The major coffee chain Starbucks has announced that it will be shutting down at least 16 locations across the country due to employees’ safety concerns.
As reported by CNN, all of the stores that are closing down are located in just five cities: Los Angeles, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; and Washington, D.C. The stores will shut their doors by the end of July.
The political consequences of turning to the dark side.
“It should not surprise the person alerted to spiritual realities that in an age of atheism diverse forms of the religion of Satanism have sprung up all over the world and are gaining followers at a rapid rate.” So wrote the late Catholic priest Vincent P. Miceli in his 1981 book, The Antichrist: The Final Campaign Against the Savior, recently republished by Sophia Institute Press, with observations about secularism’s evils highly pertinent forty years later.
Russia’s cyber operations following its invasion of Ukraine have “almost certainly” been more extensive than what has been publicly reported, and Canada is among the targets, the Communications Security Establishment said.
The CSE’s Canadian Centre for Cybersecurity said in a threat bulletin issued Thursday “the scope and severity of cyber operations related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine has almost certainly been more sophisticated and widespread than has been reported in open sources.”
The entire country seems to be swept up in the smothering heat of a long, blinding, burning Texas summer. It isn’t so much the climate—though it is that, too, and I have spent hours half-asleep reflecting on the fact that one day, should the slow creep of equatorial heat continue, everyone will eventually index the world to the same catalog of images I did growing up: dead earthworms baking on the sidewalk, melted asphalt clinging to rubber-soled sneakers, caution tape draped over schoolyard playgrounds with signs warning of second-degree burns.
One in five Americans want President Joe Biden to run for reelection while the vast majority say it is time for Biden to call it quits, a Yahoo News/YouGov survey released Thursday found.
Slow motion of a dumbass taking video while walking near the tracks. 😳😳😂😂 pic.twitter.com/bVAl4kKe2w
— Sven the Realist🇩🇪 (@ultimatebigguy) July 14, 2022
Philadelphia is experiencing the dreaded long, hot summer. Violent crime continues to soar, from premeditated ambushes to seemingly random juvenile attacks. Under district attorney Larry Krasner’s catch-and-release crime policies, Philadelphia homicides are in a statistical dead heat with last year’s record-breaking numbers. The response of city leaders? They’re imposing a lockdown, creating a curfew, and politely asking murderers to stay home at night.
So long as the progress base of the Democrat Party dictates Biden’s foreign policy, those policies will continue to fail, to the detriment of regional security and stability.
Ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden’s trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia, the president published an op-ed in The Washington Post, in which he placed his trip in the context of his overall Middle East policy. A few days later, Israel’s opposition leader, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, made a brief statement on Biden’s then upcoming visit that spoke directly to the claims Biden made in his article. Taken together, the two communications explain why Biden’s visit was a failure before it even began—and what a successful policy looks like.
Biden’s article, “Why I’m going to Saudi Arabia,” was a political communication to his party’s progressive base. It served a twofold purpose. First, it was an apology to progressives, who are hostile to both Saudi Arabia and Israel. Second, Biden assured progressives that he was not changing course. His Middle East policy to date will remain his policy going forward.
A University of Washington computer science professor claims his First Amendment rights have been violated after he was punished for his dissenting view on historic claims Native Americans have to the campus land, according to a lawsuit filed in Seattle federal court.
Stuart Reges, 63, who teaches an introductory course to computer programing, broke ranks with the university administration’s ‘indigenous land acknowledgment statement,’ which holds that the Coastal Salish people, a native tribe, have historic claims to campus land.
In Reges’s syllabus for his course, he wrote, ‘I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.’
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), responding to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, has announced the biggest overhaul of European defense since the end of the Cold War. By pledging more money, more troops and more unity to deter Russia, NATO leaders have reaffirmed NATO as the cornerstone of transatlantic defense.
The alliance’s new Strategic Concept, adopted at the NATO Summit in Madrid on June 28-30, focuses on addressing the return of great-power politics, specifically strategic competition with revisionist powers such as Russia and China.
B.C. powwow organizers apologize after identity-based event rules spark outrage
Organizers of a popular powwow in Kamloops, B.C. have issued their “sincerest apologies” after the event rules posted to their Facebook page sparked significant public outrage.
According to a Tuesday post, contestants in the 41st Annual Kamloopa Powwow must be “at least (1/4) Native Blood,” and proof of “tribal identification/status may be required.” The rules also stated that dancers must wear full regalia and “be of the correct gender for that category.”
In January, the city of Hamtramck, Michigan, became the first municipality in the United States to be governed entirely by Muslim Americans. Mayor Amer Ghalib was sworn into office with an all-Muslim city council on January 2, after promising to represent the entire community, “no matter your faith, your background, who you love, or your political views.”
Yet, Hamtramck’s new mayor does not live up to his inclusive pledge. Ghalib’s Facebook account includes deeply racist, anti-black statements. He viciously mocked black justice demonstrations and endorsed a comment that referred to African Americans as “animal” and “inhuman.”
China is using artificial intelligence to ‘improve’ its court system by recommending laws, drafting documents and alerting ‘perceived human errors’ in rulings.
Judges must now consult the AI on every case by law, Beijing’s Supreme Court said in an update on the system published this week, and if they go against its recommendation they must submit a written explanation for why.
The AI has also been connected to police databases and China’s Orwellian social credit system, handing it the power to punish people – for example by automatically putting a thief’s property up for sale online.
The House on Wednesday voted to create a secure government system for reporting UFOs and to compel current and former officials to reveal what they might know about the mysterious phenomena by promising to protect them from reprisal.
The bipartisan amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, passed by voice vote without debate, is part of an aggressive effort to exert more oversight over an enduring intelligence-gathering challenge that has gained more attention in recent years.
