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Sep 1, 2026
Street Vagrants
By Heather Mac Donald
A Los Angeles city councilman just coined a new appellation for the drug-addicted vagrants who colonize city streets. They are “our neighbors,” says Hugo Soto-Martínez, a member of the L.A. Chapter of Democratic Socialists of America. Who knew?
This new identity is even more cheeky than the original rebranding of such vagrants as “the homeless.” Soto-Martinez used the “neighbors” designation to persuade his fellow council members to allow homeless encampments near senior centers and libraries and around freeway overpasses. The previous occupant of Soto-Martinez’s seat had banned such encampments in his and, eventually, Soto-Martinez’s district, which includes Hollywood and Echo Park. Last Tuesday’s 10–3 vote repealed that ban. At present, the repeal applies only to what is now Soto-Martinez’s jurisdiction. But expect this green light for street squalor to extend more widely, as the Left pushes Los Angeles further toward uncontrolled anarchy.
“Neighbor” traditionally conjures the image of someone with an equal stake in one’s community as oneself, who shares one’s interest in stability, and who can be counted on, in times of need, for help. The occupants of the feces- and drug-strewn trash sites euphemistically referred to as “encampments,” as if they were part of a Boy Scout Jamboree, don’t fit the bill. Those transients are parasites on other people’s efforts to create a community. They contribute nothing, pay no rent or taxes, and inevitably bring lawlessness and predation. They almost invariably turn down the shelter and services offered by feckless outreach workers, since they want no interference with their unrestricted drug use.
Would Soto-Martinez and his fellow DSA members ask an encampment occupant to watch their children while they run an errand, or to keep an eye on their homes while they go on vacation, as one might with an actual neighbor? The instinctive answer is: Of course not! But such instincts are being rapidly overturned. Perhaps one day there will be a leftie so delusional as actually to live by the principles he inflicts on others and who does deliver his child to the tender ministrations of encampment dwellers. We can only hope for such an experiment in the practicability of progressive ideology.
Meantime, a member of the vast nonprofit industry dedicated to keeping vagrants on the streets demonstrated the brilliance of the original “homeless” moniker. Kris Rehl is an organizer with LA Street Care and the Abolish 41.18 Campaign, the latter of which seeks to abolish all remaining encampment bans in Los Angeles. “The only way to change the housing status of an unhoused person is to house them,” he told the Los Angeles Times in reference to the Soto-Martinez repeal bill.
The Aristotelian logic of this claim is unimpeachable. If someone is “unhoused,” you make him housed by housing him. Simple! On such logic billions of taxpayer dollars have been poured down the drain or pumped into the veins of drug addicts. It is the basis for the profoundly misguided “Housing First” strategy, which Donald Trump is trying to decouple from the spigot of federal homeless grants. Whenever the Democrats retake the White House, Housing First will again reign supreme across the United States.
All this while California’s Board of Forestry and Fire Protection has just required homeowners in particularly high-risk fire zones to pare back the vegetation around their homes, notwithstanding the power of greenery to combat rising temperatures without the use of air conditioning. The board could have accomplished far more by insisting that cities across California ban homeless encampments everywhere, not just in a few specialized zones. From January through mid-December 2025, the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to 16,982 “Homeless or Encampment Related” fires, an average of 46 fires a day, according to KABC Eyewitness News. Those fires are worsened by the combustible metals, flammable liquids, and lithium-ion batteries routinely included in the filthy detritus stored under vagrant tarps and tents and that make fighting those fires so dangerous for first responders. This double standard—strict rules for taxpaying homeowners, anything goes for the dysfunctional exploiters of ever-diminishing bourgeois order—is emblematic of the anarcho-tyranny that the Los Angeles City Council and its counterparts elsewhere are inflicting around the country. -City Journal
Viral Hepatitis Deaths Increase
Chronic hepatitis B–related deaths increased by 17% since 2015, accounting for a majority of viral hepatitis deaths in 2024.
By Eva Lorenz
The 2026 World Health Organization (WHO) Global Hepatitis Report found an increase in the number of viral hepatitis deaths in 2024 despite gains in hepatitis B vaccination and hepatitis C treatment. The report provides the first assessment of progress toward the WHO’s 2030 viral hepatitis elimination target.
“[The report] identifies where countries are succeeding, where they are falling behind and where persistent gaps in prevention, testing, treatment, surveillance and programmatic reporting must be closed,” wrote the core report team in a commentary published in The Lancet. “The tools required to eliminate viral hepatitis as a public health threat already exist: The challenge now is to ensure that they reach the people and communities who need them most.”
If left untreated, hepatitis C and B can lead to serious liver complications, including cirrhosis and liver cancer. There is no vaccine for HCV, but direct-acting antiviral therapy cures chronic hepatitis C in more than 95% of people who complete treatment, which typically takes two or three months. Vaccines can prevent HBV infection and its consequences. Antiviral treatment keeps HBV replication under control, but it seldom leads to a cure.
The WHO’s 2030 viral hepatitis elimination goals include achieving a 90% reduction in new hepatitis B infections, an 80% reduction in new hepatitis C infections and a 65% reduction in deaths compared with a 2015 baseline.
“Perhaps the most alarming finding of the report is the high and rising burden of HBV-related mortality,” wrote the core researchers.
The Global Hepatitis Report found a 32% drop in new hepatitis B infections. Hepatitis B among children under five decreased to 0.6%, with 85 countries achieving or surpassing the 2030 target of 0.1%.
The report estimated 1.3 million deaths related to HBV and HCV in 2024, primarily due to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common type of liver cancer. The estimate included 1.1 million deaths related to hepatitis B—an increase of 17% since 2015. Of an estimated 240 million living with chronic HBV in 2024, only 65 million (27%) had been diagnosed, and only 10 million were receiving antiviral treatment.
While HBV related deaths rose, HCV-related deaths declined by 12% since 2015, primarily due to improved treatment with direct-acting antivirals. Still, new diagnoses for HCV are not declining at a pace required to reach elimination targets.
030 and beyond, elimination of viral hepatitis will require a decisive shift from fragmented initiatives to scaled, integrated, decentralized service delivery at national and subnational levels,” wrote the report’s researchers. “Countries must embed hepatitis interventions within services for HIV, tuberculosis, maternal and child health, and noncommunicable diseases that are delivered as part of primary health care, using existing laboratories, supply chains, health workforces and financing mechanisms to improve sustainability and equity.”
To learn more about hepatitis among specific populations and countries, read “Efforts to Eliminate Hepatitis Deliver Gains but More Action Needed to Meet 2030 Targets.” (https://www.hepmag.com/article/efforts-eliminate-hepatitis-deliver-gains-action-needed-meet-2030-targets#search-query=global%20hepatitis%20report) -hep
Preaching the Resurrection
“And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all.” (Acts 4:33)
There are multitudes today who believe that Christ’s resurrection was a spiritual resurrection, insisting that the idea of a dead body returning to life after three days in the grave is completely unscientific and impossible.
This was not what the apostles preached with great grace and great power, however. They would hardly have been excited about any kind of spiritual resurrection, since everyone—both Jews and the pagan Gentiles—believed in life after death. If that was their message, no one would have doubted, and no one would have cared. Even when the disciples saw the resurrected Christ, they first “supposed that they had seen a spirit” (Luke 24:37). Christ had to urge them to “handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (v. 39).
When the disciples finally became convinced of His bodily resurrection, they were quickly transformed into courageous evangelists, willing even to die in support of their glorious message of salvation. The resurrection was, indeed, contrary to scientific law and all human experience, and this very fact proved to them that their Lord was Himself the divine lawgiver and author of all human experience. All other founders and leaders of human religions, ancient or modern, are themselves subject to death, but He alone has triumphed over death. Only the Creator of life can conquer death, and the resurrection proves that Jesus Christ is Creator as well as Savior.
Therefore, when we today, like the apostles of old, proclaim the resurrection of Christ, we know that His name is above every name. This enables us also to witness with great power, in great grace. HMM
El Niño
There is a nearly 70% chance that the building Super El Niño will be the strongest such event on record, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast released Thursday.
Previously, NOAA had been projecting that this event would likely rank “Among the largest El Niño events in the historical record.”
The change in the forecast largely stems from how rapidly this El Niño is intensifying, along with computer model guidance nearly unanimously showing it will peak in late fall and early winter at a level that is stronger than previously thought. NOAA’s El Niño intensity records date back to 1950.
El Niño is a climate cycle characterized by hotter than average ocean temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific. This warmer water transfers vast quantities of heat into the atmosphere via clouds and heavy precipitation. This, in turn, helps shift weather patterns across the globe, favoring drought in Indonesia and Australia, flooding in parts of South America and many other impacts elsewhere.
The intensity of an El Niño is determined by how hot the ocean temperatures get compared to average in a benchmark region of the tropical Pacific. NOAA expects this event to exceed even the massive Super El Niño that occurred in 1982 to 1983, which was the previous record-holder for its intensity.
This year's El Niño could become most extreme on record
Ocean temperatures are already hotter than normal for this time of year in the central equatorial Pacific compared to even the hottest El Niños on record.
Specifically, NOAA forecasters are anticipating that sea surface temperature anomalies in the Niño region will exceed 2.5 degrees Celsius above average, as measured over a three-month timespan to factor out shorter-term variability.
Long-term climate change means that background ocean temperatures throughout the tropical oceans have climbed in recent decades, which can mute the signature of El Niño.
Because of this, NOAA uses a new El Niño index known as the Relative Oceanic Niño Index, or RONI, which takes that broader warming trend into consideration. Even using that handicap, however, this El Niño is on track to be unprecedented.
“This is a genuinely remarkable event,” said University of California climate scientist Daniel Swain in a YouTube briefing on El Niño broadcast this week.
“We’re already at record-breaking or record-tying territory now, and we’re expected to skyrocket,” he said.
Uncharted territory
The effects of each El Niño tend to be unique, and society is in uncharted territory with this one. Never has there been an El Niño this intense, nor has a powerful El Niño taken place against a background climate that was as hot as it is now. These factors make its impacts somewhat of a wild card, experts say, with the effects of global warming acting in concert with El Niño to heighten the severity of heat waves and other disasters.
Just because the Super El Niño is expected to be record-strong does not mean that its impacts will be markedly worse or are guaranteed to occur in most of the locations that are typically affected, NOAA forecasters cautioned in their update.
However, it does increase the odds of typical El Niño impacts, particularly in the fall and winter months when its influence on the weather in the Northern Hemisphere peaks.
In the US, this can mean unusually wet conditions from California across the southern tier of the country, all the way to Florida. In addition, El Niño winters tend to be milder and drier than average in parts of the Midwest.
El Niño boosts global average temperatures, with the El Niño signal riding on top of the human-caused global warming trend, like an ascending escalator. El Niño events are the steps upwards, while human-caused climate change is the longer-term, steady upward trend of the escalator.
Because of the strength of this El Niño, it is virtually certain that 2027 will set a record for the hottest year on record, and possible that 2026 will as well. -CNN
Third Temple
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Yes, Jews believe the Temple will one day be rebuilt – but contrary to viral conspiracies, Jewish tradition says we’re nowhere near building it now
Now that the whole world is talking about the Third Temple in Jerusalem, let’s go there. I am a Jew, a Chabad follower, and a rabbi, so you can trust what I’m about to share a lot more than the conspiracy theories podcasters have tried to share in my name.
First, the old news:
Yes, Jews believe that we will have a Third Temple, on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, in the same location where our first two Temples once stood. It’s not some secret that the Mossad is hiding, nor something that Chabad subtly pushes, and it’s certainly not a code being signaled through patches on IDF uniforms.
It has been in the public record for thousands of years:
2,800 years ago, Isaiah prophesied: “… concerning Judah and Jerusalem … at the end of the days, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be firmly established at the top of the mountains … and many peoples shall go, and they shall say, ‘Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mount, to the house of the God of Jacob …’” (Isaiah 2:2)
2,600 years ago, Ezekiel prophesied: “In the visions of God … He placed me on a very lofty mountain and upon it was like the building of a city from the south … And He said to me, ‘This is the place of My throne where I shall dwell … this is the teaching of the House; Upon the top of the mountain, all its boundary round about shall be most holy…’” (Ezekiel 40:2)
2,000 years ago, Jewish sages composed a blessing that is recited in our daily prayer liturgy: “Return in mercy to Jerusalem Your city and dwell therein as You have promised … rebuild it, soon in our days, as an everlasting edifice … restore the service to Your Sanctuary and accept with love and favor Israel’s fire-offerings and prayer…”
1,900 years ago, the Talmudic sage Rabbi Yehuda composed a prayer that we recite several times every day: “May it be Your will, L-rd our G‑d and G‑d of our fathers, that the Holy Temple be rebuilt speedily in our days.”
What about the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock shrine? Aren’t we going to be sensitive to these holy Islamic sites? This is an important consideration, but I wonder – is anyone sensitive to the fact that the Temple Mount was a holy site for Jews thousands of years before Muslims conquered and built their sites?
The Muslim conquest of Jerusalem occurred in the 7th century CE. Shortly after that, they built both the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa on the Temple Mount, the site where the two Jewish Temples had stood.
Now let’s take a trip down Jewish memory lane.
The Bible is filled with references to the Temple Mount. Adam, the first human, was created out of earth gathered from the Temple Mount. 3,700 years ago, G-d told Avraham to offer his son Isaac to Him. Where? Upon the Temple Mount. 3,600 years ago, when Jacob was running away from his brother Esav, he fell asleep and had a dream. In it, G-d told him: “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac; the land upon which you are lying, to you I will give it and to your seed.” Where did this occur? Yes, upon the Temple Mount.
Before entering Israel, the Bible records what G-d told the Jewish people (Deuteronomy 12:11): “And you shall cross the Jordan and settle in the land the Lord, your God, is giving you as an inheritance … And it will be, that the place the Lord, your God, will choose in which to establish His Name, there you shall bring your sacrifices…”
Again, that “place that G-d chose” – the place where we were commanded to build a Temple – is the Temple Mount.
About 3,000 years ago, King David successfully conquered Jerusalem, fulfilling G-d’s promise and beginning preparations for the Temple. It was his son King Shlomo who built the first Temple, which stood on the Temple Mount for 410 years, until the Babylonians savagely destroyed the Temple and exiled the Jews.
About 2,500 years ago, the Persian Emperor Cyrus permitted the Jews to return to Israel and build a second Temple, on the Temple Mount. This Temple stood for 420 years, until the Romans destroyed it and exiled the Jews.
If you ask where the Jews have been since then, the answer is simple. We wish we could have been living as G-d had promised – as a sovereign nation in the land of Israel, with a Temple on the Temple Mount. But alas, antisemitic hatred and persecution led to our destruction and banishment from the land. We never “left” the land or “gave away” our G-d-given gift to anyone else.
Let’s move on. Are we going to build a Third Temple?
In 1948, we Jews finally reclaimed control over our homeland – or at least some of it. Only in 1967 did we gain control over Jerusalem’s Old City and the Temple Mount. That is when this question became realistic.
And yet, in the past 60 years, we haven’t built the Third Temple, nor are there any substantial plans or efforts to do so. Why?
Obviously, there are geopolitical considerations, which are significant, but my focus is on what the Jewish sources say. Contrary to what many assume, and as my colleague Rabbi Y. Shurpin explains so well on Chabad.org, Jewish tradition does not say we should simply start building a Temple tomorrow. In fact, a close examination of the sources reveals several major obstacles:
The obligation to rebuild the Temple is understood by many to apply only when the majority of the Jewish nation resides in Israel. Currently, less than 50% of Jews live in Israel.
The obligation to rebuild the Temple is understood by many to apply only when there is a Jewish king or prophet, which we don’t have nowadays.
We don’t even know how to construct it. Ezekiel’s prophecy outlines the blueprint of the Temple, but there are many different interpretations about how to understand these instructions.
One of the central items in the Temple is the altar for sacrifices. Our sages teach that the altar must be placed in the exact spot where Adam was first formed, and where Avraham built an altar for Isaac. Today, we don’t really know where this is. (When building the Second Temple, prophets came to vouch for the precise location.)
Even if we figured out how and where to build the Temple, we might be forbidden to enter it in our state of impurity. To become purified requires the ashes of a red heifer, which we don’t currently have.
The Temple will be staffed by “kohanim” – descendants of the biblical priest class. To be appointed, a kohen will need a genealogical verification of being a direct descendant of Aaron – something most kohanim don’t have nowadays.
The kohanim will need to wear special clothing, and today we aren’t clear about the identity of some of the materials, such as the techelet dye or the precious stones for the High Priest’s breastplate.
So how will the Third Temple be built?
The answer to this is not so clear.
In general, regarding all matters concerning the Jewish belief about messianic times, including universal peace, ingathering of the exiles, an end to evil, restoration of the Jewish monarchy, resurrection of the dead, and the return of worship in the holy Temple, all of these are shrouded in mystery and ambiguity. Not for lack of certainty about them, nor for a shortage of sources confirming them. Rather, these sources have been understood differently over the ages, and ultimately it appears that G-d deliberately wants these matters to remain enigmatic – for now.
That being said, there seem to be two general opinions about how the Temple will be built:
Maimonides rules that the Temple will be built by King Moshiach. In other words, we will need to wait for the arrival of Moshiach.
Others are of the opinion that in the Messianic era, the Temple will miraculously descend ready-built from heaven.
The bottom line:
In summary, as much as we yearn for the building of the Third Temple, and we know that it will happen one day, we are not currently in a position to fulfill this Jewish religious commandment.
So, for now, will everyone please relax, and will the conspiracists please educate themselves. Neither Chabad nor any other community with influence is making any such plans.
Instead, as per a core teaching of the Chabad-Lubavitcher Rebbe, we are focused on something more important for now: To practice unconditional love, to promote acts of kindness, to teach the word of G-d, to strengthen faith and purpose, to fill the world with true peace, and to prepare humanity for Messianic times.
Our job is to build a better world. We’ll let G-d figure out how to build the Temple. Because the Temple will not appear when the Jewish People become powerful enough to build it. It will appear when humanity becomes spiritual enough to receive it.
Oh, and by the way, in that future era of universal peace, we look forward to greeting all citizens and nations of the world in our Temple. Yes, all will be welcome.
We hope and pray that we will witness this very soon. -The Times Of Israel
PHD GRADUATE
By Sarah Anne Lloyd
Although computer science goes back to the 19th century, the academic field really came into its own in the early 1960s. The first United States graduates with advanced computer science degrees emerged in the middle of that decade, and the first two Ph.D. candidates graduated on the same day (from different schools) on June 7, 1965. One of the graduates was not only the first U.S. woman to earn a Ph.D. in the field, but also a nun: Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, who earned her degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (The other candidate was Irving Tang of Washington University in St. Louis.)
Keller was born Evelyn Keller, and her name was changed to Mary Kenneth after she took her vows with the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) in 1933 at age 19. She was assigned to teach elementary and high school for the next 29 years, so she earned her academic degrees slowly so as not to interfere with her duties. She graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor’s degree in mathematical sciences in 1943 and a master’s in mathematics in 1952.
Keller was working as a high school math teacher in Chicago when she took her first computer workshop in 1961. “I just went out to look at a computer one day,” she told religious publication The Witness, “and I never came back.” By delegating mundane tasks to computers, Keller said, people could “aspire to higher levels of thinking.” After graduation, she founded the computer science department at Clarke University, a college founded by the BVM in Dubuque, Iowa. She also taught adult computer classes on the side, including tutoring the famed architect Buckminster Fuller, and helped develop educational modules for BASIC programming. -History
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