Donald Trump

The Guardian -   Donald Trump has issued a fresh verbal attack against Pope Leo XIV, accusing the pontiff of “endangering a lot of Catholics” because “he thinks it’s fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon”.  The remarks come two days before Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, meets Leo at the Vatican in an effort to ease the tensions sparked by Trump’s previous broadside against the Chicago-born pontiff over his condemnation of the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Alternet -   President Donald Trump loves to brag about how many cognitive tests he has taken recently and how much he has, allegedly, aced them. Now, however, one very important person has spoken out about why those are not the achievements Trump thinks they are: the doctor who designed the test.

In a report published Tuesday, Australia's 9News spoke with Canadian neurologist Ziad Nasreddine, creator of the Montreal Cognitive Test, which Trump has been taking multiple times throughout his second term. As MS NOW's Steven Benen recently observed, Trump has touted his results on these tests as if passing them means that "he’d been declared the smartest person on Earth," but in reality, the questions and the requirements are intentionally rudimentary.

"Sample questions include drawing an analog clock with the correct time, with points given for correct numbering," 9News explained. "Another question is to name as many words as they can in a minute beginning with the letter B. A failing grade would be less than 11 words. The final questions are to know the date, day of the week, their location and what city they are in."

"It wasn't designed to be a test of IQ," Nasreddine told the outlet. "It was designed to assess normal cognitive performance."