Feelings of financial insecurity among Americans have reached their highest point in at least a decade.

A third of American adults in Northwestern Mutual’s 2024 Planning & Progress survey said they don’t feel financially secure. That’s up from 27% in 2023 and the highest measure going back to 2012.

“Despite the growing economy, Americans have had to endure one financial disruption after another over the last several years, and it’s hard to feel positive when you don’t know what’s around the corner,” said Christian Mitchell, the company’s chief customer officer, in a press release.

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Feeling financially insecure is becoming way too common an emotion/a reality. After so many fin'l twists and turns since Covid, stability doesn't sound boring, it sounds like a luxury.https://t.co/52Hk65ETV1

— Suzanne Woolley (@WealthWatch) March 11, 2024

The Church of England in Lancashire has achieved an important milestone in developing its environmental credentials.

The Diocese of Blackburn has been awarded the Bronze status of the national A Rocha Eco Church programme, which encourages churches, schools and dioceses throughout the UK to take practical action in ‘caring for God’s Creation’.

The collective award follows individual bronze awards for Blackburn Cathedral; the Diocesan Offices in Blackburn and the Centre for Christian Discipleship and Prayer at Whalley Abbey, along with 15 parishes in their own right across Lancashire. A further three churches in the Diocese have already achieved silver status; while another 36 have registered and are working towards their bronze status.

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Congratulations to @cofelancs on their Bronze Eco Diocese! #Ecochurchhttps://t.co/pECAWKNI6y

— Church of England Environment Programme (@CofEEnvironment) March 11, 2024

“In the past 10 years we have seen more than 17 mass kidnappings. It’s a bad record for any country and government, a total breakdown of the social contract,” regional security expert David Otto told CBS News over the weekend about the situation in Nigeria. “Most of the victims are women in these attacks, and when you attack women you have attacked society. The attacks of the last week — when 200-plus people are just taken — show after two decades of fighting insurgency, the government is still unable to protect society from terrorist groups.”

Otto spoke as the parents of more than 280 children voiced their anger over a mass abduction in Nigeria’s northern Kaduna state. The students, boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 15, were seized by armed men from the elementary and secondary schools in the town of Kuriga on Thursday.

The parents told local media outlets that bandits, as kidnap gangs in the region are commonly called, had taken their children and they implored Nigeria’s government to pay any ransom being demanded to secure their safe return.

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However great an Anglican’s veneration for Aquinas might be, they will probably concur with Mascall that “I do not consider Thomas locutus, causa finita [Thomas has spoken, the case is closed] as the last judgement to be passed on any theological problem; though my approach might be summed up in the words, Thomas locutus, causa incepta [Thomas has spoken, the matter is begun].”

AQUINAS was a man of superhuman intelligence and insight. As Josef Pieper put it, his arguments have the interlocking architectural majesty of a Bach fugue. He offers both a summation and a fountainhead. But what makes him a saint — and, indeed, such a fine theologian — is his interest in God. Faith does not reach out to a proposition, he wrote, but to a reality. That gets to the heart of why so many people turn to Aquinas today: because he thought that theology was about God.

Seven hundred and fifty years after Thomas’s death, one of the distinctive characteristics of the Church in our time is that quite so many Christians — across so many Churches — would gladly echo the words of Pope Pius XI in 1923: “Just as it was said of old to the Egyptians in time of famine: ‘Go to Joseph’ [Genesis 41.55], so that they should receive a supply of corn to nourish their bodies, so to those who are now in quest of truth we say ‘Go to Thomas,’ that they may ask from him the food of solid doctrine of which he has an abundance to nourish their souls unto eternal life.”

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"His sense of the pouring forth of creation, in glorious multiplicity, as an imitation of the Plenitude from whom all things spring, puts Aquinas in the top rank of Christian Platonists."https://t.co/DlpZWGG750

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 11, 2024

The death certificate for Ryan Bagwell, a 19-year-old from Mission, Texas, states that he died from a fentanyl overdose.

His mother, Sandra Bagwell, says that is wrong.

On an April night in 2022, he swallowed one pill from a bottle of Percocet, a prescription painkiller that he and a friend bought earlier that day at a Mexican pharmacy just over the border. The next morning, his mother found him dead in his bedroom.

A federal law enforcement lab found that none of the pills from the bottle tested positive for Percocet. But they all tested positive for lethal quantities of fentanyl.

“Ryan was poisoned,” Mrs. Bagwell, an elementary-school reading specialist, said.

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Overdose or Poisoning? A New Debate Over What to Call a Drug Death.: Grieving families want official records and popular discourse to move away from reflexive use of “overdose,” which they believe blames victims for their deaths. https://t.co/EE9BNjgr23

— Sophia Devetzi (@SophiaDevetzi) March 11, 2024

Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Bore da bawb…fel hyn ma’ dachre wythnos newi…enjoiwch eich diwrnod x

Good morning everyone…this is the way to start a new week…enjoy your day x pic.twitter.com/3d00oot3uj

— Aled Hall 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 (@AledHall) March 11, 2024

I will sing of thy steadfast love, O LORD, for ever; with my mouth I will proclaim thy faithfulness to all generations. For thy steadfast love was established for ever, thy faithfulness is firm as the heavens.

–Psalm 89:1-2

Morning everyone hope you are well. What a difference a week makes, blue skies now turned to grey. The bridge at Chapel Stile crossing the Great Langdale Beck with the Langdale Pikes as a backdrop. Have a great day. #LakeDistrict @keswickbootco pic.twitter.com/GIPz0Vp9KL

— Rod Hutchinson (@lakesrhino) March 11, 2024