On Jan. 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after takeoff, killing all seven onboard and forever changing the lives of those who witnessed it. MORE

Pope Francis is meeting with a fellow green activist:Leonardo DiCaprio.

The Oscar-nominated actor had a morning audience with the pope Thursday. The Vatican offered no immediate comment, other than to confirm the meeting was on the pope’s agenda.

Francis’ environmental encyclical Laudato Si (Praise Be) has been embraced by environmentalists for its denunciation of the world’s fossil fuel-based economy and demand for greener energy sources. Continue reading →

In many of these cases, Muslims are picking Anti Catholic groups and places. Makes you wonder?

MILWAUKEE –  A Milwaukee man wanted to storm a Masonic temple with a machine gun and kill at least 30 people in an attack he hoped would show “nobody can play with Muslims” and spark more mass shootings in the United States, federal agents said Tuesday after the man’s arrest. MORE

Pope Francis asked Protestants and other Christian Churches for forgiveness for past persecution by Catholics as the Vatican announced on Monday he would visit Sweden later in the year to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

Speaking at an annual vespers service in St. Paul’s Basilica in Rome attended by representatives of other religions, he asked “forgiveness for the un-gospel like behaviour by Catholics towards Christians of other Churches”. He also asked Catholics to forgive those who had persecuted them. MORE

Polygamy is illegal in the United Kingdom under Section 57 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.

But the UK recognizes polygamy if the marriages were in countries where they are legal, i.e., Islamic countries. That means the UK recognizes the polygamous marriages of Muslim immigrants.

And so in 2008, the Blair government gave the go-ahead for husbands with multiple wives to claim extra welfare benefits, so long as the weddings had taken place in countries where polygamy is legal. MORE

Ecumenical event

Vatican City, Jan 25, 2016 / 05:34 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis will take part in an ecumenical ceremony in Lund, Sweden, to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, the Vatican announced Monday.

The event will “will highlight the solid ecumenical developments between Catholics and Lutherans and the joint gifts received through dialogue,” according to a joint press release by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). MORE

Vatican City (AFP) – Pope Francis will celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation by attending an ecumenical service in Sweden as a guest of the Lutheran church, the Vatican said Monday.

In a highly symbolic act of reconciliation that would even recently have been unthinkable for a Catholic pontiff, Francis will visit the Swedish city of Lund on October 31 for a commemoration jointly organised by his own inter-faith agency and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF).

The surprise move will see the head of the world’s Catholics worship alongside the heirs to a religious tradition founded in opposition to the church of Rome and which once regarded the pope as the anti-Christ. MORE

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis met Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in the Vatican on Tuesday and urged Tehran to work with other Middle East states to promote peace and stop the spread of terrorism and arms trafficking in the region.

Shi’ite Muslim Iran is the strongest ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Western countries back his mainly Sunni Muslim opponents in the five-year-old civil war.

Many Western nations also accuse Iran of funding various militant groups which they deem to be terrorist organizations. MORE

BUENOS AIRES — Farmers and fumigators in Argentina are running out of time as they scramble to control the country’s worst plague of locusts in more than half a century, officials warned on Monday.

The provincial authorities and Senasa, the government’s agricultural inspection agency, have intensified their efforts to exterminate swarms of the insects in the dry forests of northern Argentina. But their attempts might not be enough to prevent the locusts from developing into a flying throng in the coming days — when they will then threaten to devour crops like sunflowers and cotton, and grasslands for cattle grazing.” MORE

Resurrection of the dead is a religious tenet that may soon become scientific fact. The question is who will get there first: God or scientists?

Many great rabbis are saying that we are in the final days before the Messiah, and though God has his own sense of time, wearing a wristwatch that slowly ticks off the millenniums, he has been challenged to a deadline when it comes to the resurrection. MORE

If you thought Enhanced Human Operations (EHO) were an extravagant fantasy of Hollywood films and video games, then think again. Russia and China are involved in EHO, the act of modifying the brain and body in order to create “super soldiers” who will have the upper hand in battles.

Understandably, the United States is concerned about the prospect of having to join Russia and China by going down the Enhanced Human Operations route. Continue reading →

Brazil has sent more than 200,000 troops to go ‘house to house’ in the battle against Zika-carrying mosquitoes, blamed for causing a birth defect epidemic that is spreading rapidly across the world. MORE