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The Catholic Church has been asked to back a national strike against pension changes aimed at cutting the nation's deficit Brazil's nine largest trade unions, as well as various pastoral commissions, have asked the country's Catholic bishops to help organize a nation-wide general strike on June 14 to protest changes to the country's pension system. Bishop Roberto Francisco Ferreira Paz, representative of Brazil's National Conference of Bishops, has said that plans of the government of Jair Bolsonaro would harm the welfare of ordinary people. Major reform of the pension systemThe announced pension "reform" is a key element of government efforts...

Cardinal Cupich said the vote 'marks a sad moment in our history as a State' The Illinois Senate has approved an expansive abortion bill that would declare abortion to be a “fundamental right” in the state and would remove regulations on abortion clinics and doctors. Shortly before midnight on the final day of the legislative session, the Senate approved the bill by a vote of 34-20. It had passed the House last week in a 64-50 vote. The bill now goes to the desk of Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who has indicated that he will sign it. Cardinal Blase Cupich of...

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested Friday that the Supreme Court is deeply divided as it closes out its 2018-2019 term this month, with a series of high-profile cases on the 2020 census and political gerrymandering poised to be released. She hinted, while speaking to a conference of federal judges in New York, that the number of decisions decided by a five-member majority will grow.

Venezuela has hit a worrying milestone. The United Nations says more than 4 million refugees and migrants have left the country, which is suffering from political chaos, food shortages and hyperinflation. The U.N. has called this exodus the "largest in the recently history of Latin American and the Caribbean." "The pace of the outflow from Venezuela has been staggering," the U.N.'s refugee agency UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration said in a joint statement. The numbers make it clear that the pace is escalating. The U.N. says one million people have left since November 2018. And the high rate...

Sooo…this is messed up. The New York Times recently published a piece called “Madonna at Sixty,” written by Vanessa Grigoriadis. It explores her ever-changing public persona and such. It’s kind of the typical fluff piece you’d imagine the New York Times would put out about a celebrity: The night before the Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas in May, Madonna was sitting in the arena attached to the MGM Grand hotel, staring at a double of herself. The double, who was standing on the stage many yards away, was younger and looked Asian but wore a similar lace minidress and...

Sen. Mitt Romney said Friday he may never be ready to endorse President Donald Trump's re-election, but wouldn't give the race's Democratic front-runner, Joe Biden, "more than a 50-50 shot" of winning the White House. "I think the attitude here has got to be the same as across the country, which is the president will surely be the Republican nominee and an incumbent in a growing economy is more likely to win than to lose. But it's not a sure thing," he said. Romney said if the Democrats nominate "a strong contender, anything's possible." But he declined to say whether...

By: Scripps National items.[0].image.alt President Donald Trump tweeted Friday evening that the United States had reached a deal with Mexico and that he would be suspending pending tariffs on goods imported from Mexico.

I am pleased to inform you that The United States of America has reached a signed agreement with Mexico. The Tariffs scheduled to be implemented by the U.S. on Monday, against Mexico, are hereby indefinitely suspended. Mexico, in turn, has agreed to take strong measur

I have a young protégé who told me that he was going to attend the Belmont Stakes with a group of his friends. I think this will also be his first visit to a racetrack This will be the 54th consecutive Belmont Stakes I have attended. I sent him a copy of the Past Performances earlier in the week, and just now I prepared an analysis of the races for him. I thought some FReepers might be interested in what I sent to him so I reproduce it below. ML/NJ

A former Minneapolis police officer who shot and killed an unarmed woman who had called 911 said Friday he "knew in an instant that I was wrong" and apologized to her family, just moments before a judge brushed off a defense request for leniency and ordered him to prison for 12½ years. The stiff sentence for Mohamed Noor capped a case that had been fraught by race from the start. Noor, a Somali American, shot Justine Ruszczyk Damond , a white, upper-middle-class dual citizen of the U.S. and Australia, when she approached his squad car in the alley behind her...

This wasn't some slip of the tongue. Appearing on Nicolle Wallace's MSNBC show, Deadline: White House, this afternoon, John Heilemann warned that "I'm about to use some language that might need to be bleeped out." Heilemann then proceeded to use barnyard vulgarity to attack Fox News in general and Sean Hannity in particular: "I yield to no one in my tendency to call 'bulls---' on people at Fox News when they lie. And so, obviously, Sean's full of it, right? . . . The political reality she [Nancy Pelosi] is confronting is the political reality created by Sean Hannity and...

Summary of Interview: Dave Janda Interviews Bill Binney and Kirk Wiebe on the NSA data collection policies and parallel intelligence platforms, i.e., Hammer and the DNC leak. As Janda notes credits are due to Mary Fanning and Alan Jones investigative work on the topic.

FULL INTERVIEW: President Trump goes one-on-one with Laura Ingraham during his trip to France commemorating 75 years since the Allied forces took Normandy beach during World War II. #IngrahamAngle #FoxNews

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said Friday he may decline to support Donald Trump for president in 2020, explaining, “I wouldn't be surprised if I stay out of the endorsements." The 2012 Republican presidential nominee, who has not shied away from criticizing Trump, told reporters at his annual E2 Summit in the Utah ski-resort town of Park City that he doesn’t thing endorsements really matter anyway "I don't think endorsements are worth a thimble of spit," Romney said. Romney in 2016 refused to support Trump, famously giving a speech in which he referred to the candidate as a “phony, a fraud."...

Tim Bottaro was ready to endorse Kamala Harris. He planned an event for the California senator in Sioux City, Iowa, buying balloons to match her campaign’s colors. But the morning before Harris was due to arrive, her campaign called the former Democratic Party chairman in Woodbury County to cancel, blaming a crucial Senate vote on disaster aid. To Bottaro, it sounded like an excuse — Harris canceled both days of her Iowa swing, while several other senators were able to make the vote and still get to Iowa that weekend. He’s now decided not to endorse Harris, illustrating the risk...

For more than two hours on Thursday, June 6, a large chunk of European mobile traffic was rerouted through the infrastructure of China Telecom, China's third-largest telco and internet service provider (ISP). The incident occurred because of a BGP route leak at Swiss data center colocation company Safe Host, which accidentally leaked over 70,000 routes from its internal routing table to the Chinese ISP. The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), which is used to reroute traffic at the ISP level, has been known to be problematic to work with, and BGP leaks happen all the time. However, there are safeguards and...

Oops! Talk about a political report that didn't age well. In fact, Dana Bash's report on Wednesday that Joe Biden remained firm in his support for the Hyde Amendment that prohibited federal funding of abortions didn't even make it past the next day.

After commemorating the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Portsmouth, England, on Wednesday, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump made their way to France for today’s ceremony marking the Normandy landings. Joining French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, the Trumps paid tribute to service members from both countries who battled against Nazi soldiers in World War II. After the commemorative ceremony, including speeches by both of the presidents, and a viewing at the Normandy American Cemetery, there was a military fly-over at Omaha Beach. POTUS was then off to Calvados in France for a working lunch and...

When some illegal immigrants are released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), they are literally flying from the border, reportedly without valid identification. The border crisis has put such a strain on bus lines and local accommodation that the Transport Security Administration (TSA) is apparently violating its own security measures, the Washington Examiner reported Friday. For six months now, the TSA has been ignoring the rules it created to make the skies safer for travelers in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. There are 15 documents that the TSA considers to be valid for a passenger to board an...

Street artist Sabo refashioned a photo of pop star Miley Cyrus licking a cake that read “abortion is healthcare,” replacing the cake with a bloody, aborted baby. “This is in response to Miley licking an “ABORTION IS HEALTHCARE” cake which those on the Right found as tasteless and disrespectful as I’m sure the Left will find my version,” Sabo told Breitbart News of his repurposed political art, which popped up this week around the city of Los Angeles.