These were the white words displayed on a black t-shirt that the head coach of the NBA championship Boston Celtics wore during the celebration ceremony following the team’s victory. In speaking on his emotions following his championship win Coach Joe Mazzulla said, “First of all, the most important thing for us, for me, is our faith, and we have the number one fans in the world.” He also noted that being in this position to coach this team was “a blessing. I don’t deserve it but because of grace I’m here.”

These types of actions that are focused on Mazzulla’s Catholic faith are not new if you’ve been following his journey. So much of his words and actions are centered on God. The country, the world and his team have taken notice. In November 2022, after a game in Boston attended by the Prince and Princess of Wales, a reporter asked him if was able to meet “the royal family.” Mazzulla responded, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph? I’m only familiar with one royal family. I don’t know too much about that one. But hopefully, they’re Celtics fans.”

Mazzulla has consistently been a man who is upfront with his faith and the Celtics organization and players know this to be the case as well. He also recently said, “If we win the championship this year, we’re flying to Jerusalem and we’re walking from Jericho to Jerusalem.” He noted that his trip there several years ago had radically transformed his faith.

There are many other faith moments and actions that we could reference for the head coach. What is amazing is that he also seems to have influenced his players. There is no way we can say this for certain, but it is interesting that so many of the Celtics players would be so open about their faith in God directly following their championship victory.

The virtues of faith, hope and love appear to be a part of the way they speak and carry themselves. Several important contributors to the team spoke freely and clearly about their love of God and seemed to immediately praise their teammates and coaches over themselves.

Jayson Tatum, the leader of the team and top scorer, said, “First of all, God is the greatest. Not because we won but to put me in positions to maximize my God-given ability. To surround me with these guys and my family. This is an incredible feeling.”

Tatum wasn’t nearly referencing the phrase, “I’d like to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” This is something many players say and is a great way to be upfront about one’s faith. However, Tatum was different. He was more specific. God is not good because he won the game but because God enables Jayson to be the man and athlete that he is. God is the source and center, along with his family and team.

Jaylen Brown, another key start for the Celtics said the following in his post-game interview: “For me, my faith is most high and in just believing in my teammates and my coaching staff and just being grateful.”

Again, Brown focused on others instead of himself. He also noted that being thankful for all that he has been given is critical. His relationship with God is the clear number one. Placing that relationship where it needs to be gives him the vision of gratitude, no matter what happens.

Finally, Al Horford, the Celtics veteran, chanted “Gloria a Dios. Gloria a Dios. Glory, glory, glory to the Lord,” to the crowd and reporters following the Celtics championship win. Amid all of the confetti and celebration, he was smiling and gave God the notice. All of this should bring one to see that God is real and he is everything. Horford’s words were the shortest but were given with such power.

The Mazzulla effect was so clear to me watching all of these players be vocal about their faith.

During the postseason last year, the Celtics were knocked out of the playoffs and did not meet their championship expectations. When they were down in their series, Mazzulla was honest about how he spent some of his time. In a press conference, he said that he had visited three girls under the age of 21 years old who had terminal cancer. He wanted to be with them and spend some time with them. He said that being with these girls and seeing them still smile gave him a new perspective on life. He saw that the game was not the most important thing. At the end of our lives, it is faith and love that remains.

It sounds like this head coach has got it right. Keep God first and everything else will fall into place. It also appears that he has transmitted that truth to his players. Now, they follow his faith lead.

We should as well.

Author: Thomas Griffin; Source: National Catholic Register

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Small People

The story that comes just before this one is about a great man, a highflier, a Very Important Person: Naaman, the commander of Syria’s army (2 Kings 5). And the passage that immediately follows is about an even more important person: Naaman’s boss, the king of Syria himself (2 Kings 6:8–33). Both men have corner offices, fly first class, and live in gated communities. They’re big deals.

But not the people in this story. They’re referred to as “the sons of the prophets,” a group gathered around a prophet such as Elisha, learning from him and serving him. These are the guys who work in a cubicle, fly economy, and live where the houses are small and close together. They’re not famous or important — in fact, we’re not even told their names.

And yet this passage tells their story. In between the internationally significant narratives of a great military leader and a famous political leader is an episode about no-names involved in a purely local affair. This surprising interest in small people seems to have been a recurring feature of Elisha’s ministry (see the stories in 2 Kings 4). It’s also a hallmark of the larger biblical story (notice, for example, the focus on unnamed minor characters throughout the Gospel of Mark).

What’s more, the Bible doesn’t just show an interest in small people for whom things are going well — people who might be a net gain, even in their own small way. Rather, it demonstrates genuine care for small people with problems. That’s certainly the case for the sons of the prophets in 2 Kings 6. In fact, they have two problems.

Small Problems

The first problem is a housing issue. “Now the sons of the prophets said to Elisha, ‘See, the place where we dwell under your charge is too small for us’” (2 Kings 6:1). I get this. Several years ago, with our kids getting older, our house felt cramped, so we moved to a larger one. I wouldn’t deem our housing needs worthy of inclusion in Holy Scripture. Maybe the sons of the prophets felt similarly. But here’s their story — in the Bible. Apparently, the small problems of small people matter to God.

In this case, the sons of the prophets come to Elisha not just with a problem, but with a proposed solution. “‘Let us go to the Jordan and each of us get there a log, and let us make a place for us to dwell there.’ And he answered, ‘Go’” (2 Kings 6:2). Sometimes God meets our needs through miraculous means (he’ll do that in this very story). Other times he helps us through our own activity. Elisha doesn’t make a new house appear out of thin air. Instead, the sons of the prophets mount a logging expedition and build a house.

God often works this way. According to Jesus, God feeds the birds of the air — but as one of my seminary professors used to say, you don’t see birds lying on their backs, waiting for God to drop worms into their beaks. He feeds them through their own worm-finding efforts. Yes, God can provide manna from heaven and bread by raven (1 Kings 17:3–6), but his normal means of provision is our own hard work (2 Thessalonians 3:10).

The second problem involves a lost axe head. “But as one was felling a log, his axe head fell into the water, and he cried out, ‘Alas, my master! It was borrowed’” (2 Kings 6:5). Of course, this is a tiny issue in the grand sweep of things. But when a problem happens to us, we don’t feel that way about it. When it’s our injured leg, our dented car, our negative job review, our extended sickness, the comparatively small problem can feel big. The unnamed man in verse 5 “cried out” — a term connoting real distress. He cries out, “Alas!” He can’t afford to replace that borrowed axe head.

Yes, it’s a relatively small problem — but not to him. Will God even notice? Look what happens next.

Small Miracle

“Then the man of God said, ‘Where did it fall?’ When he showed him the place, he cut off a stick and threw it in there and made the iron float. And he said, ‘Take it up.’ So he reached out his hand and took it” (2 Kings 6:6–7). The description of Elisha as “the man of God” reminds us that Elisha, though a prophet, is a man. He needs to ask where the axe head fell (apparently, the miracle doesn’t include actually locating it!). But the term “man of God” also reminds us that Elisha represents God, speaks for God, does miracles by the power of God. God himself, in the person of his prophet, is involved in this small miracle.

Elisha throws a stick into the water; the axe head floats. We’re not told why a stick is used, but this is undoubtedly a miracle. Iron doesn’t float. As miracles go, it’s a small one. No one is raised from the dead. The fate of a nation doesn’t hang in the balance. There are few witnesses. Even the ending of the story is undramatic. “And he said, ‘Take it up.’ So he reached out his hand and took it.” That’s it. End of story.

So, here’s a summary of this little story: Some small people have a couple of small problems, and God meets their needs — in one case through their own planning and effort, and in the other through a small miracle. Maybe the story doesn’t seem all that important, yet I’m glad it’s in the Bible. It demonstrates that God cares about us and our everyday problems. He acts on our behalf. If we’re attentive, we’ll see that in our own lives.

No Prayer Too Small

I’ve seen God act this way in my own life. I’m a pastor, and a few years ago, I agreed to lead a graveside service for the deceased brother of a friend who lives in town. My friend isn’t a follower of Jesus, so this seemed like a great opportunity to serve him and deepen our friendship. The service was scheduled for 1:00, but somehow, I got it into my head that it began at 1:30. That day, I drove to the cemetery and arrived at about 1:20, thinking I was early. But as I walked toward the grave, I saw many cars and a crowd of people. I looked at my notes, discovered I was in fact twenty minutes late, and felt sick to my stomach.

Surprisingly, though, as I neared the grave, I saw pallbearers pulling a coffin out of a hearse and carrying it toward the grave. My friend greeted me and told me what had happened. An out-of-town funeral home had driven the coffin to the wrong cemetery in our town. A grave had been dug at that cemetery for a different funeral the same day, and they had lowered the coffin into that grave. It took time to discover the error, get the coffin out of the grave and back into the hearse, and drive it to the right place. In fact, it took them twenty minutes. Which meant I arrived right on time. I believe that was the work of God. He knew every little detail, cared for me, and prevented an unintentional offense against my friend. God did a small miracle for a small person (me).

Psalm 147:3–4 says that God “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.” God does big things (like creating and naming the stars) and little things (like binding up the wounds of sad people). So, here’s an invitation: Ask God for his help. Give him your burden. Surrender your problem. He wants you to ask. He sees and cares, no matter how humble and hidden the issue. God took on flesh and came to earth as a tiny, fragile, helpless baby born to a manual laborer. By doing so, he was saying, loud and clear, “I care about small people. I was one myself.” Let’s bring our problems, big and small, to him.

Source: Desiring God

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Biden has given no indication that he intends to exit the race, and his campaign has flatly dismissed the suggestion. But that has done little to silence critics who are openly questioning whether Biden is the right person to take on Donald Trump, a figure the president – and his party – view as a grave threat to American democracy.

In the unlikely scenario Biden decides not to run, the most obvious choice to replace him would be his 59-year-old vice president and running mate, Kamala Harris. But it would not be automatic – and other candidates would likely challenge Harris, who has suffered her own low approval ratings, for the nomination.

Already some Democrats are looking past the vice-president at other possible contenders – Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois governor JB Pritzker, California governor Gavin Newsom and Maryland governor Wes Moore.

It’s a sign that Democrats have yet to fully embrace Harris as Biden’s heir apparent.

“To even discuss Biden stepping down while COMPLETELY IGNORING THE VP … is a serious look into how we see the importance, capacity and seriousness of women of color,” writer Tanzina Vega, said on X.

Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, is the highest-ranking female elected official in US history and the first Black and first Asian American to serve as vice president.

Democrats, traumatized by Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016, rallied behind Biden in 2020 over a younger, more diverse and progressive field of candidates that included Harris. As a candidate, Biden promised to be a “bridge” to the next generation of Democratic leaders, which many interpreted as commitment to serve one-term and before passing the baton to Harris.

But when the time came to make a decision, Biden argued that he was still the Democrat best-positioned to beat Trump.

For the past three and a half years, Harris’s barrier-breaking vice-presidency has divided Democrats. Negative press, some of it self-inflicted, compounded by sexist and racist attacks, and a challenging policy portfolio weighed on public perception of the former California senator. Nearly 50% of voters have an unfavorable view of Harris, according to 538’s polling average, compared with the roughly 40% who view her favorably, figures that are comparable with Biden’s.

Despite a rocky start to her tenure, Harris has eased into the role, especially since becoming the administration’s leading voice on abortion rights. On Monday, Harris marked two years since the second anniversary of the US supreme court decision that overturned Roe v Wade with a fiery warning that Trump would not hesitate to further restrict women’s reproductive rights in a second-term.

Nodding to her background as a prosecutor, the vice president declared: “In the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America, Donald Trump is guilty.”

Harris’s clear defense of abortion rights, by far Democrats’ strongest issue, stands in stark contrast to Biden. During Thursday’s debate, Biden fumbled an attack on Trump over Republican bans on the procedure, pivoting bizarrely to immigration and raising the case of a young woman murdered in Georgia.

Moments after Biden finished the debate, it was Harris who came to his defense first in a pair of interviews. On CNN and MSNBC, Harris spun his performance, saying voters must look at the last three-and-a-half years of accomplishments and not just at the 90-minute debate. Harris conceded that Biden had a “slow start” but insisted he finished “strong.”

“I’m talking about the choice for November,” she said on CNN. “I’m talking about one of the most important elections in our collective lifetime.”

In a sharp back-and-forth, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper pressed Harris about calls for Biden to step aside.

“I’m not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes when I’ve been watching the last three-and-a-half years of performance,” she said, emphasizing his legislative and executive achievements he’s pulled in his first-term.

At a rally in Las Vegas the following day, Harris doubled down on her support.

“In the Oval Office, negotiating bipartisan deals, I see him in the situation room keeping our country safe,” she said, adding that the election would not be decided by “one night in June”.

The Atlanta debate was the first of the election cycle, with a second scheduled in September. The Biden campaign has agreed to a vice-presidential debate between Harris and Trump’s eventual running mate, but the terms have not yet been to confirmed.

In a hypothetical matchup against Trump, Harris performed roughly on par with Biden, trailing the former president by six points in a February Times/Siena poll. Biden trailed Trump by five points in the same poll. Meanwhile, the poll found Harris ran stronger than Biden with Black voters, though worse with Hispanic voters and men.

Biden’s age has long been an electoral challenge. But his shaky debate performance shocked even his staunchest supporters. At a rally on Friday, Biden acknowledged his stumbles, but insisted he was still the best candidate to defeat Trump.

“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” he said at a post-debate rally in North Carolina. “I know I don’t walk as easy as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.”

But mounting concerns about Biden’s mental acuity have drawn even greater scrutiny of Harris, particularly from the right. Republicans have sought to make Harris a boogyman, with Nikki Haley warning during the GOP primary a vote for Biden was a vote for “a President Harris”.

With the convention scheduled for mid-August in Chicago, and the formal nomination process to take place virtually at some point before that to meet an Ohio ballot deadline, many Democrats have said there is not enough time to replace Biden at the top of the ticket.

Former South Carolina lawmaker and Democratic commentator Bakari Sellers, who endorsed Harris in the 2020 primary, said wishing for an alternative to emerge at this stage was futile.

“You’re not nominating Gretch or Gavin or Wes over Kamala. Stop it,” he wrote on X, adding: “Choice is Trump, Biden or couch. I choose Joe.”

Posted by: Christian Fellows; Source: TheGuardian

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#Join_The_Bible_Study_Wagon

1 Chapter a day .

Enjoy quality time with the Word and the Holy Spirit

Have a blessed week!

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Nine National Football League teams have refrained from mentioning LGBT pride month on social media this year after other companies have experienced financial consequences as a result of their promotion of LGBT ideology.

Seven days into June, which LGBT activists recognize as LGBT pride month every year, slightly more than one-quarter of the NFL teams haven’t made any reference to the occasion. In the past, professional sports teams and other notable corporations have taken a lot of heat for wholeheartedly embracing it.

NFL teams whose X accounts have not brought up anything related to pride month in the past week are: Atlanta Falcons, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Dallas Cowboys, Kansas City Chiefs, Miami Dolphins, New Orleans Saints, Pittsburgh Steelers and Tennessee Titans.

The Arizona Cardinals, Baltimore Ravens, Buffalo Bills, Carolina Panthers, Chicago Bears, Denver Broncos, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Las Vegas Raiders, Los Angeles Rams, Minnesota Vikings, New England Patriots, New York Giants, New York Jets, San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers have all sent out at least one tweet acknowledging pride month.

Additionally, the Green Bay Packers sent out a tweet Tuesday declaring “Football is for everyone” but did not explicitly mention pride month, while the Jacksonville Jaguars sent out a similar post.

In addition to posting a tweet acknowledging the first day of pride month, the Los Angeles Chargers changed their profile picture on X to the team’s logo emblazoned in the rainbow colors that have come to symbolize LGBT ideology. The Philadelphia Eagles also changed the profile picture on their X account to a picture of the team’s eagle logo bathed in rainbow colors, while the Washington Commanders now have a profile picture on X of their “W” logo in rainbow colors.

The Commanders also sent out a tweet at the beginning of pride month, like most of the other teams have done. The Detroit Lions plugged the team’s “Pride Month apparel collection” in a June 1 tweet.

The handful of NFL teams opting not to promote pride month, at least so far, comes as major companies’ embrace of LGBT ideology has led to backlash among the American public. A survey from Bloomberg published last year found that “references to ‘Pride Month’ in filings, presentations and transcripts from April to June at more than 900 of the largest US companies dropped almost 40% from this time last year, the first decline in five years.”

One of the most notable examples of a company experiencing financial losses as a result of its promotion of LGBT ideology is Target, which saw its stock plummet last year after the big box store plugged an LGBT Pride collection and a “tuck-friendly” swimsuit designed to make it easier for trans-identified men to conceal their genitalia while wearing women’s swimsuits. Target lost $9.3 billion in market value and recorded a 12.6% drop in stocks as a result of backlash to its efforts to advance LGBT ideology.

Source: The Christian Post, Author:Ryan Foley

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A “Star Wars” spinoff is receiving negative attention from fans for pushing LGBT ideology in what has become a trend in recent adaptations of legendary franchises.

While “The Acolyte” premiered Tuesday, it has been clear since long before the series officially became available to the subscribers of Disney+ that the program was designed to appeal to a progressive audience. In an X post last year, the “Star Wars” fan account The Direct announced that “THE ACOLYTE has cast Abigail Thorn as Ensign Eurus, making her the first transgender actor to appear in a #StarWars series.”

Earlier this year, series creator Leslye Headland openly admitted to the goal behind the show in an interview that surfaced on X. “When I saw ‘Frozen’ as a grown-a– woman, I cried through the entire movie,” she recalled. “There was just something about the relationship between the sisters, the … devillainization of the classic kind of fairytale bad guy, you know, the concept of true love being between two sisters and not a heterosexual relationship … it just destroyed me completely.”

At that point, Headland said her desire was “to make something like this that is, you know, for lack of a better term, Disney, meaning something that like my parents would have allowed me to see when I was younger as a queer person, that I would have been able to understand a queer person.” She asserted that had such a program existed, she “would have had a completely different life.”

“I really was inspired by it and I was like ‘God, I would love to make a story like this,’” she added. “When I was developing this original idea to pitch to [production company Lucasfilm’s] Kathleen [Kennedy], I thought … you know it can’t just be that, you know, when you’re pitching ‘Star Wars’ you have to pull from what you know [‘Star Wars’ creator] George [Lucas] was also interested in.”

Headland saw an opportunity to create her “own new characters” who lived during a period of time in the “Star Wars” universe known as the “High Republic” or the “end of High Republic into prequels” that preceded the “Skywalker saga” that is at the center of the “Star Wars” franchise.

In a text message to The New York Times published last week, Headland proclaimed, “Anyone who engages in bigotry, racism or hate speech … I don’t consider a fan.”

A review of the first few episodes of “The Acolyte” posted to YouTube Tuesday night warned that the third episode of the series works to “completely redefine what ‘The Force’ is” and highlighted how “two mothers conceive twins” as part of the plot line. The video, posted by the account Geeks + Gamers, featured one fan of the franchise telling the others on the panel to “get ready for pronouns in Star Wars.”

A summary of “The Acolyte” created by the Internet Movie Database describes the show as a “Star Wars series that takes viewers into a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging dark-side powers in the final days of the High Republic era.”

“The Acolyte” is not the first example of a new installment of a long-running franchise embracing LGBT ideology. In 2021, DC Comics announced on “National Coming Out Day” that “the life of Jon Kent, the Superman of Earth and son of Clark Kent and Lois Lane” would take a “bold new direction” in a then-unpublished version of the comic book series Superman: Son of Kal-El. The plot twist hyped by the comic book company involved the revelation of the main character as bisexual.

Source: The Christian Post, Author: Ryan Foley

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Researchers at the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with research groups from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and Fudan University, have developed a fatigue-free ferroelectric material based on sliding ferroelectricity. The study is published in Science.

Ferroelectric materials have switchable spontaneous polarization that can be reversed by an external electric field, which has been widely applied to non-volatile memory, sensing, and energy conversion devices.

Due to the inherited ionic motion of ferroelectric switching, ferroelectric polarization fatigue inevitably occurs in conventional ferroelectric materials as the number of polarization reversal cycles increases. This can lead to performance degradation and device failure, thus limiting the practical applications of ferroelectric materials.

To solve this fatigue problem, the researchers developed a fatigue-free ferroelectric system based on sliding ferroelectricity. A bilayer 3R-MoS2 dual-gate device was fabricated using the chemical vapor transport method.

After 106 switching cycles with different pulse widths ranging from 1 ms to 100 ms, the ferroelectric polarization dipoles showed no loss, indicating that the device still retained its memory performance.

Compared with commercial ferroelectric devices, this device exhibits a superior total stress time of 105 s in an electric field, demonstrating its excellent endurance.

By means of a novel machine-learning potential model, theoretical calculations revealed that the fatigue-free property of sliding ferroelectricity can be attributed to its immobile charged defects.

This work provides an innovative solution to the problematic performance degradation of conventional ferroelectrics.

Source: phys.org, Author: Chinese Academy of Sciences

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A popular Los Angeles YouTuber faces an explosives charge with federal prosecutors accusing him of directing a video stunt in which fireworks were blasted from an airborne helicopter and at a speeding Lamborghini.

Suk Min Choi, 24, who also goes by Alex Choi, 24, was arrested Wednesday and charged with one count of causing the placement of an explosive or incendiary device on an aircraft, the US Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California announced in a news release Thursday.

Choi, who has 923,000 followers on YouTube and 1.2 million followers on Instagram, posted a video titled “Destroying a Lamborghini with Fireworks” on July 4, 2023, according to an affidavit filed with the criminal complaint.

The nearly 11-minute video, which is no longer posted on Choi’s social media pages, shows two women shooting fireworks out of the helicopter and toward the sportscar, the affidavit said.

“After shooting what appears to be a live-action version of a fictionalized video game scene, the video transitions to a behind-the-scenes look at how Choi shot the first third of the video. During this portion of the video, Choi allegedly makes various references to himself coordinating the shoot,” the US Attorney’s Office said.

Authorities believe the footage was shot in June 2023 on a federally-owned area of the El Mirage Dry Lakebed in San Bernardino County, California. The Bureau of Land Management provided photos of tire marks left behind by the sports car, according to prosecutors.

Choi is also accused of lacking the proper permits to film in the area, including Federal Aviation Administration approval for planned filming activities involving the helicopter, according to the affidavit.

Additionally, prosecutors said Choi traveled to Las Vegas to buy the fireworks because they are illegal in California.

CNN is attempting to identify Choi’s legal representation

No other people involved in the video were named in the affidavit. No injuries were reported as a result of the stunt, Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the US attorney’s office, told CNN.

Dozens of videos on Choi’s YouTube channel feature flashy luxury sports cars, though the most recent video was posted in December.

Choi made his initial appearance in court Thursday and was released on $50,000 bond, McEvoy, said. Choi did not enter a plea. His arraignment is scheduled for July 2.

He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted as charged, according to prosecutors.

Related video

Source: CNN, Author: Cindy Von Quedow

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Japan’s fertility rate, which has seen a precipitous fall for many years, has reached another record low as the government ramps up efforts to encourage young people to get married and start families — even launching its own dating app.

The nation of 123.9 million people only recorded 727,277 births last year, according to new data released by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare on Friday. The fertility rate – defined as the total number of births a woman has in her lifetime – dropped from 1.26 to 1.20.

For a population to remain stable, it needs a fertility rate of 2.1. Anything above that will see a population expand, with a large proportion of children and young adults, as seen in India and many African nations.

But in Japan, the fertility rate has been well below that stable marker of 2.1 for half a century, experts say – it fell below that level after the 1973 global oil crisis pushed economies into recession, and never recovered.

The downward trend has accelerated in recent years, with the number of deaths overtaking births each year and causing the total population to shrink – with far-reaching consequences for Japan’s workforce, economy, welfare system and social fabric.

In 2023, the country recorded 1.57 million deaths, according to the Health Ministry – more than double the number of births.

And Japan’s not having much matrimonial luck, either – the number of marriages fell by 30,000 last year, while the number of divorces rose.

Experts say the decline is expected to continue for at least several decades and is to some extent irreversible due to the country’s population structure. Even if Japan were to boost its fertility rate tomorrow, its population will keep falling until the skewed ratio of young people to older adults balances out.

Still, the government is now  racing to soften the impact, launching new government agencies to focus specifically on this problem. It has launched initiatives such as expanding child care facilities, offering housing subsidies to parents, and in some towns, even paying couples to have children.

In the capital Tokyo, local officials are trying a new tack: launching a government-run dating app, which is in early testing phases and will be fully operational later this year.

“Please use it as ‘the first step’ to begin marriage hunting,” the app’s website says, adding that the AI-matchmaking system is provided by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

Users are asked to take a “values diagnostic test” but there’s also an option to put in the desired traits of a future partner.

“Based on your values and the values you seek in a partner, which can be determined by taking a diagnostic test, AI will introduce you to a compatible person,” it said. “What cannot be measured by appearance or conditions alone may lead to unexpected encounters.

The app even caught the eye of billionaire Elon Musk, who wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “I’m glad the government of Japan recognizes the importance of this matter. If radical action isn’t taken, Japan (and many other countries) will disappear!”

Experts have told CNN this scenario is unlikely – the fertility rate is expected to even out at some point, and the country will adjust. Japan may look very different at that point, from its demographic makeup to its economy and domestic policies, but it won’t simply vanish.

“Marriage is a decision based on one’s own values, but the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is working to build momentum for marriage so that those who think they ‘intend to get married eventually’ can take that first step,” says the dating app’s website.

Users must be single, over 18 years old “with a desire to get married,” and be living or working in Tokyo, the website says.

It also lists the government’s other measures to support couples – such as providing information on work-life balance, child care and housing support, men’s participation in housework and child-rearing, and career counseling.

“We hope that every single one of you who wishes to get married will think about what being in a ‘couple’ means to you,” it says.

Related video

Source:CNN, Author: Jessie Yeung and Hemari Semans

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“It wasn’t so much about leaving as it was about an opportunity to grow a new network that puts faith and family at the forefront of its content,” Bure wrote in response. “I’m very proud of the work I did at Hallmark for 15 years and love all my friends there.”

When she left Hallmark two years ago, she explained to the wall Street Journal what her intentions were.

“My heart wants to tell stories that have more meaning and purpose and depth behind them. I knew that the people behind Great American Family were Christians [who] love the Lord and wanted to promote faith programming and good family entertainment.”

Bure, who was part of the hit 90s sitcom Full House, joined Hallmark in 2008 and went on to be part of 30 films with the channel. In 2022, however, she left amid the channel’s decision to air commercials from an LGBTQ+ wedding registry and event website, Zola.com. In response, conservative activist group One Million Moms put out a petition calling for Hallmark to take down the ads, which was eventually removed. 

Under GAC, Bure has roles in several projects, including a new mystery movie franchise titled “The Ainsley McGregor Mysteries” and a new Christmas movie titled “A Christmas Less Traveled.” She also serves as a GAC executive with the company/

“I’m very excited to develop heartwarming family and faith-filled programming and make the kind of stories my family and I love to watch,” Bure said in a statement. “I am constantly looking for ways that I can inspire people to live life with purpose. GAC fits my brand perfectly; we share a vision of creating compelling, wholesome content for an audience who wants to watch programming for and with the whole family.”

Source:Crosswalk.com, Author: Milton Quintanilla

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