Finnish defence forces announced on Saturday that they are to conduct an unusually large-scale military exercise close to the Russian border next summer.
Up to 8,000 reservist troops from all regiments will take part in training in the border district of Pielinen Karelia in June 2015.
People often ask: why did Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, not speak out more forcefully against Hitler? Historian Fr Dermot Fenlon of the Birmingham Oratory looks at the facts and sets the record straight.
The answer is recounted by a former inmate of Dachau, Mgr Jean Bernard, later Bishop of Luxembourg:
Islamic State fighters in Iraq are reportedly reserving a special kind of cruelty for women from minority religions.
The militants are keeping hundreds of Yazidi, Christian, and Turkoman women in Mosul’s Badush prison, gang-raping some and selling others as brides for as low as $25, The Daily Beast reports.
They took turns behind John McCormick’s lawn mower.
For the firefighters and EMTs of Station 4 in Baytown it was another normal assignment: rushing to a 911 call to help save someone’s life.
But to the family and neighbors of John McCormick it was it was beyond normal. It helped restore a bit of their faith in humanity and the kindness of strangers.
President Barack Obama is ruling out the possibility that the U.S. will take military action to address growing violence in Ukraine.
Obama says the U.S. will stand firm with its allies to address the conflict in Ukraine, where the U.S. says Russia is backing pro-Russian separatists. But Obama says a military confrontation between the U.S. and Russia in the region, quote, “is not in the cards.”
An eruption has started near Bárðarbunga. The Met Office has confirmed this. The eruption is an lava eruption.
A fissure has started north of Dyngjujökull, in Holuhraun. The eruption has been confirmed by scientists in the field. The rather small lowfrequency tremor suggests the eruption is located outside the glacier.
As they do whenever they visit Florida, Greg Groff and his young daughter stopped by the manatee pool at Miami Seaquarium, where the speed bump-shaped marine mammals placidly swim in circles.
They noted the pink scars and disfigured tail on one manatee, damage from a boat propeller that left it unable to survive in the wild.
Brain Cage 