Eighty-one years after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the nuclear landscape is dire. Experts say arms control is on “life support,” if not dead, while diplomacy and negotiations are overrun by conflict and confrontation. In February, the expiration of the New START Treaty marked the end of more than five decades of U.S.-Russian (Soviet) arms-control treaties.
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Pope Leo XIV on Monday released a 42,000-word encyclical calling for government regulation of artificial intelligence and implored world leaders to ensure the burgeoning technology is used for the benefit of all humankind — not concentrated in the hands of a powerful, profit-seeking few. Leo warned in the first major theological document of his papacy that unrestrained AI and its potentially…
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The Justice Department is bringing back the use of firing squads and lethal injection using pentobarbital as it seeks to expedite and expand federal death penalty convictions and executions. No federal executions have been carried out since 2020, when the first Trump administration broke with over a decade of precedent and executed 13 people on death row. The second Trump administration is now…
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Parents of children killed in the US bombing of an elementary school in southern Iran released a letter on Sunday applauding Pope Leo XIV for speaking out against war and urging him to “continue to be the voice of the voiceless children.” “We write this letter to you with trembling hands and a heart full of pain, from amidst the ashes and ruins of the schools of the city of Minab…
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Amid a contentious feud with Pope Leo XIV regarding U.S. military interventions over the past several months, including the war in Iran, the Trump administration has ended an $11 million contract with the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami. The contract through the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) gave funds to the organization to provide housing and other resources for…
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In comments to reporters on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth used a religious parable to criticize the media — the latest in a series of many religious statements he’s made since the start of the U.S.’s war on Iran. During his remarks, Hegseth recounted his pastor’s sermon at his church this past weekend. The pastor, Hegseth said, discussed the story of Jesus Christ healing a man…
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