Author: Tom Faranda
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Pope Leo’s important address to Vatican Diplomat Corp.
I love it. “Peter among us.” this is from The Pillar, a Catholic online publication. —Pope Leo XIV gave last week his first annual address to the Vatican’s diplomatic corps — a speech which customarily sets out diplomatic priorities for the year, and is the pope’s “state of the world” address. Edgar Beltran broke down…
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Briarcliff Manor School District #1 in NY State for math achievement
And #3 in English language proficieny. We have a friend who teaches math at the highest levels in Briarcliff HS and she is, in fact, quite brilliant. In December, the New York State Education Department released math and English Language Arts (ELA) assessment results for students in grades three through eight from the 2024–2025 school…
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NYT: “U.S. and Venezuela Explore Restoring Diplomatic Ties”
This is good. She sees the handwriting on the wall. “The move embodied the contradictions and fast-changing nature of the two countries’ relationship.” Less than a week after the United States snatched its president under cover of night, Venezuela said it was exploring restoring diplomatic ties and sending a delegation to Washington to check on…
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CNBC: Tom Friedman on Venezuela, Trump & next steps
Friedman is skeptical that Venezuelan oil can be restarted without a change of regime, which he thinks will require boots on the ground. But see the NYT article below the video. Venezuela is not Libya and the new leader – Delcy Rodriguez – is super-ambitious and if it’s in her self interest to suddenly become…
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Sunday wordle – 51 in a row
I am an everyday wordle kind of guy with a 96% success rate. And now I’m on a “quest” to break my old record of 77. A good friend of ours had something like 133 in a row before she (women are smarter than men of course) by haphazard neglect missed doing it on a…
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Kentucky bishops: Nations have right to borders, but actions in US causing ‘hostility, anxiety, and fear’
This is from CatholicVote “Nations have a right and responsibility to control their borders and to enforce laws meant to protect the population, but all laws must be enforced in a just and predictable manner that respects the God-given dignity of each human person,” the bishops wrote in the statement. The bishops quoted Pope Leo’s…