TOKYO (AP) — A 7.7 magnitude earthquake Monday off northern Japan sparked a short-lived tsunami alert and an advisory of a slightly higher risk of a possible megaquake for its coastal areas.

The Cabinet Office and the Japan Meteorological Agency said there was a 1% chance for a megaquake, compared to a 0.1% chance during normal times, in the next week or so following the quake near the Chishima and Japan trenches.

Officials said the advisory was not a prediction but urged residents in 182 towns along the northeastern coasts to raise their preparedness while continuing their daily lives.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi urged residents to confirm their designated shelters and evacuation routes and to check emergency food and grab bags so they can run immediately when a megaquake hits. “The government will do our utmost in case of an emergency,” she told reporters.

It’s been 15 years since a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and massive tsunami on March 11, 2011, ravaged parts of northern Japan, causing more than 22,000 deaths and forcing nearly half a million people to flee their homes.

https://apnews.com/article/japan-earthquake-tsunami-0746aebae49fc6cc37e20836ca37d570 

CrimethInc., an extremely far-left decentralized Antifa anarchist collective, has launched its annual “Steal Something from Work Day” campaign with a new article openly encouraging workplace theft, and a special focus on nurses pocketing medical supplies to support “community defense” against federal immigration enforcement.

The April 15 post titled “Steal Something from Work Day 2026: Why Nurses Steal to Save Lives” frames employee theft as a “moderate option” in response to what the group calls intensified capitalist exploitation under the second Trump administration.

The article contrasts everyday workplace theft with more extreme tactics such as warehouse burnings and direct attacks on employers.

CrimethInc. has promoted the event for more than a decade, designating April 15, traditionally Tax Day, as a worldwide day of symbolic resistance.

During an appearance on One America News Network’s “Fine Point,” Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall, author of Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI, said Anthropic’s artificial intelligence “threatened to blackmail, its metaphorical boss.”

Host Chanel Rion said, “Headline number two, meta is having trouble with rogue AI agents. Listen to this. A meta AI agent went full rogue inside the company when asked to help with a routine internal technical question it independently posted sensitive company and user data to engineers who weren’t authorized to see it, exposing the information for nearly two hours before it was caught..."

Hall said,"...this is Agentic AI for those who are newer to the conversation is text to action, which means that you tell the agent what to do, and it goes off on autonomously and carries out that action...Anthropic had a similar situation where they had an AI agent that literally broke out of its, of its containment in its sandbox and threatened to blackmail, its metaphorical boss by making up allegations of extramarital affair. So these things are very, very unwieldy. And we have to be very cautious.”

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2026/04/17/code-red-author-wynton-hall-anthropics-ai-threatened-to-blackmail-its-boss/  

Human rights activists expressed disgust and outrage this week after photos surfaced of a recently freed Cuban political prisoner suffering from multiple severe medical conditions, including cancer and visible malnutrition.

Cuba has been suffering under a brutal, murderous communist regime for 67 years. The Communist Party, first under late dictator Fidel Castro and now under his brother Raúl, engaged for decades in the widespread use of torture, firing squads, mass arrests, and public beatings, among other practices, to subjugate that population, which never voted for the Castro regime as Fidel Castro and his small gang staged a coup to seize power. 

Alexander Díaz Rodríguez, now 45, was arrested in the immediate aftermath of the July 11 anti-communist protests and convicted of the crimes of “disrespect” and “public disorder” for objecting to the Castro dictatorship. He was granted no medical clemency and released simply because he completed his five-year term.

...Díaz Rodríguez suffers from terminal throat cancer, hepatitis B, and thyroid disease.

Humanitarian activists advocating for Díaz Rodríguez noted this week that he is unlikely to receive the care he needs to live following his release. The Union for a Free Cuba Party, an anti-communist organization, issued a call on Tuesday for a country in the free world to issue a humanitarian visa for the former political prisoner.

The Castro regime regularly denies the existence of political prisoners in Cuba.

https://www.breitbart.com/latin-america/2026/04/15/outrage-as-cuba-releases-political-prisoner-in-concentration-camp-conditions/  

All eyes have been on the skies recently as people followed the journey of four Artemis II astronauts as they went farther into space than any other human had ever gone. The pictures have been beautiful, but even more so has been the great testimony of astronaut Victor Glover, who keeps pointing people toward the Creator God.

“My career is fed by my faith. Anytime I do something that’s pretty risky, I pray — before I fly, every time I fly. Definitely, when you go sit on top of a rocket ship,” Glover stated in a previous interview. “In the military, there’s a saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. There aren’t any on top of rockets, either.”

Of course, others are reporting that many atheists online are upset about this. They want people to see the wonder and beauty of the universe and to worship the creature—science, technology, human ambition and achievement—rather than the Creator God, who is to be praised forever. They are actively suppressing the truth in unrighteousness and are upset that this one particular astronaut isn’t doing it alongside them! Sounds like Romans 1.

But it’s obvious to all—whether here on earth or out in the cosmos—that God created the heavens and the earth. It all exists to give glory to him. And it does it well.

https://harbingersdaily.com/atheists-are-outraged-when-astronauts-give-glory-to-god/  

Roman Catholic dioceses across America saw a 38 percent increase in people attending church at Easter this year, compared to last, a sign that revival is breaking out.

The finding is consistent with recent polling showing a noticeable rise in people indicating that they’ve made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ.

Michael New, a social researcher at the Catholic University of America, told The Washington Times, “I think this reflects a pushback against secular liberalism, feminism, and transgender stuff.”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/04/revival-massive-number-churches-see-explosive-38-percent/  

If the morally-confused Pope Leo XIV continues to assume the role of a partisan podcaster, he will very quickly lose his moral authority.

...Leo is recklessly engaging in a left-wing campaign to damage President Trump’s and the Republican Party’s standing with Catholics, and, by extension, his own standing as a credible spiritual leader.

Thus far, after only a short time as pope, Leo has already: repeatedly attacked Trump’s positions on immigration; blasted Trump’s approach towards the weaklings in Europe and the useless United Nations; and blistered what he describes as Trump’s “diplomacy based on force.”

Leo is already the most divisive pope of my lifetime.

First, there is Leo’s political hypocrisy. We see Muslims all around the world engaging in terrible misdeeds including the persecution of Christians, and Leo’s only response has either been silence or whataboutism. If you are going to assume the role of a daily podcaster and want to be seen as an honest moral broker, you have to call out all the ills of the world, not just Trump’s.

For example, why hasn’t Pope Podcaster said something about Democrats covering up sexual assault allegations against Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) for over a decade?

Above all, Leo is just plain morally wrong when it comes to bashing Trump. To begin with, no reasonable or moral person is okay with the suicidal mullahs of Iran obtaining nukes, and that’s the only choice here. Instead of grasping that piece of moral clarity, Leo’s criticism of the war makes him sound, at best, naïve.

Where is Leo’s criticism of the Iranian regime’s daily promise to destroy America and Israel? Google failed to find one.

What’s more, why does Leo side with Europe over the U.S? ...Again, all we get from Leo are the same partisan, empty-headed pro-U.N. talking points we hear from the empty-headed partisans who infest CNN.

I’m a Catholic. I’ll always be a Catholic.

One of the most common talking points from the left is that if you don’t rush confused kids into the gender reassignment pipeline, they will kill themselves. The left tells us that “transgenderism” is not a mental health problem, while at the same time telling us that people, especially minors, will kill themselves at greater rates if steps aren’t quickly taken to get those kids on puberty blockers, and on track to have their bodies permanently mutilated to change their sex. 

More to the point, the narrative goes like this: “Trans kids” are at higher risk of suicide if they don’t receive greater acceptance, supportive environments, and “access” to “gender-affirming care.” 

Did it ever occur to the left that the suicide in these cases may be connected to the increased likelihood that gender-confused children have severe mental health instability? Did it ever occur to the left that a pre-existing mental health issue, not the gender issue, is what may contribute to the risk of suicide? 

Don’t take my word for it. Researchers in Finland published a groundbreaking study in the peer-reviewed pediatric journal Acta Paediatrica, which pretty much destroyed the notion that “gender reassignment” surgeries and treatments help gender-confused kids. 

According to the study, the surgeries and treatments may, in fact, be making things worse. 

“In some individuals, medical GR appears to be linked to deterioration in mental health,” the study found. “Subsequent to medical GR, psychiatric treatment needs appear to increase.” 

You would think that if you take a deep dive into 25 years of real-world data, you might get a clear picture of the issues at play and what’s really happening. 

During that period, the percentage of males wanting to become female jumped from 9.8% in 1996 to 60.7% in 2019. This stat alone kills the “born this way” assumption. As Finland’s culture has shifted aggressively leftward, more boys want to be girls. This suggests that the “trans kids” dynamic is a social contagion. 

The study found that teens who decided not to receive hormonal or surgical treatments enjoyed better mental health outcomes. The rate of mental health challenges increased by a much lesser amount. That puts the kibosh on the whole rationale for transing the kids. 

If a kid is confused over his or her gender, and you don’t give them puberty blockers, and you don’t push surgeries on them, you’re more likely to have a kid with better mental health in the end.  

But if you do put them on the hormonal treatment track and the surgery track, the chances of the child having compounded mental health problems increase. 

The left likes to lecture the right to “follow the science,” but this science will be buried if the left has anything to do with it. The left wants gender-confused children. The left wants to "trans kids."

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/finland-data-blows-narrative-gender-reassignment-prevents-suicide  

Earth’s magnetic north pole has a new official position. The updated World Magnetic Model 2025, released by the National Centers for Environmental Information (NOAA) and the British Geological Survey, confirms the pole is drifting closer to Siberia.

That matters well beyond geophysics. The model keeps military and civilian planes, ships, submarines, and GPS units aligned with the planet’s changing magnetic field. The pole is now officially closer to northern Russia than to Canada, a notable geographic milestone after more than 190 years of movement across the Arctic.

Without regular updates to the magnetic model, navigation errors would accumulate quietly. A few degrees of uncorrected declination can throw off flight paths, shipping lanes, and military targeting systems. That is why governments and industries treat each five-year update as a critical event.

Unlike geographic north, which is fixed by Earth’s axis, magnetic north is tied to motion in the planet’s outer core. Flowing molten iron and nickel generate electric currents that produce the magnetic field. As that field changes, the magnetic pole moves too.

The shift has been underway for more than 190 years. The pole has traveled over 2,200 kilometers from its original position in the high Canadian Arctic. What was once a slow crawl became a sprint in the 1990s.

The update also revises the location of magnetic blackout zones. These are polar regions where compass readings become unreliable due to magnetic interference. As the magnetic pole shifts toward Siberia, so do the boundaries of these zones, affecting both military planning and scientific expeditions.

https://dailygalaxy.com/2026/04/earth-magnetic-north-pole-new-location/