We counted 21 meteors in an hour. The streaks of light were part of the annual Perseid meteor shower that my wife and I recently observed.

Sitting under the glorious night sky, I realized it had been too long since I had stared at the stars. I felt as though I was forgetting the vastness of Creation, with its innumerable orbs of light, planets and galaxies.

Israel will enter a three-week nationwide lockdown starting on Friday to contain the spread of the coronavirus after a second-wave surge of new cases, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

During the lockdown, which comes during the Jewish high-holiday season, Israelis will have to stay within 500 meters of their houses, but can travel to workplaces that will be allowed to operate on a limited basis.

Search-and-rescue teams, with dogs in tow, were deployed across the blackened ruins of southern Oregon towns on Sunday as smoldering wildfires still ravaged U.S. Pacific Coast states after causing widespread destruction.

A blitz of wildfires across Oregon, California and Washington has destroyed thousands of homes and a half dozen small towns this summer, scorching more than 4 million acres and killing more than two dozen people since early August.

The United States military on Wednesday announced that it would reduce its presence in Iraq from 5,200 to 3,000 troops this month, formalizing a long-expected move.

Last month, Reuters reported that the United States was expected to reduce its troops presence in Iraq by about a third.

MEXICO CITY (AP)—Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Wednesday he would ask the Attorney General’s Office to investigate a clash between hundreds of farmers and National Guard troops at a dam in the northern state of Chihuahua and a subsequent incident that left two people dead.

It was the latest flashpoint in a months-long conflict over the Mexican government’s attempts to pay off its water debt with the United States over objections of local farmers.

Rapid population growth, lack of access to food and water and increased exposure to natural disasters mean more than 1 billion people face being displaced by 2050, according to a new analysis of global ecological threats.

Compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), a think-tank that produces annual terrorism and peace indexes, the Ecological Threat Register uses data from the United Nations and other sources to assess eight ecological threats and predict which countries and regions are most at risk.

Tensions along the disputed India-China border seem to be getting worse, three months after their deadliest confrontation in decades.

The Asian giants accused each other this week of sending soldiers into the other’s territory and fired warning shots for the first time in 45 years, raising the specter of full-scale military conflict.

Everyone wants to know what the future holds. Most have no idea. So many are confused, not knowing where to turn for answers to the great questions about the future!

Suppose you could know the direction and conclusion of world events—world history—before the outcome. What if you could know the courses of nations in advance? Imagine knowing tomorrow’s biggest headlines before they come to pass, and how events will affect you, and all human beings, personally.

At least there will not be a government shutdown.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday the Senate would vote on a trimmed-down Republican coronavirus relief package, though it has a slim chance of passage in the face of Democrats’ insistence for more sweeping aid.

Thousands of people are homeless in Senegal’s capital on Monday after a weekend storm brought nearly a year’s worth of rainfall in a single day, turning roads into rivers.

Video footage showed residents in the suburbs of Dakar wading through floodwaters up to their chests after the storm that began late Saturday in the West African nation, where at least six deaths were recorded nationwide.

Wildfires churned through bone-dry California on Tuesday after a scorching Labor Day weekend that saw a dramatic airlift of more than 200 people trapped by flames and ended with the state’s largest utility turning off power to 172,000 customers to try to prevent power lines and other equipment from sparking more fires.

“We’re completely trapped. There’s fire on all sides, all around us,” said Jeremy Remington, as he stood on a beach surrounded by fire in the Mammoth Pool Reservoir, a popular recreational site in California’s Sierra National Forest, in a video posted on Twitter. Mr. Remington was later airlifted to safety, local news reported.

Pick one that contains mostly alcohol, and has few other ingredients.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hand sanitizers should be at least 60 percent ethyl alcohol or 70 percent isopropyl alcohol. Other approved ingredients may include sterile distilled water, hydrogen peroxide and glycerin, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

An estimated 45 million people in southern Africa are food insecure, with the number of people without access to adequate affordable and nutritious food up 10 percent from last year, the World Food Program said.

The COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with extreme weather events and the struggling economies of several countries, are the main causes of the food insecurity, said international aid organizations in a webinar organized by the Foreign Correspondents Association of Southern Africa.

The European Union told Britain on Monday that there would be no trade deal if it tried to tinker with the Brexit divorce treaty, raising the prospect of a tumultuous end-of-year finale to the saga.

In yet another twist to the four-year saga since Britain voted to quit the EU, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government was reported to be planning new legislation to override parts of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement it signed in January.

Groundbreaking research confirms that the act of smiling can trick your mind into being more positive, simply by moving your facial muscles.

In a study published in Experimental Psychology, researchers at the University of South Australia evaluated the impact of a covert smile on perception of face and body expressions. In both scenarios, a smile was induced by participants holding a pen between their teeth, forcing their facial muscles to replicate the movement of a smile.

On July 21, two U.S Air Force B-1B bombers took off from Guam and headed west over the Pacific Ocean to the hotly contested South China Sea. The sleek jets made a low-level pass over the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its escorting fleet, which was exercising nearby in the Philippines Sea, according to images released by the U.S. military.

The operation was part of the Trump administration’s intensifying challenge to China’s ruling Communist Party and its sweeping territorial claims over one of the world’s most important strategic waterways. The U.S. Defense Department is turning to the firepower of its heavily armed, long-range bombers as it seeks to counter Beijing’s bid to control the seas off the Chinese coast.