Popular culture loves its image of Norsemen shivering in fur pelts, raiding British monasteries, and braving the icy North Atlantic. Yet while Vikings struggled to survive on the thawing margins of Greenland, a far richer and more formidable maritime power flourished thousands of miles away in the tropical warmth of southern India.
That power was the Chola Empire.
A modern golden age remains within reach — provided we do not cripple ourselves with fear of the very conditions that have so often underwritten human prosperity.
At its height between 985 and 1044 A.D., the Cholas projected force on a scale that made Viking longships look like backyard skirmishers. Their ships were technological marvels — floating fortresses capable of transporting cavalry, infantry, and weeks of provisions across vast distances.
The Cholas mounted a major naval expedition against the Srivijaya Empire, a dominant maritime power based in what is now Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula. This was an amphibious assault conducted thousands of miles from home ports, a logistical achievement comparable to modern naval operations. The Cholas toppled rulers, secured the vital Malacca Strait, and guaranteed safe passage for merchant guilds trading from the Middle East to China.
On land, they maintained a standing army that included thousands of war elephants.
Their wealth also found expression in stone. The Great Living Chola Temples — now recognized as UNESCO World Heritage sites — stretch across southern India and neighboring islands. Built without modern machinery, these monumental structures relied on elephants to haul massive stones from distances of up to 60 miles.
Chola society possessed abundant labor, food, and wealth. The question is why.
What enabled a civilization to generate the immense caloric and economic surplus required to build stone monuments and launch armadas across the Indian Ocean? A large part of the answer lies in climate — specifically, global warming.
The rise of the Chola Empire coincided with the Medieval Warm Period, which lasted roughly from 900 to 1300 A.D. This relationship between warmth and human flourishing is inconvenient for the modern climate-industrial narrative, which treats rising temperatures as an unqualified catastrophe.
Warmth strengthens tropical monsoons, the lifeblood of agrarian economies like the Cholas’. Recent scientific research confirms that fluctuations in the Indian summer monsoon shaped agricultural output and the rise and fall of major dynasties. Indian civilization flourished during the Roman Warm Period, fractured during the Dark Ages Cold Period, and reached new heights under the Cholas during the Medieval Warm Period.
The Chola Empire was sustained by the very kind of warming modern activists describe as an “existential threat.”
RELATED: ‘Green Antoinettes’ live large, preach small
ajijchan via iStock/Getty Images
In the Cauvery Delta — the empire’s heartland — this favorable climate transformed the region into the “Rice Bowl of the South.” Three harvests a year became common. Granaries overflowed. Revenues surged.
That surplus freed labor from subsistence farming and redirected it toward imperial ambition. Chola trade guilds thrived, exporting textiles, spices, and grain to the Chinese Song Dynasty — another civilization that prospered during this warm epoch.
Today, we find ourselves in another warming phase, emerging from the depths of the Little Ice Age that ended in the mid-19th century. Global crop yields have repeatedly reached record highs. India has re-emerged as a major grain exporter. The planet is experiencing a measurable “greening” effect as higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels fertilize plants and warmer temperatures expand cultivable land.
Yet, we are told to feel guilty.
Coal, oil, and natural gas — fuels that protect humanity from the elements and power modern economies — are vilified. Environmental extremists implicitly argue for a colder world, despite the historical record showing that colder periods brought famine, disease, and social collapse.
The Chola Empire stands as a reminder of what human ingenuity can achieve when the climate cooperates. Its ships sailed on prosperity sustained by warmth. Its temples rose from a society rich in calories and confidence. Its civilization commanded respect across continents.
We face a similar opportunity today. A modern golden age remains within reach — provided we do not cripple ourselves with fear of the very conditions that have so often underwritten human prosperity.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Tuesday froze access to child care and family assistance funds for California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York after widespread concerns over fraud and abuse of state-administered programs.
The post Democrats: HHS Freezing$10 Billion in Child Care Funding to Blue States amid Fraud Accusations a ‘Frontal Assault’ on Children appeared first on Breitbart.
As America celebrates its 250th year, the very organization planning the celebration has now been accused of spreading "progressive propaganda."
On Tuesday, America250 made a post praising former President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his novel list of "freedoms."
'Celebrating the socialist campaign positions of FDR as fundamental to American history was not what I expected when I hit the follow button.'
In a graphic, the post says, "On this day in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined four universal freedoms people the world over ought to enjoy."
"Spoken during a moment of uncertainty, the Four Freedoms helped define what America stood for — and continues to stand for," the post reads.
While the list starts with freedoms generally familiar to all Americans, specifically freedom of speech and freedom of worship, FDR also added a couple of novelties: "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear."
RELATED: Soros-tied No Kings protesters plot to sabotage US Army's 250th anniversary parade
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images
The Federalist's Brianna Lyman called out what she called America250's "progressive propaganda": "'Freedom from Want' is not a constitutional freedom nor a natural right. It was invented by FDR and his socialist cohort to justify welfare expansion and redefine rights as government grants — flying directly in the face of what America *actually* stands for."
"Making up a right like 'Freedom from Want' — and then pretending like this is a core American value, is shameful revisionist history from America250," Lyman added.
At the end of the series of graphics, the America250 post says, "President Roosevelt spoke them. Norman Rockwell painted them. We will strive to live them."
The Tennessee Star's Tom Pappert commented, "Celebrating the socialist campaign positions of FDR as fundamental to American history was not what I expected when I hit the follow button."
According to the America250 website, the "nonpartisan" U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission was established by Congress in 2016 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
While it is not clear who runs the social media accounts, notable figures on the commission include several members of Trump's Cabinet, Democrat and Republican congressmen and senators, and 16 private citizens.
The chair of America250, Rosie Rios, was appointed by President Joe Biden and previously served in both the Obama and Biden administrations in some capacity, according to her biography.
Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and their spouses are listed as "honorary national co-chairs" of America250.
America250 did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
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Trump officials have hit the ground running after surging some 2,000 immigration and fraud investigators into Minneapolis.
The post Trump Officials Descend on Minneapolis in Migration and Somali Fraud Crackdown appeared first on Breitbart.
Personally I think springtime is the best time to start something new — after all, the sunshine gets warmer, everything is budding and greening up, and my energy level is definitely higher than it is right now, in the “bleak midwinter.”
Nevertheless January 1 looms large. We're less than a week into the new year, a time that practically begs us to turn over a fresh page, a new leaf.
The idea is putting my daily meeting with God on my calendar as a nonnegotiable appointment.
So let’s talk about how to use 2026 to improve your relationship — with your creator.
Because that is unquestionably the most important task on our to-do list. Full stop.
How to do that? Well some things never change. God gave us an instruction manual, and immersing ourselves in that should be our absolute highest priority. This includes:
And of course along with immersion in the Word, which involves absorbing things God wants us to learn and act upon, He also welcomes us into His very presence. We are invited to bring our worship and gratitude to Him in prayer as well as our every request and concern, big or small.
Yeah, it always comes back to those two things.
Prayer and the Word.
And now here are some suggestions about how to prioritize these most important of life activities, now that 2026 is underway ...
The morning meetingI read this idea this year on Substack (if anyone can remind me of who suggested it, please comment, and I’ll update with the link), and it hit me hard. Probably because I find too much of the day slipping away from me even though I’m not bound to external employment hours, and I know I need to take better control of my time. I’m still wasting too much sand!
The idea is putting my daily meeting with God on my calendar as a nonnegotiable appointment. You can make this appointment any time of the day that works for you, but I do think morning is preferable if you can swing it. This meeting can be as long or brief as this stage of your life requires, but give it a hard start time and a hard stop time (of course you can always tweak this as life changes).
A meeting requires an agenda. You can make a general agenda for all meetings, or you can prepare a separate agenda for each daily meeting. Right now I’m working with an ambitious general agenda, but giving myself grace to skip some items if need be. Here’s my meeting agenda:
1. Read-through-the-Bible timeNo, I’m not doing it in a year. I’m doing a three-year plan, because I want to savor what I’m reading and avoid the “check-it-off-for-the-day” mindset.
I used Biblereadingplangenerator.com to create exactly what I wanted to cover — the Bible chronologically as it happened, with the prophets intertwined with other Old Testament passages where they fit chronologically, and the New Testament letters in the order they were written.
I removed Psalms and Proverbs from the plan, then added them back in at a rate of one per day (one Psalm, one chapter of Proverbs). This is because I’ve learned that I need to really slow down to savor the depth and wisdom contained in these two books.
Another benefit of taking three years for this is I have time to read and analyze the study notes in my Bible or even look up other commentary perspectives.
A final part of this agenda item: reading through books about the books of the Bible I’ve completed (this falls under the general category of “reading what other people have written about the Bible”).
2. Daily Bible chunksThere’s probably a more elegant way to say that. But the point is, since read-through-the-Bible time stays in each book of the Bible for quite awhile, I want to dip my toe into other sections as well on a regular basis. Here’s how I’ll divide it up by each day of the week this year, reading generally shorter sections of each book (I use my study Bible’s book outlines to guide me):
Notice the emphasis on the New Testament, since my foundational Bible reading will be mostly Old Testament for at least two years!
3. DevotionalIf I’m working through a devotional, here’s where I’ll do that.
4. MemorizationI’m trying something new this year! I want to memorize whole big chunks of the Word. I think I’m going to start with the tiny book of Jude, where the topic is false teaching. Very relevant for 2026, I believe.
I’ll study it first before beginning to memorize, a verse or two at a time. I'm planning to do this with my mini-discipleship group, so there’ll be at least two of us working our way through it.
5. Other reading or trainingI’ll try to work my way through my enormous “books I’d like to read” list during this time as well, since I have countless spiritually enriching titles collected but not yet read. Or I’ll watch videos I’ve been saving to work through, like Stand to Reason’s excellent apologetics series.
6. Throne room timeThis is where we gratefully accept His gracious invitation to come directly to the foot of His throne with all our prayers.
I’ve always tried to systemize my prayers, keeping lists and focusing on different people and needs on different days, but I’ve never journaled my prayers. The reason I’m excited to do this now is this — I’m excited to crack open my new five-year prayer journal.
The idea of this is to write out a prayer (or prayers) for each day, then after a full year of filling the journal, we circle back and fill it out a second year and a third and a fourth and a fifth — reviewing the previous year’s entry as we do.
I can’t wait to see how God works in my life as I review prayers I prayed a year earlier!
RELATED: How to bring Charlie Kirk's vision to life — starting in your own family
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
A few final thoughtsSo that will be my morning meeting in 2026. I will devote a couple of hours to it every day. After all, I’m in the season of life where I can devote more time to this most worthy endeavor, and I’m excited to make that commitment.
I’ve written a few other pieces to help you plan, execute, and enjoy this most marvelous time of the day:
With the year just beginning, there is nothing more important to lock in for 2026 than your time with God.
Happy (and God-centered) new year to all of you!
A version of this article previously appeared on the She Speaks Truth Substack.
Police in Clovis, New Mexico, said they received a 911 call just after 12:30 a.m. Friday from a residence in the 2500 block of East 7th Street.
The caller — a 20-year-old male — stated that he was shot by someone who broke into his home and that he also shot the person who broke in, police said.
It was the second fatal shooting that week in Clovis, which is about three and a half hours east of Albuquerque.
The caller added that he and a female were hiding in a closet, police said.
Police and emergency medical services responded to the scene, police said.
The male caller suffered a gunshot wound and was taken to Plains Regional Medical Center, police said.
A second male — identified as 20-year-old Keilyn Parker — also was in the home and had been shot. Parker was taken to Plains Regional Medical Center but didn't survive his injuries, police said.
The Major Crimes Unit has been activated to investigate this event, police said.
Those with information about this incident are asked to call the police department's nonemergency line at 575-769-1921, police said, adding that information can be provided anonymously through the tip411 program, accessed by going to www.police.cityofclovis.org. Anonymous tips also can be provided to the Curry County Crime Stoppers at 575-763-7000, police said.
RELATED: Gun-wielding male kicks down door of home, opens fire at homeowner. But his target is armed too.
Image source: Clovis (N.M.) Police Department
It was the second fatal shooting that week in Clovis, which is about three and a half hours east of Albuquerque.
Police said they received a 911 call around 3:30 p.m. Dec. 29 about a 15-year-old male with a gunshot wound. Police said officers and EMS personnel responded to the scene, and the teen was taken to Plains Regional Medical Center, but he did not survive.
The police chief in a later Facebook post said the teen and his friends were playing with guns in a bedroom, and a witness said one of the juveniles was handling a gun that was believed to be unloaded when it discharged.
Following the shooting, the victim’s friends fled the residence and took the reported firearms with them, police said. The shooter was identified as a 16-year-old, police said. A warrant was filed in district court for involuntary manslaughter, minor in possession of a handgun, tampering with evidence, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, police said.
The teen was arrested around 6 p.m. Dec. 31 and booked into a juvenile detention center, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
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Roger Waters, far-left British musician and co-founder of the English rock band Pink Floyd, took to social media to defend former Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and bizarrely claim that the United States is a "savage empire" made up of "gringo bullies."
The post Video: Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters Defends Dictator Nicolás Maduro, Smears the U.S. as a ‘Savage Empire’ appeared first on Breitbart.
The contrast could not be more glaring. While Barack Obama and Joe Biden bitterly betrayed the Iranian people—choosing secret letters, pallets of cash, sanctions relief, and regime brutality over freedom — Donald Trump stood openly and unapologetically with those fighting their Islamic jailers. Iranians know the difference. As the regime’s buildings burn, police defect, and chants for the Shah echo across Tehran and the provinces, protesters have gone so far as to christen a street “President Trump Street.” This is not symbolism—it is judgment. The Iranian people remember who armed their oppressors and who named their killers for what they are. And they are making it unmistakably clear which American president they believe stands on the side of liberation—and which ones chose the mullahs instead.