosions have entered even the far reaches of possibility, even for an administration which embraces brutal violence with such open enthusiasm, is cause for alarm and collective action against the threat that nuclear weapons pose to human life.It’s easy to dismiss a “test” as something less than the full terrifying reality of nuclear weapons use. In some cases, this is true. Underground nuclear tests are less immediately hazardous to human and environmental health than atmospheric tests, which the US stopped conducting in 1962. An ICBM test does not involve the detonation of a nuclear weapon.But the scale and political importance of a nuclear weapon test means any indication of a willingness to use it under any circumstances has political significance. Historians have noted that one of the main reasons the United States ultimately decided to use nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to test whether they would work as expected.We should not let nuclear testing once again become part of nuclear-armed countries’ business as usual. A nuclear explosion is a nuclear explosion, and the fallout will be all of ours to deal with.Emma Claire Foley is a Program Associate at Global Zero. She runs the Global Zero Military Incidents Project, which collects and analyzes open-source data to track the risk of conflict involving nuclear-armed states. She received her A.M. in Russian and Eurasian Studies from Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Sep 20, 2024 - World

The Brazilian “King of Football” had been treated for colon cancer since 2021.View Entire Post ›

Apr 9, 2023 - World

Kanamara Matsuri has been an annual tradition since 1969, and besides being known for its fun, it raises money for a good cause.View Entire Post ›