USA - The chaos unfolding in Chicago is a perfect example of social disintegration. After years of worsening murder rates - earning the city the nickname 'Chiraq', there's now an armed gang of children carjacking folks at gunpoint. Chicago police say the children, ages 10-17, have been on a carjacking spree across Chicago's South Side, which started in late June. The group of kids, in two incidents, have discharged weapons in broad daylight as they approached their victims. Maybe it's time for local government administrators to stop ignoring the social-economic collapse of American cities under their watch and cease the farce of 'defunding the police' - how is that going to make the scared people feel any safer?

USA - None of this involves beauty tips, pimple patches or white shirts. But at least they’re focusing on the important stuff. Like this article, published July 10: “Black Power Naps Is Addressing Systemic Racism in Sleep.” Yes, your teens are being told a good night’s rest is now white privilege. For hundreds and hundreds of years, Brittney McNamara reports, black people have been deprived of sleep. As a form of protest against this, Fannie Sosa and Navild Acosta have created Black Power Naps, “an artistic initiative with components including physical installations, zines, an opera, and more.”

USA - A pro-life artist painted the words, “Baby Lives Matter,” in front of a Planned Parenthood facility in Salt Lake City, Utah. In a video message Friday, Tayler Hansen said, given the millions of babies who are aborted each year, he “felt inclined to demonstrate a true peaceful protest dedicated to those abandoned without a voice.” According to KUTV News, Hansen said he painted the “Baby Lives Matter” mural at 1:00 am Saturday morning, using paint that would endure on the pavement for ten days, at the most, and easily wash away. “With recent events unfolding, everybody knows about the Black Lives Matter murals unfolding around the nation,” he said, according to the news report. “I thought I would bring awareness to one of the biggest human rights crises that nobody wants to talk about.” Hansen reported on Saturday that his mural had already been removed as of that morning.

ITALY - Italy is getting its own Brexit-type party led by a staunch Eurosceptic senator, a former journalist and ex-member of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement who recently met with Nigel Farage for inspiration. While its name is yet to be revealed, the party, led by Senator Gianluigi Paragone, already has a clear goal – to lead Italy, a founding member of the 27-member bloc, out of the European Union. Inspired by the UK’s vote to exit the EU, the 48-year-old senator traveled to London on Monday to meet with Brexit architect Nigel Farage. After the meeting, Paragone said his country “can no longer be blackmailed by countries that offend the great prestige of Italy.” Speaking to the media, Paragone said the only way for Italy to tackle the economic crisis brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic is to do so as a “really sovereign state,” such as Britain.

GERMANY - Germany’s next leader will need to restate not only the country’s future security stance, but also help articulate the Alliance’s adaptation to new strategic realities. Looking ahead, Germany’s future leaders need to deliver their new narrative to the public by showing how it responds to their international vision of the future. Addressing the evolving power and ideological struggle of the 2020s, Germany’s future chancellor will need to provide, most crucially, a clear sense of direction as to which fundamental challenges are threatening the Western way of life. In fact, by adapting NATO’s vision of 1949 – ‘keeping the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down’ – Berlin’s new vision needs to be geared at ‘keeping the Americans in, the Russians out and the Chinese in check’.

TURKEY - In a statement, Erdogan said that the reimposition of Muslim worship at the Hagia Sophia is “the harbinger of the liberation of Masjid al-Aqsa [the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount].” That’s a call for throwing Israel out of Jerusalem and the spot holiest in Judaism. That this incendiary comment came during the period when religious Jews begin the period of mourning for the destruction of the ancient Temple culminating on Tisha B’Av [evening to evening 29-30 July 2020] is probably coincidental but still chilling. [Tisha B'Av is an annual fast day in Judaism, on which a number of disasters in Jewish history occurred, primarily the destruction of both Solomon's Temple by the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the Second Temple by the Roman Empire in Jerusalem.]

USA - Catholic churches across North America suffered a devastating week of vandalism and arson from July 10-16, according to a report from the Aleteia news agency. The week-long spree of vandalism, presumably connected with ongoing protests, included the desecration of statues of Jesus and Mary — some of which were “beheaded or spray-painted” — along with graffiti on church structures and fire, John Burger reported. On July 10, a vandal sprayed a statue of the Virgin Mary that stands in front of Cathedral Preparatory School in Queens, New York, with the word “IDOL.” Although the school’s security camera picked up footage of the individual committing the crime, police had not yet apprehended the perpetrator as of the report’s publication this past weekend. The rector of Cathedral Prep, Father James Kuroly, called the incident “an act of hatred.”

LEBANON - Most parts of Lebanon are receiving no more than two or three hours of electricity a day. An incoming flight at Beirut’s airport had to abort a landing this month because the lights on the runway went out. The traffic signals in the capital have stopped working, adding to the congestion on Beirut’s already chaotic streets. These are among the latest symptoms of an economic implosion that is accelerating at an alarming pace in Lebanon as its government, its banks and its citizens run out of foreign currency simultaneously.

ALASKA - Alaska has been hit by a huge earthquake, which prompted a major tsunami alert in the US. The 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit about 75 miles south of Chignik in Alaska. Officials issued a tsunami warning for South Alaska and the Alaska Peninsula, from Kennedy Entrance to Unimak Pass. This has now been downgraded and there is no longer a tsunami threat from this earthquake. It landed in the Ring of Fire, so-called because a huge number of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions take place there.

GERMANY - US President Donald Trump’s idea of withdrawing a significant number of US troops from Germany is neither new nor a surprise. The White House issued the same threat once before, just ahead of the NATO summit in July 2018… The political reaction in Germany to Trump’s withdrawal plans is two-fold. In its official statements, Berlin has stated that it would find the move regrettable, while also pointing out that it has yet to be informed of any precise details. However, other members of the major political parties – especially the opposition parties – are expressing very different hopes and concerns. The left-wing Die Linke has said that it supports the withdrawal, and the new SPD parliamentary leader Rolf Mützenich sees it as an opportunity to usher in “a sustainable reorientation of security policy in Europe.” Mützenich and the Greens have campaigned for years for a withdrawal of tactical US nuclear weapons from Germany.

GERMANY - Germany has systematically violated arms export regulations for 30 years, researchers announced on Sunday. "Germany licenses and exports weapons of war and armaments to countries affected by war and crisis, to countries with human rights violations and to regions of tension," the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) said. A PRIF study examined the consistency of German arms export policy since 1990 and whether they adhered to the European Union's eight-point criteria when approving arms exports. The EU criteria includes "respect for human rights and international humanitarian law by the country of final destination" and "maintenance of peace, security and stability in a region." Germany has "repeatedly violated these criteria," the study said. "German weapons are systematically appearing in war zones and in the hands of dictators," Greenpeace disarmament expert Alexander Lurz told French news agency AFP. "We urgently need a strict arms export law that prohibits exports to developing countries and puts an end to this deliberate, systematic undermining of export guidelines."

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - A United Arab Emirates spacecraft rocketed into blue skies from a Japanese launch center Monday at the start of a seven-month journey to Mars on the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission. The lift-off of the Mars orbiter named Amal, or Hope, starts a rush to fly to Earth’s neighbor that is scheduled to be followed in the next few days by China and the United States. At the space center in Dubai, people watching were transfixed by the lift-off, then cheered and clapped, with one woman offering a celebratory cry common for weddings. Amal blasted off from the Tanegashima Space Center aboard a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ H-IIA rocket on time at 6:58am (2158 GMT Sunday) after being delayed five days by bad weather. Mitsubishi later said the probe successfully separated from the rocket and was now on its solo journey to Mars.

AUSTRALIA - Human body parts named after “men, kings and gods” have been deemed irrelevant and misogynistic by some Australian doctors who no longer seek to salute the ideas of dead, male anatomists. A specialist obstetrician in the state of Queensland, gynaecologist and anatomy lecturer, Dr Kristin Small, is urging her students to drop gender bias and what she calls irrelevant and misogynistic medical language. She believes the terms invoke the jaded beliefs of older generations and wants more practical and descriptive terms for body parts. “The young trainee doctors are mostly keen to learn the more relevant language and are often shocked when they hear the origins of some medical terms,” she said. The word “hysterectomy” originated from a time when women were treated for female hysteria by removing the uterus. The Achilles tendon, the tough band of fibrous tissue that connects the calf muscles to the heel bone, is named after the mythological Greek warrior, Achilles.

ISRAEL - Airports Authority says current restrictions, under which entry granted only to nationals or those obtaining special permit from Immigration Authority, to stay in force. Restrictions preventing foreign visitors from entering the country due to the coronavirus pandemic will be extended until the beginning of September, the Israel Airports Authority announced Monday. The ban will continue until September 1 due to the recent surge in virus infections in Israel, the IAA said. Recent weeks have seen daily infections climb consistently to nearly 2,000, although on Monday the Health Ministry reported a drop to 1,139 cases in the previous 24 hours. The death toll increased by six overnight Sunday and Monday morning, to 415.

USA - 1.5 Billion children are dead – what is the appropriate sentence for such a crime? One out of every six people in the world is missing. If 1.5 billion children had not been systematically killed over the past 50 years, the total population of the planet would be 9 billion instead of the current level of 7.5 billion. And of course I am not even counting the children and the grandchildren that the missing 1.5 billion would have had if they had been allowed to grow up. There have been other great genocides throughout human history, but there has never been one that has literally wiped out one-sixth of humanity. Virtually every nation in the world has eagerly participated in this horrific genocide, and that arguably makes us the most evil generation to ever walk the face of the Earth. So what would the appropriate punishment be for killing 1.5 billion children? 1.5 billion children are dead, and it is difficult to imagine a sentence that would be too harsh for what we have done.