04 Culture

News Source
EXCERPT:

Beaver Scouts in Scotland took a trip to the Central Scotland Islamic Centre for reasons that will never advance the West. Nonetheless, on that trip, the scouts, boys aged 6-8, bowed to Allah. This should be controversial because there is absolutely zero reason as to why these kids are being religiously indoctrinated. Nonetheless, one boy refused to participate in the Muslim prayer, and that puts him on the right side of history.

According to 5Pillars, “the largest English language Muslim news site in Europe, Australia and the Americas,” the clip “was taken during a Beavers Scouts educational visit to various houses of worship, including a mosque, as part of the ‘Faith Activity Badge.’ The visit took place at Stirling Islamic Centre in Scotland a few days ago.”

In other words, according to local media, this is not indoctrination; it is education. And to call that a bunch of gobbledygook would be an understatement. And LOL to the fact that they just had to throw in the “Islamophobia” slander. In case it was not clear, no one buys that crap anymore.

In order to achieve this badge, Scouts can visit a place of worship and tell other Scouts about what they learned. This can include visiting a mosque to learn about Islam. That explains why they did what they did, but the fact that this is encouraged is proof that Europe has fallen.

In the pursuit of being so incredibly tolerant and inclusive, the left has favored whatever this is; the fact that this is not controversial for many people is a scandal in itself.

News Source
EXCERPT:

In late March around 15 religious thinkers met with the artificial intelligence company Anthropic to discuss one of the strangest and most consequential questions now facing the AI industry: How do you teach a chatbot to be good?

The invitations to these meetings had arrived in different ways. Greg Cootsona’s came via e-mail. Brian Patrick Green’s came via a friend of a friend after Anthropic asked for suggested names. Both ended up in a series of conversations with the company about Claude, Anthropic’s chatbot, and the moral framework meant to guide how it behaves.

The aim wasn’t to make the chatbot Bible-thumping or pious. But it was an acknowledgment that centuries-old traditions of moral reasoning might offer insights to a five-year-old frontier AI lab whose systems are becoming more capable, more persuasive and harder to govern by simple rules.

News Source
EXCERPT:

A Green Party councillor in Cork wants the Irish city to honor the mosquito blamed for killing Oliver Cromwell, the English Lord Protector whose conquest of Ireland made him a reviled figure there. Oliver Moran tabled the motion at a Cork City Council meeting on May 12, proposing what he describes as the world’s smallest public statue, to be mounted on an empty plinth outside City Hall.

The motion reads:

STATUE TO THE MOSQUITO OR MIDGE THAT BIT OLIVER CROMWELL

‘That Cork City Council will erect a statue to the mosquito or midge that bit Oliver Cromwell during his siege of the city, later causing his death through ‘Cork fever’ (malaria); and that this statue shall be the ‘world’s smallest public statue’.’

News Source
EXCERPT:

Leftists are planning an Oregon “strip club” event to raise money for a group supporting convicted members of an Antifa terrorist cell in Texas.

The Williamette Valley Abolition Project will host a May 31 “Sluts 4 Prairieland Defendants” event in Eugene for the sixteen people convicted over a July 2025 shooting at the federal government’s Prairieland Detention Facility for migrants, according to a Friday Instagram announcement. Seven defendants pleaded guilty to terrorism offenses for aiding the Antifa-aligned group that carried out the attack, while jurors convicted nine others of terrorism, attempted murder and other offenses in March.

News Source
EXCERPT:


WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – A new U.S. Department of Education (DOE) rule aimed at curbing “useless” degree programs that leave students high in debt but short on career prospects could have unintended consequences for religious education, several leaders of Christian colleges are warning.

Tucked within President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging One Big Beautiful Bill Act (BBB) last year was a so-called “do no harm” standard for federal student loan eligibility, which would require eligible degree programs to yield higher earnings for graduates than those without the degree. Last October, American University estimated that only about 1.8% of overall students were in programs likely to be negatively impacted by the change.

On April 20, DOE published regulations implementing the new rule by “replacing the former debt-to-earnings (‘D/E’) metric with a revised earnings premium measure, expanding transparency, and strengthening institutional compliance standards.” A “revised version of the earnings premium measure would apply to both GE [gainful employment] and non-GE programs; those failing the earnings premium measure in two of three consecutive years would lose Direct Loan eligibility, though limited extensions may be granted when an orderly program closure […] is in students’ best interest.”

 

News Source
EXCERPT:

During a recent appearance on the Jennifer Welch podcast, Tom Steyer, a billionaire Democrat running for governor of California, said that he is ‘totally’ in favor of trans athletes in high school.

I have been saying that Democrats learned absolutely nothing from the 2024 election, and this is further proof. They have every intention of returning to the same issues they supported before losing power.

Not only does the public not support the idea of trans athletes in high school sports, but the very idea of ‘trans kids’ has been soundly rejected.

News Source
EXCERPT:

 As AI agents are integrated into an organization, enterprises will need to pivot from a set of linear processes and steps, to rewiring work in a very different way, explains Shah. That’s because the value in AI agents isn’t as another layer in an existing technology stack but as a connective tissue, he explains, moving between or across layers to coordinate a high-level task or retrieve and interpret data from multiple discrete applications. AI agents can create “a true competitive differentiation for an enterprise” by making decisions based on this capacity to contextualize, he says. “That is where the next battleground will be.”

To build this connective tissue, leaders need to adapt their technology stack to surface higher quality decisions from AI agents, prioritizing access to multiple datasets and applications simultaneously to develop tacit knowledge. “Organizations that make this architectural shift become genuinely more adaptive,” says Chatterjee. “When a new business requirement emerges, you don’t wait six months for a software vendor to build a feature. You configure an AI employee using natural language and connect it to the systems it needs. The time from business to production workflow drops from months to days.”

News Source
EXCERPT:

Pope Leo XIV called Monday for robust regulation of artificial intelligence and for its developers to work for the common good rather than profit, issuing a sweeping manifesto on safeguarding humankind as the technology impacts everything from work to war.

“Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), Leo’s first encyclical, has been eagerly awaited ever since history’s first U.S.-born pope announced days after his election that he considered AI to be the biggest challenge facing humanity today.

In the text, Leo denounced the “culture of power” driving the AI race, especially in developing ever more sophisticated methods of remote warfare. He declared that it was “not permissible” to entrust irreversible, lethal decisions to AI systems, setting up another flash point between the American pope and the Trump administration, which has worked aggressively to deregulate AI development.

“Artificial Intelligence now demands to be disarmed, freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion and death,″ the pope told a special Vatican presentation of the encyclical, one of the most authoritative types of teaching documents a pope can issue.

Experts in the tech industry, academia and Catholic morality said the document will likely become a benchmark in the debate over AI, a point of reference for policymakers, researchers and ordinary folk alike. It comes as the near-daily developments in the technology trigger concerns over AI replacing human jobs and even human intelligence.

Taylor Black, a Microsoft AI executive and director of Catholic University of America’s AI institute, said the document would prompt people “at the forefront of these tools” to ask questions such as “What does it mean to be human?”

News Source
EXCERPT:

Planned Parenthood is putting women’s lives and health at risk once again.

The abortion business has launched a program that sells abortion pills to women who are not even pregnant, allowing them to stockpile the drugs for possible future use in ending the lives of their unborn babies.

The initiative, called “Just In Case Abortion Pills,” comes from Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai’i, Alaska, Indiana and Kentucky.

It makes the two-drug regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol available in advance to residents of Washington state and Hawaii. Women can obtain the dangerous abortion pills in person at one of the affiliate’s 16 health centers or, in some cases, by mail.

News Source
EXCERPT:

It takes a place as progressively backwards as Colorado to decide school children are safer around accused child molesters than other children who espouse the wrong beliefs.

News Source
EXCERPT:

You’ll notice an important missing detail from this article.

Names. Despite a lengthy press conference, law enforcement did not identify the two dead suspects in the San Diego Islamic Center shooting.

In fact…the officials remained pretty vague concerning details about the suspects.

Law enforcement discovered a manifesto and over 30 guns while executing three search warrants:

Law enforcement officials also served search warrants on the suspects’ electronic devices during the investigation. Investigators said they recovered a manifesto, as well as writings outlining religious and racial beliefs “of how the world they envision should look,” according to FBI Special Agent in Charge Mark Remily.

“These subjects did not discriminate in who they hated, and let me be very clear to anyone who thinks they can end the world through violence: They’re sorely mistaken,” Remily said. “The FBI, our law enforcement partners and our community are much stronger than you think.”

Mark Remily of the FBI said during a news conference that authorities have uncovered writings by the suspects. Authorities declined to specify what ideologies or views were expressed by the shooters, only that they met online and shared a “broad hatred” toward different religions and races.

There was no specific threat against the Islamic center, which is the largest mosque in San Diego, but authorities found that the suspects engaged in “generalized hate rhetoric,” [San Diego Police Department Chief Scott] Wahl said.

Got it? This part:

Authorities declined to specify what ideologies or views were expressed by the shooters, only that they met online and shared a “broad hatred” toward different religions and races.

There was no specific threat against the Islamic center, which is the largest mosque in San Diego, but authorities found that the suspects engaged in “generalized hate rhetoric.”

News Source
EXCERPT:

San Diego mosque shooter Caleb Vazquez was obsessed with a “based racist” Dutch cartoon character, according to his online pals and his purported manifesto.

Vazquez, 18, and his co-killer Cain Clark, 17, met through twisted internet circles encouraging Nazi and incel rhetoric — and acted on their hateful fantasies during the Monday bloodbath at the Islamic Center of San Diego.

Aside from the neo-Nazi symbols found at the grim scene, Vazquez had an unsuspecting hate-filled icon — a schoolgirl character named Mymy Schoppenboer from discontinued Dutch series called “Ongezellig.”

News Source
EXCERPT:

Two New York Democrats running in a hotly contested congressional primary pledged federal funding for “Drag Story Hour” — as records show city and state taxpayers have paid nearly $700,000 to boost the program.

Incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman and his opponent, former city Comptroller Brad Lander, both told an LGBTQ Democratic club that they support dishing out federal money to subsidize the program, which invited drag queens into schools to read to young children.

Protesters supporting Drag Queen Story Hour hold signs outside The Center, a support space for LGBTQ+ people, in New York City. Getty Images
A spokesman for Brad Lander confirmed that if elected to the House, the Democrat looks foward to funding drag story hours, along with affordable housing, health and childcare and more. AP

“Unfortunately, the Majority does not allow funding from Members of Congress to support LGBTQIA+ programming,” Goldman wrote in on a questionnaire from the Jim Owles LGBT Liberal Democratic Club in response to a question about whether he had “hosted, funded or otherwise supported” a Drag Story Hour.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Florida just became the first state to seriously challenge the surrogacy industry after a gay couple living in France contracted with a woman in Florida to be their surrogate.

The couple petitioned the Broward County court for early parental rights.

While Judge Marlon Weiss granted their petition, he questioned whether surrogacy is constitutional, claiming it violates the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.

“Judge Marlon Weiss argued that if unborn children

News Source
EXCERPT:

Beginning this summer, University of California Berkeley School of Law students will be banned from using artificial intelligence to complete coursework or exams.

Under the newly adopted policy, students cannot “conceptualize, outline, draft, revise, and edit their work” using AI.

It also explicitly forbids students from asking AI to correct grammar mistakes or translate a paper into English.

Students are permitted to use AI for “research on papers ONLY for the limited purpose of identifying sources, such as cases, statutes, or secondary sources,” the policy states.

However, professors are permitted to make exceptions to this rule as long as they “do so in writing and with appropriate notice and require students to disclose any authorized AI use,” it states.

News Source
EXCERPT:

“Nudity is permitted only while actively showering. Members are expected to put clothing on or be covered during use of the space outside of showering.”

A San Francisco YMCA has implemented new rules after a trans-identified male was seen walking around naked in the locker room in front of women and children, as well as allegedly harassing female members.

New rules at the Stonestown Family YMCA stated that “Nudity should be discreet, limited, and brief.” The rule added, “Nudity is permitted only while actively showering. Members are expected to put clothing on or be covered during use of the space outside of showering,” per the Daily Mail.

The new rules continued, “Respect privacy and personal space. Please maintain appropriate distance from others, be mindful of personal space during times of undress, and demonstrate courtesy at all times.”

News Source
EXCERPT:

The wind picks up dust from the unpaved road one afternoon in December as Jack van Honk turns into a ramshackle neighborhood in Lambert’s Bay, on the west coast of South Africa. A stocky woman in a red patterned sundress steps out of a small home painted palest sea green, her ochre-dirt yard crowded with potted plants, many medicinal. She smiles broadly, deep wrinkles creasing a face that is cherubic and yet careworn beyond her 47 years. “Doctor! I missed you,” she beams, her husky voice barely more than a hoarse whisper.

Maria carries a rare genetic mutation that is almost unknown outside of southern Africa. Its effects have been to calcify a part of the brain called the basolateral amygdala, and to thicken and scar the vocal cords. A friend of Maria with the same condition lives several hours inland, and sometimes they meet when van Honk brings them to Cape Town for brain scans and other tests. “It helps to know I’m not alone,” Maria says.

The Indiana Supreme Court rejected a Planned Parenthood petition that would have applied a Court of Appeals ruling blocking an abortion ban from taking place. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said the court “ruled in favor of office and delivered a decisive WIN for the people of Indiana and the unborn!”

Go Deeper

News Source
EXCERPT:

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito had some choice words for their Supreme Court colleagues on Thursday over their “remarkable” decision “undermin[ing]” the court’s historic Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

The stinging rebukes came in an order the high court handed down to temporarily pause an appellate court ruling that halted a Biden-era FDA rule allowing the mailing of mifepristone to women without an in-person doctor visit. In agreeing to halt the policy, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the FDA’s “progressive relaxation of mifepristone’s guardrails likely lacked a basis in data and scientific literature,” and noted how the “FDA itself now concedes the regulations were marred by ‘procedural deficits’ and a ‘lack of adequate consideration.’”

While seven justices agreed to temporarily pause the 5th Circuit’s order while litigation in the case continues, Thomas and Alito authored brutal dissents underscoring the illogical nature of their colleagues’ decision.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Key Takeaways

  • Stanford School of Medicine has removed diversity, equity, and inclusion language from its website following a DOJ investigation into its admissions practices, prompting concerns about whether the changes are substantive or merely cosmetic.
  • The medical school rebranded its diversity offices but maintained programs aimed at health disparities, leading some experts to criticize these actions as superficial and potentially misleading.
  • Federal pressure has shifted the dynamics around DEI in higher education, pushing institutions to reconsider their diversity policies, which previously relied on government mandates for justification.

Stanford School of Medicine quietly removed diversity, equity, and inclusion langua

News Source
EXCERPT:

Hassan Abbas could face up to five years in prison after “pleading no contest to four felonies: disrupting public services, unlawful distribution of an abortion-inducing drug, identity fraud, and deception to obtain a dangerous drug,” according to Lucas County Prosecuting Attorney Julia R. Bates.

Bates “announced that Hassan-James Abbas, 32, reached a plea agreement May 6, 2026, before Judge Joseph McNamara.”

According to the Ohio Bar Association, “By entering a no contest plea, he does not accept guilt but acknowledges that facts laid out by prosecution in charging documents are true,” Samira Asma-Sadeque reported for People Magazine.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Two Israeli soldiers were sentenced to several weeks in military prison for desecrating a statue of the Virgin Mary in southern Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said.

Last week, a photo surfaced showing a service member hugging the statue in the predominantly Christian village of Debel, near the Israeli border, and placing a cigarette in the statue’s mouth. The image sparked outrage on social media and prompted an official investigation.

On Monday, IDF spokeswoman Ariella Mazor said the soldier posing with the statue and the soldier filming him were sentenced to 21 and 14 days behind bars, respectively.

“The IDF views the incident with great severity and respects freedom of religion and worship, as well as holy sites and religious symbols of all religions and communities,” Mazor wrote on X.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Michigan Democrats are pushing a controversial new legislative package to begin euthanizing members of the public under radical “assisted suicide” laws.

The bills would legalize medically assisted suicide for certain terminally ill adults, adding the state to a growing list of jurisdictions embracing the slippery slope of so-called “death with dignity” laws.

The proposed legislation would create a “Death with Dignity Act” allowing adults diagnosed with terminal illnesses and given six months or less to live to request life-ending drugs from doctors.

Supporters frame the measure as compassionate end-of-life care.

Bishop Schneider: Synod report on homosexuality ‘crossed the line from orthodoxy into heresy’ www.lifesitenews.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

Bishop Athanasius Schneider has said that a Vatican Synod on Synodality report suggesting homosexual “relationships” may not be sinful echoes the serpent in the Garden of Eden and has “crossed the line from orthodoxy into heresy.”

In an interview with Vatican journalist Diane Montagna, Schneider commented on the final report of Study Group 9, published May 5 by the Holy See’s General Secretariat of the Synod. The document was put together by one of the ten study groups established by Pope Francis in February 2024 in the context of the Synod on Synodality. The report from Study Group 9, titled “Theological criteria and synodal methodologies for shared discernment of emerging doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical issues,” suggested that homosexual “relationships” may not be sinful in themselves.

“In issuing the Final Report of Study Group No. 9, the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops has stooped to promoting the propaganda of a global sexual ideology that is being aggressively pushed in politics and the media worldwide,” Schneider told Montagna.