Fr. Seraphim reads a section, To Pray is to Follow, from the booklet On Prayer. The text can be found at mullmonastery.com.

In the year 429, eighty thousand Vandals crossed from Spain into Africa and, in the course of ten years of massacre and pillage, gained control of most of the Roman territories of North Africa. Many people picture these barbarians as pagans, but they were in fact Arian heretics, who under their leader Genseric began a fierce persecution of the Church wherever they encountered it. The tortures that many thousands endured in their confession of the Faith are too horrible to describe here; the clergy were singled out for special cruelty.   Today we especially commemorate the Orthodox faithful whom the Vandals burned to death in their church, who went on singing hymns and praising God until the moment of their death. We also commemorate the three hundred Martyrs in Carthage who died by the sword rather than submit to Arian baptism.   The death of Genseric in 454 brought little relief, for after a short hiatus his successors Huneric (477-484) and Gonthamund (484-497) continued the persecution as viciously as before. Christian Africa lived under the Vandal yoke for almost 100 years: freedom from persecution was not secure until Justinian's forces overcame and drove off the Vandals in 523-525. The African Church, once a beacon of Christianity, never recovered its former vitality.

On this feast of Ss. Peter and Paul, Fr. Andrew speaks on why these two apostles are so celebrated and what we can do to imitate them.

Commenting on the epistle reading for the Feast of the Archangels, Fr. Andrew discusses how we can follow Christ, the 'Leader of our Salvation.'

Fr. Philip calls us to engage in the practices of prayer, fasting and generosity - the basic building blocks of Christian faithfulness.

All disciples of Jesus are called to follow Him, in the power of the Holy Spirit, into a new life of holiness.

We have everything that we need to follow in the path of the apostles and saints in humbly obeying our Lord. That is how we can become radiant with the divine glory and obey the Savior’s calling: “Follow Me.”

This week we read the epistle through the lenses of St. John Chrysostom, St. John Climacus, the book of Genesis and Isaiah’s portrait of the Suffering Servant. Here we are given the hope to continue following our great forerunner Jesus. The gospel reading adds to this the importance of faith, prayer and fasting, as we set our faces towards the cross.

useful Chrome/Firefox add-on that finds your X/Twitter friends on Bluesky #

In the wake of the Roman Catholic Papal visit to the US, Pope Francis received much adulation for his message of inclusiveness. Fr Thomas reminds us that while the gospel calls us to love all people, we're also called to love a holy God who separates us from the world of sin and leads us to a transformed life.

In this convicting message, Fr. Tom shows us that following Christ can - and will - cost us everything; however, we are promised so much more here and in the world to come.

Fr. Gregory Hallam gives the sermon on the first Sunday of Great Lent

Fr. Emmanuel Kahn reminds us that it is good that we should understand the choice before each of us. Will we continue to sin or will we seek to be holy?

Bobby Maddex interviews Fr. Lawrence Farley, host of the AFR podcast Coffee Cup Commentaries and the author of the new AFP book Following Egeria: A Visit to the Holy Land Through Time and Space.

Fr. Gregory Hallam joins us from St. Aidan's Orthodox Church in Manchester, United Kingdom, to speak about a new educational program for children designed to teach them about the Orthodox Faith. It is freely available worldwide and it is called Followers. This program is under the pastoral leadership of Metropolitan Silouan, primate of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of the British Isles and Ireland.

Who follows Christ and who stays behind?

Sunday of the Holy Cross. Mark 8:34-38; 9:1

The collision, involving a white BMW X6 and a black Kia Ceed taxi, happened on Cochrane Avenue at about 03:05.

The A27 has re-opened in both directions after the road was shut on Tuesday morning.

Emergency services were called to the blaze on Tuesday evening.

The Gloucester centre is eager to emulate the exploits and travel of idol Jamie Roberts.

Derbyshire Police appeal for witnesses and dashcam footage after the death of a man in his 50s.

Yesterday I noticed that the Spotify Windows desktop app had changed and instead of a “follow” button under a playlist there was now a heart icon. If you hover over the heart it says “Save to Your Library” and when you click on it the playlist appears with all of the other playlists that you...

The UK new car market fell for the second time this year, down by -6.0% in October to 144,288 new registrations, according to the latest figures from the Society of […]

The post UK’s EV sales up thanks to discounting, Elon Musk wealth leaps $15 billion following Trump win appeared first on ShinyShiny.

This isn’t the first time a president claimed democracy was ‘under attack’

We develop and test a theoretical model that explores how individuals appraise different types of stressful job demands and how these cognitive appraisals impact job performance. The model also explores how charismatic leaders influence such appraisal and reaction processes, and by virtue of these effects, how leaders can influence the impact of stressful demands on their followers' job performance. In Study 1 (n = 74 U.S. Marines), our model was largely supported in hierarchical linear modeling analyses. Marines whose leaders were judged by superiors to exhibit charismatic leader behaviors appraised challenge stressors as being more challenging, and were more likely to respond to this appraisal with higher performance. Although charismatic leader behaviors did not influence how hindrance stressors were appraised, they negated the strong negative effect of hindrance appraisals on job performance. In Study 2 (n = 270 U.S. Marines) charismatic leader behaviors were measured through the eyes of the focal Marines, and the interactions found in Study 1 were replicated. Results from multilevel structural equation modeling analyses also indicate that charismatic leader behaviors moderate both the mediating role of challenge appraisals in transmitting the effect of challenge stressors to job performance, and the mediating role of hindrance appraisals in transmitting the effect of hindrance stressors to job performance. Implications of our results to theory and practice are discussed. Keywords: stress, leadership, job performance, multilevel modeling

"Best Places to Work" (BPTW) and similar competitions are a proliferating form of third party employment branding. Little is known, however, about how single or repeated third party employment branding occurrences relate to key human capital outcomes. Extending signaling theory by considering signal credibility and comparability, we use archival and survey data from 624 BPTW participants in sixteen competitions across a three-year period to develop and test hypotheses linking BPTW certifications to collective turnover rates and key informant perceptions of applicant pool quality. We find that certifications are associated with lower turnover rates, and in addition, propose competing crystallization and celebrity hypotheses that model turnover trajectories with repeated certifications, finding diminishing marginal turnover reductions across multiple certifications. We also examine company size and industry job opening moderators, finding that as certifications increase, applicant pool quality is (1) higher in smaller companies and (2) higher when job openings are scarcer. Finally, beyond being certified or not, we find supplemental evidence for effects of the specific certification level achieved (e.g., 2nd versus 15th). This investigation advances theory related to collective turnover, applicant pool quality, and employment branding, and is relevant to company decisions about seeking or re-seeking third party certifications.

Research about the effects of an organization's general reputation following a negative event remains equivocal: Some studies have found that a high reputation is a benefit because of the stock of social capital and goodwill it generates; others have found it to be a burden because of the greater stakeholder attention and violation of expectations associated with a negative event. We theorize that stakeholders' level of organizational identification helps explain which mechanisms are more dominant. We test our hypotheses on a sample of legislative references associated with NCAA major infractions from 1999-2009. Our results indicate that a high reputation is a burden for an organization when considering low-identification stakeholder support: As the number of legislative references increases, a high-reputation university will receive fewer donations from non-alumni donors than universities without this asset. In contrast, a high reputation is a benefit when considering high-identification stakeholder support: As the number of legislative references increases, a high-reputation university will receive more donations from alumni donors than universities without this asset. However, an exploratory investigation reveals that alumni donations to high-reputation universities decline as the number of legislative references increases, suggesting that the benefit of a high reputation has a limit.

NEW YORK: The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal hush money case has put off ruling on whether the president-elect’s conviction should be thrown out on immunity grounds, enabling prosecutors to weigh next steps following his Nov. 5 election victory.

Justice Juan Merchan had been due to rule on Tuesday on Trump’s argument that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in July that presidents are immune from prosecution involving their official acts meant the New York state case should be dismissed.

Instead, Merchan granted a request by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office to have until Nov. 19 to consider how to approach the case in light of Trump’s looming inauguration in January 2025, email correspondence made public on Tuesday showed.

Trump’s scheduled Nov. 26 sentencing is now widely expected to be postponed.

Trump in May became the first U.S. president - former or sitting - convicted of a crime when a jury in Manhattan found him guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a potential sex scandal shortly before his first election win in 2016. Trump, who pleaded not guilty, has vowed to appeal the verdict after sentencing.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo wrote there were “competing interests” between ensuring a criminal case proceeds as usual and protecting the office of the president.

“The People agree that these are unprecedented circumstances,“ Colangelo wrote.

Trump is set to be the first felon inaugurated as president after his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.

At issue in the six-week Manhattan trial was a $130,000 payment made by Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about a sexual encounter she said she had with him in 2006 but which he has denied.

Trump’s defense lawyer Emil Bove wrote that the case ultimately needed to be dismissed to avoid interfering with Trump’s presidential duties.

“The stay, and dismissal, are necessary to avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern,“ Bove wrote.

TRUMP FACED FOUR CRIMINAL CASES

Trump, 78, is hoping to enter office unencumbered by any of four criminal cases he has faced and which once were thought to have threatened to derail his 2024 candidacy to return to the White House after having served from 2017-2021.

The Republican Trump has portrayed the hush money case brought by Bragg, a Democrat, and the three other state and federal criminal indictments brought in 2023 as politically motivated attempts to harm his presidential campaign. He pleaded not guilty in all four cases.

“It is now abundantly clear that Americans want an immediate end to the weaponization of our justice system,“ Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement on Tuesday.

Special Counsel Jack Smith brought two of the cases against Trump, one involving classified documents he kept after leaving office and the other involving his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. A Florida-based federal judge in July dismissed the documents case. The Justice Department is now evaluating how to wind down Smith’s election-related case.

Trump also faces state criminal charges in Georgia over his bid to reverse his 2020 loss in that state, but the case remains in limbo.

The Supreme Court, in a decision arising from one of Smith’s two cases against Trump, decided that presidents are immune from prosecution involving their official acts and that juries cannot be presented evidence of official acts in trials over personal conduct. It marked the first time that the court recognized any degree of presidential immunity from prosecution.

In making the case for immunity, Trump’s lawyers said the jury that convicted Trump in the hush money case was shown evidence by prosecutors of his social media posts as president and heard testimony from his former aides about conversations that occurred in the White House during his 2017-2021 term.

Bragg’s office countered that the Supreme Court’s ruling has no bearing on the case, which they said concerned “wholly unofficial conduct.” The Supreme Court in its ruling found no immunity for a president’s unofficial acts.

THE tragic crash of a Tesla Model Y in Toronto in October has raised serious concerns about the accessibility and usability of the car’s electronic door handles during emergencies. The fiery accident claimed the lives of four individuals: Neelraj Gohil (25), his sister Ketaba Gohil (29), Jay Sisodiya, and Digvijay Patel, leaving a sole survivor, a woman in her 20s.

The woman’s escape was made possible by Rick Harper, a Canada Post employee, who heroically smashed the car’s window with a metal pole. Harper described the survivor as “desperate to get out,” but unable to open the car’s doors from inside. Tesla vehicles rely on an electronic button to open doors rather than traditional handles, and if the car’s power system fails in a crash, the doors may become inoperable.

Concerns About Tesla’s Safety Design

While Tesla promotes a “safety-first design” and manual override mechanisms for emergencies, these features are not widely known or intuitive. The manual override involves removing a door panel and pulling a hidden cable — a process that could be difficult or impossible in the chaos and panic of a serious accident.

Safety experts and crash investigators have raised concerns that victims may not be aware of the override feature or may lack the presence of mind to locate and use it under duress.

The Accident

The Tesla reportedly crashed into a guardrail at high speed along Lake Shore Boulevard East. The cause of the accident is still under investigation, but the crash’s aftermath has drawn attention to Tesla’s safety protocols, particularly in situations involving power failure. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has several ongoing investigations into the Tesla Model Y, ranging from “unexpected brake activation” to “sudden unintended acceleration.”

A Heroic Rescue Effort

Harper’s quick action saved the survivor, but he was unaware that others were trapped inside due to the dense smoke. “I didn’t know there were other people in there. The smoke was so thick,” he said. It remains unclear if the other passengers also struggled to open the doors.

Broader Implications

This tragedy underscores the need for automakers to improve safety features in EVs, especially during power failures. Intuitive and easily accessible escape mechanisms are critical, and greater public awareness of emergency procedures is vital.

As investigators work to determine the exact cause of the crash, this incident highlights the balance that must be struck between advanced technology and real-world practicality in automotive safety.

This is the cost of following orders, whether blindly or knowingly, in the Philippine National Police: 214 cops faced 352 criminal charges, with 20 still in detention, for carrying out the war on drugs during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte. Another 195 cops were sacked while 398 face possible dismissal from the PNP over administrative cases.

Wondering how to travel cheap? Money expert Clark Howard has a lot of experience and advice to share when it comes to answering this question!

The post Follow Clark Howard’s #1 Rule To Travel Cheap appeared first on Clark Howard.

Are you holding airline tickets for an upcoming trip? The odds are favorable that you will fly on schedule. However, be aware that the airlines can tweak departure times, flight frequency, and in some cases even swap aircraft models based on customer demand. Monitor Your Flight Status and Know Your Passenger Rights If you’re trying […]

The post Follow These Tips if an Airline Reschedules Your Flight appeared first on Clark Howard.

On Saturday night, a select few from Karachi enjoyed excerpts from the album and an extended trailer of ‘Ustad’

The actress asks for respect and privacy as her family navigates this difficult period.

Streaming video still provides some meaningful advantages to traditional cable: it’s generally cheaper (assuming you don’t sign up for every service under the sun); customer satisfaction ratings are generally higher; and users have more power to pick and choose and cancel services at a whim. But the party simply isn’t poised to last. Thanks to […]

Jamie Foxx embraces powerful daily mantra following health crisis

Jamie Foxx revealed the daily mantra he lives by after surviving a health scare back in April 2023.

The Oscar winner took to his official Instagram account on Tuesday, November 12, to share his powerful...