Russia installs operation simulator at Beloyarsk plant - World Nuclear News

Russia installs operation simulator at Beloyarsk plant - World Nuclear News: A full-scale simulator at unit 4 of the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant - the BN-800 fast neutron reactor in Russia - has passed acceptance tests, state nuclear corporation Rosatom has announced. The BN-800 fast neutron reactor started operating at 100% power for the first time in August 2016.

China plans fusion power research - World Nuclear News

China plans fusion power research - World Nuclear News: A research centre to support China's push for nuclear fusion power has been approved. It will  be able to test large superconducting magnets and filters under operational conditions.

Bombshell New Allegations: Kushner Appears to be Extorting Qatari Government

https://hillreporter.com/bombshell-new-allegations-kushner-appears-to-be-extorting-qatari-government-29169

Why the financial community should work to prevent the market and economic shocks of a nuclear incident - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Why the financial community should work to prevent the market and economic shocks of a nuclear incident - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: The risks of a nuclear incident—including the detonation of a nuclear bomb or dirty bomb, or a cyberattack on a nuclear power plant—have been discussed ad nauseam. Investment icon Warren Buffett and many international security experts have expounded on the significant risks of a nuclear incident in the coming decades. Many experts, in fact, actually … Continued

We need a better Green New Deal — An economist’s take - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

We need a better Green New Deal — An economist’s take - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Investing in a green economy will create about three times more jobs than maintaining our existing fossil fuel infrastructure. So what’s the problem with selling the existing Green New Deal to the country? Plenty, says an economist who has studied a number of different green energy plans.

Why smart people are more likely to believe fake news

Research shows that smart people are more susceptible to fake news and conspiracy theories – but why?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/01/why-smart-people-are-more-likely-to-believe-fake-news?utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=71312595&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--Ia3l8IhWbO2DIoGm4hsc-yMfTCN1g1ntdM-dF0y3SXRWIJCnH8lrmpz_zPgmqIRM1inXdntlwJuRTXzrIJPlfO1k7QOUftOdhkrIoETEjL2tlVCQ&_hsmi=71312595

A Russian drone hunts other drones with a shotgun

https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/01/russian-shotgun-packing-drone/?utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=71312595&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--Ia3l8IhWbO2DIoGm4hsc-yMfTCN1g1ntdM-dF0y3SXRWIJCnH8lrmpz_zPgmqIRM1inXdntlwJuRTXzrIJPlfO1k7QOUftOdhkrIoETEjL2tlVCQ&_hsmi=71312595

The Day the Dinosaurs Died

A young paleontologist may have discovered a record of the most significant event in the history of life on Earth.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died?utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=71312595&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--Ia3l8IhWbO2DIoGm4hsc-yMfTCN1g1ntdM-dF0y3SXRWIJCnH8lrmpz_zPgmqIRM1inXdntlwJuRTXzrIJPlfO1k7QOUftOdhkrIoETEjL2tlVCQ&_hsmi=71312595

Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Is Engaged: Here's What We Know About Her Fiancé | Brides

Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Is Engaged: Here's What We Know About Her Fiancé | Brides: Forget the 11 criminal felony counts Elizabeth Holmes is facing—she's got a wedding to plan! The Theranos founder is engaged to William "Billy" Evans.

Journalists Matt Taibbi and Aaron Maté explain how the Russiagate narrative helped Trump – Alternet.org

Journalists Matt Taibbi and Aaron Maté explain how the Russiagate narrative helped Trump – Alternet.org: The claim that President Trump engaged in collusion with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election was so pervasive and unquestioned that only a handful of journalists demonstrated the healthy skepticism required by their profession. Last week, special counsel Robert Mueller delivered his report

Opinion | Russians Always Knew There Was No Collusion - The New York Times

Opinion | Russians Always Knew There Was No Collusion - The New York Times: The Kremlin’s allies and its opponents alike have been baffled by America’s Russia obsession. Can we ever look at the U.S. the same way again?

Box Office Shocker: UNPLANNED gives birth to fifth-place finish - Religion News Service

Box Office Shocker: UNPLANNED gives birth to fifth-place finish - Religion News Service: The controversial abortion biopic UNPLANNED over-performed its pre-release projections to become the #5 movie at the box office this weekend. The film took in an estimated $6,110,000 or a cumulative per-screen average of $5,770 on only 1,059 locations across the country. The film received a rare A+ CinemaScore.

Supreme Court Turns Down Bids to Stop Trump’s Bump Stock Ban

Supreme Court Turns Down Bids to Stop Trump’s Bump Stock Ban: The ban requires any person or entity in possession of bump stocks to destroy or surrender them.

EXCLUSIVE: HHS Makes $5.1 Million Grant to Pro-Life Community Clinics

EXCLUSIVE: HHS Makes $5.1 Million Grant to Pro-Life Community Clinics: “The administration has opened up a new avenue of health care choices for low-income and underserved women and their families in California,” CEO Kathleen Eaton Bravo says.

Why Palestinians are Fleeing Lebanon

Why Palestinians are Fleeing Lebanon: International journalists based in the Middle East seem to care precious little about the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon, who, for several decades now, have been protesting the apartheid and discrimination practiced by an Arab country.

How 1 Submarine Could Have Started a Nuclear War During the Cuban Missile Crisis | The National Interest

How 1 Submarine Could Have Started a Nuclear War During the Cuban Missile Crisis | The National Interest: Scary history.

How China Plans to Win a War Against the Navy: Sink Its Aircraft Carriers | The National Interest

How China Plans to Win a War Against the Navy: Sink Its Aircraft Carriers | The National Interest: History tells us so.

NATO Is Not Dying. It’s a Zombie. | The National Interest

NATO Is Not Dying. It’s a Zombie. | The National Interest: NATO is simply a zombie periodically reanimated through various methods, usually voodoo magic.

Editorial: Where Catholic teaching is bent to market demands | National Catholic Reporter

Editorial: Where Catholic teaching is bent to market demands | National Catholic Reporter: It took two crashes within five months and a total of 346 deaths before government agencies began answering the alarms that had been going off for years over the manner in which the fitness and safety...

Vatican official challenges ethics of markets at University of Chicago event | National Catholic Reporter

Vatican official challenges ethics of markets at University of Chicago event | National Catholic Reporter: Financial markets must serve the human person, rather than human beings being reduced to serving markets, a Vatican official told a conference at the University of Chicago — notably the birthplace o...

Twitter Network Uses Fake Accounts to Promote Netanyahu, Israel Watchdog Finds - The New York Times

Twitter Network Uses Fake Accounts to Promote Netanyahu, Israel Watchdog Finds - The New York Times: A network of hundreds of social media accounts, many of them fake, was used to smear opponents of the Israeli prime minister, investigators found.

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Trump Tells the Truth: Sanctions Cause People to Suffer

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Trump Tells the Truth: Sanctions Cause People to Suffer: This week President Trump admitted what the Washington policy establishment of both parties would rather be kept quiet. Asked why he intervened to...

In UK and US, political elites squandered deference they once enjoyed | National Catholic Reporter

In UK and US, political elites squandered deference they once enjoyed | National Catholic Reporter: A wise friend wrote to ask if I thought that our political situation here and the Brexit crisis in the United Kingdom do not both reflect a loss of confidence in "elite" political leadership. He asked...

This doctor wrote one last prescription on his way to execution

This doctor wrote one last prescription on his way to execution: His name was Mariano Mullerat I Soldevila, and he was born on March 24, 1897, in Tarragona, Spain. He was the sixth of seven children and his parents, Ramon Mullerat and his wife, Bonaventura, were…

The other names of the parable of the prodigal son

The other names of the parable of the prodigal son: The parable of the prodigal son might be one of the most (if not the most!) popular in all four Gospels. But the other names by which this parable is known might not be as familiar. For instance, s…

Vatican manuscripts among precious documents to be digitized by Cambridge--Aleteia

Vatican manuscripts among precious documents to be digitized by Cambridge--Aleteia: Two-year project will open up "some of the most important manuscripts" to the world, university says

29 Phrases that show everyday Catholic wisdom

29 Phrases that show everyday Catholic wisdom: Our pastor at Mass last week shared his least favorite “Catholic catch phrase.” It was, “God never gives you more than you can handle.” “Yes he does,” said the pastor, “And he’s there to handle it …

Dad steals the show with "Ave Maria" at Disney

Dad steals the show with "Ave Maria" at Disney: Guests at the Grand Floridian Resort Hotel were treated to a impromptu perfromance of "Ave Maria" when a dad teamed up with the house pianist.

Wetwork: A Review of Unplanned

    

Wetwork: A Review of

Unplanned
 

Brad Miner on a remarkable, if uneven, pro-life movie that makes clear why abortion is “wetwork,” a loan word from the Russian mokroye delo: meaning murder.

My anti-abortion views solidified in 1976 when I bought a copy of Esquiremagazine. There was something in it by or about George Plimpton that I wanted to read, but thumbing through the pages I came to an article titled “What I Saw at the Abortion” by Richard Selzer, M.D.

            I’d been a Catholic for about three years and knew what I was supposed to believe about abortion. I’d recently readHumane vitaefor the first time and been deeply impressed by its clarity: “all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, [is] to be absolutely excluded.” But it was when I read Dr. Selzer’s article that my view was forever set.

            What knocked me for a loop was Selzer’s reference to a “flick,” a resistance, the fetus defending itself against its murder. Read it for yourself, but here’s the good doctor’s conclusion:

I am not trying to argue. I am only saying I’ve seen. The flick. Whatever else may be said in abortion’s defense, the vision of that other defense will not vanish from my eyes. What I saw I saw as that: a defense, a motion from, an effort away. And it has happened that you cannot reason with me now. For what can language do against the truth of what I saw?

            So, it seemed to me before I watched the new movie, Unplanned, that the defining scene would have to be just such a moment, one in which Abby Johnson (played by Ashley Bratcher) witnessed the abortion that changed her life. (The film is based on her book of the same title.)

            That moment is set up nicely in an earlier scene in which Abby, the youngest clinic director at Planned Parenthood, banally counsels a young woman not to worry: “The one thing that all experts agree on is that, at this stage, the fetus can’t feel anything.”

Click here to read the rest of Mr. Miner’s review . 
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2019/04/01/wetwork-a-review-of-unplanned/?utm_source=The+Catholic+Thing+Daily&utm_campaign=3c374300f3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_07_01_02_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_769a14e16a-3c374300f3-244213773. .

The Denison Forum Daily Article April 1, 2019 Police officers replace tools stolen by thieves

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Police officers replace tools stolen by thieves April 1, 2019  |  READ TIME: 4 minutes   DONATE   Adrian Salgado is a gardener in Santa Ana, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. When thieves stole his truck, cell phone, landscaping equipment, and a thousand dollars in rent money, he lost his only means of supporting himself and his family. With the money gone, he had no way to replace his tools. Police were able to recover Salgado’s truck, but his equipment—including a lawnmower, edger, hand tools, and leaf blower—was gone. The police officers felt they had to do something to help. They pooled their resources, obtained money from their police association, and went shopping. Home Depot chipped in another hundred dollars and offered military discounts to the officers who serve as reservists. The police officers gave the new tools to Salgado, who immediately went back to work. One officer said, “I’ve been doing this job for twenty-seven years. Every so often it’s a good day. That was a good day.” Does God understand? It is gratifying to see police officers caring so personally for those they serve. In our broken world, there are times when we may wonder if God feels the same way about us. Over the weekend, a teenager was fatally shot after knocking on the wrong door in Atlanta. A father of four is on life support after a fight with another man in the parking lot at Dodger Stadium left him with a fractured skull. A South Carolina student got into a car, erroneously thinking it was her Uber ride and was later found dead. The driver has been arrested on charges of murder and kidnapping. Each day’s news gives us reason to question whether the Creator cares what happens to his creation. For assurance that he does, let’s explore a question many of us may not have asked before. Why was Jesus born? If I asked you why Jesus came to the earth, you’d say: to die for our sins. You’d be right, of course. But what would you say if I asked you why he had to be born to die? We know that his virgin birth in Bethlehem fulfilled prophecy (cf. Micah 5:2; Isaiah 7:14). But why did God make these predictions? If Jesus’ only purpose in coming was to die, why couldn’t he appear as an adult and immediately die on the cross for our sins? We know that Jesus’ earthly ministry included healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and raising the dead. It initiated the apostolic movement that carried the gospel forward to the “ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Jesus’ incarnation also caused him to experience hunger in the desert (Matthew 4:2), thirst on the cross (John 19:28), weariness at Jacob’s well (John 4:6), and grief at Lazarus’ tomb (John 11:35). He was tempted in the wilderness and beyond. As a result, we know that “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). But here’s a further question: Did Jesus have to go through his incarnation to understand the human condition? What did God learn about us? Are we saying that the omniscient Lord did not know as much about us before Christmas as he did after Easter? That the Father does not understand us as well as the Son? That the God of the Old Testament does not know us as well as the God of the New Testament? Remember that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). His Father says of himself, “I the Lord do not change” (Malachi 3:6). The immutability of God is a fact woven all through Scripture. As is the omniscience of God. He knows “the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done” (Isaiah 46:10). Jesus is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3) so that the Son does not know anything the Father does not know. What did we learn about God? All this to say, God did not learn something about us because of the incarnation. But we learned something about him. Max Lucado: “Why did God leave us one tale after another of wounded lives being restored? It isn’t to tell us what Jesus did. It’s to tell us what Jesus does.” It’s to prove to us that the sovereign God of the universe understands what it is to hunger, thirst, grow weary, suffer grief, and face temptation. To repeat Hebrews 4:15, we know that “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Here’s the consequence: “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (v. 16). What will you bring to God? The gospel is relevant to our post-Christian, secularist, relativistic culture because Jesus is relevant to our post-Christian, secularist, relativistic culture. In all of human history, no one else has proven so fully his solidarity with the human race. No one else has proven so powerfully his understanding of our condition and compassion for our needs. This is why you and I must share his grace in our love and speak his truth to our times. We represent the only One who meets every need of every person we know. And it’s why we must resist the self-reliance of our culture by coming to Jesus with our needs and challenges, questions and struggles. When we do, we will “receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Every time. What do you need to bring to the throne of grace today? Share Tweet Forward Donate Click to listen to The Daily Article Podcast Subscribe to The Daily Article podcast on iTunes or Stitcher to receive it at the same time this email is sent. If not subscribed, the podcast will be available via this link by 7am CST.

Jim Denison, Ph.D., speaks and writes on cultural and contemporary issues. He is a trusted author and subject matter expert in areas where faith and current events intersect. His Daily Article provides leading insight for discerning today’s news from a biblical perspective. Subscribe to Jim Denison's The Daily Article >>

Bishop Barron's Gospel Reflection April 1, 2019

Monday, April 1, 2019

Fourth Week of Lent

John 4:43-54

Friends, our Gospel today tells of Jesus healing a royal official’s son. The official asked him to heal his son, who was near death. Jesus said to him, "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe." But the royal official persisted. And Jesus told him his son would live. The man believed Jesus, and his son recovered. Theologian Paul Tillich said that "faith" is the most misunderstood word in the religious vocabulary. And this is a tragedy, for faith stands at the very heart of the program; it is the sine qua non of the Christian thing. What is it? The opening line of Hebrews 11 has the right definition: "Faith is confident assurance concerning what we hope for, and conviction about things we do not see." Faith is a straining ahead toward those things that are, at best, dimly glimpsed. But notice please that it is not a craven, hand-wringing, unsure business. It is confident and full of conviction. Think of the great figures of faith, from Abraham to John Paul II: they are anything but shaky, indefinite, questioning people. Like the royal official, they are clear, focused, assured. Reflect: What adjectives would you use to describe your own faith?  Reading 1 Is 65:17-21 Thus says the LORD: Lo, I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; The things of the past shall not be remembered or come to mind. Instead, there shall always be rejoicing and happiness in what I create; For I create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight; I will rejoice in Jerusalem and exult in my people. No longer shall the sound of weeping be heard there, or the sound of crying; No longer shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not round out his full lifetime; He dies a mere youth who reaches but a hundred years, and he who fails of a hundred shall be thought accursed. They shall live in the houses they build, and eat the fruit of the vineyards they plant. Responsorial Psalm Ps 30:2 and 4, 5-6, 11-12a and 13b R. (2a)  I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me. I will extol you, O LORD, for you drew me clear and did not let my enemies rejoice over me. O LORD, you brought me up from the nether world; you preserved me from among those going down into the pit. R. I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me. Sing praise to the LORD, you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name. For his anger lasts but a moment; a lifetime, his good will. At nightfall, weeping enters in, but with the dawn, rejoicing. R. I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me. "Hear, O LORD, and have pity on me; O LORD, be my helper." You changed my mourning into dancing; O LORD, my God, forever will I give you thanks. R. I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me. Gospel Jn 4:43-54 At that time Jesus left [Samaria] for Galilee. For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his native place. When he came into Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all he had done in Jerusalem at the feast; for they themselves had gone to the feast. Then he returned to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, who was near death. Jesus said to him, "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe." The royal official said to him, "Sir, come down before my child dies." Jesus said to him, "You may go; your son will live." The man believed what Jesus said to him and left. While the man was on his way back, his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live. He asked them when he began to recover. They told him, "The fever left him yesterday, about one in the afternoon." The father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live," and he and his whole household came to believe. Now this was the second sign Jesus did when he came to Galilee from Judea.