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In this episode, Chris Cochrane guest-hosts for his brother Ray and devotes the whole show to one event: Disney’s D23 2026 fan convention in Anaheim. Friday night delivered Marvel’s new X-Men cast, Adam Driver as Mister Sinister, a fresh Avengers: Doomsday trailer, and a release date for Frozen 3. Saturday turned to the parks, with Villains Land, an Indiana Jones dark ride, the long-awaited Expedition Everest yeti repair, and a Monsters Inc land opening in 2027. – Want to start a podcast? It’s easy to get started! Sign up at Blubrry – Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Chris if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Full Summary Chris Cochrane opens the show and explains why this episode breaks the usual format. Instead of six or eight unrelated stories, the entire episode covers Disney’s D23 convention, which he compares to Apple’s WWDC. For newcomers, he notes that D23 is Disney’s official fan club, named for the company’s founding year of 1923. This year’s event ran two nights at the Honda Center: Friday for movies and television, Saturday for the theme parks. Marvel Finally Casts the X-Men Friday’s headline was the X-Men. The Associated Press put the crowd near 12,000, and Marvel Studios used that stage to name its rebooted team. Christopher Abbott plays Professor Charles Xavier, Inde Navarrette plays Rogue, and Maya Boyd plays Storm. Adam Driver rounds out the group as the villain Mister Sinister. Meanwhile, Samara Weaving, Kit Connor, and Sadie Sink were already known as Emma Frost, Cyclops, and Jean Grey. Jake Schreier directs, and the film arrives May 5, 2028. Chris calls the lineup spot-on casting. He singles out Weaving as a perfect match for the comics, and he points out that Sink already appeared as Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Navarrette is the least established name, coming off a breakout role in an indie horror film. Boyd, meanwhile, was the name he knew least, with what he believes is a Broadway background. Above all, Chris hopes Marvel does the team justice, and he recommends the animated revival X-Men ’97 on Disney+ as the best place to start. Frozen 3 Gets a Date and a Chaotic Reveal Frozen 3 lands November 24, 2027. That is the Wednesday of Thanksgiving week, the same slot the first two films used. The story centers on Anna and Kristoff’s wedding, which a new villain, an evil Ice Queen, disrupts. Jennifer Lee returns to direct with Trent Correy, and the full voice cast is back. However, the reveal itself fell apart. Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel performed a darker arrangement of “Frozen Heart.” Meanwhile, the audio failed, the video failed, and a set of doors never opened. Menzel asked the crowd whether they should try it again, and Bell simply narrated everything that was supposed to happen. Afterward, Josh Gad sang “Oooh, Samantha,” a new love song for Olaf. Chris is here for it, since Olaf is one of the franchise’s best comic characters. Pixar, Disney Animation, and the Rest of Friday Night Pixar chief Pete Docter laid out a packed slate. Incredibles 3 hits summer 2028 and follows Violet and Dash sneaking out at night to fight crime. Chris hopes that finally shows a grown-up Jack-Jack. Coco 2 follows in November 2029 with Benjamin Bratt returning as Ernesto de la Cruz. That has fans puzzling over how a villain already in the Land of the Dead comes back. Additionally, Pixar showed an original called Ghost Market and a Venice-set cat film called Gatto. On the Disney Animation side, Zootopia 3 is confirmed. The live-action Tangled arrives March 31, 2028 with Kathryn Hahn as Mother Gothel. Chris considers that casting perfect after her turn in Agatha All Along. A live-action Lilo & Stitch sequel, a new Simpsons movie, a Bluey movie, and a Kingdom Hearts anime series round out the list. For Star Wars fans, Ahsoka returns January 20, 2027. Chris also offers a hot take: he prefers Rogue One to the entire sequel trilogy. Consequently, he welcomes original stories like Ryan Gosling’s upcoming Starfighter. Adam Driver Is Mister Sinister Driver appeared by video rather than in person. He told the crowd that he and Kevin Feige had talked for years about joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Then he announced he would play Magneto. After a long pause, he corrected himself to Nathaniel Milbury, which is Mister Sinister’s human alias. The gag landed because fans had floated Driver for Magneto for years. For anyone new to the comics, Chris explains that Mister Sinister is a geneticist obsessed with mutant DNA, a manipulator rather than a brawler. The cast met backstage only minutes earlier, so Chris is curious how their chemistry develops. Notably, Christopher Abbott previously worked with Driver on HBO’s Girls. The script comes from Beef creator Lee Sung Jin and The Bear co-showrunner Joanna Calo, two prestige-television names that have Chris excited. Why the X-Men Took Thirty Years to Reach the MCU A business story underlies the casting. In the 1990s, a financially struggling Marvel sold film rights to raise cash. Fox ended up with the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and Sony took Spider-Man. As a result, Marvel Studios built its connected universe from 2008 onward without some of its most famous characters. The Hugh Jackman era of X-Men films belonged to Fox, with a separate continuity and no crossovers. That changed in 2019, when Disney closed its $71 billion purchase of 21st Century Fox’s film and television studio. Most coverage framed the deal as a streaming play, but it also brought the X-Men home. Chris sums it up neatly: Disney signed the paperwork in 2019, cast the film in 2026, and audiences see it in 2028. Ryan Gosling’s Starfighter, Ghost Rider, and VisionQuest Lucasfilm dated Star Wars: Starfighter for May 28, 2027. Gosling plays Kade Auberon, a pilot from the wrong side of the galaxy tied to the fastest starfighter ever built. Before he walked out, Disney played clips of him as a kid on The Mickey Mouse Club. Gosling said the company changed his life then and is changing it again now. He is also playing Ghost Rider in the Marvel universe. That thrills Chris, since Nicolas Cage last carried the character on the big screen. Meanwhile, the Disney+ series VisionQuest arrives October 14. Paul Bettany returns as Vision and James Spader as Ultron, and the trailer drops the two androids into oddly mundane human situations. Bettany joked that Vision has “rather inconveniently died several times.” Chris agrees the character has been through the wringer since WandaVision. The Avengers: Doomsday Trailer Avengers: Doomsday opens December 18, with Joe and Anthony Russo directing. Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, and Hayley Atwell introduced the new footage. It offers the clearest look yet at Downey as Doctor Doom, who fights off Thor and takes his hammer. Evans appears as Captain America holding a baby, and Ian McKellen shows up as a haggard, long-haired Magneto. One quieter shot has Doom staring at a portrait of a lost wife and child. That frames him as a grieving avenger rather than a world-ender. He also commands an army of comic-accurate Sentinels. The cast pulls from the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the legacy Fox X-Men, including Patrick Stewart. Hugh Jackman also appeared on screen to say he is willing to return as Wolverine, though that was not a confirmation. Chris, a self-described Marvel nerd, closes with a theory. He suspects the MCU’s Tony Stark was actually Victor von Doom, adopted by the Starks, which would explain the Downey casting. He also predicts the Fox-era X-Men die off in this film and that Thor may be the major casualty. If it happens, he wants credit for calling it. Sponsor: GoDaddy Economy hosting $6.99/month, WordPress hosting $12.99/month, domains $11.99. Website builder trial available. Use codes at geeknewscentral.com/godaddy to support the show. Disney Parks Around the World Saturday’s Disney Experiences showcase covered parks, resorts, and cruise ships, with Neil Patrick Harris hosting. Hong Kong Disneyland gets an Avengers pavilion that reshapes its Stark Expo skyline. Shanghai Disneyland is building the first land devoted entirely to Spider-Man, complete with a new coaster. Since Spider-Man is his favorite hero, Chris hopes to visit once it opens. Closer to home, Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure is doubling in size with two rides opening in 2028. Avengers: Infinity Defense brings back Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Chris Hemsworth, and Downey, while Stark Flight Lab adds Brie Larson. A Coco boat ride into the Land of the Dead is also coming, with no height requirement. Chris admits he prefers California Adventure to Disneyland because the rides are better. Overseas, Disneyland Paris will retire its Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain overlay at the end of 2027 and restore the original Jules Verne theme. Paris also gets the first ride ever based on The Lion King. Tokyo Disneyland adds Sugar Rush: Sweet Rescue, the first Wreck-It Ralph ride, plus a Space Mountain launch sequence designed with YouTuber Mark Rober. Finally, Disney Cruise Line announced three more ships, including the Disney Believe in 2027 and an entirely new class in 2029. Back in Anaheim, Tomorrowland is getting reimagined, which Chris welcomes because the land badly needs an update. The Magic Happens parade and the Remember Dreams Come True fireworks are both returning. For the tech crowd, Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run now has a Fortnite crossover, where in-game missions unlock content on the real ride. Every New Walt Disney World Ride and Land Chris ranks the Florida parks Hollywood Studios first, then Epcot, Animal Kingdom, and Magic Kingdom. Magic Kingdom leads the announcements with Villains Land, now the official name. It features a Maleficent coaster through an enchanted briar and a boat ride through the Evil Queen’s catacombs. Reporting puts its scale near Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, and Glenn Close appeared in character as Cruella to announce it. Piston Peak, the Cars area replacing Tom Sawyer Island, adds two more rides, though their exact names remain unsettled. Additionally, the Carousel of Progress gets new scenes and a recast. Jamie Lee Curtis and Bryan Cranston will voice Mom and Dad starting late spring 2027. Chris, invoking Heisenberg, calls Cranston the GOAT. At Animal Kingdom, the Indiana Jones ride now has a name: Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent. It tells an original 1950 story inside a Maya temple, and Harrison Ford personally served as the physical model for the animatronic. Nearby, the Tropical Americas land brings Antonio’s Fiesta de Encanto, with more than fifty animal animatronics and no height requirement. Then comes the fix park regulars have wanted for years. The Expedition Everest yeti broke soon after the ride opened. Rather than fix it, Disney lit it with a strobe for over a decade, earning the nickname disco yeti. Now it is being repaired and returned to full motion. Chris rates Everest among his top five rides anywhere, and he suggests riding it before the fix so you can compare. Over at Epcot, Spaceship Earth gets its first major story rewrite in nearly twenty years, shifting from communication history to human connection. Dreamfinder also returns to Journey Into Imagination, and Disney Experiences chairman Thomas Mazloum introduced that news with two words: “we heard you.” Mazloum added that Disney has more projects underway than at any point in its history. After this rundown, Chris believes him. Monsters Inc Land Opens in 2027 Monstropolis begins opening at Hollywood Studios in early 2027, but in stages. The headline door coaster will not be ready on day one. It is the first suspended coaster in any Disney park. It also uses Disney’s first vertical lift, hauling riders about forty feet straight up before launching them into the door vault. Instead, the land opens with the Glob Theater’s “Welcome to Monstropolis” show and Harryhausen’s, a working sushi restaurant lifted from the first film. The stage show features an original song by Randy Newman, his first ever written for a theme park attraction. Chris also notes that the restaurant name honors stop-motion legend Ray Harryhausen. Wrapping up, Chris names the X-Men casting and the Doomsday trailer as his favorite moments of the weekend. He hopes to cover more movie news on future shows, and he plugs Dune: Part Three, which also opens December 18. Chris signs off with the usual mentions: GNC Insider at geeknewscentral.com/insider, email at geeknews@gmail.com, the newsletter, and modern podcast apps at podcastapps.com. He also thanks GoDaddy for over twenty years of support. The post Huge Announcements From D23!! #1873 appeared first on Geek News Central.

Nearby hotel wont allow local residents? full 2640 Mon, 24 Aug 2026 20:00:00 +0000 cm2dNjVgJ05bm43549EGZk1l1IFNf4qe news The Dana & Parks Podcast news Nearby hotel wont allow local residents? You wanted it... Now here it is! Listen to each hour of the Dana & Parks Show whenever and wherever you want! © 2025 Audacy, Inc. News https://player.amperwavepodcasting.com?feed-link=https

Listen to 2 hours of calm rain and birds, with light rainfall and gentle bird sounds in the background. This natural rain sound is useful for sleep, study, focus, reading, meditation, and relaxation. Let the soft rain and quiet birds help cover background noise and create a simple peaceful space for rest or concentration.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/asmr-rain-recordings--5347561/support.Lose the AD intros by becoming a subscriber!https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/asmr-rain-recordings--5347561/support

It’s not your average Monday when an orca swims right up next to you. That’s what happened at the Ballard Locks last week. If you want to keep up on orca activity, there’s a whatsapp group that alerts you about local sightings. We'll talk with Kersti Muul, field biologist and director of the whatsapp group Salish Wildlife Watch. We can only make Seattle Now because listeners support us. Tap here to make a gift and keep Seattle Now in your feed. Got questions about local news or story ideas to share? We want to hear from you! Email us at seattlenow@kuow.org, leave us a voicemail at (206) 616-6746 or leave us feedback online or on the KUOW App.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A woman who worked at one of the most secure laboratories in the country walked away down a rural New Mexico highway on a summer afternoon, and the questions that opened that day have only multiplied since.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/casiasLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.LIKE WHAT YOU'RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS has new episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit WeirdDarkness.com • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL

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Missing Nancy Guthrie Mystery Deepens as FBI Searches Neighborhood Again Following Monsoon, Nearby Resident ClaimsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The New Monsters: Montauk — Episode Two Long before the Montauk Monster washed ashore, there was another mystery already waiting at the eastern edge of Long Island. Its name was Camp Hero. Towering radar antennas once scanned the Atlantic from windswept bluffs overlooking the ocean, searching for Soviet bombers during the darkest years of the Cold War. Nearby, the federal laboratories of Plum Island quietly conducted research behind locked gates, fueling decades of speculation about what might be happening just beyond public view. History tells one story. Folklore tells another. In Episode Two of The New Monsters, Branden Morgan separates documented history from enduring myth, exploring how an abandoned military installation became one of America's greatest conspiracy legends—and why secrecy itself may be the most powerful monster of all. From Cold War air-defense systems and classified government programs to the infamous Montauk Project and the surprising origins of Stranger Things, this episode reveals how history, psychology, and imagination combined to create one of the most influential modern myths in America. Because before anyone believed in the Montauk Monster... they first had to believe in Montauk. The documented history of Camp Hero America's Cold War radar defense network Why abandoned military installations inspire folklore The real history of Plum Island and its animal disease laboratory The origins of the Montauk Project conspiracy How government secrecy fuels modern mythology Why Stranger Things was originally conceived as Montauk The psychology of conspiracy theories and belief How fiction and reality continue feeding one another Every generation creates the monsters it deserves. Ancient civilizations imagined dragons beyond the edge of the map. Medieval Europe feared witches. Modern America fears secret laboratories, classified research, and technologies hidden behind locked gates. The monsters evolve—but the fears beneath them remain remarkably familiar. If you're enjoying The New Monsters, please follow The Devil Within wherever you listen to podcasts. Watch every episode in video on the Evio Creative YouTube Channel, where you'll find archival photographs, historical documents, maps, and visual companions that bring these investigations to life. Follow @thedevilwithinpod on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube for exclusive clips, behind-the-scenes content, and updates on future investigations. Written & Hosted by: Branden Morgan A production of Evio Creative. In This EpisodeThe Devil Within Theme

Who is lost and who do you need to hold in prayer?

Last time we spoke about autumn battle of Changsha. In late September and early October 1941, the Chinese commander Chen Cheng focused on Yichang, a crucial Yangtze stronghold whose loss would threaten China's position and the approach toward Chongqing. Chen Cheng's plan tightened a ring around the city while Chinese forces blocked Japanese reinforcement routes, including efforts to cut retreat lines at places like Jingmen and Dangyang. The battle's pressure was intensified by shifting momentum elsewhere. As the Japanese situation around Changsha became unstable—strained by supplies, exhaustion, and mounting casualties—the Japanese command began to withdraw north. Chiang Kai-shek used this to accelerate Chinese priorities, ordering rapid capture of Yichang within a tight deadline. Inside Yichang, the defense turned tragic as Japanese troops faced encirclement, heavy artillery barrages, and desperate street fighting.    #213 Blood, Rain, and Flags: The Last Struggle Around Yichang Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. While the struggle around Changsha occupied one half of the battlefield, another contest of equal consequence was taking shape farther west at Yichang. The two operations were not separate stories. They belonged to the same campaign, and each influenced the fate of the other. If Changsha was the city whose danger was plain to every observer, Yichang was the stronghold whose importance weighed most heavily on the calculations of commanders. In the autumn of 1941, the outcome in one place could not be understood without the other. For Chen Cheng, Yichang was more than a military objective. It was a wound that had never closed. The city stood on the Yangtze at a point of major strategic value, tied not only to communications and transport but also to the defense of the river approach toward the wartime capital. When Yichang had fallen in June 1940, it had done more than alter the front line. It had left behind humiliation. Three Japanese divisions—the 3rd, 13th, and 39th—had seized the city after twelve days and nights of intense fighting. At five in the afternoon on June 11, a unit of the Japanese 13th Division under Tanaka Seiichi had broken in from the southeast. Chinese troops of the 18th Army under Peng Shan and Luo Guangwen's 18th Division fought a savage close-quarters battle inside the city for a full day and night, while Japanese forces of the 3rd and 39th Divisions pressed from the north. At four in the afternoon on June 12, with Deng Ping's battalion covering the withdrawal, the Chinese finally pulled out and Yichang was lost. Men in high command do not always remember defeat in the same way as the men who fight through it. Soldiers tend to remember heat, hunger, the dead, or the exact corner where a friend fell. Commanders also remember those things, but they remember something else as well: failure recorded in the language of responsibility. Chen Cheng could not forget that twenty Chinese corps had been beaten by three Japanese divisions. At the time, Li Zongren had commanded the operation. Now the chance to erase that old disgrace seemed to be passing into Chen Cheng's own hands. On September 20, he received two telegrams, one from the Military Commission and one from Chiang Kai-shek himself. From that point onward, Yichang dominated his thoughts. By September 23, the Military Commission approved Chen's request to transfer the 33rd Army Group of the Fifth War Zone into the Sixth War Zone for the coming attack. On paper, his position seemed powerful. He now had fourteen divisions at his disposal. Yichang itself was held only by Uchiyama Eitaro's 13th Division and the Hayabuchi Detachment, together amounting to roughly sixteen thousand men. Even granting the usual Japanese superiority in training, firepower, communications, and local tactical cohesion, the Chinese possessed absolute numerical advantage. By September 28, the Chinese units had reached their attack positions, and Chen Cheng set his operational design in motion. The forces on the right bank were to attack first and pull the main body of the Japanese 39th Division southward. The 33rd Army would strike toward Jingmen and Dangyang in order to cut off the enemy's routes of retreat and reinforcement. Once these movements took hold, Yichang itself would be enclosed and crushed. Li Jilan's 94th Army, Li Yannian's 2nd Army, Song Kentang's 32nd Army, and other formations advanced according to plan. On paper the arrangement had clarity. On the ground it had resistance. The Japanese defended from strong fieldworks, and progress came slowly. Earthworks, wire, trenches, and mutually supporting positions transformed every apparent advance into hard labor. The Chinese pushed forward, but not with the speed Chen Cheng wanted. Even a favorable comparison of troop numbers could not cancel the fact that an entrenched Japanese force, once determined to hold, could impose a terrible price on assault. By October 1, Japanese troops outside Yichang began withdrawing into the city proper. Chen Cheng responded by ordering all troops to complete the encirclement. At last the operation seemed to be reaching the decisive stage. The city was tightening under pressure. The ring was nearly closed. Yet at that very moment time began pressing harder on both sides. On October 2, both Chen Cheng outside the city and Uchiyama inside it received telegrams that sharpened the crisis. The message sent from the Japanese 11th Army headquarters in Wuhan informed Uchiyama that the famous Tokyo Asakusa Art Troupe was coming to Yichang to comfort the front-line troops. The Expeditionary Army Headquarters in Nanjing had decided that, for political reasons, the troupe could not be turned back merely because combat conditions were dangerous. Their purpose was morale. That such a message could arrive at such a time reveals much about Japanese wartime culture. Appearances, spirit, ritual reassurance, and the emotional theater of endurance still had to be maintained even when military reality was worsening by the hour. The telegram that Chen Cheng received was very different. Chiang Kai-shek's order stated with brutal directness: the Japanese in northern Hunan had begun to withdraw, and Chen was ordered to spare no effort to capture Yichang within three days. Chen stared at the message for a long time. There was no need for explanation. He understood at once what Chiang meant. The battle for Yichang had already consumed days of hard fighting. Chinese units had suffered substantial losses. But the essential fact stood over every map and every order: if Japanese forces disengaging from northern Hunan reached Yichang in time to reinforce it, then all the effort already expended might amount to nothing. The battle had become not only a contest of strength, but a race. At nearly the same time, the command post of the Japanese 11th Army at Yueyang was confronting the other half of the same problem. On the night of September 30, the headquarters was brightly lit as Chief of Staff Isamu Kinoshita arranged reports, reconnaissance findings, and field messages before the army commander. The Japanese still possessed a valuable advantage: they had access to Chinese communication codes. But such intelligence could not solve every operational problem. It could not conjure food where there was none, restore exhausted bodies, or stop the battlefield from changing shape. By then the Japanese situation around Changsha had become increasingly unstable. The Hayabuchi Detachment, after entering the city, was entangled in fierce urban fighting with the Chinese 6th Provisional Division of the 79th Army. By the evening of September 30, neither side had eliminated the other inside the city. Outside Changsha, the Japanese 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 40th Divisions had assembled and kept major Chinese forces at bay. One element of the 3rd Division had even moved south by truck to Zhuzhou, fifty kilometers away, and occupied the abandoned city. Yet these outward signs of success concealed a serious weakness. The Japanese rear was fraying. Ammunition and food were running low. Divisions operating that deep in hostile territory could not sustain a prolonged campaign under such conditions. More than ten days of uninterrupted movement and fighting had also produced rising non-combat casualties. Men were collapsing from fatigue along the march. Sickness increased steadily. Units that had looked formidable on the offensive were beginning to wear thin from inside. At the same time, Chinese remnants from earlier defeats, new reinforcements, and formations that had regrouped after being thrown back were all watching for signs of weakness. Even if the Japanese divisions in Hunan still had the strength to fight several more actions, another question overrode everything else: Yichang. Yichang was not simply another point on the map. It was a strategic stronghold on the Yangtze and one of the key places from which Japan threatened Chongqing. The city also carried institutional memory. After its capture in June 1940, the occupying troops had initially been ordered to withdraw for rest and reorganization. But Imperial General Headquarters had reversed that decision almost at once and demanded that Yichang be held after all. Troops already on the road had to turn back and retake a city that had been burned, stripped, and rendered difficult to occupy. Among those who had insisted most strongly that Yichang must be retained was Anami Korechika, then vice minister of the army. Now Anami faced the consequence of that earlier insistence. However attractive the gains in Hunan might appear, Yichang could not simply be sacrificed. Uchiyama's 13th Division was not strong enough to hold indefinitely without relief. Anami looked at Hunan on the map—a rich province, beautiful and militarily tempting, much of it seeming almost within reach. But strategy does not reward attachment. With great reluctance, he gave the order to retreat. On the morning of October 1, all Japanese divisions received the reversal instructions, and at four in the afternoon they began moving north. For Xue Yue, this altered the entire meaning of the campaign. Since the beginning of the battle, he had known frustration, disappointment, and anger. Whatever private calculations he may have made about Chiang Kai-shek's strategic direction, Chen Cheng's political influence, his own mistakes in the earlier phase of operations, or the rivalries that had long poisoned Republican military life, none of those feelings prevented him from seeing the opportunity now before him. Once the Japanese turned north, pursuit was no longer merely a matter of salvaging dignity. It became an operational necessity tied directly to Yichang. His staff quickly drafted a pursuit order defining routes, timings, and methods. The document explicitly called for tracking and pursuing, interception, flanking movement, ambush, and surprise attack. This was not to be a ceremonial following of a retreating enemy at a respectful distance. It was meant to be pressure—enough pressure, if possible, to delay Japanese movement back toward Hubei. Two hours after Xue issued the order, another telegram arrived from Chongqing. Chiang Kai-shek instructed that since the enemy which had advanced into northern Hunan had begun retreating toward Yueyang on the night of October 1, the Ninth War Zone was to exploit their fatigue, pursue boldly, seize Yueyang if possible, sabotage the Wuyue Railway, and launch attacks, ambushes, and fierce strikes along the retreat route to prevent the Japanese from regaining their former defenses or shifting quickly toward Wuhan. The purpose was stated clearly: to facilitate the operations of the Third, Fifth, and Sixth War Zones. Xue Yue understood the message at once. The support provided by the Third and Fifth War Zones had been limited and often symbolic. The operation that truly mattered now was Chen Cheng's assault on Yichang. Pursuit in Hunan was not simply retaliation for the threat to Changsha. It was an attempt to buy time in blood, mud, and delay. He adjusted the pursuit deployment and ordered commanders at every level to go forward and supervise their units in person. Autumn rain began to fall over northern Hunan. Hills disappeared in mist and drizzle. Along the roads leading north moved Japanese soldiers under the Rising Sun flag; behind them and beside them, often through fields, villages, and broken country, moved Chinese troops under the Blue Sky, White Sun, and Red Earth flag. Their uniforms differed, their languages differed, their causes differed—but the exhaustion in their faces must often have looked terribly alike. Both armies moved through damp air, hunger, uncertainty, and the constant expectation of another clash. The pursuit, however, revealed the limits of Chinese strength as well as its persistence. On October 2, the battered remnants of the Chinese 74th and 26th Armies cleared battlefields along the Liuyang and Laodao Rivers and found no Japanese left there. The 74th withdrew to Liling to regroup. The 26th halted at Changle Street for replenishment. Yang Sen sent the whole 27th Army Group after the retreating enemy. Ou Zhen's 4th Army attempted to intercept the Japanese 40th Division, but the Japanese maneuvered skillfully and escaped. Ou Zhen pursued them north of the Miluo River for three days, reached the Changshui River, and found the south bank empty. The 20th Army tried to cut off the Japanese 6th Division at Fulipu. At first they could not even locate the enemy, but they did collect large amounts of matériel left behind. Deputy Commander Xia Jiong remarked, with rough optimism, that the Japanese were still "steaming hot" and would certainly be caught. His men ran hard, crossed the Miluo River, and finally did catch a rearguard. Yet the Japanese, intent only on getting away, adopted what Chinese accounts described as a low-key method of not retaliating and not becoming decisively engaged. After crossing Gaoqiao they withdrew into their previous defensive area, and Xia could do little more than stop, rest, and continue to watch them. The 58th Army intercepted more than two thousand Japanese troops near Guanwang Bridge. For a moment it seemed a major clash might erupt. Instead the Japanese fled, leaving behind large quantities of supplies. The Chinese followed them as far as Taolin and then halted when it became clear that the enemy had regained strong ground. These episodes were frustrating, but they were not meaningless. They showed that many Chinese formations had been too badly mauled in the earlier phase of the campaign to sustain relentless offensive pressure. They also showed that the Japanese, though in retreat, were still disciplined enough to avoid disastrous entanglements while shedding matériel to gain speed. The Chinese units that struck hardest during this phase were not those most damaged at the beginning of the battle, but fresher formations such as Xia Chuzhong's 79th Army and Fu Zhongfang's 99th Army. Xia's men ambushed the Hayabuchi Detachment and nearly destroyed it, killing two of its three battalion commanders. Fu's 99th Army fought a series of clashes with the Japanese 3rd and 6th Divisions and with the Hirano and Araki Detachments. The Japanese, eager to keep moving, absorbed losses rather than pause for extended battle. The 99th Army captured so much matériel that transporting it became a problem in itself. On October 4, a squad leader of the 197th Division even shot down an aircraft with machine-gun fire. Yet even here success had limits. By October 9, the entire Japanese force in northern Hunan had crossed the Xinqiang River and reoccupied its original positions. Chinese attacks achieved nothing decisive. The river once again became, in military imagination, almost a fixed frontier. As gunfire subsided in Xiangbei, all attention turned toward Yichang. The encirclement of the city was completed at noon on October 4. Chen Cheng ordered a general offensive to begin at four in the morning on October 6. Outside the city, Li Yannian's 2nd Army held fast against the Japanese 39th Division, which was trying to come in from Jingmen. Altogether, the Sixth War Zone had committed fourteen divisions—more than one hundred thousand men—to the operation. What followed was the familiar but always arresting spectacle of a great battle gathering itself. Small detachments moved forward to cut wire and destroy fortifications outside the city. Artillery officers adjusted their fire with care. Ammunition boxes changed hands continuously. Telephone operators hurried back and forth laying lines. Engineers worked with picks and shovels. Trucks forced their way down crowded roads with horns blaring. Boats were requisitioned along the riverbank, and dark-skinned boatmen weathered by the Yangtze wind moved among soldiers and officers. Behind the assault units stood medical stations under Red Cross flags, waiting for the wounded they knew were coming. All the machinery of battle was in motion. Inside Yichang, meanwhile, another scene unfolded that could only exist in wartime Japan's peculiar mixture of militarism and performance. At the field hospital of the Japanese 13th Division on the campus of Mingde Middle School, wounded soldiers wrapped in white bandages stood, sat, lay on stretchers, or leaned on medical orderlies in the yard watching entertainers from home perform while the dull rhythms of artillery sounded in the distance. The Asakusa Art Troupe had been founded in the mid-1920s and had made its name by combining modern popular elements with traditional stage culture. It had first won over ordinary audiences and then, as its reputation rose, gained acceptance among official and elite circles as well. After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, it was gradually folded into the machinery of wartime propaganda, performing works meant to praise sacrifice, glorify the empire, and strengthen morale. When the delegation of more than thirty members arrived at the 11th Army headquarters in Wuhan, the army added a military band of more than twenty men to accompany them to Yichang. But by the time they reached the city, the battle had already drawn close. They could not visit forward positions. Instead they performed for the wounded. The last performance featured heavily made-up young men and women dancing a popular folk number. As the dance continued, the women bowed and invited medics and wounded men who could still move to join them. Kimono and military uniform mixed. Smiles appeared beside bandages. Music from the home islands drifted out beneath the sound of an approaching siege. Then war interrupted the scene completely. Before dawn on October 6, Chinese artillery opened on Yichang with a deafening bombardment, and the cries of attack rolled over the city. As day came up, the troupe members watched stretchers being rushed into the field hospital where they had only recently performed. One of the sixteen-year-old twin geisha sisters, Mihoko, asked the troupe leader Akizuru through tears whether they would ever be able to return to Tokyo. Qiuhe, the famous dance artist in her fifties, answered gently that they would. General Anami, she said, was leading brave troops there and would arrive in the next few days. The child must pray. The reassurance was human, but it was also part of the wartime language of consolation. Outside the city, reality was harsher. For two days and nights the fighting remained severe. The Japanese fell back toward the edge of the city and resisted with desperation. The Japanese 3rd Air Regiment in Hankou committed itself heavily to the defense, flying sortie after sortie over Yichang. Aircraft came so often that some made four round trips in a single day. On the morning of October 8, a unit of the Chinese 94th Army crossed by boat from the west bank, bypassed the Gezhouba area, and landed at the northern end of Huangcaoba. Advancing south along the embankment, it established positions on the Yangtze side only about half a kilometer from the city. This foothold effectively dominated Japanese positions west of Yichang. Mortar rounds crossed the water. Heavy and light machine guns pinned the defenders outside the walls. At the same time, the 9th Division of the 32nd Army and part of the 99th Army pressed inward as well. The ring tightened. October 9 was grave for both sides. The Japanese withdrawal from northern Hunan had by now produced a relief force. Anami assembled elite troops from several divisions into a rapid deployment column for Yichang. For the Chinese Sixth War Zone, however, victory seemed very near. Inside the city the Japanese situation was increasingly desperate. Casualties were severe. The field hospital yard was filled with groaning wounded. Uchiyama summoned support personnel, medics, cooks, ordnance repairmen, and any wounded men still capable of firing. He armed them all and formed an improvised reserve. Then, while this force was assembling, he heard the sound of a trumpet. One of the band members, still practicing as if battle had not reached its climax, reminded him that the more than twenty members of the 11th Army band were also soldiers in uniform. He added them as well, creating a special unit of 388 men. Hundreds of sacks of rice were taken from storage and piled around division headquarters as fortifications. Uchiyama then turned to Chief of Staff Akinaga and said, "Let's not believe any miracles will happen." The line was bleak, but lucid. It meant that there would be no rescue through wishful thinking. If they lived, it would be because they held long enough. If they died, they would die without pretending that destiny had cheated them. Outside the city, Chen Cheng faced a different but equally harsh pressure. On October 2, Chiang Kai-shek had ordered Yichang taken within three days. On the 4th, Chen requested an extension until the 8th; Chiang agreed, but warned that because the Japanese were retreating from northern Hunan, the city must be captured by then or all previous effort would be wasted. Chen launched the general assault on the 6th, but fierce resistance on the ground and in the air slowed him. By the 8th, the city still had not fallen. He requested another extension, asking to take Yichang by October 10. This time Chiang sent no reply. Chen understood the silence. It meant that no political room remained behind him. At 2:30 in the morning on October 10, the Sixth War Zone opened another general offensive. One hundred and forty artillery pieces joined the bombardment. Shells fell across every part of the Japanese defenses until the repeated flashes made it hard for the gunners to tell what had not yet been hit. Then the infantry went in. Men shouted and surged forward like water breaking through a barrier. Hidden Japanese machine guns cut them down in wave after wave, but more men followed behind. The dead piled on the approaches so thickly that nationality itself seemed to vanish in blood and mud. Under that fire, dawn rose red. Uchiyama watched the sunrise from the highest building in the city, the three-story Yichang Bank. After the war, he told a reporter that the sky, the earth, and even the Yangtze had all seemed red to him, as if the river itself were carrying the blood of Chinese and Japanese alike. According to a later Japanese account, messages reached him from every side that morning reporting collapse. Roughly 5000 men were estimated killed or seriously wounded. At eight o'clock Uchiyama went down to the operations room. Waiting there were his chief of staff and senior officers. At that moment the final ritual of battlefield defeat began. A farewell telegram to Anami Korechika was read aloud. Nearby stood the regimental flag of the 104th Regiment, entrusted to Captain Izumi Shigeru before the regiment's complete destruction. Uchiyama then took the 13th Division's own flag—the imperial military color—and laid it over the regimental flag. Officers and men wept, removed their caps, and bowed their heads. Uchiyama's hands trembled so badly that it took him three matches to set the flag alight. In Japanese military culture, burning a flag was among the sternest rites of defeat. The flag could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. To destroy it was to acknowledge annihilation while presenting that annihilation as a final offering to the imperial state. When the flags had burned and places for seppuku had been chosen, the farewell message remained. It declared that all officers and soldiers had done their utmost for the empire in the final struggle, that military flags, confidential documents, and imperial edicts had been burned, and that it was deeply regrettable that overseas Chinese and the delegation in Yichang had also suffered this fate. Uchiyama then added one final sentence in red pencil: the soldiers of the empire had fulfilled their duty and died for their country amidst the heroic cries of "Long live the Grand Marshal!" At 8:50 the clerk began encoding the telegram. Then Uchiyama said quietly to the officers waiting to die: "Please wait a little longer." The words postponed death by minutes. There was still the narrow possibility that communication mattered, or that the battle had not yet reached its absolute end. Chief of Staff Akinaga summoned his adjutant, Sakata Ryūshirō, and ordered that if the division commander and chief of staff died before the telegram was sent, Sakata was to form a suicide squad, break out by any means possible, and report the division's fate to 11th Army headquarters. At ten in the morning, the Japanese 39th Division attacking from Jingmen launched a new assault under Anami's strict orders against Li Yannian's 2nd Army. One regiment used poison gas to break through part of the Chinese line and reached the outskirts of Yichang. Chen Cheng personally directed the Chinese response, using elements of the attacking force and the 2nd Army to surround and beat back the thrust. By two in the afternoon, only the Dongshan Temple line remained intact among the different sectors of the Japanese city defense. Chinese troops had penetrated the city and were fighting bitterly in the streets, moving steadily toward division headquarters. At four in the afternoon, more than 2000 Japanese rapid deployment troops from northern Hunan reached the northeast approaches of Yichang and at once joined the relief effort. Chen Cheng threw reserves in to block them, and both sides locked in combat six kilometers outside the city. As dusk fell, the Chinese assault units in the city had also suffered terrible losses. Chen Cheng ordered them to regroup, replenish, and launch a final attack after dark. Then, at seven in the evening, almost as the order was issued, a violent gale rose and torrential rain began to fall. Such heavy rain was unusual in the Yichang area in October, and to men who had been living for days under the pressure of siege, death, and deadline, it must have seemed uncanny. The Chinese attacked through the downpour, but progress was painfully slow. At the same time, more than ten thousand Japanese troops arriving from northern Hunan reached the outskirts, fought for over two hours in the rain, and finally broke into the city, linking up with what remained of the 13th Division. At eleven that night, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the attack on Yichang halted and instructed the Chinese troops to return to their original defensive positions. The battle ended not in a clear verdict, but in exhaustion. One elderly resident of Yichang, Huang Jupu, later left a memory of the aftermath more vivid than any headquarters summary. He recalled that the heavy rain began at nightfall on the twentieth day of the eighth lunar month—October 10 in the Gregorian calendar—and continued into the next afternoon. Rainwater soaked the corpses lying in the streets until the water became a deep brownish-red pool more than two feet deep before it drained into the Yangtze and changed the river's color. The next day, he said, both sides sent corpse-collection teams into the streets under Red Cross flags. They pushed carts and worked separately, avoiding conflict, though sometimes they spoke to one another when trying to identify bodies. The Japanese recovery party included Chinese helpers and local residents. They turned corpses over, looked at clothing and weapons, and tried to determine nationality. Some bodies were naked, perhaps stripped wounded, which made identification harder. Since Chinese and Japanese could resemble one another, neither side wanted to take the wrong dead, fearing that a mistake would disturb the heroic souls to whom each army believed it owed proper burial. In the end, Huang remembered, it was the people of Yichang who pooled their money to bury many of the dead north of the city. Later an unmarked stone was raised there, with a bowl of rice and a stick of incense set before it. That image does something military history often fails to do. It restores weight to the end of battle. Armies issue attack orders, counterattack orders, pursuit orders, and retreat orders. Staff officers mark arrows on maps. Commanders calculate reinforcement and delay. But after all of that comes the business of soaked bodies in the street, identification, carts, shallow graves, and local people forced to do what armies can no longer fully do for their own dead. Seen as a whole, the operations in Hunan and Hubei during these weeks form one connected historical drama. The Japanese advance toward Changsha was real and dangerous, but it failed to produce decisive strategic gain. The battle strained the Chinese defense badly. Some units collapsed. Others improvised and recovered. The city was entered, contested, and then fought over again. Behind the forward line, Chinese forces such as Yang Sen's 27th Army Group harassed Japanese communications and supply, turning depth into vulnerability. At the same time, Chen Cheng's offensive against Yichang transformed what might otherwise have remained a local success for Japan in Hunan into a strategic dilemma. Once Yichang came seriously under threat, the Japanese command could not continue to treat the Hunan offensive as self-contained. It had to weigh possession against preservation, momentum against strategic necessity. That calculation compelled the retreat from northern Hunan. The retreat in turn changed the meaning of Xue Yue's operations. Pursuit became valuable not mainly because it might recover wounded pride or even because it might damage the retreating enemy, but because every hour of delay imposed on Japanese units moving north was another hour in which Yichang might fall. Yet Yichang did not fall. That fact is central, but it must be interpreted carefully. Chen Cheng had numerical superiority and fought with determination, but numbers alone could not cancel the difficulty of assaulting a fortified Japanese position under air attack and against fanatical resistance. Time worked against him. Every day lost increased the chance that Japanese relief would arrive from Hunan. Chiang Kai-shek's increasingly urgent telegrams reflected strategic logic, but they could not abolish battlefield reality. Men still had to cross open ground, cut wire, silence guns, and survive fire. Inside Yichang, Uchiyama's defense reveals the same pressure from the opposite side. He understood that his task was simple in principle and terrible in practice: hold until relief arrived. That necessity drove him to arm cooks, medics, repairmen, musicians, and wounded men. It drove him to build fortifications from sacks of rice. It brought him to the point of burning flags and preparing for ritual death while still delaying the final act long enough to see whether rescue might come. The presence of the Asakusa Art Troupe inside the besieged city sharpened the tragedy. They had been sent for morale and appearance, as if cultural performance might reassure an empire already growing anxious about the costs of war. Instead they became trapped witnesses to near-annihilation. The young girl asking if she would ever return to Tokyo cuts through all rhetoric. It is the ordinary human question that waits behind every doctrine of heroic sacrifice. In the end, neither side obtained everything it sought. Japan failed to turn its push into Hunan into a decisive result. China failed to retake Yichang despite concentration of force and a window of opportunity that for a time seemed very real. But that does not mean the campaign resolves into stalemate in any empty sense. It revealed important truths. For China, it showed both weakness and development. Weakness appeared in broken lines, uneven coordination, exhausted pursuit, and the inability to convert superiority in numbers into victory at Yichang. But development appeared too: a greater ability to coordinate war zones, to pressure Japanese rear areas, to force the enemy into strategic compromise, and to sustain resistance under conditions that would once have threatened outright collapse. For Japan, the campaign exposed the narrowing gap between aggressive offensive action and dangerous overextension. Japanese divisions could still strike hard, move with speed, and defend with ferocity. Their aircraft could still exact terrible cost. But logistics, fatigue, sickness, and the obligation to rescue threatened positions like Yichang increasingly limited what offensive success could mean. The deepest memory of the campaign may belong not to generals, however, but to the smaller figures history often notices only in passing: the soldier chewing dry ration without water; the wounded man who blew himself up rather than submit; the old beggar who revealed a depot; the band member still practicing trumpet in a city preparing for death; the frightened girl from the troupe; the townspeople who buried the dead after rain washed blood into the Yangtze. These are not decorative details. They are what make the history real. The autumn of 1941 in Hunan and Hubei was not one clean victory, nor one clean defeat. It was a season in which pressure in one sector altered decision in another, in which tactical success did not always yield strategic reward, and in which endurance itself increasingly became a form of power. That is why the campaign matters. It shows a war whose balance had begun to change, not dramatically or conclusively, but perceptibly. China still suffered, improvised, and fell short. Japan still advanced, struck hard, and held important ground. Yet the margin between them was no longer what it had been in the earlier years of the war. History moved that autumn not by omen or destiny, but by the hard materials of war: supply, timing, weather, command, fatigue, communications, morale, and blood. In Hunan and Hubei, all of those forces converged. They carried armies north and west, into cities and out again, across rivers, through rain, and finally into memory. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. As Chinese pressure tightened, Japan's wider situation around Changsha deteriorated—fatigue, supply strain, and losses accumulated. When the Japanese began retreating north, relief efforts turned Yichang into a desperate struggle marked by shifting fronts, poison gas, street fighting, and heavy bombardment. Chiang Kai-shek demanded a deadline, forcing Chen into final assaults that ultimately failed to secure a clean victory.  

Preparing the Heart to Receive God's Word The Homily reflects on Jesus' explanation of the Parable of the Sower, . . . . . . drawing attention to the different places where the seed falls: the path, rocky ground, thorns, and fertile soil. While a careful farmer would sow only on good soil, God generously scatters His grace upon everyone without discrimination. This reveals God's boundless love and mercy, inviting believers to imitate His generosity rather than being selective in whom they love or serve. The preacher emphasizes that hearing God's Word is not enough; it must be understood, welcomed with humility, and allowed to take deep root. Echoing the words of St. Jerome, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ,” he encourages continual engagement with Scripture, reminding listeners that God's Word is “living and active,” always revealing new insights regardless of how many times it has been heard. The Homily further explains that shallow enthusiasm cannot sustain faith when trials arise, nor can faith flourish when worldly anxieties and the pursuit of riches choke God's Word. Lasting spiritual growth requires prayer, participation in the faith community, devotion to the Rosary, Eucharistic Adoration, and perseverance through suffering. Those who cultivate fertile hearts bear the fruits of patience, trust, and love. The preacher concludes by presenting St. Charbel as a model disciple whose humility, deep prayer life, and profound devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary enabled him to receive God's Word, nurture it faithfully, and bear abundant spiritual fruit. We are likewise called not merely to hear the Gospel but to live it so that their lives become a witness to Christ. Hear more within this Meditation Media. Listen to: Preparing the Heart to Receive God's Word ------------------------------------------------------------------ Art Work Parable of the Sower: Dutch Painter: Pieter Bruegel the Elder:  1557 A Sower went out to sow. The painting depicts a farmer scattering seed across a field. On the left, thorny bushes threaten to overtake the grain. Nearby, rocky ground offers quick growth but little endurance. To the right, further down the hill, the seed falls on fertile soil. Across the river, a crowd gathers to hear the teachings of Jesus. The painting was inspired by a trip to the mountains the artist took just before creating this piece. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Gospel: Matthew 13:18-23 First Reading: Jeremiah 3:14-17

AP correspondent Karen Chammas reports 15 elephants in Kenya have died of cyanide poisoning after eating tomatoes from nearby farms.

The Andrea Doria: Pride of Italy On the night of July 25, 1956, the ocean liner Andrea Doria was off the coast of Nantucket steaming towards New York. Converging on the same path but in the opposite direction was the Swedish passenger ship Stockholm. Nantucket. Thick fog blanketed the Atlantic that night. Radar showed each ship the other's blip, yet through a chain of misread signals and last-second turns, the Andrea Doria and Stockholm collided. The Stockholm's reinforced bow tore into the Andrea Doria's starboard side, ripping open several decks and killing passengers instantly in their cabins. The Italian liner, already listing dangerously due to a design flaw in her fuel tanks, began taking on water and rolling further with every passing hour. What followed was one of the great maritime rescues of the 20th century. Nearby ships, including the Ile de France, diverted course and worked through the night to pull survivors from lifeboats in the darkness. By morning on July 26, with more than 1,600 people safely evacuated, the Andrea Doria finally rolled onto her side and slipped beneath the waves, watched by cameras and a stunned public. This episode traces the final hours of the Andrea Doria: the decisions on the bridge, the scramble to save lives, and the questions that still surround how two ships equipped with modern radar ever found themselves on a collision course. My guest for this episode is wreck diver Andrea Murdoch Alpini. You can find him at https://www.phidiving.com/ and https://www.wreckdiving.it/. This episode was originally published as Episode 4 of Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs on October 4, 2022. Written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. All episodes, images, and sources can be found at [⁠shipwrecksandseadogs.com⁠](https://www.shipwrecksandseadogs.com). Original theme music by Sean Sigfried. [⁠⁠⁠](⁠⁠https://www.seansigfried.com)https://www.seansigfried.com⁠⁠⁠ **

The All Local for Tuesday, July 21st, 2026

The city moved forward with its professional show at Parque de Vida while Mancos, Rico and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe canceled fireworks because of fire conditions.

Astronomy Daily — The Weekend Space and Astronomy News Wrap | Saturday 18 July 2026 | S05E144 Anna and Avery wrap the biggest week in space news this year: brand-new research warning that extreme solar storms may hit harder than our models assume, and the delightful news that South African rooibos tea seeds are headed for the International Space Station — plus the four stories that defined the week, from the first atmosphere ever found on a rocky habitable-zone world to Starship's dramatic T-0 abort and Monday's retry. Story Sources •       Solar storms underestimated — Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10757-4); phys.org; Space.com •       Rooibos in Space — South African Rooibos Council / MaxIQ Space / SANSA announcement; phys.org; News24 •       LHS 1140 b atmosphere — Science; Space.com (as covered S05E143) •       Starship Flight 13 — SpaceX / Space.com launch coverage (arc across S05E139–E143; retry NET 20 July) •       Omega Centauri black hole — Hubble/JWST astrometry study (as covered S05E141) •       Pluto landslides & Charon tectonics — New Horizons imagery studies (as covered S05E142) Visit astronomydaily.io for our full archive. Follow @AstroDailyPod. Astronomy Daily is part of the Bitesz.com Podcast Network.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Good News! Humanity has finally found two exciting new ways to ruin your night: blasting artificial sunlight from space and filling your living room with tiny mushroom people.First, the FCC has approved a controversial demonstration satellite designed to reflect sunlight onto Earth after dark. Supporters say space mirrors could power solar farms and illuminate disaster zones. Vampires say Hell No! Astronomers counter that they could devastate dark skies, disrupt scientific research, and potentially flash-blind drivers and pilots. Because apparently the moon needed a loud, privately owned coworker.Then we investigate Lanmaoa Asiatica, a mysterious mushroom that reportedly causes people to see vivid, three-dimensional miniature humans marching, dancing, climbing furniture, and generally treating your home like their personal gnome amusement park. Stranger still, scientists have found no known psychedelic compound that explains why undercooking dinner can summon an entire pocket-sized civilization.This week, come for the controversial space mirror satellites, artificial sunlight, and astronomical light pollution. Stay for the Lilliputian hallucinations, tiny mushroom people, and the unsettling possibility that the future will be far too bright and approximately two inches tall.Links & Resources

In a solo episode of the Casual Cattle Conversations podcast, host Shaye Wanner shares her background growing up on a ranch that evolved into a registered Red Angus seedstock operation and now living on her husband's centennial family farm, to frame three key transition planning tips.   First, she urges producers to honestly ask whether they truly want to be on the family farm or would rather farm/ranch independently while staying close to family, noting legacy isn't limited to land ownership and that not all family members work well together. Second, she advises financially planning for the unknown by saving and working with bankers and financial professionals even without a clear transition timeline, since taking over must still be a sound business decision. Third, she emphasizes, “You don't get to change what's not yours,” encouraging respect for older generations and clarity about one's current role.  Join Rising Ranchers Here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/risingranchers Catch more conversations like this one and learn more at https://www.casualcattleconversations.com/   00:08 Welcome and Ways to Connect  01:45 My Ranching Background  05:20 Three Tips Overview  05:41 Family Farm or Nearby  10:01 Plan for the Unknown  13:27 You Cant Change It   

A still morning: a bird walks across a roof, pecking and testing the world step by step among barbecue scraps and scattered leaves. Nearby, other birds move on or stay, each tending small adjustments—worms pulled from damp soil, twigs rearranged, gulls arguing with the wind—while the day slowly begins. Simple moments add up to a quiet invitation: leave a window open for a while and listen to what has already begun without you.

Newly published research at Georgia State University found that rental properties in historically Black, lower-income neighborhoods are mostly locally owned by absentee landlords in whiter, more affluent neighborhoods. But the rental properties in those more affluent neighborhoods are largely owned by landlords outside of the region and even the state of Georgia. Taylor Shelton, is an associate professor in the department of geosciences and Ryan Pardue, is a doctoral student in the Urban Studies Institute at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. Both Shelton and Pardue collaborated on the GSU study and discussed it on this edition of “Closer Look.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

USDA food safety expert Meredith Carothers says a food thermometer, not inner color, is the key to knowing if meat has reached a safe internal temperature during cooking. USDA Radio NewslineSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chatsworth House is one of England's most spectacular stately homes.And in this episode, I'm taking you inside one of the Peak District's most iconic landmarks. You'll learn about its fascinating history, explore the grand rooms and beautiful gardens, discover filming locations from Pride & Prejudice and other productions, and get plenty of practical tips to help you plan your own visit. I'll also share why I think Chatsworth is worth visiting even though it's one of the busier sights in the Peak District. From avoiding the busiest times to making the most of the gardens, estate walks, farm shop, and nearby trails, this episode will help you experience Chatsworth House at a slower, more enjoyable pace.Want to chat more about Chatsworth House?Contact me at Lynne@WanderYourWay.comIn this episode:1:56: Intro2:44: Placing Chatworth House on the map3:30: History6:22: Rooms you can visit11:29: Logistics & advice13:38: The Garden18:27: Nearby trails & parking20:04: Additional planning considerations26:22: Wrapping it upImportant links:Chatsworth HouseDiscovering the Diverse and Beautiful Peak District EnglandWander Your WayWander Your Way AdventuresWander Your Way ResourcesEagle Creek ★ Support this podcast ★

China's national football team may not have qualified for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, but the country remains a major contributor to the tournament through its manufacturing industry, which has a key role in producing a large share of the official merchandise sold to fans worldwide.中国国家男子足球队虽未晋级2026年国际足联世界杯，但依托本国制造业，中国仍是本届赛事的重要支撑方；全球球迷所购的官方周边商品，很大一部分都由中国生产。The tournament, staged across 16 host cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico, will run from June 11 to July 19. This year's World Cup is bigger than ever as it will feature 48 football teams, instead of the usual 32 teams.本届世界杯在美国、加拿大、墨西哥共计16座主办城市举办，赛事周期为6月11日至7月19日。本届世界杯规模创下历史新高，参赛球队由往届的32支扩充至48支。Much of the World Cup-themed merchandise and souvenirs bought by fans was manufactured in Yiwu International Trade City, in Yiwu, Zhejiang province, famous as the world's largest wholesale small commodity market.球迷选购的大部分世界杯主题周边与纪念商品，都产自浙江义乌国际商贸城，这里是全球规模最大的小商品批发市场。Mike Smith, 60, from East London, was in New York shopping with his wife at an official FIFA World Cup 2026 store temporarily located on the ground-floor of the plush mall The Shops at Columbus Circle in Manhattan.60岁的迈克·史密斯来自伦敦东区，他和妻子正在纽约曼哈顿哥伦布圆环高端购物中心一层的2026世界杯官方临时门店购物。Smith told China Daily: "There's a nice selection of things in here. I expect a lot of the merchandise is made in China. It is good as that means they're still a part of the tournament."史密斯接受《中国日报》采访时表示：“店里商品种类十分丰富。我猜大部分周边都是中国制造，这是件好事，说明中国始终参与着这项赛事。”"We have to get our grandson a T-shirt in a large or he won't be very happy with us. He's football-mad! We are very excited about the matches and the England boys are doing well so far. So, all-in-all it's been a nice trip."“我们得给孙子买一件大号T恤，不然他会不开心。他是个狂热球迷！我们对赛事满怀期待，目前英格兰队的发挥也很不错。总的来说，这次出行十分愉快。”"Made in China" labels could be seen on official FIFA products, ranging from scarves, key rings, T-shirts, mini footballs, jackets and more.国际足联官方商品随处可见“中国制造”标签，品类涵盖围巾、钥匙扣、T恤、迷你足球、外套等各类产品。Some items were made in the likeness of very popular World Cup players like Argentina's Lionel Messi and Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo.部分商品以梅西、C罗等世界杯人气球星为原型制作，梅西效力阿根廷队，C罗代表葡萄牙队。Local manufacturers in Yiwu told Chinese media that they began receiving orders from international buyers in early 2025 to ensure they reached overseas markets in time for the kick-off of the World Cup.义乌本地厂商向国内媒体透露，早在2025年初他们就接到海外采购商订单，保障商品能在世界杯开赛之前准时销往全球市场。However, the football souvenirs are not just being made in Yiwu.不过，足球纪念商品的产地并不只有义乌。Some are produced in Guangzhou in Guangdong province, Qingdao in Shandong province and Xiamen in Fujian province, according to local media reports.据地方媒体报道，广东广州、山东青岛、福建厦门也有工厂生产相关周边。A production plant in Guangdong manufactured the official match ball of the 2026 World Cup, called Trionda. Some match balls are fitted with Chinese smart chips.广东一家工厂打造了2026世界杯官方比赛用球“特里安达”，部分比赛用球内置中国研发的智能芯片。At one other official FIFA store in New York, a member of staff, who did not want to be named as he was not authorized to speak to the media, said that the shop was extremely busy most days as many shoppers from all over the world bought multiple things.纽约另一家世界杯官方门店一名不愿透露姓名的店员（无对外媒体采访权限）称，门店平日里客流爆满，世界各地的消费者都会一次性选购多款商品。He added that the most popular items for sale were the T-shirts, baseball hats, pins and scarves with the FIFA 2026 World Cup logo on them. All "Made in China" products.他补充道，印有2026世界杯标识的T恤、棒球帽、徽章和围巾最畅销，这些商品全部为中国制造。FIFA licenses its official merchandise, including products with the tournament's logo and emblem and team crests. Any unauthorized replicas infringe trademark rights and can be seized by customs.国际足联对官方周边实行授权管理，含赛事标识、会徽、球队队徽的商品均在授权范围内；未经许可的仿制品涉嫌侵犯商标权，海关可依法予以扣押。Some of the other merchandise on display in stores were made in Vietnam or Cambodia, the labels showed.门店陈列的其余部分周边商品，标签显示产自越南或柬埔寨。Various football fans were browsing through the goods for sale at another very busy FIFA Store located in Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan on Monday.周一，曼哈顿洛克菲勒广场另一间客流火爆的世界杯官方门店内，各路球迷正在挑选在售商品。Nearby in Rockefeller Center, a line of customers eagerly waited to view exhibits inside a FIFA museum, adorned with the photos of a few iconic football players outside, including the late Pele of Brazil.不远处的洛克菲勒中心内，大批游客排队等候参观国际足联博物馆；场馆外墙陈列多位传奇球星海报，其中包含已故巴西球王贝利。China's presence at the World Cup even extends beyond the stores and onto the pitch.中国对本届世界杯的参与不止体现在周边门店，赛场之上也随处可见中国元素。Pop Mart's famous Labubu dolls made an appearance at the opening ceremony.泡泡玛特热门IP拉布布玩偶亮相世界杯开幕式。Two life-sized Labubu dolls in football jerseys were seen lifting a replica of the World Cup trophy at Azteca Stadium in Mexico City on June 11.6月11日，墨西哥城阿兹特克体育场中，两个真人大小、身着球衣的拉布布玩偶举起大力神杯复刻模型。A pair of Chinese-made football boots gained attention during the tournament.一款中国制造的足球战靴在赛事期间备受关注。Cape Verde goalkeeper Josimar Jose Evora Dias, commonly known as Vozinha, wore Senda Mendoza Elite boots manufactured by Xufeng Sports Products in Putian, Fujian province.佛得角门将若西马尔·若泽·埃沃拉·迪亚斯（昵称沃济尼亚）上脚了福建莆田旭峰体育生产的森达门多萨精英款足球鞋。His team competed with European champions Spain to get a surprise 0-0 draw in Atlanta on June 15.6月15日亚特兰大赛场，他所在的佛得角队逼平欧洲冠军西班牙队，爆出0比0的冷门。Chinese beverage makers, including Luckin Coffee and Cotti Coffee, have struck partnerships with national teams such as Spain and Argentina, according to Xinhua News Agency.新华社消息，瑞幸咖啡、库迪咖啡等中国饮品品牌已与西班牙、阿根廷等国家队达成合作。Chinese technology is also a big part of the tournament. Chinese TV maker Hisense is the official Video Assistant Referee (VAR) review TV provider used to make crucial game decisions, Yahoo reported.科技领域同样少不了中国身影。雅虎报道，中国电视厂商海信为本届赛事提供视频助理裁判（VAR）专用回放显示屏，用于裁决比赛关键判罚。Lenovo, a Chinese technology firm, is the supplier of equipment to 16 stadiums in the tournament. Both the company's servers and artificial intelligence devices will be used.中国科技企业联想为全部16座赛事场馆供应设备，赛事将投入使用联想服务器与人工智能设备。China is also taking part through a trio of its referees in the event: Fu Ming, assistant referee Zhou Fei, and Ma Ning, a VAR.三名中国裁判也参与本届世界杯执法工作，分别是主裁判傅明、助理裁判周飞、视频助理裁判马宁。Host cities Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara have 115 light-rail trains manufactured by CRRC, a Chinese rail transit equipment supplier.墨西哥城、蒙特雷、瓜达拉哈拉三座主办城市投入运营115列轻轨列车，全部由中国中车轨道交通装备企业制造。In Mexico City, 800 new-energy shuttle buses — 95 percent of them made in China — will help take fans between venues, Xinhua reported.新华社报道，墨西哥城投放800辆新能源接驳大巴，其中95%为中国制造，负责接送球迷往返各个赛场。merchandise /ˈmɜːtʃəndaɪs/周边商品，商品，货品souvenir /ˌsuːvəˈnɪə(r)/纪念品，纪念周边emblem /ˈembləm/会徽，徽章，标志infringe /ɪnˈfrɪndʒ/侵犯（权利），违反replica /ˈreplɪkə/复制品，复刻模型transit /ˈtrænzɪt/交通运输，运输系统

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Cheaper farm down the road sinking your sales? It's not your prices. It's a skill gap, and it's fixable. In the final episode of our 4-part farm marketing foundation series, Charlotte breaks down exactly how to get customers to drive out of their way to a rural farm, keep them coming back season after season, and stop fearing the cheaper competition. You'll hear how one client, Valerie in Pennsylvania, 10x'd her farm stand sales in six months, with five other farm stands, six weekly farmers markets, and cheaper butcher shops all surrounding her, and a farm building you can't even see from the road. Inside this episode: Why relationship (not price) is what makes someone drive past five cheaper farms to get to yours The real reason customers don't come back after the first sale How to build your email list at community events, pop-ups, and partnerships Off-season email strategy that keeps customers loyal year after year How far in advance to market wedding flowers, CSAs, and seasonal products The 5-day launch framework that has farmers selling out in one week This is the long-game foundation that has farmers in the Profitable Farmer program selling out, charging their worth, and serving customers for an average of five years. If you're a farmer wondering why people aren't finding you, or why they're not coming back, this is the episode that ties the whole marketing foundation together.  

What if we found a true second Earth nearby? A living world, a barren paradise, or something too familiar to be natural could change science, politics, and humanity's future forever.Get Nebula using my link for 50% off an annual subscription: https://go.nebula.tv/isaacarthurWatch my exclusive video Nearby Supernovae: https://nebula.tv/videos/isaacarthur-nearby-supernovae-could-one-destroy-earth-and-could-we-stop-itCheck out Gods & Monsters: https://nebula.tv/curiousarchive/gods-and-monsters?ref=isaacarthur

What if we found a true second Earth nearby? A living world, a barren paradise, or something too familiar to be natural could change science, politics, and humanity's future forever.Get Nebula using my link for 50% off an annual subscription: https://go.nebula.tv/isaacarthurWatch my exclusive video Nearby Supernovae: https://nebula.tv/videos/isaacarthur-nearby-supernovae-could-one-destroy-earth-and-could-we-stop-itCheck out Gods & Monsters: https://nebula.tv/curiousarchive/gods-and-monsters?ref=isaacarthur

Hello Interactors,A couple weeks ago, I found myself in Tulsa for the first time. I left pleasantly surprised. There's a lot of private money flowing into this town, but the city is filled with sorted stories about land, who holds it, who loses it, and how that loss and potential return is engineered. On Juneteenth, the city's history feels especially close so I thought I'd unpack the layers of displacement, violence, and reinvention that lurk beneath a city still struggling to face them.CONCRETE, COALS, AND A CITY THAT CONCEALSRaise your hand if you like Brutalist architecture (I'm raising mine.) I just didn't expect to find it in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I was visiting for my niece's wedding.The Brut Hotel is a converted Brutalist tower a few blocks from the Arkansas River and it's all raw concrete. Even the floors and counters. Most people see Brutalism as cold — which is nice on a hot Tulsa day — but I read it as honest and direct. A bit like a Midwestern prairie settler stereotype. After all, the style did emerge in postwar Europe from an egalitarian impulse. It was meant to be democratic architecture stripped of ornamental excesses of fancy city folks. It arrived in America just in time to become the aesthetic of urban renewal. We mostly got housing projects and highway interchanges built on top of what had been Black and working-class neighborhoods, often by eminent domain and without meaningful consent. Concrete can be made to beautiful, but it's definitely also the material of displacement. Tulsa is no exception.On my first muggy Tulsa morning, I ran from The Brut toward the river. A block or two along, tucked between midtown houses on Cheyenne Avenue, I passed a small park I had read about but didn't know was so close. The bronze sculpture of a flame was the give away. This is Creek Nation Council Oak Park, and it is, in the most literal sense, where Tulsa began.In 1836, the Lochapoka clan of the Creek Nation arrived at this hill above the river after two years on the Trail of Tears. They had carried live coals from their last ceremonial fires in Alabama the entire way — embers kept alive through hundreds of miles of forced march. Under this oak, they set those coals down and kindled a new flame. They named the settlement Talasi, meaning “old town.” White settlers mispronounced it into Tulsa. The term “Trail of Tears” perhaps softens this forced displacement too much. Of the 630 Lochapoka who began the journey, 161 did not survive it. The oak did and it still holds its annual ceremonies. In November 2024, the site was formally returned to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.As I kept running south along the river, a second gathering place was harder to miss. It has a giant sign that reads, The Gathering Place.The Gathering Place is a privately built public-ish park that stretches along the Arkansas River's eastern bank and inland a bit. It's one hundred acres of fountains, climbing structures, event lawns, and restored prairie plantings. It is, by nearly any measure, a stunningly beautiful park. It is also unmistakably the product of a single man's fortune. George Kaiser, the Tulsa-born oil billionaire and philanthropist, has poured more than $350 million into transforming this stretch of riverfront. It's honestly something you'd expect to see in a Northern European city. The park opened in 2018 to national acclaim. The New York Times called it “the most ambitious new park in a generation.” I can see why.But head north from the riverfront, past the gleaming BOK Center arena (“B. OK.” is a financial services company dating back to 1910 oil money and is half owned by Kaiser) and the reclaimed warehouse districts, (including the Bob Dylan Center — Kaiser bought Bob Dylan's archive collection in 2016) and within minutes you are in a different city. North Tulsa — and specifically the Greenwood District — reveals modest homes and stretches of underdevelopment. This is an area that feels like it's being watched and commemorated but it's not entirely clear it is being heard. The Greenwood Rising history center, also primarily bankrolled by Kaiser, opened in 2021 exactly one hundred years after the neighborhood was destroyed in the Tulsa Massacre. This building is also very nice and tells the area's story well. Whether it changes the story is another matter.Cities can act as maps of their own history, so that's how I try to read them. I take note of the distances between prosperity and poverty, commemoration and investment…even a museum and a neighborhood. These are not determinant accidents of the market, but accumulated residue of specific decisions made by specific people over a very long time. To understand Tulsa's geography today, you have to go back not just to 1921, but further — to the rivers and grasslands of Indian Territory the Lochapoka people encountered. It's here you'll find federal ledgers leveraged as weapons, their lines and lists legalizing the largest land liquidation in American history.PROMISES, PARCELS, AND THE POLITICS OF POSSESSIONThe Lochapoka were not the only ones force-marched into Indian Territory. All five of the so-called Civilized Tribes — the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole nations — were relocated from their homelands in the American Southeast across the 1830s. Each tribe were given the same federal promise that the territory would remain theirs permanently. The maps and the Federal treaties said so, but neither turned out to mean much.What the maps did not show, and what the official history long preferred to omit, is that the Five Tribes brought enslaved Black people with them into Indian Territory. As the historians Annette Gordon-Reed and Rose Stremlau have noted in the context of the 1619 Project, the story of this dispossession cannot be told without acknowledging that intersection: the Trail of Tears was also, for some, a forced march into continued bondage (Gordon-Reed et al., 2022). That fact would shape the politics of Oklahoma for generations — and it is the thread that connects the founding fire under the Council Oak to the rise of Greenwood eighty years later.After the Civil War, the federal government's promises to the Five Tribes began to erode almost immediately. The Freedmen — formerly enslaved people who had been held by tribal members — were formally granted citizenship in the tribes by treaty, though the tribes' willingness to honor that citizenship varied considerably. Many Freedmen, seeking mutual protection and economic self-sufficiency, began establishing their own communities. This impulse gave rise to what became known as the Black Towns Movement. Between the 1870s and the 1920s, more than fifty all-Black towns were founded in Oklahoma and Kansas, created by people who had learned, with good reason, not to rely on the goodwill of white-majority governments (Martin, 2025; Gordon-Reed et al., 2022).The legal and cartographic instrument that made the Black Towns possible — and that would ultimately help destroy them — was the allotment system. The Dawes Act of 1887 broke up communally held tribal land into individual parcels, assigning plots to enrolled tribal members and opening the remainder to white settlement. It was framed as a civilizing measure. It was in practice a mechanism for transferring Indigenous land to white hands on an enormous scale. Each parcel was drawn on a map, recorded in a ledger, and assigned a legal description. This act appeared to secure property rights while in fact it made land far easier to steal through legal machinery than it had ever been to simply seize.The discovery of oil made the theft more systematic and more lethal. When crude was found beneath allotments assigned to Native people — particularly in the Osage Nation, the Creek Nation, and elsewhere — a federal guardianship system allowed courts to appoint white guardians for Native landowners deemed “incompetent” to manage their own affairs. The definition of incompetence was flexible and self-serving. Native heirs to oil-bearing land died under suspicious circumstances with startling frequency. Deeds were forged. Guardians enriched themselves and left their wards landless. The historian David Grann has documented this in devastating detail for the Osage Nation specifically, but the pattern was region-wide. Modern GIS analysis of original allotment records against subsequent deed transfers reveals what contemporaries knew but rarely said aloud: the disappearance of Native landowners from oil country was not a coincidence, but a covert policy.For Black Oklahomans, the allotment system created a narrow window of possibility. Freedmen who appeared on the Dawes Rolls received allotments of their own. Some of this land was in proximity to other Black allottees, and the Black Towns Movement capitalized on that geography, incorporating towns, establishing churches and schools, and building the civic infrastructure that Black communities had been denied elsewhere. As scholar JT Martin has argued, the philanthropic traditions within these communities — the mutual aid societies, the church networks, the communal investment in education — were not secondary features of the Black Towns Movement but its essential architecture (Martin, 2025). People who had nothing built institutions that served everyone.Greenwood, established in the early 1900s on the northern edge of Tulsa, was the apex of that project. By 1921, it contained over thirty-five blocks of Black-owned businesses, a hospital, law offices, two newspapers, a library, schools, and churches. Booker T. Washington reportedly called it “the Negro Wall Street,” a phrase that has since become shorthand for what the neighborhood achieved. Although that shorthand flattens what was, more precisely, a masterwork of community-building under conditions designed to make community impossible.As the literary scholar Gary M. Jenkins has observed, Greenwood sat directly along what would become Route 66 (Jenkins, 2022). The all-Black towns of Oklahoma were embedded in the landscape that John Steinbeck traversed in The Grapes of Wrath — and conspicuously omitted from it. The invisibility of Black spatial achievement in the canonical accounts of American westward movement is not incidental. It reflects a pattern in which the places, presence, and prosperity of Black life were purposefully purged from the maps white Americans made of their own country.BURNING, BURYING, AND THE BATTLE TO BELONGOn the night of May 31, 1921, a white mob descended on Greenwood. Over the following eighteen hours, the neighborhood was looted, burned, and bombed — aircraft dropped incendiary devices on residential streets. When it was over, 35 square blocks had been reduced to ash. Somewhere between 100 and 300 people were dead, most of them Black. More than 10,000 Black residents were left homeless. Survivors were interned in camps run by the National Guard — many of whom had also participated in the destruction.What followed the physical destruction was a second, slower erasure. Greenwood residents who attempted to rebuild found themselves blocked by a newly enacted city ordinance that rezoned their land for commercial and industrial use. Insurance claims were denied. Property was effectively seized under the cover of “urban renewal” in subsequent decades. As Morris, Parker, and Negrón have documented, the Tulsa massacre is a case study in what they call “Black community-killing” — the systematic destruction not just of physical structures but of the institutional web that makes a community function: the schools, the churches, the newspapers, the businesses (Morris, Parker & Negrón, 2022). The buildings burned in a day. The community's capacity to reconstitute itself was methodically dismantled over years.For most of the twentieth century, the massacre was not taught in Oklahoma schools. It did not appear in city histories and land was not returned. The story was, in the most literal sense, removed from the map.Kaiser's investments in Tulsa have been substantial and wide-ranging: the Gathering Place, the Greenwood Rising museum, workforce development initiatives, early childhood programs. The philanthropic intent appears sincere, and some of the work — particularly in early education — addresses structural inequities rather than simply aestheticizing them. It would be uncharitable, and inaccurate, to dismiss the whole enterprise as window dressing.But scholar JT Martin poses this question which cuts to the heart of the matter: when we study philanthropy in America, whose philanthropic traditions do we center? (Martin, 2025). The mutual aid societies, the church networks, the community land trusts built by Black and Indigenous communities — these represent forms of collective investment that predate and often outperform the interventions of elite donors, yet they receive a fraction of the scholarly and public attention. George Kaiser's riverfront is visible. The endogenous philanthropic infrastructure of North Tulsa — the churches that held Greenwood together after the massacre, the community organizations that exist today — is largely invisible in the civic narrative that Tulsa tells about itself.The geography makes this concrete. The Gathering Place and the BOK Center sit south on the Arkansas River, in and adjacent to Tulsa's whiter, wealthier districts. Including the area where the Philbrook Museum of Art sits. This Italian Renaissance villa was built in 1926 by oil pioneer Waite Phillips (as in Phillips 66), donated to the city in 1938 as a public art center. It's now one of the finest regional museums in the country. This gesture rhymes with Kaiser's: oil money transmuted into civic cultural institution, the private estate opened to the public as an act of philanthropic legacy-building. The Philbrook is genuinely beautiful and genuinely valuable. It is also located nowhere near North Tulsa.The pattern is not new. Greenwood Rising stands in Greenwood, but the area remains economically depressed, and North Tulsa is still among the most segregated parts of an already divided city. Philanthropic investments that produce a park on the wealthy side of the river and a museum on the historically Black side, while leaving structural inequalities intact, are not reparative.The development around Greenwood tells a more troubling story. ONEOK Field, built in 2010 on historic Greenwood land despite community opposition, has delivered few benefits to Black residents, who are still taxed to support it. Nearby, the Tulsa Arts District has flourished with amenities catering to a whiter, more affluent clientele, while long-standing Black businesses struggle. Even hotels in Greenwood market themselves as part of that district. This is less restoration than a familiar precursor to displacement in the form of cultural investment followed by real estate pressure.Some argue that understanding land and spatial justice in places like Tulsa requires connecting the Greenwood reparations movement to broader Indigenous-led land reclamation efforts (Du, 2021). In 2020, the Supreme Court's decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma ruled that the Creek Nation reservation had never been legally dissolved and that the federal government's century-old maps of Oklahoma had been legally wrong all along. The majority opinion was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, a conservative textualist, who applied the same originalist logic to treaty rights that right-wing jurists typically apply to the Second Amendment. The ruling was a genuine landmark, restoring tribal jurisdiction over a substantial portion of eastern Oklahoma. Subsequent decisions have extended the logic to other tribes.The political irony is perplexing. Oklahoma has been among the most reliably right-wing states in the country for decades; its congressional delegation is uniformly conservative; its state government has consistently resisted federal oversight and minority rights claims. Yet it was conservative judicial originalism — the doctrine that legal texts mean what they said when written — that restored, at least partially, what the federal government had promised the Five Tribes in the 1830s. The promise was old, the maps were wrong, and it took a conservative judge to point it out.What McGirt did not do was address the claims of Black Oklahomans. The Freedmen's citizenship rights within the Five Tribes remain contested. The Greenwood reparations movement has won moral recognition but not legal remedy. The 1921 massacre commission recommended reparations in 2001 and they have never been paid. These struggles do feel connected — Black and Indigenous claims to land and sovereignty in Oklahoma have been shaped by the same federal machinery of dispossession, and their futures may be intertwined in ways that neither community has yet fully reckoned with (Du, 2021).Juneteenth, the holiday now recognized federally, commemorates June 19, 1865 — the day enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, were told the war was over (the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued two and a half years earlier) and they were free. What the holiday cannot quite contain is what freedom meant in practice for people who were free but landless. They were free but also targeted. They were also freed from the maps that governed how wealth was accumulated and held in America. The Black Towns of Oklahoma were an answer to these problems and Greenwood was that, for a while. Then it was burned down.What grows back from a fire depends on who tends the soil, and who owns it. In Tulsa today, that question is still being answered. Will the answers be as brutally honest as Brutalism — the idea that a building should be honest about what it is made of? Tulsa is made of oil money and dispossession, Black resilience and white violence, broken treaties and belated reckonings. Despite conservative political domination, the maps are being redrawn. Whether they will finally show all of that honestly — without the decorative Italian Renaissance stucco — is more political than cartographic. But McGirt proves that promises, however papered over, still possess the power to pierce the present.ReferencesDu, Y. (2021). Black geographies unveiled: A critical review. Human Geography. Gordon-Reed, A., Stremlau, R., Lowery, M., et al. (2022). The 1619 project forum. The American Historical Review. Jenkins, G. M. (2022). Steinbeck, race, and Route 66 in The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck Review.Martin, J. T. (2025). Are Black people philanthropists? Toward a more diverse research agenda on philanthropy. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race. Morris, J. E., Parker, B. D., & Negrón, L. M. (2022). Black school closings aren't new: Historically contextualizing contemporary school closings and Black community resistance. Educational Researcher. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

OPINION: A distant peace with nearby consequences | June 17, 2026Subscribe to The Manila Times Channel - https://tmt.ph/YTSubscribe Visit our website at https://www.manilatimes.net Follow us: Facebook - https://tmt.ph/facebook Instagram - https://tmt.ph/instagram Twitter - https://tmt.ph/twitter DailyMotion - https://tmt.ph/dailymotion Subscribe to our Digital Edition - https://tmt.ph/digital Check out our Podcasts: Spotify - https://tmt.ph/spotify Apple Podcasts - https://tmt.ph/applepodcasts Amazon Music - https://tmt.ph/amazonmusic Deezer: https://tmt.ph/deezer Stitcher: https://tmt.ph/stitcherTune In: https://tmt.ph/tunein#TheManilaTimes#KeepUpWithTheTimes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Benjamin L. Carp describes how the fire erupted between midnight and 1:00 a.m. on September 21, 1776, near White Hall Slip. While some attributed it to a drunken accident, British witnesses on nearby warships reported seeing flames ignite at 15 to 20 separate points simultaneously. This multiplicity of ignition sites strongly suggested a coordinated design by rebel saboteurs. The city was particularly vulnerable because firefighting equipment was in disarray and the alarm bells had been removed to be melted down for Continental Army cannons, leaving the few remaining watchmen unable to sound a general alarm. (3)

AP correspondent Julie Walker reports the Lebanese army withdraws from southern village after Israeli troops advance nearby.

SHOW NOTES Baguio: An American Hill Station in the Philippine HighlandsToday on the GoNOMAD Travel Podcast, Senior Writer Chin Liang takes us up into the cool, mist‑wrapped mountains of northern Luzon to explore Baguio (BAG‑ee‑oh), the Philippines' original highland escape. While most of the country swelters in tropical heat, Baguio sits comfortably below 70°F year‑round — a climate that first drew American colonizers here in the early 1900s and still lures travelers today.Chin begins his day in Burnham Park, the century‑old civic park designed by famed American planner Daniel Burnham. A man‑made lake sits at its center, ringed with weeping willows and bright yellow daisies, where families paddle small boats across the water. The lawns, rose gardens, and skate ramps echo the classic American park style Burnham brought to cities across the world.Just across the street, Chin stops at Café by the Ruins, a beloved Baguio institution. Their signature crispy tapa — thin slices of beef marinated in local spices and served with mountain rice, eggs, tomatoes, and onions — fuels the morning's adventures.Baguio's nickname, City of Pines, becomes clear at Camp John Hay, once an American military recreation facility and now a sprawling eco‑tourism resort. Visitors can stay in forest cabins, ride horses, play golf, or wander the pine‑scented trails. Chin highlights the Yellow Trail, a favorite for shinrin‑yoku, the Japanese practice of forest bathing: feeling the bark of a tree, breathing in the pine needles, and walking slowly with a 5‑step inhale, 5‑step exhale rhythm.Inside the camp sits the historic Bell House, named for U.S. Army General Franklin Bell. Its polished wood floors and broad veranda preserve the atmosphere of early 20th‑century American life in the Philippines. Right next door, Chin discovers one of Baguio's quirkiest attractions — the Cemetery of Negativism, a playful lawn of cartoonish “gravestones” where visitors symbolically bury their bad thoughts.Back in the city, Session Road buzzes with life. Pastel‑colored American‑era buildings now house cafés, shops, and bakeries. When Chin visited, a full county‑fair‑style festival was underway: line‑dancing girls stomping in rhythm, locals in cowboy hats riding ponies, a beauty pageant beside an arm‑wrestling contest, and a singer belting out “Sweet Caroline” as the entire crowd — kids, parents, grandparents — sang along in perfect chorus.To understand the region's Indigenous heritage, Chin visits the Igorot Stone Kingdom, a massive stone fortress built without cement, echoing the engineering of the Cordillera rice terraces. Towers, terraces, and walls rise like life‑sized sandcastles — a tribute to the Igorot people and the builder's mother, a Cordilleran woman.Just north of Baguio lies La Trinidad, the strawberry capital of the Philippines. From November to May, visitors can pick their own berries and try local favorites like strawberry taho — warm soft tofu sweetened with brown sugar and topped with fresh berries — and strawberry ice cream. Nearby, the Valley of Colors bursts across the mountainside, hundreds of homes painted in bright hues like a giant mural. Locals say it looks as if “God spilled paint over the hillside.”With its cool air, drifting fog, pine forests, and blend of American history and Indigenous culture, Baguio remains the Philippines' beloved Summer Capital — a place to breathe, wander, and escape the heat.Listen to more episodes of the GoNOMAD Travel Podcast: Apple Podcasts: Spotify:Read more travel stories on GoNOMAD: https://www.gonomad.comFollow GoNOMAD on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gonomad_travel Mentioned in this episode:Check out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of the Voyascape Travel Network, that brings together the world's best travel podcasts. You can find all of our podcasts from around the world at Voyascape.com. If you are interested in advertising or sponsored content on any of our shows you can find out more at the link below.Voyascape Podcast Network

A French GT champion's skull turns up in a remote forest. In Paris, two hooded intelligence operatives sweat through a heatwave in a stolen Renault with a silencer made from an applesauce pouch. Nearby, a life coach in the suburbs learns the bounty on her head is 70 grand, plus tax. Brad is here to share the intoxicating pleasure of untangling a real-life Masonic conspiracy, dubbed “The Athanor Affair.” It's the unfolding story of a Freemason lodge outside Paris that ran a murder-for-hire service staffed by government spooks playing James Bond, if Bond were a moron. Twenty-two people are on trial at this exact moment, in one of France's most bizarre court cases in modern times. Listen now, before the body count rises. Next week Travis will take us through another Masonic murder, set in the more distant past, in Part II. Thanks to Mathilde Huron for impeccable voice acting. http://mathildehuron.com Brad: https://x.com/LoveAndSaucers https://www.instagram.com/bradwtf/ SuperStructure https://superstructurepodcast.com/ https://www.instagram.com/superstructurepodcast/ Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Check out our new podcast series network Cursed Media! All episodes of Spectral Voyager Season 2 are out now! Binge the entirety of Truly Tradly Deeply by Annie Kelly and Megan Kelly as well as Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows: cursedmedia.net Produced by Liv Agar & Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe and Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com) qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

Bonterra Resources Chairman Cesar Gonzalez discusses new deep drilling from the Barry deposit, where five kilometre-scale holes all intersected mineralization between roughly 750 and 850 metres, supporting the company's down-dip model within the Urban-Barry camp. Gonzalez also updates the Goldfields earn-in, the recent Windfall Impact Benefit Agreement, and how Barry and Gladiator could fit into a broader regional mining complex. The conversation also covers Bonterra's 10,000-to-12,000 metre Desmaraisville program, the ongoing CEO search, and upcoming summer catalysts.

The MAHA Lowdown with Jeff Louderback – Hyperscale data centers promise jobs and tax revenue, but nearby towns face strained water supplies, constant tonal noise, health stress, falling property values, and secretive local deals. Communities demand moratoriums, stronger testing, real environmental reviews, and accountable officials before industrial server campuses reshape rural land, public health, and daily life...

To get to a recent live show in Moorhead, the Minnesota Now team took scenic Highway 10 from St. Paul to learn more about the state from the road. We made a series of audio postcards from notable roadside attractions, including a piece of one of Minnesota's oldest and most recognizable landscapes: tallgrass prairie. The Nature Conservancy recently acquired nearly 2,000 acres of prairieland to protect in Clay County. Their goal is to conserve the plants and create habitat for prairie chickens and pollinators. The site is one of just a few slivers of prairie in a state that used to be covered in tallgrass. Nearby is another of those slivers: the Bluestem Prairie Scientific and Natural Area, which is also protected by the Nature Conservancy. Liz Beery, the group's associate director of grasslands, joined MPR News host Nina Moini for a walk there.

​Let's say your clinic is based in one city, but many of your patients are willing to drive 20 or even 30 miles to see you. They know it's worth traveling for high-quality care. The challenge is that when those same people search online, they often aren't typing in your city's name. They're looking for services closer to where they live or work.So how can your clinic show up in those searches and attract new patients from surrounding cities or suburbs?That's what we're exploring today: how to expand your local SEO reach the right way. We'll cover how Google determines local relevance, the strategies that actually help you appear in nearby city searches, and what to avoid so you don't hurt your visibility.By the end, you'll have a clear roadmap for building a stronger local presence that helps patients in your wider area discover your clinic and book appointments with confidence.Episode webpages, blog, & show notes: https://propelyourcompany.com/rank-in-nearby-cities-local-seo-for-clinics/Send in your questions. ❤ We'd love to hear from you!Webinar: The Hidden SEO Mistakes Costing Clinics Patients Right Now (And Easy Fixes You Can Start Making This Week)Save your spot: https://propelyourcompany.com/june/** Can't make it live? Register anyway. You'll get access to the limited-time replay. *** 

What happens when strong travel demand collides with rising costs and global uncertainty? April's data gives us a clearer picture—and it's more nuanced than you might expect. In this episode of The STR Data Lab, Jamie Lane and Bram Gallagher break down the latest U.S. short-term rental performance and what it signals for the critical summer season ahead.On the surface, the numbers look solid: ADR growth is outpacing inflation, demand continues to climb, and booking trends remain resilient. But beneath that strength are important signals hosts and operators can't ignore—elevated inflation, persistent interest rates, and a shifting supply landscape that could reshape competition in the months ahead.The conversation also dives into one of the biggest demand drivers of the year: the upcoming World Cup. While expectations may have started sky-high, the real story is how demand is spreading—not just across host cities, but into nearby “spillover” markets benefiting from longer stays and regional travel patterns. The result? A summer that's shaping up to be strong—but not without complexity.You don't want to miss this episode!Key Takeaways:ADR growth remains a bright spot: Existing operators are seeing ~6%+ year-over-year rate growth—outpacing inflation and signaling continued pricing power.Supply is accelerating (again): New listings are ramping up, especially in World Cup host markets, which could increase competition heading into peak season.Demand is steady—but not explosive: Overall demand is growing, though slightly trailing supply, leading to relatively flat occupancy levels.World Cup impact goes beyond host cities: Nearby and drive-to markets are seeing major “spillover” demand as travelers extend stays and explore multiple destinations.Macro factors still matter: Elevated inflation, high energy costs, and interest rate uncertainty could influence traveler behavior—especially for international bookings.Sign up for AirDNA for FREE

Inside a climate-controlled room at lender Luxury Asset Capital's Manhattan office, rows of Hermès handbags line the shelves: Mini Kellys in exotic skins worth roughly $75,000 each, diamond-encrusted Birkin bags and other limited-edition pieces that are worth six figures. Nearby, a first edition of The Catcher in the Rye (which can sell for as much as $50,000) sits alongside contemporary artwork, including a Yoshitomo Nara drawing, worth more than $200,000. Down the hall, safes hold scores of Rolex watches, diamonds and gold jewelry, all meticulously tagged and sealed.  And none of it is for sale. The items are all collateral—pledged by ultra-wealthy borrowers seeking quick cash. Denver-based Luxury Asset Capital runs its operation with the basic mechanics of a neighborhood pawn shop and the discretion of a Swiss bank. Borrowers pledge their watches, jewelry, handbags and fine art in exchange for short-term, nonrecourse loans—often funded within a day.  One borrower who manages a large hedge fund hocked his wife's eight-carat diamond ring—worth upwards of $600,000—after receiving a large margin call (the loan was eventually repaid and the ring was returned. Another client once brought in an Emmy award as collateral. By Sergei Klebnikov, Forbes Staff Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This short podcast is from the Bry-X stage of the 7th Annual HVACR Training Symposium: Cheryl Klein's "Surge Protection for HVAC." Cheryl is with DITEK, a veteran-owned company based in Florida, and has extensive knowledge of whole-home surge protection and HVAC-specific surge protectors. HVAC systems may have their lifespans reduced by power surges (tens of thousands of volts within microseconds) or sustained overvoltage. Surge protectors specifically protect the equipment from power surges, though DITEK manufactures products that help manage sustained overvoltage (and undervoltage, which surge protectors CANNOT protect against). Nearby lightning strikes and high voltage from the utility company (especially after undervoltage) are common causes of surges. Everyone in the country has risks of power surges, but some areas are exceptionally high-risk, whether due to utility causes or climate (lightning storms). Degradation is the invisible damage that occurs over time with repeated surges. Destruction can be associated with a specific event, like a direct lightning strike or a blown transformer. Surge protection helps with both; when a surge comes through, the surge protector directs the surge to ground instead of your HVAC equipment. DITEK uses thermally protected MOVs (TPMOVs) to redirect the surge; TPMOVs react to surges and change from a low-impedance state to a high-impedance state, effectively pointing the surges to ground, and only a clamped voltage makes it to the HVAC equipment. However, surge protectors will degrade with each event; DITEK's surge protectors have LEDs indicating their health. NEC 2020 requires surge protection on all dwellings, so many homeowners have whole-home surge protection already installed. Surge protection on the HVAC unit can still be added as an extra layer, which provides better protection for the HVAC system specifically. HVAC surge protection works at the condenser. DITEK's KoolGuard2 (KG2) is a voltage monitor that works on single-phase equipment under 40 continuous amps. It cuts power if the power exceeds or dips too far below the typical voltage, and then it restores power after three minutes. It also does not require programming, but it has a few best practices, such as reducing lead length to improve the clamping voltage and keeping protected and unprotected wires in separate conduits. Ground must also be within code have low enough impedance to redirect the surges effectively; the resistance can only be measured properly with a megohmmeter or clamp meter. DITEK also has three-phase surge protection for commercial equipment and has options for BAS systems.   Learn more about DITEK's products and DITEK University at https://www.diteksurgeprotection.com/.  Have a question that you want us to answer on the podcast? Submit your questions at https://www.speakpipe.com/hvacschool. Purchase your tickets or learn more about the 7th Annual HVACR Training Symposium at https://hvacrschool.com/symposium. Subscribe to our podcast on your iPhone or Android. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. Check out our handy calculators here or on the HVAC School Mobile App for Apple and Android.

#158 Exploring Amsterdam's STRAAT Museum: A Street Art Wonderland You Can't Miss In this episode of The Everyday Bucket List Podcast, we dive into the vibrant world of the STRAAT Museum in Amsterdam—a haven for street art and graffiti lovers. From massive wall-sized murals to immersive installations created by artists from around the globe, this isn't your typical museum experience. In this episode, we cover: What makes the STRAAT Museum unique, from its industrial warehouse setting to its ever-changing art collection How to get there easily via the free ferry from Amsterdam Central Station Notable artists to look out for, including Eduardo Kobra's famous Anne Frank mural Tips for exploring the museum, using guided tours, and capturing stunning photos Nearby spots to grab a bite or drink, including hip cafés and creative restaurants Join us as we navigate the museum's panoramic deck, admire bold artwork, and share practical tips to make your visit smooth and unforgettable. Whether you're a street art enthusiast or just curious about Amsterdam's creative side, this episode is packed with inspiration and insider advice. CLICK THE LINKS BELOW OR CUT AND PASTE THEM INTO YOUR BROWSER: Binge-listen to my Seasonal Bucket List playlist https://bit.ly/3SPiiVN Binge-listen to my playlist about traveling to Europe https://bit.ly/4g4Bb07 Listen to these episodes next: 6+ Quirky Bucket List Stops & Everyday Adventures Inspired By Them Spotify & Apple (Ep 151)  19 Cheap Ideas to FULLY Enjoy Spring & FINALLY Escape Winter Spotify or Apple (Ep152)  Spring Bucket List: See the Most Beautiful Tulip Garden in the World Spotify or Apple (Ep 157) RESOURCES: Grab a copy of The Everyday Bucket List Book https://amzn.to/3vwxz2K Support my work: https://buymeacoffee.com/edbl Connect with me: Website: KarenCordaway.com Twitter (X): @KarenCordaway https://x.com/karencordaway Pinterest: @Everyday_Bucket_List https://www.pinterest.com/EverydayBucketList/ TikTok: @Everyday_Bucket_List https://www.tiktok.com/@everyday_bucket_list Need a coach? Hire me to help with bucket list goals: https://karencordaway.com/contact/ If you're enjoying this podcast, please rate and review it to let me know what content you want more of! Disclaimer: Some outbound links financially benefit the podcast. Using them is a small way to support the show at zero cost to you. I only endorse products I personally use or would recommend to close friends and family. https://karencordaway.com/disclaimer/

In this episode, we perceive a moment of clarity at the end of a dilemma, as depicted in Sangam Literary work, Aganaanooru 245, penned by Madurai Maruthan Ilanaakanaar. Set in the ‘Paalai’ or ‘Drylands landscape’, the verse presents surprising details about a particular animal in this domain. ‘உயிரினும் சிறந்த ஒண் பொருள் தருமார்நன்று புரி காட்சியர் சென்றனர், அவர்’ எனமனை வலித்து ஒழியும் மதுகையள் ஆதல்நீ நற்கு அறிந்தனைஆயின், நீங்கி,மழை பெயல் மறந்த கழை திரங்கு இயவில்,செல் சாத்து எறியும் பண்பு இல் வாழ்க்கைவல் வில் இளையர் தலைவர், எல் உற,வரி கிளர் பணைத் தோள், வயிறு அணி திதலை,அரியலாட்டியர் அல்கு மனை வரைப்பில்,மகிழ் நொடை பெறாஅராகி, நனை கவுள்கான யானை வெண் கோடு சுட்டி,மன்று ஓடு புதல்வன் புன் தலை நீவும்அரு முனைப் பாக்கத்து அல்கி, வைகுற,நிழல் படக் கவின்ற நீள்அரை இலவத்துஅழல் அகைந்தன்ன அலங்குசினை ஒண் பூக்குழல் இசைத் தும்பி ஆர்க்கும் ஆங்கண்,குறும் பொறை உணங்கும் ததர் வெள் என்புகடுங் கால் ஒட்டகத்து அல்கு பசி தீர்க்கும்கல் நெடுங் கவலைய கானம் நீந்தி,அம் மா அரிவை ஒழிய,சென்மோ நெஞ்சம்! வாரலென் யானே. In this trip to this harsh domain, we get to glimpse at many unique sights, as we listen to the man say these words to his heart: “If you know very well that she has the strength to say, ‘Wishing to bring back that radiant thing, which has more worth than life, having the wisdom to do the right things, he has left', and remain at home, then, parting away, you may go, O heart, to those spaces, which the rains have forsaken and where dried bamboos abound. And here, attacking merchants, who tread these paths, those men with sturdy bows live a life lacking culture. When night falls, their leader reaches the gates of homes, which belong to maiden, with thick bamboo-like arms having radiant lines, and bellies with beauty spots many, who sell filtered toddy. Not finding that drink of ecstasy, he would return home, and pointing to the white tusk, which had come from a wild elephant with moistened cheeks, he would caress the coarse-haired head of his son, playing around the house. In such a wild community, stay the night, and leave by morning, to those places, where upon the swaying branches of the silk-cotton tree, with a thick trunk, one which renders an exquisite shade, radiant flowers bloom, akin to flames fluttering, and bees buzz around like flutes. Nearby upon a short boulder, lies drying white bones, which satisfies the deep hunger of camels with fast legs. Traversing these stony, long paths in the scrub jungle, leaving that beautiful, dark-skinned maiden here, you may go, O heart! I shan't come!” Let’s walk on and explore those barren spaces! The man starts with an ‘if clause’ to his heart. He tells his heart, ‘If you know one thing for sure, you may leave, and that is if you know the lady has the ability to remain at home and understand the logic and importance of the journey to be taken in search of wealth’. Then, he launches into a description of the place where he is asking his heart to leave, and to do that, he focuses on the denizens of the said place. First, we catch a glimpse of merchants walking here and then robbers attacking them. The man decides to zoom on the leader of this rowdy gang and follows him as he walks in the late evening hour, towards the home of toddy sellers, who happen to be women with bamboo-like arms and beautiful bellies. Here’s a subtle indicator that women had a hand in handling trade in those times.  Returning, we learn that all that toddy is sold out and the man returns home, and he points to the white tusk, which he had taken for the barter, which had come from an elephant in musth, and caresses the head of his young son, as a way of inspiring the lad to aim for great things in life, like hunting down an elephant. Leaving aside the animal rights implications, let’s just appreciate this moment of bonding between a robber father and his son. The man had been telling this story only to predict that the heart would end up staying in such a community, and then in the morning, it would leave to a place, where silk-cotton trees were in full bloom, and their flowers would appear like spots of flames atop the branches. When we are delighting, ‘Oh! What a pretty sight!’, the man turns our attention to some white bones lying scattered on nearby rocks. Remember how some merchants got attacked in the beginning of this tale? Perhaps all the scavengers have had their fill and only the drying, white bones of those dead merchants are left. Now the man talks about something fascinating. He says a camel would come that way and feed on those bones to allay its burning hunger. Here lies not one but two things that stunned me no end! My first question was, ‘What is a camel doing in South India?’. Next question, okay maybe there’s some reason that there are camels, but aren’t they herbivores and why is this verse saying they are eating bones? Surely the Sangam folk must have got their animals mixed up! Turns out they have not! Though it’s true that camels are not native to Tamil land, it shows evidence of trade with other regions, and it seems like a sound idea of those merchants to bring this animal with steady legs for their journeys through the drylands. Next, coming to the bones, I learnt that camels do eat bones and assorted other things like leather and skin, whenever their calcium and phosphorus levels dip down. Apparently, it’s a phenomenon called ‘osteophagia’. As it is these animals are wandering about desert landscapes and guess it makes sense that these animals have to make do with what they get and not be strict about their vegan diets!  Back from our consorting with camels, we see that the man has been talking to his heart, asking it to leave to such arid landscapes, leaving the lady, and concluding that he was not planning on accompanying his heart. In essence, a clear decision in favour of staying at home, against the nudge of his heart, which was pushing him to part with the lady. This is yet another case of the man separating his heart from himself! What is the heart if not a part in the man’s mind, which was provoking him to choose a different path? This demarcation of the man and his heart in two thousand year old poem makes me connect the same principle to modern psychological techniques like ‘Internal Family Systems’, which ask the ‘Self’ in the mind to separate from the emotional parts to truly understand what’s going on in the psyche! A valuable lesson in dealing with dilemmas, as sensed intuitively by our ancestors with their deep understanding of the human mind!  

6. Guest: Lorenzo Fiori. Fiori addresses the suspicious poisoning of wolves in Italy's Abruzzo National Park, noting conflicts with local farmers. He recommends travelers visit the historic "star city" of Palmanova and nearby Roman sites to escape over-tourism in major cities. The segment concludes with a culinary tip for preparing a traditional potato dish. 61600 NETHERLANDS

“What is truth?” This question was posed by Pontius Pilate in Gospel of John 18:38 as he interrogated Our Lord shortly before His brutal execution. It is a question at once poignant in its aim, sharp in its focus, and profound in its depth—and one that is far from new to humanity.From the moment we first gazed upon the stars in the night sky, we have stood in awe of our surroundings, seeking answers to the deepest questions of existence. The human intellect, by its very nature, strives to apprehend and understand reality; indeed, our minds hunger for it. Truth, simply defined, is “what actually is.” Modern man, unfortunately, gleefully defies this definition. He likes to say, “truth is relative”. There is no objective truth to reality. Truth is what I say it is, and how dare you Christian, try to impose your truth on others. Consider, dear friends, the image placed before us on the parish bulletin. It stands in quiet contrast to the spirit of defiance we so often encounter. It is the renowned fresco by Raphael, painted within the halls of the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City (just a few doors down from the Sistine Chapel) between 1509 and 1511. This masterpiece, known as The School of Athens, gathers together the greatest minds of the ancient world.There we see Ptolemy holding the sphere of the earth, striving to map the movements of the heavens. Nearby stands Pythagoras, immersed in numbers and harmony. And Socrates, ever the questioner, engages in dialogue, seeking truth through reason.Yet, our eyes are drawn, almost irresistibly, to the center, where two towering figures stand: Plato and Aristotle. Plato gestures upward, toward the heavens, teaching that truth lies beyond, in the realm of eternal forms. Aristotle, in contrast, extends his hand toward the earth, reminding us that truth is also found here, in the physical world we can touch and see with our senses.What a testimony this is to the human longing for truth—to the relentless pursuit of what is real, what is good, what is eternal. The Greeks sought truth with passion, with discipline, with all the power of the human mind. And yet, my brothers and sisters, this is where the story does not end but where it is fulfilled.For into this great human search steps Jesus Christ.In the Gospel this Sunday, we encounter the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Like those philosophers of old, they too were seekers. They had placed their hope in Jesus. They believed they had found the truth. But then came the scandal of the crucifixion… and with it, confusion, sorrow, and doubt. Their hopes seemed shattered.Or were they?For the Risen Lord draws near. He walks beside them, though they do not yet recognize Him. And in that sacred encounter, He reveals something astonishing: that truth is not merely an idea to be grasped, nor a theory to be proven but a Person to be encountered.A truth more profound, more mysterious, and more beautiful than anything they could have ever imagined. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

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Link Up w/The Morning Sickness Digitally All Over:Instagram: @hms_98_official, @bosskupd, @bretvesely, @dickToledoX/Twitter: @HMSon98, @DickToledo, @bretveselyFacebook: @HMSKUPDYouTube: @hmspodcast9320, @98kupdRequest/Call in/Wakeup Song line:(IN AZ) 602.585.9800More HMS: holmbergpodcast.com, 98kupd.comEmail: dtoledo@98kupd.com, bvesely@98kupd.com, bbogen@98kupd.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of the Explore Oregon Podcast, host Zach Urness talks about the popular mini cabins at Detroit Lake State Park and great places to visit nearby during the spring. The cabins were originally intended as staff housing for seasonal employees, but in the off-season, they've becoming popular for visitors that might otherwise not visit. Urness talks to the rangers who made the cabins happen, before highlighting five fun adventures nearby that are good to visit in spring.

5. Landing Success and the Mystery of Amos-6 In December 2015, SpaceX achieved its first successful land landing at Cape Canaveral, overcoming concerns that the sonic booms might damage nearby spy satellites. However, the company faced a major setback in 2016 when the Amos-6 rocket exploded on the pad during fueling. Musk briefly entertained a "sniper theory" involving competitors, though the cause was technical. This period showcased Musk's intense management style, where he demanded data-driven results while pushing his young workforce to be "flawless" to ensure the existential survival of the company. (5)1897 WAR OF THE WORLDS

  Jeremy Zakis describes Dallas, an eleven-year-old dog, patrolling to protect his property from aggressive cockatoos that previously dismantled a neighbor's roof, with a gang of up to seven birds conducting reconnaissance from a nearby pine tree while targeting solar panels. 2

Jeff Bliss notes Governor Newsom promotes high-speed rail despite a nearby fire and no track laid, while facing skepticism about his presidential potential and California's ongoing infrastructure struggles.1908 TULARE COUNTY