CHINA - Plague alerts in China have led officials to quarantine the village of Suji Xincun, Inner Mongolia, commanding daily disinfection of homes after a resident died of the disease. Is the bubonic plague back in 2020? Bubonic plague cases have seemingly made a resurgence amidst the calamitous backdrop of 2020, with several people now dead after contracting the ancient disease. The shutdown of Suji Xincun is the latest measure taken by authorities in the vicinity of Mongolia, which has seen the bulk of cases spread from contact with animals. The district of Damao Banner, in which the village resides, is on a level three alert for plague prevention in hopes to stem the potential tide of infections, caused by bites from bacteria-carrying fleas. The bubonic plague is the most famous, and amongst the most deadly, diseases in the world. Notable outbreaks before and during the Middle Ages killed millions of people worldwide, at the time a significant portion of the population.

CHINA - China’s Gansu province has been left devastated as heavy rain has caused severe mudslides in the area trapping thousands of people. Early reports have indicated that more than 10,000 local residents in Longnan, a city in the country of Wenxian have been trapped. Other areas have begun taking precautions to prevent a similar incident in other provinces. Today China's Sichuan province raised its flood emergency response to its highest level. This is due to the Yangtze river flooding rapidly. According to China's ministry of emergency management, the floods have impacted 63 million people. The economic damage for flooding has been estimated at $25.8 billion and is expected to rise.

USA - Donald Trump has declared war on Germany. In a manner of speaking. Europe’s most important country, potentially America’s most valuable partner, has in the mind of the president become an adversary. Of all Trump’s many foreign policy disasters, this is perhaps his most significant.

USA - In all of US history, we have never seen anything like “the mass exodus of 2020”. Hundreds of thousands of people are leaving the major cities on both coasts in search of a better life. Homelessness, crime and drug use were already on the rise in many of our large cities prior to 2020, but many big city residents were willing to put up with a certain amount of chaos in order to maintain their lifestyles. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and months of civil unrest have finally pushed a lot of people over the edge. Moving companies on both coasts are doing a booming business as wealthy and middle class families flee at a blistering pace, and most of those families do not plan to ever return.

MIDDLE EAST - There is finally some good news in a year that has been buffeted by the coronavirus crisis. The agreement between the UAE and Israel, announced by the White House on Thursday, is more than just an agreement to normalize relations between Israel and an Arab country. I believe it is the beginning of regionwide peace. It is a catalyst for more countries in the Middle East to actually envision a better future for their children, and it confirms to the entire world that there are still righteous women and men who have worked tirelessly for this moment. It also shows us that there are still leaders who have the courage to make difficult and bold steps in the name of peace.

MIDDLE EAST - After decades of dominating and defining tensions across the Middle East, the Palestinians are no longer a pressing priority; they also seem increasingly irrelevant to the region's trendlines. Their brethren are abandoning them. "The conflict is decidedly less important to leaders in the region," Natan Sachs, the director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, told me. The agreement is "a visible demonstration of the fatigue of some Arab leaders, in the UAE and Saudi Arabia in particular, with the Palestinian leadership and their cause. They no longer want to be held back by what they see as Palestinian rejectionism." The Palestinians have to sort out their own political mess before the Arab world will again expend much political clout to help their cause. Israel's deal with the UAE alters a fundamental premise of peace, Sachs noted. For decades, the framework of international diplomacy was based on "land for peace" in exchange for the Arabs promising no future aggression. The new premise is "peace for peace."

USA - Proponents of children questioning and even changing their biological sex have produced a musical compilation dubbed Trans and Nonbinary Kids Mix to benefit a summer camp in New Hampshire that caters to parents who believe young children can choose their gender. According to the LGBT Foundation, children understand and should be counted in this category: “Non-binary is used to describe people who feel their gender cannot be defined within the margins of gender binary. Instead, they understand their gender in a way that goes beyond simply identifying as either a man or woman. Some non-binary people may feel comfortable within trans communities and find this is a safe space to be with others who don’t identify as cis, but this isn’t always the case.”

USA - San Francisco state Senator Scott Wiener has introduced a new bill to decriminalize adult men having sex with boys and he and his allies in the media are smearing all opposition as "homophobic" and "anti-Semitic." LGBT activists have pushed reasonable notions of equality to its limits with obscene perversions. Wiener argues all forms of sex should be treated equally under the law. The Law Will Protect Exploitation of Minors.

USA - By supporting the “Deal of the Century”, the UAE and Saudi Arabia had made a strategic decision that pursuing peace with Israel was in the long-term collective security interest of the Gulf Arab States. It therefore should not come as a surprise to anyone that there would be a last-ditch effort at diplomacy to save the deal by providing Netanyahu an off-ramp from his very public decision to pursue annexation.

MIDDLE EAST - Israel and the United Arab Emirates have announced an agreement leading to full diplomatic relations - with the help of US President Donald Trump (who has a Zionist daughter and son-in-law Jared Kushner). Sealed after a long-running series of negotiations and confirmed in a phone call on August 13 among Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli co-prime minister, Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed, and Donald Trump, the US president, the participants will formally sign the accord at the White House in coming weeks.

USA - It begins: Black Lives Matter mob demands white people move out of homes and leave them for black people. Coming soon to a Democrat-run city near you! A Black Lives Matter mob held a rally in a gentrified neighborhood reportedly in Seattle on Wednesday where they demanded that white people leave their homes and give them to black people.

INDIA - India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has vowed to continue defending the country, while sending a veiled message to both China and Pakistan, with whom India clashed along disputed borders this year. Addressing the nation on Independence Day, Modi spoke of the Line of Control (LoC) and the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the names for India’s contentious borders with Pakistan and China respectively. From LoC to LAC, whoever tried to challenge the sovereignty of our country got a fitting response from our soldiers in their own language. The message comes a day after India’s President Ram Nath Kovind accused Beijing of “expansion.” In his speech, Modi mentioned the 20 Indian soldiers killed in a fierce confrontation with Chinese troops along the disputed border in the Himalayas on June 15. The incident was the deadliest clash between the neighbors since 1975. Beijing recognized casualties on both sides, but did not release any numbers.

USA - Betting against the US dollar was already the top second-half trade for currency and rates investors and its popularity is only growing as the greenback tumbles, according to a Bank of America Corp survey. A weaker dollar was the favorite trade for 36% of the fund managers surveyed this month by Bank of America, putting it well ahead of other ideas and up from 30% in July. So far that stance appears to be paying off, and a continuing slide in the currency appears to only be adding to the ranks of dollar bears. The Bloomberg dollar index has continued to slide in August after last month notching a decline of more than 3.3%, its biggest drop since January 2018. It’s now close to 10% below its March peak and positioning data shows that bets against the greenback continue to mount.

USA - Two brush fires in Southern California continued Saturday to burn thousands of acres, force hundreds of people from their homes and contribute to unhealthy air quality across the region. The Lake fire, burning in the hills of the Angeles National Forest near Lake Hughes, had consumed 17,862 acres and was 12% contained as of Saturday night, authorities said. It had destroyed six buildings and continued to threaten thousands more, officials said. Mandatory evacuations remained in place for Lake Hughes and the surrounding areas, though some evacuation orders that had been issued for the Antelope Valley were lifted Friday night. The American Red Cross was operating an evacuation point at Highland High School in Palmdale.

RUSSIA - Russia has stepped up vaccinations against the bubonic plague amid signs of a 'alarming' westward spread of the Black Death. The deadly disease has been detected in the Altai Mountains, a popular Siberian tourist region, including an area where it has not been seen since monitoring began 62 years ago. The rush to vaccinate more than 32,000 comes after two deaths in Mongolia and two in China, which both share borders with Russia. Some 18,090 people have been immunised in scenic Altai Republic after the spread in marmots and other rodents, announced health officials.