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West Jerusalem is reportedly continuing to develop attack plans despite US President Donald Trump’s preference for diplomacy

Israel is considering a “limited strike” on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, despite Washington’s refusal to support military action, Reuters reported on Saturday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The deliberations come as the second round of US-Iran negotiations have concluded in Rome, with expert-level talks expected to continue on April 26 in Oman.

According to Reuters, Israeli officials are weighing a “limited strike” that would require minimal US support – unlike the larger and prolonged bombing campaign previously under consideration.

West Jerusalem reportedly presented Washington with several strike options, “including some with late spring and summer timelines.” A senior Israeli official told the outlet that no final decision had been made.

On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that US President Donald Trump had rejected an Israeli proposal for “extensive” strikes, opting instead to pursue diplomacy.

“I’m not in a rush to do it, because I think that Iran has a chance to have a great country and to live happily without death, and I’d like to see that. That’s my first option,” Trump told reporters on Thursday.

A senior Iranian security official told Reuters that Tehran had “intelligence from reliable sources that Israel is planning a major attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.”

Iranian officials have previously vowed to retaliate against any form of aggression.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Saturday that the talks in Rome “were held in a constructive environment.” A US official told CBS News that the sides had “made very good progress.”

Trump abandoned the 2015 UN-backed nuclear deal during his first term in office, accusing Iran of secretly violating the agreement. He reimposed sanctions on Tehran and, in February, formally renewed his “maximum pressure” campaign. Iran has denied any wrongdoing but has since rolled back its commitments under the deal, increasing uranium enrichment.

Delegations from the countries have held indirect discussions on Tehran’s nuclear program in Rome

A US delegation attempted to present realistic demands to Iran during Omani-mediated negotiations in Rome on Saturday, an informed source has told RT.

The delegations, led by US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, sat in separate rooms as Omani mediators relayed messages between them.

The talks came two weeks after US President Donald Trump threatened Iran with “bombing” unless an agreement on its nuclear program was reached.

An informed source familiar with the talks told RT that “the American delegation tried to set its demands realistically in the second round of negotiations.”

“We made very good progress in our direct and indirect discussions,” a US official told CBS News.

Araghchi wrote on X that the “relatively positive atmosphere in Rome has enabled progress on principles and objectives of a possible deal.” He added that many in Tehran believe the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the original nuclear deal, is “no longer good enough for us.”

Trump abandoned the JCPOA during his first term in office, accusing the Islamic Republic of secretly violating the deal. His administration reimposed sanctions on Iran and, in February, after returning to office, he formally renewed his “maximum pressure” campaign. Tehran has denied any wrongdoing but has since rolled back its commitments under the 2015 plan, increasing its enrichment of uranium.

“Iran’s nuclear program is completely peaceful, and Iran is ready to dispel any doubts in this regard,” Esmaeil Baghaei, the spokesman for Tehran’s foreign ministry, said on Saturday.

Technical experts are scheduled to meet again ahead of the next round of negotiations between Witkoff and Araghchi in Oman on April 26, according to the Iranian foreign minister.

That is correct.

70 men stood against the advancing British regular army, 700 troops on their way to destroy the patriots’ supply depot at Concord. The rebels had been warned in advance of the route by Paul Revere and others. Even with the valuable intel, they knew they would be greatly outnumbered. As the majority of rebel forces fell back to defend Concord, these 70 stood. They stood out of principle.

It wasn’t just the outrageous amount of tax on tea (about $20/lb in today’s dollars)… it was the moral objection to any taxation at all, without representation. The native born colonists had no standing in parliament.

No one cared about them, nor their rights. The entire Empire sneered at them.

Sound familiar?

Happy Easter! My hopeful prayer is that you experience, in this Easter Season, true joy in a personal encounter with the Risen Lord. The Church’s firehose of imagery and traditions and sacred liturgy has been blasting fully at our little drinking cups. Holy Week and the Sacred Triduum can overwhelm as we reach the apex of the Easter Vigil and Sunday’s light. You know by now that I like to…

Source

The White House indicated earlier that it would wash its hands of the Ukraine conflict if either side is obstinate

US President Donald Trump reportedly expects to “make a determination for a full and comprehensive ceasefire” between Ukraine and Russia as early as next week. Both are to be presented with the final offer, the New York Post has claimed, citing an anonymous senior administration official.

Trump has stated on multiple occasions that he wants to put an end to the Ukraine conflict as soon as possible. Since he assumed office in January, Washington and Moscow have been engaged in active diplomacy, holding several rounds of high-level talks.

The newspaper quoted a source on Friday as saying that “this coming week in London, we want to make a determination for a full and comprehensive cease-fire.” The unnamed US official added that the “intent then is to have [discussions] with the Russians” and determine where Moscow and Kiev stand on this “final offer.”

According to the publication, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov told US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff during their meeting in Paris on Thursday that Kiev is “90%” on board with Washington’s peace framework, which has yet to be made public.

Ukraine’s remaining concerns mostly revolve around territories which Kiev claims as its own, but are in fact under Moscow’s control at present, the Post reported.

Russia has demanded that Ukraine officially recognize the “reality on the ground,” while Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly ruled out such a scenario.

The media outlet further alleged that the US could offer Russia a “carrot”: the relaxation of sanctions and the potential unfreezing of Moscow’s seized assets, which are currently held by Western institutions.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump echoed a remark made by Rubio earlier in the day, stating that “if for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult… we’re going to just take a pass.”

Russian authorities have expressed skepticism about the feasibility of a ceasefire with Ukraine and accused Kiev’s backers in Europe of undermining US efforts.

Speaking to journalists on Thursday, Moscow’s UN representative, Vassily Nebenzia, stated that due to the West’s record of using peace deals to help build up the Ukrainian military, expectations of a full ceasefire are “simply unrealistic at this stage.”

A Holy Saturday meditation from Bossuet, that ought to kick-start you:

Like every finite thing, man is small. The time will come when this man who seemed so great to us will cease to be. The days of my life are all that stand between me and nothingness, and this is but a small difference. I enter into life under a law that commands my departure from it. I come to make my mark and to show myself as others do. Afterward, I will disappear. I have seen others pass before me; others shall succeed me, and these will present the same spectacle to their successors. All of us will at last be mixed together in nothingness.

My life, all told, has been only a handful of years; and there were so many before me and will be so many after. How small a place do I occupy in the great abyss of time! I am nothing. This short interval is not capable of distinguishing me from the nothingness into which I must return. I have come only to take my number, and to this point no use has been made of me. The drama would have been no worse acted had I remained offstage. My part in this world is very small, and so insignificant that it seems to me only a dream that I am here, and all that I see an empty image: “the form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7:31).

The whole of my career has been only a handful of years; and in reaching this age how many perils have I escaped? How many illnesses? What has kept the course of my days from having come to an end at any moment? Death prepares many ambushes. In the end, we will fall into its hands. I see a tree battered by the wind; it loses leaves every minute; some resist more, others less; but those few that escape the storm will at last be conquered by winter, which always comes to wither them and make them fall. It is the same in life. The large number of men who run the same course ensures that some of them will reach the end of it; but after havingavoided the various attacks of death, and arriving at the end after so many perils, they fall at the race’s end. Their life extinguishes itself like a candle that consumes its own matter.

My life has been only a handful of years, and of these, in how many of them have I really lived? Sleep resembles death more than life; childhood is the life of a beast. How many days would I like to erase from the days of my youth? And when I am older, how many more shall I add to that total? Let us see what remains. What shall I then count, if all of these are not to be reckoned? The time during which I felt a certain contentment, or in which I acquired some honor? But how much of this sort of time is scattered throughout my life? If I take away sleep, illnesses, and times of anxiety from my life, and I now take up all of the things in which I have had some contentment or honor, how much will that be? As to this contentment: did I enjoy it all at once? Have I not had it in parcels? Have I had it without anxiety? And, if there has been anxiety, should I count it as time that I reckon or time that I do not? Has not anxiety always divided every two moments of contentment? Is it not always thrown across them to prevent them from meeting one another? What then is left to me? Of lawful pleasures, a useless memory; of illicit ones, regret, and a debt to be paid in Hell, or by penance.

How right we are to say that our time passes! Truly it passes, and we pass with it. My whole being rests upon a single moment: it is all that separates me from nothingness. When that moment has passed, I snatch another one. They pass one after the other, and one after the other I join them together, trying to reassure myself, and I do not perceive that they carry me with them, and that I will soon be out of time. This is my life, and what is so frightening is that what to my sight seems fleeting is to God an eternal present. These things have to do with me.

What belongs to me belongs to time, because I myself depend upon time. Yet they belong to God before they belong to me, and they depend upon God before they depend upon time. Time cannot wrest them from his empire, for he is above time. To him, they remain, and they enter among his treasures. What I have lost I will find again. What I do in time passes through time to eternity, for time is comprehended by and is under the rule of eternity and leads to eternity. I enjoy the moments of this life only as they pass; when they pass, I must respond to them as if they had remained. It is not enough to say, “They have gone, I will think no more of them.” They are gone to me, yes, but to God, no, and he will ask me for a reckoning of them.

If this life is a small thing because it is passing, what are we to think of those pleasures that do not last for a whole lifetime and which pass by in a moment? Are they worth their price? O my God, I resolve with all my heart, in your presence, every day, to think about death, at least when I lie down and when I rise. And with this thought: “I have little time, I have a long road to travel, perhaps I have less further to go than I think.” I will praise God for having brought me to think about repentance, and I will put order into my affairs, into my confession, into my meditation, thinking not about what passes, but with great care, great courage, and great diligence about what remains.

From the descent of Christ to hell we may learn, for our instruction, four things:

1. Firm hope in God. No matter what the trouble in which a man finds himself, he should always put trust in God’s help and rely on it. There is no trouble greater than to find oneself in hell. If then Christ freed those who were in hell, any man who is a friend of God cannot but have great confidence that he too shall be freed from what-ever anxiety holds him. Wisdom forsook not the just when he was sold, but delivered him from sinners; she went down with him into the pit and in bands she left him not (Wis. x. 13-14). And since to His servants God gives a special assistance, he who serves God should have still greater confidence. He that fear eth the Lord shall tremble at nothing and shall not be afraid: for he is his hope(Ecclus. xxxiv. 16). 

2. We ought to conceive fear and to rid our selves of presumption. For although Christ suffered for sinners, and went down into hell to set them free, he did not set all sinners free, but only those who were free of mortal sin. Those who had died in mortal sin He left there. Wherefore for those who have gone down to hell in mortal sin there remains no hope of pardon. They shall be in hell as the holy Fathers are in heaven, that is for ever. 

3. We ought to be full of care. Christ went down into hell for our salvation, and we should be careful frequently to go down there too, turning over in our minds hell’s pain and penalties, as did the holy king Ezechias as we read in the prophecy of Isaias, I said : In the midst of my days I shall go to the gates of hell (Isaias xxxviii. 10). 

Those who in their meditation often go down to hell during life, will not easily go down there at death. Such meditations are a powerful arm against sin, and a useful aid to bring a man back from sin. Daily we see men kept from evildoing by the fear of the law’s punishments. How much greater care should they not take on account of the punishment of hell, greater in its duration, in its bitterness and in its variety. Remember thy last end and thou shalt never sin (Ecclus. vii. 40). 

4. The fact is for us an example of love. Christ went down into hell to set free those that were his own. We, too, therefore, should go down there to help our own. For those who are in purgatory are themselves unable to do anything, and therefore we ought to help them. Truly he would be a harsh man indeed who failed to come to the aid of a kinsman who lay in prison, here on earth. How much more harsh, then, the man who will not aid the friend who is in purgatory, for there is no comparison between the pains there and the pains of this world. Have pity on me, have pity on me, at least you my friends, because the hand of the Lord hath touched me (Job xix. 21). 

We help the souls in purgatory chiefly by these three means, by masses, by prayers, and by almsgiving. Nor is it wonderful that we can do so, for even in this world a friend can make satisfaction for a friend.

—St. Thomas Aquinas

Everyone knows the meaning of Good Friday. But what about Holy Saturday?

Good Friday is the day we remember that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. The same is true of Easter Sunday, when everyone knows we celebrate that he rose from the dead in triumph over death.

Though it may have been a day of waiting for his disciples, Jesus was engaged in some of the most dramatic and important work of his messianic mission on Holy Saturday – and it took him to the depths of hell.

Wait, what? Jesus went to hell?

It’s right there in the ancient Apostles’ Creed: “[he] was crucified, died and was buried; he descended into hell; on the third day he rose again from the dead…” (It’s also in the Athanasian Creed.)

To properly understand what is going on here, there are two things you need to know:

First, when most people hear the word “hell,” they think of the hell of the damned, the place of eternal punishment for people who do not die in Christ. However, the term “hell” can sometimes have a broader meaning of “realm of the dead” for those who are not experiencing the vision of God.

This broader meaning certainly includes the hell of the damned, but can also include other places. For example, purgatory is a part of the broader realm of the dead but is separate from the hell of the damned.

Second, before the coming of Christ, there was at least one other part of the realm of the dead that no longer exists today, a place called “the limbo of the patriarchs.”

If, before Christ, a person died in friendship with God, they wouldn’t go to the hell of the damned to be punished, but they also couldn’t go to heaven because Christ had not yet made that possible. Instead, they went to a part of the realm of the dead without the punishments of the damned.

It is to the people of this place that Christ visited when he “descended into hell.”

As the Catechism explains:

So, after dying on the cross, Christ descended to the realm of the dead to proclaim to them that he had won their salvation and to lead them as the first entrants into heaven. Traditionally, this has included people like Adam and Eve, Saint John the Baptist, and his foster-father Saint Joseph.

This vitally important but often forgotten part of Christ’s mission is described most beautifully in an ancient sermon for Holy Saturday:

Here's the full text of the amazing sermon.

So don’t let Holy Saturday just be the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Rather, contemplate Christ’s dramatic rescue mission in the realm of the dead, and praise God!

The chancellor-in-waiting says he would commit to giving Kiev long-range missiles if London backs him

Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz doesn’t officially take office until May 6, but that hasn’t stopped him from hitting the press circuit like it’s demolition day. Apparently, he’s got some lost time – and infrastructure – to make up for. 

In a chat with Germany’s public broadcaster, ARD, he floated the idea that Kiev, which seems to rank higher than Berlin on his priority list, needs to “get ahead of the situation” on the battlefield and “shape events” instead of playing defense. The event he seems most eager to shape? Oh, just the Third World War, apparently. Because he pivoted straight to the Kerch Bridge – mainland Russia’s lifeline to the Crimean peninsula – like it’s been living on borrowed time.

Merz said that “if for example, the most important land connection between Russia and Crimea is destroyed, or if something happens on Crimea itself, where most of the Russian military logistics are located, then that would be an opportunity to bring this country strategically back into the picture finally.” Cool, cool. Which picture would that be, exactly? The one labeled “Catastrophic Misjudgments of the 21st Century”?

Probably. Which is why Merz needs a useful idiot to ride shotgun alongside him in the doltmobile to share in any responsibility for the eventual mayhem when things inevitably go pear-shaped.

“You rang?” say the Brits. Or at least that’s what Merz is apparently hoping they say. “Our European partners are already supplying cruise missiles,” Merz said in an interview. “The British are doing it, the French are doing it, and the Americans are doing it anyway, this must be jointly agreed. And if it’s agreed, then Germany should take part.” 

Merz’s fellow Christian Democratic Party MPs have been floating the idea in the Western press that he’s waiting for an official permission slip from London.

It would probably read something like this: “Dear Herr Friedrich, You are hereby authorized to partake in a highly coordinated, militarized pub crawl. First stop: a punch-up with Russia, followed by a wobbly march to a greasy spoon for black coffee, bad lighting, and a collective hangover.”

“Ah, wunderbar!”

Merz is just days away from grabbing the wheel, and he’s done pretending to be the guy in the backseat yelling directions at Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Scholz, for his part, always said that Germany wouldn’t hand Kiev the Taurus long-range missiles. Not that he had much wiggle room after last year’s leaked audio from Russian intelligence of German Air Force brass workshopping ways to hit the Kerch Bridge without leaving any German fingerprints. Kind of a bad look for a guy who keeps overtly declaring that he wants peace. So naturally, he was furious. Which is why, if Team Scholz suddenly turned around now and said, “You know what? Let’s try a few long-range missile strikes, just for funsies,” people might reasonably assume that he’d undergone a surprise lobotomy with a NATO letter opener.

As the coalition partners for Merz’s incoming government, Scholz’s Social Democrats’ support would be needed on any vote. And so far, they’ve shown no interest in greenlighting his WW3 passion project. You know, democracy and all that.

Minor hiccup, I know. If military ambition and musings alone were all it took, Merz would already be well on his way to having a Netflix original named after him and maybe even a seat with his name on it waiting at The Hague.

But hey, hear the guy out. What if it’s, like, a group project? Das ist gut, ja?

Nah, dude. Nicht gut. Nicht gut at all.

What exactly does Team Merz think this would look like? Would the Brits and Germans sit side by side, fingers hovering over their respective missile buttons, doing a tense little “one, two, three, fire” and just praying that neither one flinches at the last second and leaves the other one with some very awkward phone calls to make?

If so, that would certainly explain why they’re talking about specifically needing Britain’s non-negotiable participation and not France – the country that trained a flagship brigade for the Ukrainian army, who apparently learned how to bail out before even seeing action. “Paris hailed it as a ‘unique’ initiative,” reported France24. Training 1,700 Ukrainians in France to fight who then just end up surrendering to the foie gras and rosé at the local café prior to deployment is ‘unique’, alright.

Britain isn’t exactly a great choice for a wingman either, though. If only because it says that its own participation in Ukraine is contingent on Washington holding its hand. “Europe must play its role, and I’m prepared to consider committing British forces on the ground alongside others, if there is a lasting peace agreement, but there must be a US backstop,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in February.

So for those keeping score at home. For deeper involvement in Ukraine, Merz would need the Brits. The Brits would need Washington. And what would Washington need? For them all to knock it off. But apparently that memo got lost in their inbox among all the world war fantasy fiction.

“Pentagon figures recently questioned one ally about why it was still supplying weapons to Ukraine – a challenge that was ignored,” The Economist reported on April 15. ”Diplomats in Washington also report that some Trump aides say privately that they are ‘fed up’ with Europe’s effort to strengthen Ukraine.”

Doesn’t sound like Team Trump is up for holding hands as part of the West’s human chain in its reckless playground games against Russia. “Red Rover, Red Rover, send Putin right over!”

It’s hard to believe that there was a time not too long ago that Germany wasn’t trusted with the sharp knives, like nukes. Oh wait, it still isn’t. Technically, the Bundeswehr is still supposed to be defense only, but Merz seems determined to assemble just enough multilateral hand-holding to justify pulling out the long knives – the 500-kilometer-long ones, to be precise. If this is the new leadership model, then someone better put all the launch codes in a childproof box.