Did you ever imagine a major Iranian political leader coming to visit Israel, not to threaten the Jewish people with genocide, but to offer his hand of peace, cooperation and mutual respect?

It may sound like fiction – like one of my novels – but it’s actually happening this week.

In an historic development, Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi – the son of Iran’s late king, or shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi – arrived at Ben-Gurion International Airport yesterday, accompanied by his wife, Yasmine.

“Yasmine and I just arrived here in Israel,” Pahlavi immediately tweeted to his 1.2 million followers. “We are very happy to be here and are dedicated to working toward the peaceful and prosperous future that the people of our region deserve. From the children of Cyrus, to the children of Israel, we will build this future together, in friendship.”

The reference was to Cyrus the Great, described both in Persian history and in the Bible as one of the most powerful and influential leaders in the history of the ancient Persian empire, and the man who gave the Jewish people their freedom, sent them back to Israel to resettle their homeland, and gave them both the permission and the money to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.

Read more at: www.allisrael.com

The Biden administration is dictating religious policy to Israel over the delicate question of mixed-gender prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the holiest site in Judaism.

U.S. Ambassador for International Religious Freedom Rashad Hussain, who happens to be Muslim, tweeted on behalf of the administration Sunday that the U.S. supports the implementation of an expansion of the space for egalitarian — i.e. mixed — prayer at the Wall.

In traditional, or “Orthodox,” Judaism, men and women pray separately, and men lead the services. Since only men are religiously obligated to pray, the space allocated to men is larger than the women’s section at the Wall.

In other Jewish denominations, such as “Reform,” men and women pray together, and women often lead services. Reform is the largest Jewish denomination in the U.S., but is smaller in other parts of the world.

(In Islam, men and women also pray separately, except at the Kaaba in Mecca. There is no egalitarian prayer at other Muslim holy sites, including at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, which sits above the Western Wall.)

The Western (or Wailing) Wall is the surviving remnant of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, destroyed by the Romans in the year 70. Many Jews avoid praying on the Temple Mount itself — which is a Muslim holy site today — for fear of accidentally stepping on the Holy of Holies, the spot where the presence of God is believed to have dwelt, and which was entered only by the High Priest on the annual Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur).

Read more at: www.breitbart.com

A new video from the YouTube channel Adagio revisits futurist Ray Kurzweil’s ideas about how for humans, both singularity and immortality are shockingly imminent—as in, potentially just seven years away.

Both concepts may take a stretch of reality to attain, but Kurzweil and his supporters are quite limber. The idea of singularity is the moment AI exceeds beyond human control and rapidly transforms society. Predicting this timing is tricky, to say the least.

But Kurzweil says one crucial step on the way to a potential 2045 singularity is the concept of immortality, possibly reached as soon as 2030. And the rapid rise of artificial intelligence is what will make it happen. Kurzweil believes that our technological and medical progress will grow to the point that robotics—he dubs them “nanobots”—will work to repair our bodies at the cellular level, as reported by Lifeboat, turning disease and aging around thanks to the continual work of robotic know-how. And then, voilà: immortality.

Read more at: www.popularmechanics.com

Actress and Broadway star Patti LuPone said during her Tuesday appearance on The View that she has “no idea what the difference is” between “our Christian right and the Taliban.”

After being asked what she thought about “DeSantis and the LGBTQ,” LuPone said, “That is extremely upsetting. These are human beings. And I could cry. They’re not harming anybody.”

“I don’t know why he’s doing this,” LuPone said of Florida Gov. Ron (R). “And I said this before, and I’m going to get in trouble, but I have said this before, and it’s been in print: I don’t know what the difference between our Christian right and the Taliban is. I have no idea what the difference is.”

“I just don’t know what the difference is. What’s happening in this country right now in the name of religion is so dangerous,” the Heist star continued. “And it’s not this country. It’s not America.”

Read more at: www.breitbart.com

The Dalai Lama, the Tibetans’ 87-year-old spiritual leader, issued an apology Monday morning after video surfaced of him kissing a young boy on the mouth earlier this year in northern India.

The incident happened in February in the hillside city of Dharamshala during an event for the M3M Foundation, a philanthropy group started by an Indian real estate company.

After the Dalai Lama kissed the boy, he stuck out his tongue and told the boy to “suck my tongue.”

“A video clip has been circulating that shows a recent meeting when a young boy asked His Holiness the Dalai Lama if he could give him a hug,” said a statement on the exiled leader’s Twitter account, which has 19 million followers. “His Holiness wishes to apologize to the boy and his family, as well as his many friends across the world, for the hurt his words may have caused.”

“His Holiness often teases people he meets in an innocent and playful way, even in public and before cameras,” the statement continued. “He regrets the incident.”

Read more at: www.dailywire.com

The cosmetic surgery clinic performed a double mastectomy.

A North Carolina cosmetic surgery clinic appears to have performed gender surgery on girls as young as 14.

The Cosmetic Concierge, a plastic surgery clinic in Charlotte, performed elective double mastectomies on teen patients, including at least one 14-year-old, Reduxx reported.

This month, screenshots of “before and after” photos on the clinic’s website were posted on Twitter, prompting outrage from social media users. The images showed the results of “top surgery” procedures, which remove the healthy breasts of females who desire a more masculine appearance. The photos also included the ages of the patients, some of whom were listed as 14, 15, and 16.

The clinic appears to have removed the photos from its website. An archived version of the page from January 22 showed the images present on the site, Reduxx reported.

Read more at: www.dailywire.com

A group of scientists at Cardiff University have revealed stunning information that could lead to life-changing treatment for sufferers of the most common form of Alzheimer’s disease in the next 15 years.

The research by the scientific team started in 2009, and in 2022 they announced they had found three genes that led to the disease. But now they have announced discovering 92 more genes.

“By 2040 I think we’ll be in the position to offer a range of treatments and we might not know exactly why, but one of them will be able to act on the huge range of causes,” Professor Julie Williams, the Cardiff Dementia Centre’s director, stated.

“Once you know where to start looking then you can study the effects which genes have on specific brain activity,” Williams said. “Things are speeding up and improving all the time. I’ve learnt more in the last seven years than I did in the previous 20. Tests which cost millions in the 90s can be carried out for around £30.”

Read more at: www.dailywire.com

In Boston labs, old, blind mice have regained their eyesight, developed smarter, younger brains and built healthier muscle and kidney tissue. On the flip side, young mice have prematurely aged, with devastating results to nearly every tissue in their bodies.

The experiments show aging is a reversible process, capable of being driven “forwards and backwards at will,” said anti-aging expert David Sinclair, a professor of genetics in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and codirector of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research.

Our bodies hold a backup copy of our youth that can be triggered to regenerate, said Sinclair, the senior author of a new paper showcasing the work of his lab and international scientists.

The combined experiments, published for the first time Thursday in the journal Cell, challenge the scientific belief aging is the result of genetic mutations that undermine our DNA, creating a junkyard of damaged cellular tissue that can lead to deterioration, disease and death.

“It’s not junk, it’s not damage that causes us to get old,” said Sinclair, who described the work last year at Life Itself, a health and wellness event presented in partnership with CNN.

“We believe it’s a loss of information — a loss in the cell’s ability to read its original DNA so it forgets how to function — in much the same way an old computer may develop corrupted software. I call it the information theory of aging.”

Read more at: www.cnn.com

The idea of eating bugs has, once again, found its way back into the news. NPR recently released a piece that suggested the pushback against eating bugs is founded on a baseless conspiracy theory that elites want the population to consume bugs. However, the evidence seems to suggest that elites do, in fact, want the population to consume the likes of grasshoppers and fly larvae.

“Including insects in human food has been an emerging,” NPR wrote, “but still marginal, idea among climate scientists and food security experts. In countries where insects have not been a part of the diet, it’s an idea that has long been met with hesitancy and occasional ridicule.

“In recent years, however,” they considered, “this aversion has fused with an amorphous and shapeshifting conspiracy theory in which a shadowy global elite conspires to control the world’s population. For those who espouse the theory, eating bugs isn’t just a matter of disgust, or questioning the impacts of climate change. It’s framed as a matter of individual freedom and government control.”

Though bug-eating is not a new development, world leaders have certainly encouraged the notion that those in the West ought to consider consuming bugs. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested that there would be food shortages in early 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Read more at: humanevents.com

Micah Louwagie, the transgender pastor of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Fargo, North Dakota, has compared the treatment of trans shooter Audrey Hale to the treatment of Jesus in his passion.

The Jewish leaders were looking for “any excuse — valid or not — to crucify Jesus,” Rev. Louagie said in her April 2 sermon, and “they needed to kill him in order to preserve their good image.”

After reading the Biblical account of Jesus’ crucifixion, Louwagie, a biological female married to a woman, drew an analogy to the mass shooting in Nashville.

“There are a significant number of people who have deemed that the fact that the Nashville shooter happened to be a trans person — so it’s been reported — is just the excuse they need to call for the eradication of trans folks,” she declared.

Rather than focusing on our “serious gun violence problem” or on the fact that six people are dead, “they have decided they need to cause more harm,” she added.

“Some folks have tried to focus on eradicating trans people as a solution, because they have been waiting, just waiting for an opportunity such as this,” she stated. “They’ve been waiting for a reason, any reason to stoke their hatred.”

Read more at: www.breitbart.com