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Pope Francis on Thursday called for a radical transformation of politics, economics and individual lifestyles to confront environmental degradation and climate change, blending a biting critique of consumerism and irresponsible development with a plea for swift and unified global action.

He describes relentless exploitation and destruction of the environment and says apathy, the reckless pursuit of profits, excessive faith in technology and political shortsightedness are to blame.

He places most of the blame on fossil fuels and human activity, while warning of an “unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with serious consequence for all of us” if corrective action is not taken swiftly. Developed, industrialized countries were mostly responsible, he says, and are obligated to help poorer nations confront the crisis.

Revolutionary Guards release 10 US sailors who entered Iranian waters

The US military confirmed the sailors’ release after the Guards issued a statement claiming they were freed into international waters after an apology from Washington.

The sailors’ two small navy craft brieflywent missing on Tuesday while crossing the Gulf from Kuwait to Bahrain. Pentagon sources later said the vessels entered Iranian waters because of technical difficulties.

Chances are you miss your favorite bar: The chatter, the live music, or the pour of the drink made just so. You're not alone. With bars shuttered all over the world, that sense of community has now been absent for over a year. But one bar in Mexico decided to do so something about it, by recreating some of those sounds at your favorite bar for those confined at home. And that idea? Well, it took off around the world.

The bar is in Monterrey, Mexico. Started in 2012 by Oscar Romo and a few friends, it was a little neighborhood spot, with live music next to a long, wooden bar and a small patio outside.Back then, Monterrey was emerging from a horrific string of violence from the drug cartels waging war across northern Mexico. The city was starting to come back to life, and people were finally feeling safe.

For the next eight years, Maverick blossomed into a cornerstone of the neighborhood, a spot where artists and musicians, writers, and others in the community could meet to unwind. Until the pandemic hit.

An agitated President Donald Trump on Tuesday branded the Democratic impeachment process a "lynching" shortly before a crucial new witness is scheduled to give a deposition that could potentially unpeel new layers of the Ukraine scandal that is threatening his presidency.

Trump, who on Monday called on Republicans to be tougher in his defense, warned in a tweet that Democrats were setting a precedent that a president of their own party could be impeached in future without due process.Read More"All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here -- a lynching. But we will WIN!" Trump wrote.

A torrent of disclosures could dash hopes for a swift House vote on articles of impeachment before the Thanksgiving break as members follow fresh paths of inquiry beyond the original scope of questioning. That could in turn also hinder their effort to offer the public a crisp, easily understandable case against a President who habitually defies limits on his power.CNN reported Monday on growing expectations that historic votes on impeachment may now slip towards the end of the year -- even as Democrats also move to begin doing weekend work with a scheduled Saturday deposition for another State Department official. Such a scenario would make it more likely that a subsequent Senate trial of the President could overshadow and infect the Democratic Party's presidential primary votes early next year, a time when party leaders hope voters will focus instead on considering their own candidates for President.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., announced that his initial plan of a pre-trial dismissal of the impeachment case against President Trump is now unlikely to happen

he is pushing for the trial to begin and end as quickly as possible.

“Yeah that’s dead for practical purposes,

Donald Trump wants his impeachment trial to end before his state of the union address in just two weeks’ time, Lindsey Graham said on Sunday.

“His mood is, to go to the state of the union [on 4 February] with this behind him and talk about what he wants to do for the rest of 2020 and what he wants to do for the next four years,” the South Carolina senator and close Trump ally told Fox News Sunday.

That timeline is ambitious, given overwhelming public support for a fair airing of the charges against Trump at his Senate trial, in which opening arguments will be heard on Tuesday. Graham conceded that a swift dismissal of the charges, which he had hoped for, will not be possible.

Across the country, there are growing concerns that the bitterness and animosity over the presidential election will not end when the polls close Tuesday night. From coast to coast, cities are preparing for possible protests, civil unrest and violence, regardless of the election's outcome.

While the nation's capital city is certain to be a focal point of post-election demonstrations, other cities are bracing for possible chaos too.

The National Retail Federation has held training webinars for members on crisis prevention and de-escalating conflict and hired security consultants to help store owners prepare.

“I traced a throughline: from Sandy Hook to Pizzagate to QAnon to Charlottesville and the coronavirus myths to the election lie that brought violence to the Capitol on January 6th,” she told Vox earlier this year. “I started to understand how individuals, for reasons of ideology or social status, tribalism, or for profit, were willing to reject established truths, and how once they’d done that, it was incredibly difficult to persuade them otherwise.”

She describes the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, CT as “a foundational moment in the world of misinformation and disinformation that we now live in.”

the NYT’s Elizabeth Williamson about her book, Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth, which was recently named one of the best books of 2022 by Publishers Weekly.

One great theme of the post-2008 financial world is that money is a social construct, a way to keep track of what society thinks you deserve in terms of goods and services.

15 years ago it was easier to think that money was an objective fact. Money is a kind of stuff, you might have thought, stuff with some predictable value that you can exchange for goods and services, and you can acquire a quantity of it and then you own that money and can use it however you like to buy things. 

Russia’s foreign reserves consist, in the first instance, of a set of accounting entries. But in a crisis the accounting entries don’t matter at all. All that matters are relationships, and if your relationships get bad enough then the money is as good as gone.

WikiLeaks wants to start building a list of verified Twitter users that would include highly sensitive and personal information about their families, their finances and their housing situations.

WikiLeaks would seek to uncover information about the financial lives of Russian President Vladimir Putin or President-elect Donald Trump, both of whom are verified on Twitter.)

But the proposal faced a sharp and swift backlash as technologists, journalists and security researchers slammed the idea as a “sinister” and dangerous abuse of power and privacy.

it is instead the Taiping Rebellion, which nearly toppled the Qing Dynasty 50 years earlier, that bears the strongest warnings for the current government. The revolt, which claimed at least 20 million lives before it was quelled, making it the bloodiest civil war in history, suggests caution for those who hope for a popular uprising — a Chinese Spring — today.

The Taiping Rebellion exploded out of southern China during the early 1850s in a period marked, as now, by economic dislocation, corruption and a moral vacuum. Rural poverty abounded; local officials were wildly corrupt; the Beijing government was so distant as to barely seem to exist. The uprising was set off by bloody ethnic feuds between Cantonese-speaking Chinese and the minority Hakkas over land rights.

Beijing has learned its lessons from the past. We see this in the swift and ruthless suppression of Falun Gong and other religious sects that resemble the Taiping before they became militarized. We can see it in the numbers of today’s “mass incidents.” One estimate, 180,000 in 2010, sounds ominous indeed, but in fact the sheer number shows that the dissent is not organized and has not (yet) coalesced into something that can threaten the state

“I of course realize that many people around the country are concerned that an intervention in Syria would devolve into another Siege of Belgrade, but I can assure you that this operation will be swift, decisive, and will in no way resemble the Ottoman Empire’s ill-advised invasion of Nándorfehérvár,” Obama told the assembled White House Press Corps.

“When I heard we were getting involved in Syria, right away I thought, ‘Well, here we go, it’s 1456 Belgrade all over again,’” said Seattle resident Matt Haggerty, 42, who, like millions of Americans, says he “in no way supports the idea” of getting entangled in any military campaign even remotely similar to the Ottoman invasion of the Catholic Balkans.

China’s ambitious rail rollout is helping integrate the economy of this sprawling, populous nation — though on a much faster construction timetable and at significantly higher travel speeds than anything envisioned by the Eisenhower administration.

China’s manufacturing might and global export machine are likely to grow more powerful as 200-mile-an-hour trains link cities and provinces that were previously as much as 24 hours by road or rail from the entrepreneurial seacoast.

high-speed trains were making it more convenient to base businesses here in Hunan Province. Populous Hunan has long provided labor to the factories of the east, but its mountains have tended to isolate it from the economic mainstream.

As a descendant of Irish laborers, he has no direct ties to slaveholders; still, in a departure from the views held by many Southern whites, Cummings considered the issue a personal one. “If ‘guilt’ is the best word to use, then yes, I feel guilt,” he said. “I mean, you start understanding that the wealth of this part of the world — wealth that has benefited me — was created by some half a million black people who just passed us by. How is it that we don’t acknowledge this?”

the German Coast Uprising, an event rarely mentioned in American history books. In January 1811, at least 125 slaves walked off their plantations and, dressed in makeshift military garb, began marching in revolt along River Road toward New Orleans. (The area was then called the German Coast for the high number of German immigrants, like the Haydels.) The slaves were suppressed by militias after two days, with about 95 killed, some during fighting and some after the show trials that followed. As a warning to other slaves, dozens were decapitated, their heads placed on spikes along River Road and in what is now Jackson Square in the French Quarter.

just in case you’re worried about people getting distracted by the pretty house over there, the last thing you’ll see before leaving here will be 60 beheaded slaves.”

As Allied Forces fought the Nazis for control of Europe, an unlikely unit of American and British art experts waged a shadow campaign

It was the fall of 1943. A couple of months earlier, the Sicilian landings of July 10 had marked the beginning of the Allied Italian campaign.

The idea of safeguarding European art from damage was unprecedented in modern warfare.

Pakistan attack: Gunmen kill 19 at Bacha Khan University

One Pakistani Taliban commander said the group had carried out the assault, but its main spokesman denied this.The group killed 130 students at a school in the city of Peshawar, 50km (30 miles) from Charsadda, in 2014.

The attackers struck at about 09:30 local time (04:30 GMT), apparently climbing over a back wall under cover of the thick winter fog.

Katidis is a reflection of a troubling global trend: the rise of neo-fascist politics amid the economic tumult in Europe.

The austerity measures enacted in response to the Greek economic crisis have propelled the rise of right-wing politics; nationalist groups are gaining footholds throughout the country.

While political distress causes people to leave their homelands, economic distress causes them to turn their frustration on their newest neighbors.