Jerusalem Al-Aqsa mosque compound to close over virus (Source francs24.com)

Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest site, will be closed from Friday following a spike in coronavirus cases, the authority that administers the city’s Muslim holy places announced. With cases of the virus on the rise in Israel and the Palestinian territories, the Waqf authority held an emergency meeting with health officials.

The closure coincides with a three-week lockdown to be imposed by Israel, which controls the entrances of the compound. The call to prayer will continue to ring out across Jerusalem’s Old City, Qader said, while Waqf employees will be allowed to pray at the site. Jordan is the custodian of the compound, known by Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, or Holy Sanctuary, and as the Temple Mount by Jews.

Maryland Episcopal Church vows to create $1M reparation fund (Source nbcnews.com)

A Maryland religious institution has pledged to create a $1 million fund for programs benefiting the Black community in an effort to make reparations for its role in slavery and racial injustice.

The Maryland diocese of the Episcopal Church voted Saturday in favor of establishing the fund, The Baltimore Sun reported. Historians for the diocese have found that a majority of its churches built before 1860 were constructed using slave labor or by those who benefited financially from slave labor, and that the establishment of some churches contributed to the racial segregation of neighborhoods.

The diocese, which includes more than 44,000 congregants across the state, is 90 percent white, according to Bishop Eugene Taylor Sutton.

“Why should we continue to benefit as an institution when so many in the Black community have never had the opportunity to have a good education, good jobs or good medical care?” said Sutton, who is Black. “We’ve benefited from racist institutions, and now we are going to invest financially.”

The $1 million makes up more than 20 percent of the diocese’s operating budget and existing funds in the diocese’s endowment will provide the capital, The Sun quoted the diocese as saying. Sutton said the million-dollar commitment “is going to hurt us, and it should.”

Ray Dalio Warns of Threat to Dollar as Reserve Currency (Source Bloomberg)

The dollar’s decades-long position as the global reserve currency is in jeopardy because of steps the U.S. has taken to support its economy during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Ray Dalio, founder of hedge fund giant Bridgewater Associates. While equities and gold benefited from the trillions of dollars in fiscal spending and monetary injections, those efforts are debasing the currency and have raised the possibility that the U.S. will go too far in testing the limits of government stimulus, Dalio said Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “There is so much debt production and debt monetization,” Dalio said. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index has dropped 10% from its peak in late March as investors responded to the pandemic and efforts by central bank and government officials to contain the economic fallout. All of the world’s major developed currencies have gained against the dollar as have precious metals such as gold, silver and platinum. Dalio said in July that investors should favor stocks and gold over bonds and cash because the latter offer a negative rate of return and central banks will print more money. Bridgewater has been moving into gold and inflation-linked bonds in its All Weather portfolio, diversifying the countries it invests in and finding more stocks with stable cash flow.

What Germans Fear Most (Source thetrumpet.com)

For 28 years Germany’s largest insurance firm, has sponsored a survey to learn what Germans fear most. In an increasingly complex world, the answers varied greatly this year. But one fear stands out predominantly. Some may call this fear irrational, but it certainly has geopolitical consequences.

“Despite the covid-19 pandemic,” Deutsche Welle noted September 16, “[United States President Donald] Trump tops the list of things Germans fear the most, a new survey found.”

Many Western countries distrust Trump. “A few weeks before the American presidential election, the U.S.’s reputation in a number of Western nations has fallen to its worst level in around two decades,” Die Welt noted. “The citizens of these countries give President Donald Trump and his management a miserable testimony to the coronavirus crisis. Germany turns out to be particularly critical”. Only 9 percent of Germans praised the Trump administration’s coronavirus crisis management. Conversely, 88 percent of Germans view their own government’s response to the virus positively.

Die Welt reported that in 13 surveyed countries, President Trump is, on average, less popular than Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Nine percent of Belgians expressed confidence in Trump in general, followed by 10 percent of Danes and Germans and 11 percent of French. Hostility toward America is growing around the world.

‘Vicious little suckers’: Massive clouds of mosquitoes kill cows, horses in Louisiana after Hurricane Laura (Source usatoday.com)

Swarms of mosquitoes have killed cows, deer, horses and other livestock in Louisiana after rain from Hurricane Laura led to an explosion in the pests’ population. Thousands of mosquitoes have attacked animals as large as bulls, draining their blood and driving the massive creatures to pace in summer heat until they were exhausted, according to a Louisiana State University AgCenter veterinarian, agent and press release. 

While recent aerial spraying efforts have helped bring the outbreak of mosquitoes under control, residents and animals in a portion of the state faced clouds of the bloodsucking insects in the days after Laura made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on Aug. 27.

It’s a Race Against Heat, and Humanity Is Losing

(Source Bloomberg.com) Add this to your already long list of 2020 oddities: Greenhouse gas emissions are projected to experience their steepest drop in modern history while the world remains on track to mark its second-hottest, if not hottest, year. The two facts demonstrate the relentless pace of climate change and the extreme measures we need to take to slow it down.

It’s a perverse race: The later we cut emissions, the faster the planet warms. Right now, it’s one humanity is losing.  The pandemic lockdowns and the dramatic decline in economic activity that followed will reduce emissions this year by an estimated 8%. But the level of carbon dioxide will continue to climb as long as humanity continues to add it to the atmosphere. Emissions need to come down to zero by midcentury to keep warming below 1.5C. That will require a 7% decline every year during this decade.

Russian, Chinese and Iranian hackers all targeting 2020 election, Microsoft says(Source cnn.com)

Russian, Chinese and Iranian hackers have all attempted to hack people and organizations involved in the 2020 US presidential election, Microsoft said on Thursday. Thursday’s disclosure sheds new light on efforts by Chinese and Iranian hackers to break into US political campaigns and suggests that Russian hacking efforts have continued apace.

“The activity we are announcing today makes clear that foreign activity groups have stepped up their efforts targeting the 2020 election,” Microsoft said in a post on its website. Top US cybersecurity officials acknowledged that Microsoft detected attempts to compromise email accounts of people and organizations associated with the presidential race but said there is no evidence election systems were affected.

China, others to join military exercises in Russia

(Source Associated Press)

Chinese and Russian forces will take part in joint military exercises in southern Russia later this month along with troops from Armenia, Belarus, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan and others, China’s defense ministry announced Thursday. The “Caucasus 2020” drills will deploy wheeled vehicles and light weaponry to be flown to the drill location by China’s latest transport aircraft, the ministry said in a statement. The exercises running Sept. 21-26 will focus on defensive tactics, encirclement and battlefield control and command, the ministry said. The exercises have special meaning for China-Russia ties “at this important moment when the whole world is fighting the pandemic,” it said. China has reported no new domestic coronavirus cases in weeks, while Russia is continuing to see new cases and has reported more than 1 million people infected. Since establishing a “comprehensive strategic partnership” two decades ago, China and Russia have cooperated increasingly closely on military matters and diplomacy, largely to counter U.S. influence. Their militaries regularly hold joint exercises and they back each other in the United Nations over issues including Syria and North Korea.

Thick wildfire smoke blocks sun, turns Bay Area sky orange(sfgate.com)

Just when Bay Area residents thought the world outside couldn’t get stranger, the sky Wednesday dimly glowed a pumpkin orange color you’d expect to see on Mars. With wildfire smoke high aloft in the atmosphere, the sky was a sickly yellow on Tuesday, but today a thicker blanket of toxic air is traveling overhead and the color turned an even stranger, richer hue. The sun’s rays struggled to penetrate the smoke, and at 10:45 a.m., it looked as if it were dawn. “Extremely dense & tall smoke plumes from numerous large wildfires, some of which have been generating nocturnal pyrocumulunimbus clouds (‘fire thunderstorms), are almost completely blocking out the sun across some portions of Northern California this morning,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain shared on Twitter. In some spots the sooty air reached the ground, and National Weather Service forecaster Roger Gass said a weather spotter saw falling ash at Buchanan Field Airport in Concord.

“They reported a significant amount of ash,” said Gass. “Almost to the point where it looked like moderate to heavy snow.” But while the toxic haze in the East Bay settled close to the surface, across most of the Bay Area the smoke was high in the atmosphere with the air quality ranging from good to moderate on the ground.

Northrop Grumman Wins $13.3 Billion Contract To Build New ICBM (Source Zero Hedge)

Defense firm Northrop Grumman has announced it has landed a major defense contract to lead in developing America’s Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program. It won a whopping $13.3 billion Air Force contract to build the Pentagon’s next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), crucial in nuclear deterrence. A Northrop Grumman press release said that a team nationwide that will include over 10,000 engineers, scientists and technicians will spend eight-and-a-half years building the new missile, with an expected operational goal of 2029. In a Tuesday press conference announcing the contract, Defense Secretary Mark Esper affirmed the controversial plans to push forward America’s nuclear arsenal, at a time fears grow of a ‘new Cold War’ arms race with Russia and China, also as the New START treaty hangs in the balance. “Modernizing the nuclear strategic triad is a top priority of our military,” Esper said. “It’s key to our nation’s defense. It provides that strategic nuclear deterrent that we depend on day after day – that we’ve depended on decade after decade.”