The South Bronx Legionnaires’ disease outbreak has now taken the lives of seven people, officials said Monday. MORE

A ferry plows along San Francisco Bay, trailing a tail of churned up salt, sand, and sludge and further fouling the already murky liquid that John Webley intends to turn into drinking water. But Webley, CEO of a Bay Area start-up working on a new, energy-skimping desalination system, isn’t perturbed. MORE

Swarms of locusts are threatening thousands of hectares of farmland in southern Russia, state media said on Friday, broadcasting striking images of what they claim to be the worst locust invasion in years. MORE

Vol 8 Issue 31 ~ Editor: Rev. Fr. Courtney Edward Krier
August 1, 2015 ~ St Peter in Chains

1. Baptism: Means of Salvation (27)
2. Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
3. St Alphonsus Ligouri
4. Christ in the Home (2)
5. Articles and notices Continue reading →

Since their December arrival in Vietnam, U.S. Ambassador Ted Osius and his husband have become the most prominent gay couple in the Southeast Asian country.

Osius and Clayton Bond landed with their toddler son shortly before the government abolished its ban on same-sex marriage. Now the couple, who recently adopted an infant girl, find themselves ambassadors of the nascent LGBT rights movement spreading across the country. MORE

LAS CRUCES, N.M. (AP) — A pair of small explosions just 20 minutes and a few miles apart shocked congregants Sunday morning at two churches in southern New Mexico.

There were no injuries or deaths from the blasts outside Calvary Baptist and Holy Cross Roman Catholic in Las Cruces, Las Cruces police spokesman Danny Trujillo said. Each building sustained minor damage. MORE

Weird things are happening off the Pacific Coast.

And at the center of the action is a warm-water mass that scientists call “the blob.” MORE

All these years I thought circumcision was a Jewish thing, but it’s done in the Islamic faith as well. In watching a Turkey travel log I was surprised that it is done there later in a boys life. Take a look of how the boys dress for the occasion.

MORE

The plane crashed Friday at a car auction site on the property of Blackbushe Airport in Hampshire, to the west of London, Hampshire fire and rescue services said. MORE

Baltimore reached a grim milestone on Friday, three months after riots erupted in response to the death of Freddie Gray in police custody: With 45 homicides in July, the city has seen more bloodshed in a single month than it has in 43 years.

Police reported three deaths — two men shot Thursday and one on Friday. The men died at local hospitals. MORE

He looks good to me.

Richard John “Rick” Santorum (born May 10, 1958) is an American attorney and Republican Party politician. He served as a United States Senatorrepresenting Pennsylvania (1995–2007) and was the Senate’s third-ranking Republican (2001–07).^[1] He ran as a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination,^[2] finishing second to the eventual Republican nominee Mitt Romney. MORE

A searing Midwestern drought can send corn and soybean futures into the stratosphere. Too much rain, however, makes for a more complicated situation.

That is the position farmers and grain traders find themselves after spring and summer rains delayed planting of both crops across the eastern half of the Corn Belt and then continued to soak the region into early July. The Corn Belt is the corn-producing region encompassing western Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, eastern Kansas, eastern Nebraska and southern Minnesota. MORE

Venezuela’s hospitals are in disarray. Betty Zapata reports on a country where inflation is forcing doctors’ salaries below $10 a month and patients are forced to buy life-saving drugs on the street MORE

Teary-eyed and angry Catholic parishioners across New York attended final mass services on Friday in some of dozens of churches closing or stopping regular worship services.

The closures follow an announcement by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York in November that it would consolidate 368 parishes into 294, reflecting a national trend of parish closures in the United States caused by low attendance, a shortage of priests and financial troubles. MORE