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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that there was no alternative to an attack in Rafah, and that Israel was prepared to do so without U.S. support. While thanking Blinken for American help thus far, and while sharing his concern for civilians in Gaza, Netanyahu said that “we have no way to defeat Hamas without going into Rafah and eliminating the rest of the battalions there. And I told him that I hope we will do it with the support of the U.S., but if we need to, we will...

Nearly 30 percent of American households comprise a single person, a record high...Solitaries make up 39 percent of households in Denmark, 45 percent in Finland, 42 percent in Germany, 38 percent in the Netherlands, 39 percent in Norway and 40 percent in Sweden.

Philadelphia this week became the first major U.S. city to bring back its mask mandate in response to rising cases of the BA.2 coronavirus strain, which could test the limits of a pandemic-weary public. Beginning Monday, residents of the City of Brotherly Love will be required to wear masks while in public indoor spaces and businesses will be required to report on each other regarding noncompliance.

Italian police have discovered the mummified remains of a 70-year-old woman sitting at a table more than two years after she died, prompting calls for better care for older people in the country. Marinella Beretta, who had no living relatives, was found in her house in Prestino near Lake Como in northern Italy. Police stumbled upon her remains when they made a house call during high winds in Lombardy, which risked uprooting neglected trees in her garden. She had not been seen by neighbours for at least two and a half years, according to Italian media reports. Her neighbours, who...

Merry Christmas! I hope everyone is having a good evening. This is, I think, the tenth edition of the annual thread dedicated to those among us who, for whatever reason, find ourselves solo on the night before Christmas. Here in my cozy habitat, it's just me, my faithful hound and, a little later, Ralphie Parker and then George Bailey will make his yearly appearance. The presents are wrapped and under the tree. After dinner, I'll imbibe a latte and then maybe a little vino. Anyone else solo tonight?

The most terrifying force of death comes from the hands of Men who wanted to be left Alone. They try, so very hard, to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love. They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of life that will come from it. They know that the moment they fight back, their lives as they have lived them, are over. The moment the Men who wanted to be left alone are forced to fight back, it is a form of suicide. They are literally killing off who...

To the extent that Mitt Romney, handsome rich guy, is a sympathetic figure, it is because his attempts to prostrate himself before the left fail so consistently. The “binders full of women” comment, perverted as it was by the media, was also a total capitulation to the idea that there ought to be more quotas and affirmative action in hiring. But even then – even then! – they still painted him and Paul Ryan as racists who wanted to kill grandma and crawl through your window at night to steal your birth control. The lesson Republican voters took away was:...

In a discussion about trusting in God when times are bad in Bible class right now, we learn that Christians are to have a specific trust in God when leaders and/or society are evil. God promises to, in His time, to remove evil and make things right. Throughout history, he has. Then the thought came out in class which reflects what is happening right now in society. Evil people reject God's Word and the principles found there. So, when events, leadership and decisions don't go their way, evil people panic, have intense anxiety and react in violent, destructive ways. Instead...

Donald Trump on Friday denied claims from fellow 2016 Republican presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) that Trump’s friends at the National Enquirer and Trump “political henchmen” are behind a story that the Texas senator engaged in several extramarital affairs. Trump posted a statement on Friday responding to the Cruz accusation: I have no idea whether or not the cover story about Ted Cruz in this week’s issue of the National Enquirer is true or not, but I had absolutely nothing to do with it, did not know about it, and have not, as yet, read it. Likewise, I...

Due to really bad family dysfunction I'm staying at my apartment alone on Christmas. It's the most difficult thing one can do. You just never, ever adjust to it.

In 1947, a group of Christians in Nebraska formed a fellowship known today as the Berean Church Fellowship. The name of the group is borrowed from the Acts of the Apostles 17:11, which the group quotes on their Web site (www.bereanchurchfellowship.org): "Now the Bereans… Received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." The fellowship’s Articles of Faith begin with the following statement: "We believe the Bible, consisting of both the Old and New Testament Scriptures in their entirety, is the only divinely inspired, inerrant, objectively true, and authoritative...

It's highly unlikely we're alone in the universe, NASA experts are saying, and we may be close to finding alien life. In fact, it may happen in the next two decades. NASA held a panel discussion at the agency's Washington headquarters on Monday, where space experts talked about the search for Earth-like planets that host life. Based on recent advancements in space telescope technology, scientists estimated that in the coming decades we'll confirm suspicions that we're not alone. "I think in the next 20 years we will find out we are not alone in the universe," NASA astronomer Kevin Hand...

Michigan woman dead for six years found only after money runs out For six years the bills were paid, the grass was cut and no one noticed the body of the dead woman sitting in the back seat of a car in a garage of a residential Pontiac, Michigan neighborhood. Her mummified body was finally found this week by someone dispatched to check on the property that fell into foreclosure after the money ran out of her account and the mortgage payments stopped, police said on Friday. "It is kind of the perfect storm for a mysterious set of circumstance...

<p>There also was not a herd of pink elephants walking in the Reflecting Pool in DC, but I can't prove there wasn't. See the point?</p>

THE recent announcement by a team of astronomers that there could be as many as 40 billion habitable planets in our galaxy has further fueled the speculation, popular even among many distinguished scientists, that the universe is teeming with life.The astronomer Geoffrey W. Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, an experienced planet hunter and co-author of the study that generated the finding, said that it “represents one great leap toward the possibility of life, including intelligent life, in the universe.” But “possibility” is not the same as likelihood. If a planet is to be inhabited rather than merely habitable,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration said Wednesday it would take action against the Syrian government even without the backing of allies or the United Nations because diplomatic paralysis must not prevent a response to the alleged chemical weapons attack outside the Syrian capital last week. New requests for the United Nations to authorize military action in Syria may have complicated the Obama administration's plan to take retaliatory action on the purported poison gas attack east of Damascus that U.S. officials claim was carried out by President Bashar Assad's forces. But a State Department spokeswoman said possible U.N. rejection of...

LILLE, France (Reuters) - Police in France said on Friday they were trying to identify the skeleton of a man believed to have lain undiscovered in bed for more than 15 years. The body, found in an abandoned house in the northern city of Lille, is thought to be that of the elderly owner of the property, who lived alone and appeared to have no relatives. Police said they had found piles of unopened mail at the house dating back to 1996.

Osama bin Laden aimed to assassinate President Barack Obama but directed fellow al-Qaida fighters to leave Vice President Joe Biden alone, describing him as "totally unprepared" to take over and predicting a "crisis" in America if that happened, according to a newly declassified letter from the terrorist mastermind. In the missive, part of a trove of documents seized by Navy SEALs in the raid that killed bin Laden one year ago, bin Laden asks for an update on a plan to kill Obama or Gen. David Petraeus either in Pakistan or at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. (Obama made a...

Soon after Congress returns from the Memorial Day recess, liberal House Democrats and teacher unions will make one last push to pass a $23 billion fund to prevent teacher layoffs. Democrats are looking to package the fund with war and disaster spending in a supplemental appropriations bill the House will vote on as early as this week.

With today the final day of the Legislature's session, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislative leaders are pushing hard for passage of a law that would require that 33 percent of the power used in California be from renewable energy sources by the end of 2020. The main sticking point is over a bizarre proposal that all this power be generated in-state, even though California is fully integrated into a regional grid that helps keep reliability up and costs down. Our concern is much broader, however. A strong case can be made that the state, the nation and the world...