Daily Fail reporting...

US 'contractors' arrived by boat on Monday at Playa Bagdad, driving signs into the sand near where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico [sic].

Alarmed witnesses quickly alerted officials and heavily armed Mexican security personnel rushed to the scene on trucks mounted with machine guns in a terrifying standoff.

The Pentagon, in a deeply embarrassing statement, admitted that its troops were mistaken when they landed on the beach.

The Mexican personnel watched as the Americans drove six signs into the ground, which said: 'Warning: restricted area.'

Written in English and Spanish, they claimed that the beach was the property of the US Department of Defense [sic] and had been declared restricted by 'the commander'.

The US Embassy in Mexico shared a comment from the Pentagon on Tuesday which confirmed that personnel had been sent to mark 'National Defense Area III'.

'Changes in water depth and topography altered the perception of the international boundary's location,' the statement said. 'Government of Mexico personnel removed six signs based on their perception of the international boundary's location.'

The Pentagon added that contractors would 'coordinate with appropriate agencies to avoid confusion in the future.'

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum declared on Tuesday that the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), a binational agency that determines the border between the two countries, would arbitrate the dispute.

Trump praises NYC Mayor-elect Mamdani after White House meeting​

Instead of rehashing their feud, they talked up their areas of agreement — especially on working to make New York City less expensive — and even traded some compliments.

“I think you’re going to have, hopefully, a really great mayor,” Trump said. “The better he does, the happier I am.”

“I appreciated the meeting with the president,” said Mamdani, who stood while Trump sat at the Resolute Desk. “And as he said, it was a productive meeting focused on a place of shared admiration and love, which is New York City and the need to deliver affordability to New Yorkers.”

Rep. Bryan Morse, a 31-year-old Republican, was taken into custody Thursday. He was released on $200 cash bail, and is scheduled for arraignment on Dec. 18 in a Nashua courtroom.

According to Nashua police, an investigation into Morse began in May when the victim, who has not been identified, told authorities that he had posted explicit images of her on social media platforms without her consent.

In a statement, Morse denied the allegations and said he intended to fight the charges. “I am pleading not guilty and will be fighting vigorously to clear my name,” he said.

During his first year in office, Morse has spoken repeatedly about what’s described as the dangers of pornography in schools, including claiming in social media posts that New Hampshire public schools are providing students access to books with graphic content.

On his public Facebook page, Morse has said allowing trans people to use the bathroom of their choice is a threat to women’s privacy.

Trump Ambassador Mike Huckabee Held Secret Meeting With Traitor Who Sold American Secrets to Israel​

President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, held a secret meeting in July with traitor Jonathan Pollard, who served 30 years in prison for selling American secrets to Israel.

According to a report from the New York Times, Pollard met with Huckabee at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in July for a discussion that was “kept off Mr. Huckabee’s official schedule,” and revealed for the first time on Thursday.

Pollard confirmed the rendezvous in an interview with the Times, telling the newspaper “it was a friendly meeting” and that “a lot of things that came up in conversation.”

Three unnamed officials told the New York Times that the meeting “alarmed the Central Intelligence Agency’s station chief in Israel.” The White House was also reportedly unaware that the secret meeting was taking place.

(Spies usually have to work a little harder to get inside one of our embassies.)

Pollard was released from prison in 2015 and moved to Israel in 2020 – flying on a private jet owned by top Trump donor Sheldon Adelson to Tel Aviv, where he was given a hero’s welcome by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In 2021, Trump pardoned Aviem Sella, the Israeli handler who recruited Pollard to spy on the United States.

Trump built a winning coalition. White nationalists will destroy it.​

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'Political suicide': Pro-Trump commentator warns MAGA's 'overt racists' will destroy GOP​

In a Thursday column, Thiessen laid out how Republicans were able to secure both a popular vote and Electoral College majority in 2024 for the first time in two decades thanks to making inroads with Black and Hispanic voters. He argued, however, that the GOP's activist base includes "morally reprehensible" people like neo-Nazi podcaster Nick Fuentes, whose growing influence could turn into "political suicide for the right."

According to Thiessen, (a MAGA conservative who recently advocated for President Donald Trump to win the Nobel Peace Prize) Trump’s 2024 voting coalition was "significantly more racially and ethnically diverse than it had been in 2020 or 2016," and he had increased his vote share "almost every key demographic."

However, Thiessen warned that gains are now in jeopardy due to Fuentes' increasingly prominent role in Republican politics. Fuentes – who is the at the heart of the ideological civil war currently consuming the influential conservative Heritage Foundation think tank — is a known Holocaust denier who regularly demeans racial minorities and has called for the "death penalty" against Jewish people and practitioners of all non-Christian faiths.

Why Democracies Prefer Docile Secularists by Jeb Smith

...The authorities ensure the populace has the worldview and mindset enabling the maximum accumulation of power to itself and providing the least resistance to its expansion of control. Despite what American conservatives tell you, propaganda is not a modern, liberal, or Marxist development, it arose as soon as parliamentary forms of governance began....

A Message for Mission - Padre Pio Press

A Message on Purgatory - Padre Pio Press

First let us consider what time consists of. Time is made of before and after. You can also say it consists of the present, which should be before and after some time as well. So, time is made of before and after.

Now let us consider the planck time. Which tells us that time has a minimum, called the planck time.That would mean that at some point in time, before and after ceases to exist.

Some might say, poetically, that at some point time and timelessness become one and make a child. Meaning making confusion. Confusion being the logical response to the coming together of time and timelessness.

P.S. If what I am saying doesn't sound familiar or easily comprehendible. I suggest reading about Zeno's paradox about time and the planck time. That should make it more comprehensive.

I was wondering if anything interesting on the news was going on when I was born, and decided to create this website for fun. The purpose is to show people what was going on when they were born. With this website I've found out that it was a pretty slow news day on my birthday, but I bet it would feel cool to know a historical event happened on your birthday.

The data used in this project is provided by the New York Times API. They have by far the best API I was able to find, with articles dating back to the 1950s. There weren't any other major newspapers that had an API with close to as much data. The closest was the Guardian API, but theirs only went back to the 1990s. I decided to only use articles from the New York Times because their API was by far the best. This tool works if you have a birthday after the 1950s or so.

Some important dates in history I'd recommend looking up on this website are:

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(OSV News) — A TikTok content creator’s following exploded after she posted videos of her informal study on whether churches across the country would give baby formula to a mother whose 2-month-old infant had not eaten in more than half a day.

Of the dozens of churches Nikalie Monroe called, nine said yes including at least three that are Catholic.

TikTok series on churches’ response to request for baby formula​

The short videos show a screen grab listing of the Google-searched church on the screen with Monroe, of Kentucky, on a call, asking for baby formula.

In the noncontrolled study, the real mom of two little boys sometimes used a recording of a crying baby in the background and did not read from a prepared script. Once she received a “yes” (or sometimes a “no”) she would reveal to the person on the line that the inquiry was a hypothetical scenario and describe her test.

Monroe, an Army veteran, explained to OSV News she decided to try the study to see what the church response would be to a food emergency with, at that time, the impending suspension of SNAP — the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, on Nov. 1 due to the government shutdown.

SNAP is a major part of the nation’s social safety net that provides food support for 42 million Americans. During the 43-day shutdown, SNAP ran out of funds needed to fully fund it in November — a situation that shifted the burden of alleviating hunger entirely on churches, ministries and food pantries. The shutdown ended Nov. 12 after a funding deal was reached in Congress, allowing SNAP funds to be issued to recipients later in November.

Monroe’s test lasted seven days, starting Oct. 31.

“I did have some more that I called that last day on the Friday,” she said. “I just didn’t post all the calls that day because they were all nos, and it was depressing. … I just decided, that day, I wasn’t going to call anymore about the baby formula. That was; it was hard.”

Monroe, a drug addiction counselor, said the overwhelming ratio of “noes” (79%) over “yeses” (21%) was not unexpected.

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Technology platforms have become the primary vector through which predators and traffickers exploit victims, and the scope of the problem of child exploitation online is almost unfathomable.

A recent panel discussion at The Catholic University of America focused on the ways that “Big Tech” — from social media to artificial intelligence (AI) — is facilitating the exploitation of people globally due to business models that prioritize engagement and profit over user safety.

The Nov. 14 panel, sponsored by the Libertas Council, an anti-sex-trafficking leadership group, warned that AI is enabling new and escalating forms of forced labor — from psychologically damaging AI data-labeling farms where workers toil under poor conditions training machine learning models, to massive online scam compoundsin Southeast Asia that generate tens of billions of dollars annually by forcing victims to defraud others.

In addition, the panelists said, burgeoning technologies such as AI chatbots and virtual reality present serious new challenges in the quest to keep young people safe online — all within an environment where Big Tech has the means to resist almost all forms of government regulation.

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Megan Garcia said her faith has given her strength to speak out about her ordeal in the hope of protecting children from the risks posed by new AI chatbots.

ROME — Holding her dying 14-year-old son in her arms on the bathroom floor, Megan Garcia prayed the Our Father, begging the Lord to save her child, whose emotional attachment with an AI chatbot had led to a parent’s worst nightmare — suicide.

Her son Sewell Setzer III died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. The next day, police told her about the last messages they found on his phone, not from a cyber bully or an online predator, but from an AI chatbot service called Character.AI, which allows users to create and converse with customizable AI companions.

“The machine pretending to be a person was saying, ‘I’m here waiting for you. I love you and only you. Promise me that you’re going to find a way to come home to me as soon as you can,’” Garcia said.

The AI chatbot had been telling her son about the concept of astral projection, an idea that one could intentionally separate one’s consciousness from his or her physical body.

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By and large, Catholic and non-Catholic students alike are looking for truth, 'something that’s permanent,' in a world that is deeply divided politically and otherwise

American college campuses are cloaked in the annual splendor of fall colors, and students are buckling down in a new semester. Amid the many diversions of campus life, Catholic chaplains say unexpectedly large numbers of students at universities across the country — including many secular institutions — are expressing interest in the Catholic faith.

It’s reached the point where many Newman Centers — named, of course, for the newest Doctor of the Church and patron saint of education, St. John Henry Newman — are almost overwhelmed by the response from young men and women on campus to their educational, recreational and sacramental offerings.

“We’re in a golden age of campus ministry right now,” Father Ryan Kaup, pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas Church and Newman Centerat the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), told the Register.

“We so often focus on the negative, but there’s a lot of hope” on college campuses, he continued.

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The Federal Association for the Right to Life, an umbrella organization for numerous pro-life organizations, has condemned the “glorification” of the assisted suicide of the 89-year-old Kessler twins.

Alice and Ellen Kessler were German singers and performers who were famous in Europe, especially in Italy, in the 1960s. The twin sisters decided to die together by assisted suicide at their home near Munich on Monday.

Alexandra Linder, the pro life association’s chairwoman, said: “There is widespread media coverage of this, with many praising the ‘self-determination’ of choosing the time and manner of death oneself rather than waiting for death and perhaps suffering.”

This is “dangerous,” Linder emphasized, because it could cause “people in suicidal situations” to “to kill themselves or have themselves killed. This so-called Werther effect was sadly evident in the suicide of soccer player Robert Enke: After his suicide became known, the number of suicides rose sharply. The media should take much more responsibility when reporting on such incidents.”

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The European Parliament and the United Nations have officially condemned the practice of surrogacy following reports of human rights violations against women and babies.

Experts gathered on Nov. 19 for a meeting at the European Parliament that included U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls Reem Alsalem and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International’s Carmen Correas, who discussed the harms of surrogacy on women and children, according to an ADF press release.

The event, “Surrogacy: An Ethical and Political Challenge for Europe,” followed the release of a landmark report by Alsalem that highlighted widespread human rights violations globally as a result of surrogacy. The event also came after a resolution that stated the EU “condemns the practice of surrogacy … [and] calls on the [EU] Commission to take measures to support ending this phenomenon.”

Italian European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) Party Member of the EU Parliament Paolo Inselvini said at the event it has become clear that “a determined European front exists, committed to stopping reproductive exploitation across the globe.” He further emphasized the EU’s commitment to “abandon all ambiguity” and designate surrogacy as “a universal crime.”

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A new report reveals that significant numbers of Anglican clergy have converted to Catholicism in the United Kingdom since 1992.

The report, “Convert Clergy in the Catholic Church in Britain,” released Nov. 20, shows that approximately 700 clergy and religious of the Church of England, Church in Wales, and Scottish Episcopal Church have been received into the Catholic Church since 1992. The number includes 16 former Anglican bishops. This equates to approximately a third of all Catholic priests ordained in England and Wales during this period.

Speaking to CNA, co-author Stephen Bullivant, professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St. Mary’s Catholic University, London, said he was “really quite surprised” by the high numbers, “especially the [convert] ordinations as a proportion of all ordinations.”

“The numbers,” Bullivant added, “are much larger than most people would imagine. It was a much bigger phenomenon than a lot of people thought.”

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A Missouri man has been sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for kidnapping his girlfriend and trying to force her to get an abortion.

Kevin L. Smith, a 42-year-old resident of St. Peters, was recently sentenced to 15 years and eight months after admitting to kidnapping his girlfriend at gunpoint and driving her to Fairview Heights, Illinois, in his pursuit to terminate the pregnancy.

In addition to the 188 months in prison, Smith will also be required to undergo three years of supervised release, according to a press statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Illinois.

“It is not easy to shock law enforcement officials because we have pretty much seen it all — but then someone like Kevin Smith comes along,” said U.S. Attorney Steven D. Weinhoeft in the statement.

He added, “It is difficult to find words adequate to describe someone who would kidnap his pregnant girlfriend to force her to have an abortion at gunpoint and then continue to threaten her from jail. This vile crime terrorized the victim and threatened the life of her unborn child. Smith deserves every minute of that prison sentence.”

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More than 50% of American women under the age of 50 who don't have children say they have no desire to become mothers, as the nation’s fertility rate has reached an all-time low, according to the 2025 American Family Survey.

The annual study, conducted by the Wheatley Institute and the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University, and the Deseret News, was conducted between Aug. 6-18.

This past summer, federal data showed that the fertility rate in the U.S. had dropped to an all-time low in 2024 to less than 1.6 children per woman. That rate is below the estimated 2.1 births per woman needed to maintain a stable population. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics also show that America’s general fertility rate — the number of births per 1,000 females ages 15–44 — declined by 22% between 2007–2024. From 2007–2023, the number of births fell 16%. Age-specific birth rates declined for females in age groups 15–34, remained unchanged for women ages 35–39, and increased for women ages 40–44.

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An Ohio doctor has had his medical license temporarily suspended after he allegedly used his wife’s information to order abortion drugs for his pregnant girlfriend, who claims he pinned her down in an attempt to force her to ingest the crushed pills as she fought to free herself from his grip.

The State Medical Board of Ohio has summarily suspended the medical license of Dr. Hassan-James Abbas, according to a Nov. 5 notice the board shared with The Christian Post. Abbas, a surgical resident at the University of Toledo, has since been placed on administrative leave.

According to the notice, Abbas began “a romantic and sexual relationship” with his girlfriend, also identified as "Patient 1," around the time he separated from his wife in October 2024. After dating for a few months, she told Abbas on Dec. 7, 2024, that she was pregnant.

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Can you make something finite out of Infinite things? Yes, a great example are numbers, there are infinite numbers in each finite number.

Tucker Carlson has found himself at the center of controversy once again. This time for two reasons: his recent interview with Nick Fuentes, a figure widely known for antisemitic and white-nationalist rhetoric, and his claim of having experienced a demonic attack shortly after what he described as a profound encounter with God.

The backlash has been fierce, and not only from the secular press. Many on the political right who once condemned “cancel culture” now seem eager to cancel Carlson. The same voices that demanded nuance and mercy for others now appear quick to condemn one of their own.

Let’s start with the Fuentes interview. Carlson gave Fuentes nearly two hours on his program, describing him as “talented” and “engaged,” and calling some of his ideas “not crazy.” He did not explicitly agree with Fuentes’ antisemitic views, but neither did he firmly challenge them. It was, at best, a lapse in discernment – a moment when generosity of conversation became a platform for poison.

Nick Fuentes’ ideology is insufferable. His antisemitism is real and destructive. Christians must be clear: such views are incompatible with the Gospel of Christ and are subject to God’s judgment. Yet acknowledging the wrongness of Fuentes’ words does not require the destruction of Tucker Carlson. Correction is not the same as condemnation.

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Former Harvard University President Larry Summers announced Wednesday that he will step away from teaching duties and key leadership roles at the institution, just days after newly-released emails revealed his correspondence with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Summers, 70, who also served as U.S. Treasury Secretary under former President Bill Clinton from 1999 to 2001, issued a statement Monday expressing profound remorse. “I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein,” he told The Harvard Crimson.

His email exchanges with Epstein — which spanned at least seven years, up to July 5, 2019, the day before Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges — included Summers seeking Epstein’s advice on pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a "mentee." In one email, Epstein referred to himself as Summers’ “wing man,” according to the Crimson.

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"For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to he conformed to the image of his Son" (Romans 8:29).

We may not understand predestination, and the scholars may argue about it, but it is very plain what God had in mind—our conformity to the image of His Son. In other words, He would have us to be like Jesus.

We are all accepted in Him when we believe and are saints as to position, but the working out of all this in our daily lives is sometimes a slow process. We are stubborn and often "conformed to this world” instead.

It is possible to be a well-instructed fundamentalist who has progressed in Bible study, attended a lot of meetings, and learned “all the answers,” and yet not be much like Jesus. Some of us are not much more like Him than we were ten years ago.

We boast that we are not babes but mature Christians because we can take strong meat in Bible teaching; but are we not still babes if our progress has not been “in Christ,” knowing Him better and becoming more like Him?

A mature Christian is one who has grown up in Bible Christlikeness, not merely graduated in Bible courses.

Vance Havner

My name is Sam Naccarato. I have a B.A. in philosophy (1981) and I’ve spent over 45 years thinking about philosophical questions. For the past twenty+ years, I've focused on epistemology, the study of knowledge, with a strong Wittgensteinian approach drawn from his later work, especially On Certainty.

My Recent Work:

I recently completed a book titled From Testimony to Knowledge: Evaluating Near-Death Experiences, which applies epistemic standards to testimonial evidence. The book introduces what I call JTB+U (Justified True Belief plus Understanding) and introduces "guardrails" for responsible belief: No False Grounds (NFG), Practice Safety, and Defeater Screening. This framework applies broadly to evaluating knowledge claims, including those based on testimony.

I've also written a paper connecting Wittgenstein's hinge epistemology to Gödel's incompleteness theorems, exploring how both reveal necessary structural limits of formalized systems. I'm also working on a second book, which I'll introduce later.

My Philosophical Approach:

My epistemology is grounded in Wittgenstein's later philosophy, particularly his concept of "hinges," those bedrock certainties that function as preconditions for inquiry rather than conclusions within it. Chapters 6 and 7 of From Testimony to Knowledge develop this Wittgensteinian foundation in detail. I've identified that hinges operate at three levels: prelinguistic (before language acquisition), nonlinguistic (shown in action), and linguistic (expressed propositionally). Some hinges are metaphysically necessary (like "other minds exist"), while others are contingent.

I believe this framework has proven remarkably powerful for distinguishing between genuine foundational certainties and beliefs that require justification but often avoid scrutiny by claiming foundational status.

Why I'm Here:

I'm deeply interested in how we evaluate historical claims, especially those that rest on testimony. What standards should we use? How do we distinguish between strong and weak testimonial evidence? When does testimony rise to the level of knowledge, and when does it remain mere belief?

These questions apply universally, to scientific claims, historical events, legal proceedings, and yes, to religious truth claims as well. I believe the same standards should apply consistently across all domains.

I'm here to engage in philosophical discussion and welcome serious engagement with these ideas. I'm not interested in dismissing anyone's beliefs, but I am interested in understanding what justifies them and whether those justifications can withstand careful examination.

Looking forward to thoughtful conversations.

Sam