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Kiev’s backers are said to be urging security guarantees to be included under Trump’s reported proposal to acknowledge Crimea as Russian

The UK and France are “open to a scenario” in which Kiev would concede territory to Russia in exchange for Western security guarantees and aid, the Wall Street Journal has reported, citing an insider.

London and Paris have emerged as the leading backers of Kiev’s war effort against Russia, after US President Donald Trump announced his intention to distance America from the crisis. Washington expects Ukraine and its European NATO allies to respond this week to its proposed compromise truce before presenting it to Moscow.

European leaders are wary of acknowledging Russian sovereignty over Crimea and freezing the hostilities along the current front lines – concepts reportedly outlined by Trump administration officials in Paris last week – the WSJ said on Tuesday. According to the newspaper’s source, the UK and France would prefer a deal with no formal territorial changes, “like the cease-fire that ended the Korean War.”

That armistice, signed in 1953 by military officers from North Korea and the US, was never endorsed by South Korea, which continues to reject the authority of the government in Pyongyang. Without a formal peace agreement, the Korean War remains technically unresolved.

Current hopes for a diplomatic breakthrough have been dampened by remarks from Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky. On Tuesday, he publicly dismissed certain ideas reportedly included in the Trump administration’s peace plan. Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously cautioned that the US could “move on” if either party delays progress.

Moscow has accused the EU and UK of trying to undermine Trump’s mediation efforts. Paris and London have suggested a post-ceasefire deployment of Western troops in Ukraine, a scenario that the Russian government has deemed unacceptable under any circumstances. Washington has ruled out any future military involvement in Ukraine, asserting that European nations should handle its security.

Russian officials argue that a lasting peace can only be achieved by addressing the fundamental causes of the conflict, including NATO’s expansion in Europe since the 1990s, and the rise of radical Ukrainian nationalism. According to Moscow, the Zelensky government aims to eradicate “all things Russian” within the nation.

I am initially writing these words on February 19, 2025, and the Holy Father, Pope Francis, has pneumonia in both lungs. He is of advanced age and has not been in good health. He likely is dying, and now, in early April, we know this was his final illness. The near approach of death is a solemn thing. I prayed earnestly that Francis would recover in body and mind, praying for him…

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We have good and bad news for investors who want to know whether the stock market will soar, stall, or plummet. First, the good news. This article presents the market path for what lies ahead. Unfortunately, the “right” path is among three likely scenarios.

Despite our inability to definitively show you the way forward, we can share the technical patterns that will help guide us and, in time, assign better odds as to which of the three paths will be the “right” path. Importantly, we also lay out the possible economic, geopolitical, and monetary policy scenarios that would likely correspond with each forecast.

Mapping Our Paths

The graph below plots the three most likely market paths going forward.  

Forecast A is the most bullish scenario. In this scenario, the S&P 500 has already seen its lows for the cycle. The market will grind higher until it meets resistance near the key 50- and 200-day moving averages. After a brief period of consolidation, the market would break above those important moving averages, the death cross between the two important moving averages would flip back to a golden cross, and new highs would follow. 

In our opinion, scenario B is the most likely path. It argues that, like scenario A, we may have seen the year's lows, but the stock market will consolidate in a wide range for many months before resuming a bullish trend.

C is the most concerning path. It entails a series of lower highs and lower lows for the foreseeable future. Moreover, a recession would most likely accompany this scenario.

We now present each forecast in more detail to better understand which event is most likely and how geopolitical, economic, fiscal, and monetary policy decisions can help guide us down the right path or switch paths as the environment changes.

Scenario A (Soar)- Politics, Economics, and the Fed

This scenario argues that the damage tariffs have caused the markets, and the economy is nearing an end. From a geopolitical perspective, this would mean President Trump and many of our important trade partners are close to signing beneficial trade agreements. Moreover, our bullish scenario would also likely require a trade agreement with China or, at a minimum, constructive discussions. 

A less hawkish Fed would also promote this outlook, in addition to tariffs. Chairman Powell came out relatively hawkish in mid-April. He claims the Fed is handcuffed due to its low unemployment and tame inflation mandates. To his point, they would cut rates as early as May if they saw the economy weakening and unemployment rising. However, they are still scared of the inflation boogeyman; thus, they are less likely to cut in advance of weakening labor conditions. In Powell’s opinion, tariffs are temporarily inflationary. But he raised the hawkish specter that they might be persistent.

We must also remember that liquidity in the bond market appears to be a potential problem. Bullish markets are fueled by positive sentiment and ample liquidity. If the Fed addresses the liquidity problem, the odds of a bullish outlook rise.

Lastly, case A assumes that any economic damage caused by tariffs and related consumer and corporate financial decisions is short-lived. The scenario assumes that economic activity will resume at its prior pace once a resolution on the tariffs is reached.

Donald Trump has a so-called “Trump Card” in his back pocket. Tax reductions, reduced regulations, and other pro-business legislation could be additional support for a rally to new highs.

Scenario A- Technical Analysis

The graph below shows multiple areas of potential resistance between 5600 and 5800 for the S&P 500. The combination of the key 50 and 200-day moving averages (5705 and 5751), a Fibonacci retracement level (5630), and the green support/resistance line (5800) will likely keep a lid on prices. However, if the news is bullish enough, it will break through that resistance, resuming the bullish trend, and a record high is more likely.

Scenario B (Stall)- Politics, Economics, and the Fed

Unlike scenario A, scenario B is based on a more extended period for tariff resolution. Furthermore, the signed agreements may not be as economically friendly as we envision for scenario A. Discussions with China may occur. Still, they would likely be embattled with an agreement seemingly far off.  

From time to time, tariff deals will be completed, and with each significant trade partner signing an agreement, the market will breathe a sigh of relief and provide optimism, which will help keep a floor on the market near recent lows. Conversely, ongoing trade spats, new tariffs, and retaliatory tariffs will keep a lid on the market.

The potential consolidation range is wide, and activity could be volatile as investors quickly rotate between optimism and pessimism, between the ceiling and the floor. This is the roller coaster scenario we laid out at the beginning of the year.

The Fed may remain hawkish but be willing to cut rates and possibly end QT if tariffs prove to be less of an inflation threat than they worry about. Like trade deals, a more friendly Fed would help keep a floor on losses at the recent lows.

Scenario B- Technical Analysis

We use the same graph as scenario A. However, we added the yellow box to approximate the range the market could travel in throughout most of the year. The consolidation is likely between 5800 and 4900.

Scenario C (Plummet)- Politics, Economics, and the Fed

Scenario C is our bearish outlook. Given that the S&P 500 is already 20+% off its peak, the market is priced to some degree for weaker earnings, slower economic growth, deficit reductions, and prolonged tariff negotiations. For C to play out, i.e., a peak-to-trough decline of 40% or more, the economic outlook and tariff concerns would worsen appreciably.

This scenario would likely coincide with a recession and or a credit event. Moreover, we suspect it also entails that the Fed is slow to react to liquidity issues and the government is providing less fiscal support than normal during downturns.

Corporations will find it hard to make decisions in such an environment and thus have trouble committing capital expenditures. Moreover, with reduced economic activity, they will reduce expenses, including laying off employees. Higher joblessness, a weaker economy, and poor consumer sentiment would result in consumers saving more and spending less.

While this is not our base case forecast, it's certainly plausible. However, a sharp decline from current levels suggests that the Fed and government do not appreciate, or care, how their policies harm the economy in the short term.

Scenario C- Technical Analysis

Scenario C will likely play out in a series of lower highs and lower lows. Optimistically, this could be like 2022 as shown below.  From peak to trough, the S&P 500 fell by 28%. The recent peak to trough was 21%. Thus, if this scenario plays out similarly to 2022, 4400 may mark the low.

Another way to estimate a potential bottom is to assume the S&P 500 regresses to its long-term trend. Despite the recent decline, the S&P 500 is about 30% above its 55-year trend (4120), as shown below. Unfortunately, as the graph shows, it can fall below its trend and result in an even more significant loss.

We can also use fundamentals to help us find a reasonable floor. For this exercise, we lean on a valuation analysis we shared in December 2024, which forecasted an S&P price of 4840 if valuations reverted to 2022 levels and earnings growth is flat. As we wrote:

But what if the U.S. encounters a recession due to economic or political policies or a credit-related event? Then, a decline in valuations toward the 2022 level of 22x earnings should be expected. Such would equate to roughly a 20% decline from current levels.

Lastly, we share the graph below to help provide more context for drawdowns from record highs, such as the one we are currently experiencing. Since 1969, nine drawdowns have been worse than the current one. Six of the nine have been limited to -35% or less, leaving three, including the dot-com crash and the financial crisis with larger losses.

Summary

We lean toward scenario B, the roller coaster with periods of intense volatility. If this holds, our ability to follow our trading rules and technical indicators while trying to ignore unproductive behavioral traits will be fully tested.

It's impossible to predict the path, but considering different scenarios and understanding the likely fundamental factors determining each path provides us with a road map to help us follow one or switch paths if needed.

The post The Path Ahead: Soar, Stall, Or Plummet appeared first on RIA.

Many words could describe the Francis pontificate; to me, the best is ironic. Coming from Argentina, Jorge Bergoglio was considered the ultimate outsider who would bring another wave of aggiornamento to the Church; but instead, he appeared closed inside the stale ideas of liberalism. He criticized those he saw as “wanting to go back,” yet that was exactly the criticism many of us had of him.

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Disfigurement visible on side of face…

PHOTOS: Vatican Releases First Images of Francis’ Body

On April 22, the Vatican released the first images of ‘Pope’ Francis’ corpse as it was lying in state in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta (Domus Sanctae Marthae) guest house at which the man whose real name was Jorge Bergoglio was residing for the last 12 years.

We have licensed the following two photographs for publication on this blog:

(image: Vatican Media/Getty Images)

(image: Vatican Media/Getty Images)

Although none of the photos available contain a close-up of Bergoglio’s face, one can zoom in enough to reveal a large disfigurement on the left side of his face:

The cause of this disfigurement is possibly a hematoma from the stroke the false pope reportedly suffered before falling into a coma and subsequently dying of a heart attack on Easter Monday.… READ MORE

The US peace framework reportedly includes “de jure” recognition of Crimea as part of Russia and the eventual lifting of sanctions

Washington has presented Kiev with what US President Donald Trump has called the “final offer” to end the Ukraine conflict, according to a report by Axios. The Kremlin, however, has urged the public to rely on official and primary sources for developments in US-Russia talks.

The one-page document was reportedly drafted following Trump envoy Steve Witkoff’s four-hour meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month, and was presented to Ukrainian officials in Paris last week, Axios reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources with direct knowledge of the discussions.

Under the proposed deal, the US is said to be prepared to grant “de jure” recognition of Crimea as part of Russia, and unofficially acknowledge Moscow’s “de facto” control over the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, as well as the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye.

The plan also includes provisions for lifting post-2014 sanctions on Moscow and enhancing bilateral economic cooperation. In addition, Washington would formally oppose Ukraine’s bid to join NATO.

In return, Ukraine would reportedly receive a “robust security guarantee” from a coalition of EU and other like-minded countries. The proposal does not detail how a purpoted “peacekeeping” operation would function.

Russia has rejected the deployment of NATO forces, or troops from members of the bloc under a “coalition of the willing” to Ukraine under any pretext.

The framework also promises Kiev unimpeded access to the Dnepr River and potential compensation for reconstruction efforts, although it does not specify where the funding would originate. The plan references a minerals deal between the US and Ukraine, which Trump expects to be signed on Thursday.

Another component of the proposal, according to Axios, involves designating the area around the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant as neutral territory under US administration. 

Washington reportedly expects Kiev to respond to the proposal during a multinational meeting in London on Wednesday. Both Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will skip the event, with General Keith Kellogg, another Trump envoy focused on Ukraine, leading the US delegation instead. Witkoff is expected to travel to Moscow for a follow-up meeting with Putin.

Rubio warned last week that the US could abandon the peace initiatives and “move on” to other issues if the negotiations fail. Trump said on Monday there is “a good chance of solving the problem” this week.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly ruled out ceding any territory to Russia and continues to urge the US and other allies to provide sustained military support.

Moscow has stated that the status of Crimea – which joined Russia in 2014 following a referendum held after a Western-backed coup in Kiev – and the four other former Ukrainian regions that voted to join Russia in 2022, is not open to negotiation. Russian officials insist that any peace agreement must address the “root causes” of the conflict. Putin has also said that a viable ceasefire would require Western nations to halt arms deliveries to Ukraine.

Editor’s Note: This essay is part of a week-long series of essays at Public Discourse reflecting on Pope Francis’s pontificate, his legacy, and the Catholic Church’s future.

What is the hermeneutical key to the pontificate of Pope Francis?

Kierkegaard famously quipped, “Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.”

I propose that to understand Pope Francis, it helps to go backward, beginning near the end of his pontificate by focusing on his final encyclical, Dilexit Nos. This is a challenge for many, since Dilexit Nos has received comparatively little attention—whether in the media, the Church, or among Catholic intellectuals. 

In Dilexit Nos, Pope Francis focuses on the “heart,” especially the way our participation in the dominant culture wounds the heart in a hidden, unnoticed manner. As an antidote, Pope Francis proposes participation in popular pious practices, specifically the devotion to the Sacred Heart. God’s grace can work on us through these practices, to heal our hearts, shaping us in mercy and love by drawing us closer to the heart of Jesus. 

That the heart would be a major theme of his pontificate was not obvious on March 13, 2013, when Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J., until then the Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires, was introduced as the new pope. What was more obvious then was that Pope Francis had his own style: simple white robes, leading the people in familiar prayers (an Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be), and carrying himself with a casual intimacy. Immediately after being elected, he took the bus with the cardinals to gather his personal belongings, and he declined to live in the Apostolic Palace. His message seemed to be, “Live more simply.”

A Pope of Many Purposes

Many noticed early on that Pope Francis proposed a distinctive view of the church. Rather than emphasizing the church as a sacramental reality imbued with the presence of God, or a conception of the church as a pilgrim people, Pope Francis voiced a preference for the church as a field hospital with a battlefield task: Heal the wounds! Start from the ground up. Encounter those on the margins. Accompany those who feel left out. 

Some have questioned at times whether the message of Pope Francis was distinctively Catholic or Christian. Were his teachings based on the Gospels or the life of Jesus? After all, the major writings of Pope Francis, including his social encyclicals Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti, were addressed to “all people of good will,” and their tone was, at times, quite similar to that of documents produced by secular state agencies or of similar contemporary documents motivated by social justice. Francis’s writings emphasized promoting inclusive societies; saving the rainforests; caring for the earth; encouraging global solidarity; building a peaceful world; and avoiding bad things like selfishness, racism, poverty, the prevalence of a market logic based solely on profit, and the culture of waste.  

But accounts of the pontificate of Francis that aim to go beneath the surface will emphasize deeper influences: St. Francis of Assisi, the ideas of Romano Guardini (the philosopher and theologian who was the topic of Bergoglio’s unfinished doctoral dissertation), or the Argentine movement known as the “theology of the people.” Others will point to his 2013 Apostolic Exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel—especially the section of Chapter 4 titled “The common good and peace in society”—as the blueprint for his pontificate and the key to understanding his purposes. To be sure, any account of the pontificate of Pope Francis must include each of these. 

Recovering and Transforming Our Hearts

Still, one might wonder: What purpose united the various activities of Pope Francis? I contend that one finds it in Dilexit Nos.

Dilexit Nos: On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ, was promulgated less than two weeks before the 2024 U.S. presidential election—just as Donald Trump sat down for an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, and as thousands of Beyoncé fans showed up for what the media told them would be a free concert, but which turned out to be a five-minute speech by Beyoncé endorsing Kamala Harris at a rally for “reproductive freedom.” It’s not surprising that at the time, the media were focused almost completely on matters related to the U.S. elections (including the kerfuffle of angry Beyoncé fans who felt they had been misled). Just before the elections, few had the patience to attend to a long encyclical from an aging pope that proposed to revive seventeenth-century devotional practices. Pope Francis died less than six months after promulgating it. 

Pope Francis brings the encyclical’s central theme into focus by calling for a retrieval of the devotion to the Sacred Heart, a practice that, in earlier centuries, had been dear to the Jesuits. 

At first, we might think that Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart is an activity for grandmothers. Indeed, in the encyclical Pope Francis tells a sweet story of baking cookies with his grandmother. But the point of his story is not sentimental. Pope Francis tells us that, “In the dialect we spoke, those cookies were called ‘lies.’ . . . My grandmother explained why: ‘Like lies, those cookies look big, but are empty inside; they are false, unreal.’” With this story, the pope encourages his readers to examine our own hearts and the ways in which we are complicit with the distortions and alienation of contemporary culture—a culture that seems full of promises, but is actually quite empty. In this age of artificial intelligence, when there is a tendency to overemphasize the rational-technological dimension, Pope Francis worries that we act as serial consumers: hectic, bombarded by technology, and with little room in our hearts. 

While there may be no algorithm to measure the size of one’s figurative heart, we are all regrettably familiar with—and even experience in ourselves—the broken heart, the closed heart, the empty heart, the devious heart, the perverse heart, and those who are totally heartless. Pope Francis writes, “If we devalue the heart, we also devalue what it means to speak from the heart, to act with the heart, to cultivate and heal the heart. If we fail to appreciate the specificity of the heart, we miss the messages that the mind alone cannot communicate; we miss out on the richness of our encounters with others; we miss out on poetry.” 

Pope Francis aims to awaken us to the subtle ways in which each of us actively participates in and perpetuates disordered, heartless, and sinful social structures. 

The pope calls for a transformation in our hearts. He recommends several quite specific practices. A few of these might seem sentimental: more poetry readings; more time considering the flowers and the birds; more time baking cookies with Grandma’s recipe. But the central practices Pope Francis recommends are a postmodern retrieval of traditional Catholic devotions to the Sacred Heart: devoting oneself each Thursday to contemplative worship in a holy hour before the Blessed Eucharist, and receiving the Eucharist on the First Friday of each month. 

In Dilexit Nos, Pope Francis makes reference to the Aparecida Document from the Fifth General Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Bishops. That 2007 document praises “the soul of the Latin American peoples,” describing the faith in that part of the world as “a people’s Catholicism.” It has a deeply inculturated popular piety that is a “precious treasure of the Catholic Church in Latin America” and “the most valuable dimension of Latin American culture.” It is not clear whether Pope Francis endorses all of the claims made in the Aparecida Document. For example, we might raise a question: Is it true that the popular piety of Latin America manifests a thirst for God that “only the simple and poor can know”? Is it possible for a middle-class person or a wealthy person to have a heart that thirsts for God? Pope Francis does not quote from or endorse this aspect of the Aparecida Document. Instead, he seems to suggest that the popular piety of the poor in Latin America can be a model of hearts that are open to God’s grace, and that selfish hearts can be transformed by participating in and retrieving once-popular pious practices.

Pope Francis concludes Dilexit Nos by stating explicitly that the teachings in his social encyclicals, Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti, are “not unrelated to our encounter with the love of Jesus Christ. For it is by drinking of that same love that we become capable of forging bonds of fraternity, of recognizing the dignity of each human being, and of working together to care for our common home.”

In Dilexit Nos Pope Francis proposes that, in order to receive the teaching of the Church and to participate more fully in divine grace and mercy, we need the right sort of heart—and a change of heart comes with a change in our practices. 

The teaching is not a call for a better theory of social harmony. Instead, Pope Francis is calling us to prepare for Friday, June 27th, 2025—the 350th anniversary of the apparitions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque—by reviving the practice of a holy hour each Thursday and the promotion of Eucharistic communion on the first Friday of each month. 

Once we understand that the teaching of Dilexit Nos on the importance of the heart is the key to interpreting Pope Francis’s earlier encyclicals, we see that, by extension, the heart is central to his entire pontificate. Indeed, his first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, promulgated in the first months of his pontificate, states, “In the Bible, the heart is the core of the human person, where all his or her different dimensions intersect: body and spirit, interiority and openness to the world and to others, intellect, will, and affectivity. If the heart is capable of holding all these dimensions together, it is because it is where we become open to truth and love, where we let them touch us and deeply transform us.”

Some will point to The Joy of the Gospel as the text which holds the interpretive key to Pope Francis’s pontificate. To be sure, there is something to this claim. In response, I would point to the very first line: “The joy of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus.” In other words, the joy in The Joy of the Gospel is a joyous heart.

To those who propose that St. Francis of Assisi is central, I respond (again) that what is important is the spirituality of the heart we find in St. Francis. Laudato Si’ begins by quoting the beautiful song of St. Francis and then contrasting the poetic spirituality of St. Francis with the violence and distortions in our hearts. 

At its deepest level, Laudato Si’ is not about environmental policy; it is a diagnosis of our malformed hearts. This diagnosis unfolds in Chapter 3, the deepest chapter of Laudato Si’, where the pope draws from Guardini’s account of the distortions of the human heart that come about from the dominant technocratic paradigm. Guardini, in his most famous book, The Lord, wrote, “None of the great things in human life springs from the intellect; every one of them issues from the heart and its love.”  

Just as R. J. Snell has argued that John Paul II’s pontificate is best understood as “the pontificate of the person,” I propose that the papacy of Pope Francis is best understood as “the pontificate of the heart.”

Image by Ashwin Vaswani and sourced via Unsplash. 

The latest report from the pro-abortion Guttmacher organization indicates what many pro-lifers have feared for Virginia since the Dobbs decision in 2022.  Abortion promoters are using the lack of protective pro-life laws and the virtually unregulated practice of abortion in the first two trimesters of pregnancy to turn the Commonwealth into a destination for abortions.

According to the report the number of abortions in Virginia has increased by 4,300 and assumes that that number includes many women who may have traveled here from out of state.

The state has seen six new abortion facilities open or go into development since 2022 bringing the total number to 23.

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Virginia removed the majority of protective laws for unborn children and their mothers in 2020 opening a door to the dangerously unregulated situation we find ourselves in today. The current laws allow non-doctors to perform abortions or prescribe abortion chemicals and no office visit is required. Online prescriptions mean that a women receiving these drugs may not even be pregnant.

“The new numbers suggest a deeply alarming trend and the threatened unlimited abortion amendment that has already passed once in the General Assembly will mean that Virginia will only see more unborn children lose their lives and mothers put at risk from unscrupulous abortion promoters,” said Olivia Gans Turner, president of VSHL.

Virginia’s elections this year will allow concerned people to halt the threat of the abortion amendment, the so called Right to Reproductive Freedom Act, and send a message that Virginians do not want our home to become an abortion destination. [For more on the Right to Reproductive Freedom Act, see The 2025 General Assembly Comes to a Close and the Pro-life Movement Faces the Facts – Virginia Society for Human Life.]

The post Virginia Sees Abortions Increase Significantly as More Babies are Killed appeared first on LifeNews.com.