Do some armchair traveling and see the breathtaking vistas of all 50 states while learning about their histories

An abstract aerial view of a sand dune at sunset at Imperial Sand Dunes, Glamis, California.

BIS Bulletin No 7, April 2020. Past epidemics had long-lasting effects on economies through illness and the loss of lives, while Covid-19 is marked by widespread containment measures and relatively lower fatalities among young people. The short-term costs of Covid-19 will probably dwarf those of past epidemics, due to the unprecedented and synchronised global sudden stop in economic activity induced by containment measures. The current estimated impact on global GDP growth for 2020 is around -4%, with substantial downside risks if containment policies are prolonged. Output losses are larger for major economies.

BIS Press Release - Easing trade tensions lift sentiment: BIS Quarterly Review, 8 December 2019

Basel Committee Press release "Basel Committee meets to review vulnerabilities and emerging risks, advance supervisory initiatives and promote Basel III implementationl", 27 February 2020.

BIS Press Release - Shaping the future of payments: BIS Quarterly Review, 1 March 2020

Interview with Ms Isabel Schnabel, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, in To Vima (Greek daily newspaper), conducted by Mr Angelos Athanasopoulos and published on 4 April 2020.

Interview with Mr Luis de Guindos, Vice-President of the European Central Bank, and La Vanguardia, conducted by Mr Manel Pérez and published on 12 April 2020.

Interview with Ms Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, and Le Parisien, conducted by Mr Matthieu Pelloli and published on 9 April 2020.

Interview with Ms Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, and France Inter, conducted by Mr Ali Baddou and Ms Carine Bécard on 9 April 2020.

Interview with Mr Luis de Guindos, Vice-President of the European Central Bank, and Expresso, conducted by Mr João Silvestre on 15 April 2020.

LACO AT HOME Features Sheku Kanneh-Mason Interview and Performance & More  Broadway World

The 2020 NFL Draft was the most watched ever, with more than 55 million U.S. viewers tuning in during the unique three-day event.

A woman found not criminally responsible for fatally stabbing a stranger in the heart at the makeup counter of a Toronto drugstore five years ago could ultimately be allowed to live in the community if the mental health facility where she is staying decides she can, the Ontario Review Board says.

SOLIDWORKS Multibody Part Assembly An Exploded View is used to communicate your design or drawings in a more proper and precise way. It really helps to clearly understand the sequential order of the assembly. Moreover, the exploded view is used

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The post SOLIDWORKS 2020 Enhancement Exploded View for Multibody Part appeared first on SOLIDWORKS Tech Blog.

CNA Staff, Apr 14, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Cardinal George Pell has said culture wars and anti-Catholic sentiment could have played a part in the decision of Victoria police to pursue charges against him, even while they lacked supportive evidence of the allegations in his case.

Cardinal Pell described Victoria police as having “advertised for business” against him in an April 14 interview with Sky News Australia. Pell was asked about the decision by Victoria police to launch an open-ended investigation into him, despite having received no complaints of a crime.

The interview was Pell’s first televised appearance since his release last week after more than 400 days in prison. On the evidence of a single accuser, Pell was convicted in December 2018 of sexually assaulting two choirboys at the Melbourne Cathedral in 1996.

On April 7, the Australian High Court unanimously ruled that the evidence presented during the trial would not have allowed the jury to avoid reasonable doubt and ordered Pell’s acquittal and release.

On the day of his release, Pell told CNA that “The only basis for long term healing is truth and the only basis for justice is truth, because justice means truth for all.”

Pell spoke with Sky News’ Andrew Bolt about the decision by local police to bring 28 allegations of sexual abuse against him, only to see 27 of them dropped before reaching court. The remaining allegation resulted in Pell’s conviction by a Victoria jury and eventual acquittal by the High Court.

Asked directly if he thought police were “out to get” him, Pell said he did not know.

“I don’t know how you explain it, but it is certainly extraordinary,” Pell said.

Asked if he thought there was an anti-Catholic bias at work in the decision of police to charge him and by judges at the Victoria Court of Appeal to sustain his conviction, despite the evidence which eventually led to his exoneration, Pell said it was a possibility.

“I’ve seen too many people [make the leap] from possible to probable to fact. Certainly, people do not like Christians who teach Christianity, especially on life and family and issues like that.”

“The culture wars are real,” Pell said. “There is a systematic attempt to remove the Judeo-Christian legal foundations [on for example] marriage, life, gender, sex.”

“Unfortunately, there’s less rational discussion and more playing the man, more abuse and intimidation, and that’s not good for a democracy.”

During the interview, the cardinal was also asked if he believed that there was any connection between his work to reform the Vatican finances during his time as Prefect for the Economy and the emergence of charges against him in Victoria.

“Most of the senior people in Rome who are in any way sympathetic to financial reform believe that they are [connected]. But I have seen too much from people, as I said, going to possibility to probability to fact – I don’t have any evidence of that.”

“But one of my fears was that what we had done [to reform the Vatican finances] would remain hidden for ten years or so, and they’d would be revealed and the baddies would say ‘Well, Pell and Casey [Pell’s chief advisor] were in charge then, they turned a blind eye and did nothing to it.’”

“Thanks be to God all that’s gone, because there was a flurry of articles just before Christmas exposing all sorts of things like a disastrous purchase – actually a couple of them – in London, and it was very clearly demonstrated that we tenaciously opposed those things.”

“What we were pushing and saying has been massively vindicated,” Pell said. “Now you can see why they sacked the auditor [Libero Milone], why they got rid of the external auditors.”

Asked how high up in the curial hierarchy financial corruption goes, Pell said “Who knows? It’s a little bit like [anti-Catholicism] in Victoria, you’re not quite sure where the vein runs, how thick and broad it is, and how high it goes.”

But the cardinal also made clear that, in financial reforming efforts, Pope Francis had “absolutely” supported him and that “at the feet of the pope we’ve got Cardinal [Pietro] Parolin, he’s certainly not corrupt. Just how high up [the corruption goes] is an interesting hypothesis.”

Pell said that despite the difficulties he faced in prison, where he was held in solitary confinement for much of the time for his own safety, he bore no anger towards his accuser.

“I’ve got no anger, no hostility towards my complainant, I never have,” said Pell.

“I am called to forgive what happened to me that might have been a little unjust, and there is this heroic Christian call to forgiveness in the most appalling circumstances.”

But, Pell said, he had no hesitation in condemning the terrible scandal of sexual abuse in the Church.

“I totally condemn those sorts of activities [of abuse] and the damage that it has done to people – and I have seen the damage that it has done to people.”

“One of the things that grieves me is the suggestion that I’m anti-victim or not sufficiently sympathetic. I devoted a lot of time and energy to trying to get [victims] justice, and to get them help and compensation.”

Pell noted that as archbishop in the 1990s he set up the Melbourne Response to deal with sexual abuse in the Church and bringing about justice and compensation for victims.

“I worked hard,” Pell said, “when it wasn’t easy or fashionable, to get something in place – not run by clerics – that would give some protection and redress to these people, and I have worked consistently at that since at least the middle 90s.”

The cardinal said he had kept the same routine while in prison that, as a bishop, he had often urged on priests who found themselves “in a bit of trouble;” getting up early and at a set time, praying, exercising, and eating well.

“If you can’t pray when you are in trouble, your faith is very weak indeed.”

Asked if he had ever asked God, in the words of Christ on the cross, “why have you forsaken me?” Pell responded “No.”

“But I have said ‘My God, my God, what are you up to?’”

“One of the strangest teachings about Christianity – and the most useful – is that you can offer up your suffering,” Pell said. “Suffering is not just a brute fact. A Christian can offer that up to the Good God.”

By Andrea Picciotti-Bayer

Our parish’s fall festival was coming to an end. As I rounded up my little ones, I spotted an acquaintance. Antoinette is almost 95 years old and now wheelchair bound, but her incandescent smile inevitably draws people towards her. “Have you had a nice evening?” I asked.
 
 “Oh yes,” she replied, “I spoke for a long time with Father.” 
 
“You know,” I said in a hushed tone, “I think he is a mystic.”
 
 “Yes,” Antoinette said, taking a deep breath, “he saw right to my soul.”
 
A mystic is not some sort of Catholic tarot card reader. A mystic is, in the eyes of traditional Christianity, someone God has given certain gifts and graces to accomplish a specific purpose for the salvation of souls. Some of the Church’s notable mystics include great saints like St. Padre Pio, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Catherine of Siena. Their extraordinary ability to sense God transformed their hearts. Theirs were hearts moved to quiet and solitude when necessary, but also to action and service to souls and the Church. They were obedient to God and Church, and – not unrelatedly – they were profoundly humble. 
 
Now, we shouldn’t think that the exceptional relationship that mystics had with God is just for an elite, holy few. No, not at all. Mystics walk among us in our everyday lives – Antoinette’s and my parish priest, for example – and a mystical relationship with God is open to us all. In fact, God longs to connect with each one of our hearts and transform them for His glory. To that end, National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez has just compiled a beautiful daily devotional, A Year with the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living, that can help open our hearts to such prayerful, mystical encounters with God. Lopez’ message is simple: “You too can be a mystic.”
 
“I don’t pretend to either be a mystic or an expert on mysticism,” she writes. “But I do pray enough to know that so very few us of us have plumbed the depths of what God wants to reveal to us and do in us through prayer.”
 
A Year with the Mystics features brief, daily meditations grounded in the writings and prayers of the Catholic Church’s well-known mystics – Padre Pio, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross, for example.  Lopez also includes the words of “active saints in the world,” figures not conventionally thought of as mystics such as Mother Teresa and Mother Angelica.
 
The book is not a formulaic, chapter-by-chapter guide to the interior life. Rather, each day’s reflection invites the reader into a particular contemplation. “Entering into the light,” “Divine friendship,” “Looking in the mirror, seeing light and virtue,” “Pray without ceasing? A how-to” are some of my most favorite daily invitations. Lopez follows up with a brief introduction to an inspired writing, the excerpt itself, a consideration and then a final prayer. The reading and daily meditation takes a brief 15 minutes, but it can inspire an entire holy hour or direct your entire day. It’s worth pointing out that the book is beautifully bound and sturdy enough to survive transport in a purse, briefcase, or the door pocket of the car so that not one day of contemplation is missed.    
 
I have turned to this little volume often in my prayers since receiving my review copy. And I have found great consolation – the kind of consolation I saw on Antoinette’s smiling face after she spoke with Father John at the parish festival.  
 
For most of us, the mystical union with God will be found as contemplatives in an often loud and busy world. Inviting the mystics to accompany us along our journey of contemplation presents an opportunity for incredible growth in our prayerful encounter with God. In A Year with the Mystics, Kathryn Jean Lopez has mapped a lovely and useful path to facilitate this encounter. “Be not afraid as you’ve heard and will read,” she writes “Let him bring you to a peace that surpasses all understanding, even as he brings you into a deeper understanding in the heart of the Trinity.”

By Andrea Picciotti-Bayer

Two years ago, I joined a Catholic women’s symposium that discusses the weighty matters affecting our Church and our culture. One member of our group recently told us that her elderly father was in his last days. She asked for prayers and any resources we might have to guide her and her siblings and mother in navigating weighty end-of-life issues she expected they would face. There was a flurry of supportive responses and commitments to pray, but it took a while before anyone could forward along any helpful material. For my part, I knew of nothing to suggest off-hand.

I won’t face this problem again, thanks to Father Jeffrey Kirby’s We are the Lord’s: A Catholic Guide to Difficult End-of-Life Questions. A copy of this excellent, straight-forward end-of-life book arrived in the mail a few weeks ago, though, alas, a few days after my colleague’s father passed away (a “happy death” with family around, she relayed) and the email thread ended. Kirby sets forth basic principles of discernment for answering some of the hardest – and most common – questions surrounding end-of-life medical care and treatment. He also addresses the challenging practical issues that face the dying and their family members at this time.

Father Kirby begins by confronting the great modern misunderstanding of the human condition and dying. “No person is a burden,” he writes. Yes, this may seem obvious to so many us, but it’s no less important a truth, because we live in a culture that is “intoxicated with utilitarianism” – the notion that “any inconvenience for another person, or any service that makes us uncomfortable, is unmerited.” Christian teaching, however, has “always asserted that the only response to a person is love.” Loving the dying – seeking their good, delighting in them – exposes, Kirby argues, the “selfishness that disguises as compassion.” For children of God, Kirby reminds us, “quality of life” is “matured by love and an openness to live with inconvenience, discomfort, imperfection and suffering.”

Kirby outlines three important principles of discernment to guide bioethical and end-of-life decisions. One, we must recognize God as our Creator and accept the existence of an objective order of moral truth that is beyond us. “Our personal will, or desire for autonomy, are not sovereign,” he writes. “These must be placed within our human dignity and the objective order of moral goodness.” Two, we must understand our particular vocation. That is, we have to consider our duties and responsibilities toward others, our talents and capabilities, as well as the state of our souls. Three, we must appreciate the difference between what is morally obligatory (ordinary care, in the medical context) and what is morally optional (extraordinary care).

My own parents recently told me that they have “all of their affairs in order.” One such affair is the advanced directive, a summary of a person’s wishes in various medical situations. Father Kirby notes, however, that while such planning is prudent, it does not completely resolve end-of-life questions. As bioethicists often say, “When you have one situation, you have one situation.” Advanced directives, therefore, must always should be understood as guidelines and, most importantly, never can betray moral truths in light of the unique set of circumstances a person faces.

On a most practical level, We are the Lord’s includes a chapter that addresses specific medical questions. It’s a quick reference for readers facing urgent decisions. One common medical concern, for instance, is the continued provision of nutrition and hydration. Kirby is unequivocal in explaining that unless a person’s body cannot assimilate them or it becomes harmful, at no point should a sick person be denied food or water.

The overarching lesson of We are the Lord’s is to abide, and encourage our loved ones to abide, in a spirit of abandonment to the will of God. In living. And dying. The book’s title – coming, as it does, from Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans —reminds us how end-of-life decisions for ourselves or others should be faced: “For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”

I’d not only recommend reading We are the Lord’s, I’d also suggest having a copy or two of Father Jeffrey Kirk’s handy guide available for the next time a friend, family member or colleague faces an end-of-life issue.

CONTEXT:

Recommendations conflict regarding universal application of formal screening instruments in primary care (PC) and PC-like settings for autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

CONTEXT:

Research reveals racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in autism diagnosis; there is limited information on potential disparities related to other dimensions of services.

The Importance of Being Earnest

As far as viral beauty trends go there’s no denying that the use of charcoal-based products is still going strong from face masks and sponges to teeth whitening powders.

SPENDING less on skin care products can be tempting. Aren’t all the products the same? Don’t they all just use the same ingredients? You’re basically just paying for the brand name, right? It’s far too easy to fall into this trap – the trap which leads us to try and convince ourselves that the dollar store brand stuff is just as good as high-end beauty products.

Dandelion Cafe

MY mother was known for her pizza but they were never round, not when we were growing up anyway. She would pull them from the ancient coal-fired cast iron range in the living room on long blackened oblong trays, the dough she had spent the day making puffed and undulating but always thin and super chewy.

Calabash African Restaurant

British Olympic Association chairman Sir Hugh Robertson has been selected to lead an independent governance review of World Rugby.

By Kristy Dorsey

Celtic Connections

Celtic Connections

Celtic Connections

Celtic Connections

Swadish – Modern Indian Cuisine

Zinfandel Gastro Bar

Temaki

Thyme: Lebanese Street Sajeria

FRANKLY? The restaurant world is going mad. Consider this: I order a home delivery from Yu-ca-taco early on Friday evening. For Saturday night. By text of course.

DRAKE - DARK LANE DEMO TAPES

FACE it – we are going nowhere. Even if we had a particular place to venture the regulations would not permit. For the foreseeable we shall have to contract out our travelling to others. On the upside, no airport hassle. On the downside, no giant Toblerone.

Co-hosts Keith Lemon and Anna Richardson talk to Gemma Dunn about their new show, The Fantastical Factory Of Curious Craft.

THE market for TV historians is crowded and fiercely competitive. Drop your guard for a second and Dan Snow or Bettany Hughes will be in the door and taking your gig faster than you can don a pair of those special white gloves all in the trade must have. Lucy Worsley made her name by combining immense knowledge – she is the chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces – with a steadfast dedication to raiding the dressing up box.

THE SCOTTISH Government is reviewing its Covid-19 testing strategy after the Deputy First Minster has been left “frustrated” by reports home care workers have been told to travel to the other side of Scotland for tests.

In 1951, John A. Stokes joined other black students in a strike over the condition of their school and subsequently became a figure in Brown v. Board of Ed. Hear his story and the message he wants to share with students today.

Proposed changes to the massive trove of civil rights data the U.S. Department of Education collects from every public school in the country has drawn organized praise from advocates concerned about anti-Semitism in schools.

A new mandate under the Every Student Succeeds Act requires a top-to-bottom look at how such districts deploy their money, staff, and the time used to support improvement.

Theatre

EVERY crime fiction fan will be familiar with the good cop-bad cop routine. One officer is friendly with a suspect to secure their cooperation, the other plays hard ball; one cop is a stickler for the rules, the other is a maverick.

HOW does an opposition oppose without appearing to oppose for opposition’s sake? That is the tricky situation in which Labour now finds itself as the death toll from coronavirus reaches a horrific new high.

Effective management approaches are not skills principals typically learn through the traditional pathways of education. To fill the gap, they are turning to business programs and publications.

FIRST it was Bond, then Peter Rabbit, followed by The Secret Garden. Due to the coronavirus crisis, film distributors have been pulling movies from the schedules left, right and centre and postponing their releases till later in the year.