Federal authorities are urging local law enforcement to step up security and be vigilant ahead of the holiday weekend. CBS News senior security contributor and former CIA deputy director Michael Morell joins “CBS This Morning” to discuss the threat.

Heartbreaking!! Walt/Laura warns that Transgender is a LIE. This man did what Bruce Jenner has done and then found out the truth a little too late! Supporting Transgender is not love, it is hate. It is NOT the same as gay/lesbian.

The bishops of the Episcopal Church have authorized their clergy to perform same-sex weddings, but don’t expect sweeping changes across the entire denomination anytime soon. Episcopalians voted Wednesday to allow religious weddings for gay couples, but not every priest will necessarily officiate at a same-sex wedding. MORE

A secret tunnel that was used by China and the former Soviet Union was reportedly discovered in China’s Heilongjiang province, according to the Siberian Times.

Back in the 1930s when both China and the USSR were at odds with the Empire of Japan, the two used the tunnel to exchange intel. MORE

Megan Ferland told Seattle Metropolitan that the Girl Scouts of Western Washington were “thrilled” to pull in a $100,000 donation earlier this year.

Thrilled! And who wouldn’t be? One hundred thousand dollars is quite the haul. So, yeah, the reaction was pretty big, too.

“We have these little clapper thingies, and the clappers go mad when we get that kind of gift,” Ferland, the council’s chief executive, told the magazine.

But then Ferland learned that the gift came with a stipulation, Seattle Met reported: The donor wanted a promise that the money wouldn’t be used to support transgender girls. MORE

Pope Francis said he supports the idea of setting a fixed date for Easter Sunday, which for centuries has moved back and forth according to the lunar calendar.

Easter and the Holy Week that precedes it is rooted in the Jewish Passover and fixed on the first full moon, which falls on the first Sunday after the spring equinox, March 21. MORE

OSLO, Norway, July 1 (UPI) — The Catholic Church is appealing a claim from government officials in Oslo, Norway that the church pay $5.1 million in compensation for participating in fraudulent practices.

The Oslo diocese, its bishop and its financial officer are accused of fraudulently registering thousands of people on its membership lists as to receive greater subsidies from the government. MORE

Hey, the protestants are wising up.

The United Church of Christ has voted to divest from companies with business in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

The U.S.-based denomination endorsed the action on a vote of 508-124, with 38 abstentions, during a national meeting. MORE

At lunch recently, a dear Catholic friend of mine talked to me about the practice of abstaining from meat at Lent and on other occasions. He said that a priest reminded people that if they were busy judging others for not having the same self-will or piety they had themselves, then they should “Eat a Cheeseburger and Save Your Soul.”

I thought it was such a wonderful idea, I immediately wanted to apply it to Mormonism. MORE

I’ll explain this in detail on the four things Catholics need to do in these immoral and Apocalyptic Times.

I. Prayer daily of any kind of Catholic prayers. Rosary preferred.

2. Read the readings and Gospel in your Missal for each day of the week. If you don’t have a daily missal then read a passage or two in the New Testament. Go through the whole book, over and over again untill the end. Continue reading →

A Ten Commandments monument on the Oklahoma Capitol grounds is a religious symbol and must be removed because it violates the state’s constitutional ban on using public property to benefit a religion, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The court said the Ten Commandments chiseled into the 6-foot-tall granite monument, which was privately funded by a Republican legislator, are “obviously religious in nature and are an integral part of the Jewish and Christian faiths.” MORE

President Barack Obama announced Wednesday that the United States and Cuba have struck a deal to open embassies in each other’s capitals and re-establish diplomatic relations between them for the first time in half a century.

“The progress we make today is another demonstration we don’t have to be imprisoned by the past, the president said.

In making the announcement, the president acknowledged that while there are some shared interest, such as anti-terrorism, there remain serious and profound differences on such issues as human rights and freedom of speech that the two nations continue to have “very serious differences” on, the president said. MORE

The Newport-Inglewood Fault Zone in the Los Angeles Basin is leaking helium leaving researchers to believe the fault zone is not only much deeper, but that it could leave a far more devastating quake in its path then they had originally intended. Just prior to this breaking news the U.S. Geological Survey upped their warning in the California area stating that the risk of ‘the big one’ has just increased.

“We’re not looking to make an app to get you a latte faster,” reads the slogan of Biology Is Technology, the Pentagon’s research symposium held this week in New York City. “We’re looking to solve problems that matter.”

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency had tasked the best and brightest startups, major industry players and universities to create the Next Big Thing in science — no easy feat. (One big ask: As Mic reported Wednesday, DARPA expressed interest in controlling human adrenal responses, lowering anxiety and fear in U.S. soldiers.) MORE

I remember once while on a trip to Arizona asking a long-time resident of Phoenix why anyone would want to live in such a godforsaken place. I wasn’t at all fooled by the green lawns and the swimming pools and knew that we were standing in the middle of a desert over the bones of the Hohokam Indians whose civilization had shriveled up under the brutality of the Sonora sun. The person I was speaking to had a quick retort to my east coast skepticism. MORE