Religious

What is the oldest Hebrew Bible? The Dead Sea Scrolls are fragments of the oldest Hebrew Bible text, while the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex are the oldest complete versions, written by the Masoretes in the 10th and 11th centuries, respectively. The Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript falls between the early scrolls and the later codices. Bedouin first discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947. Over 80,000 fragments, now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, were found in 11 caves near the Dead Sea site of Khirbet Qumran. The Dead Sea Scrolls date from 250 B.C.E. to 68 C.E. The Aleppo Codex, the oldest Hebrew Bible to survive to modern times, was created by scribes called Masoretes in Tiberias, Israel, around 930 C.E. As such, the Aleppo Codex is considered the most authoritative copy of the Hebrew Bible. However, the Aleppo Codex is not complete, as almost 200 pages went missing between 1947 and 1957. While the Aleppo Codex is the oldest Hebrew Bible, the Leningrad Codex is the oldest complete Hebrew Bible. The Leningrad Codex dates to 1008 C.E. The colophons identify the place written as Cairo and the person who commissioned it as Mevorak son of Nathaniel.
— Bibli-cal Archaeology Review, 8/20/2026

A recently published study by Worship Leader Research (WLR), an independent research collaborative, found that although nearly 80 percent of worship leaders report a strong sense of purpose, they also have worse overall mental health than the average American adult. Of the worship leaders who responded to the survey, only 3.4 percent rated their mental health as “excellent,” compared with a 2025 Pew survey in which 48 percent of American adults described their mental health as either “excellent” or “very good.” That number is lower for young adults — 34 percent for adults between 18 and 29 — but not nearly as low as among surveyed worship leaders.
— Christianity Today, 8/27/2026

The local church is one of the few places where musicians outside major metropolitan areas can reliably play a weekly gig. In addition to employing musicians, many churches are investing in new technology and production equipment, making them appealing to performers who love making music and using highend tools and sound systems.

Fender reported in 2021 that one in every three new guitars was sold to a church musician.
— Christian-ity Today, 8/27/2026

Faith groups suing President Donald Trump’s administration filed a motion alleging that the Department of Homeland Security committed “multiple egregious violations” of a court order that largely barred warrantless surveillance at their churches. The religious plaintiffs — including denominations such as American Baptist Churches USA and several regional bodies of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America — sued the administration last July, challenging the government’s decision to rescind the “sensitive locations” policy that had previously discouraged immigration raids at locations such as schools, hospitals, and churches. A federal judge eventually issued a 62-page injunction in February, temporarily barring warrantless investigations at the churches involved in the case — except in “exigent” circumstances.
— RNS, 8/20/2026

We now have many published studies showing that young people around the world are struggling. In particular, findings from the Global Flourishing Study (GFS) confirm that this harmful trend affects youth in both impoverished and economically advanced countries. The GFS is an unprecedented research initiative that collects data on more than 200,000 people in geographically and culturally diverse countries. They coauthored a book titled “The Death of Religion? Nones, Others, and the Flourishing of Faith” that analyzes this new data. The GFS data show that young Americans (18 to 29 years old) who regularly attend religious services are significantly more likely to flourish than those who rarely or never attend. This finding holds for each successive decade-long age category (30 to 39, etc.). Why is religious service attendance so consequential? Among other things, communities of faith emphasize relationships and social support — key drivers of human flourishing. Devout people also believe they find reconciliation with God and hope for the afterlife within their tradition.
— RNS, 8/31/2026

Social and Science

Since 2008, the preteen suicide rate has increased by an average of 8.2% annually, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health. Their 2024 analysis found that Black preteens had the highest overall suicide rate, while girls and Hispanic preteens had the greatest percentage increase. Native American preteens also experienced some of the most pronounced increases.
— Wisconsin Examiner, 7/30/2026

For a little over a month, a simple invitation to “come eat an apple with me” has enchanted residents of the nation’s capital. This is thanks to 30-year-old Carl Endrulat, a software engineer and the man on the invite who is chewing down on an apple. A QR code on the flyer links to a mysterious Partiful RSVP page. The invite asked anyone interested to show up at the entrance of Meridian Hill Park (also known as Malcolm X Park) in D.C., at W and 16th Street Northwest, on Aug. 15 from 2:00 to 2:05 p.m. Organizers also asked folks to “BYOA,” aka “bring your own apple.” The hosts, Jenny Mandl and Carl Endrulat, expected only a few friends to come to the plein air fete — 20 at most — but more than 6,500 people said they were interested in munching fruit in the sun with a bunch of strangers.
— Today, 8/18/2026

A rare few people will see their 100th birthday, earning the title of centenarian, and even fewer will live past 110. New research published in Cell Press offers a possible explanation for how these superagers might be avoiding the mounting risk of cancer and illness as the years progress. Around age 100, a rare form of T helper cells seems to proliferate in these people, expanding and adapting as time marches on. The new research suggests that special immune cells, which transform from helper T cells into a rare type of killer T cell, could be helping people who live past 100 handle immune threats. We all have T helper cells (aka CD4 cells) as part of our adaptive immune system. However, as people age into their 90s and beyond, these usually rare CD4 CTLs seem to become increasingly prevalent. This statistically significant pattern appeared in blood samples from a group of 28 Japanese participants (which, admittedly, is a very small sample size and from citizens of just one country, not necessarily representative of the global human population). This suggests that past a certain age, the human body faces increasing immune threats. An abundance of CD4 CTLs could be helping supercentenarians (at least, those living in Japan) survive them.
— Science Alert, 8/20/2026

Depression halts the formation of new brain cells, according to a new study. In adults with major depressive disorder, the hippocampus appears to stop producing new neurons. Because the hippocampus plays a key role in memory and emotional response, researchers believe this lack of new neurons may make it harder to adapt to stress. The finding challenges a long-held belief that depression stems solely from an imbalance in neurotransmitters and points to a potential new therapeutic target.
— Columbia University, 8/21/2026

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, said its artificial intelligence system hacked into another AI company on its own, calling it an “unprecedented cyber incident.” “We had a significant security incident during evaluation of our models,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement posted on social media. AI startup Hugging Face said it had detected an intrusion into its data processing systems, which it suspected was caused by an AI agent acting autonomously. The disclosure comes amid heightened concerns about the cybersecurity capabilities of powerful models.
— AP, 7/21/2026

Political

Zohran Mamdani was riding high as the mayor of New York City earlier this summer, after fulfilling a campaign pledge to impose a new tax on the wealthy. Now, after a streak of good fortune, Mamdani is facing mounting discontent among New Yorkers upset by his anti-Israel rhetoric and slights against the business community. The latest setback for the mayor came when a judge swiftly paused a new tax on luxury second homes after a group of residents, including one of Mamdani’s own supporters, filed a lawsuit accusing the city of botching the rollout. The city posted an online list of more than 900,000 properties, including homes that might be subject to the tax. It also sent notices to 17,000 property owners, including some who said they were longtime New Yorkers, stating that they might be subject to the tax.
— Wall Street Journal, 8/13/2026

The European Union’s new automated border-control system officially rolled out in April and relies on facial recognition and fingerprints instead of the age-old practice of getting your passport stamped at a booth. The government says it will speed things up and improve security at the egates, where the steps are a passport scan, a photo, and fingerprints. The passport check process takes about 10 minutes from start to finish. The line for those ineligible for the biometric scans, including families with children younger than 12 and those without a chip in their passport, can be nearly an hour long.
— Wall Street Journal, 8/13/2026

Most big, expensive cities are seeing a decline in the number of children as families struggle to cover the cost of living. The opposite is happening in Seattle and Washington, D.C., two pricey coastal cities that are diverging from the broader demographic trajectory. The number of kids rose 10% in both places, even as it fell in most other similar cities. Seattle and D.C. have vast differences, but they share a few common ingredients that seem to have spurred their growing population of children: high-paying jobs and decent local schools.
— Wall Street Journal, 9/1/2026

Financial

$3 Trillion — The mountain of cash individual investors held in retail money-market funds in August — hovered near a record high, according to the Investment Company Institute. (That doesn’t include the trillions of institutional dollars in money-market funds.) Advisers are struggling to persuade clients to move those funds into bonds or other investments, even as average money-market yields have fallen. Assets flooded into these funds in 2022 when the Federal Reserve ended its near-zero interest rate policy. Money-market yields rose above 5%. Rates have since fallen, but money-market funds, which now yield 3.49% on average, according to Crane Data, have retained their appeal.
— Wall Street Journal, 8/13/2026

A pile of all the money in the world would be taller than the Statue of Liberty and heavier than the Empire State Building. About 20% of the pile would be US bills and coins. Money from the European Union would make up another 25%. The most common coin in the pile would likely be the US penny. More than 200 billion US pennies exist worldwide, and they would weigh more than 500,000 tons.
— 1440 Daily Digest, 8/22/2026

In the 1870s, a woman from Boston ran a Ponzi scheme disguised as a bank for women, promising 8% interest. Through the “Ladies’ Deposit Company,” Sarah Howe collected $500K-equivalent to about $13M today — primarily from single and elderly women who were overlooked by traditional banks. After standing trial, Howe was convicted only of soliciting money through false pretenses, having falsely claimed the bank was backed by a Quaker venture. Howe was arrested in 1880 and imprisoned for three years for fraud. Upon her release, she committed similar frauds until she was arrested again in 1888, after which she returned to her original career as a fortune teller.
— Longreads, 7/2/2019

Israel and the Middle East

In early May 2026, a young Israeli reservist, recently returned from two months of duty in Gaza, arrived at the Mifal Hapayis headquarters to claim a 15 million shekel (approximately $4 million) lottery win. Because of his active service, he did not check the numbers until arriving home on leave, nearly two weeks after the draw. Despite the life-altering sum, he remained grounded and immediately outlined plans to use a large portion of the winnings to establish a nonprofit organization. Having witnessed the conflict’s hardships firsthand, he intended to support fellow soldiers and those affected by the war. This act of generosity transformed his personal stroke of luck into a symbol of hope and healing, marking a dramatic shift from the realities of war to a future focused on community support.
— Michael Ordman Sanity Report (Israel), 7/20/2026

Researchers at Tel Aviv University’s Gray Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences have uncovered how a natural and essential immune process can be hijacked to promote cancer progression. In a new study, the research team developed an advanced technology that enabled it to track macrophages, immune cells, in real time and reveal how they alter their behavior within a cancerous tumor after consuming dead cancer cells. The findings may pave the way for new treatments targeting the specific macrophages identified in the study, restoring the immune system’s ability to fight the tumor instead of helping it.
— Medical Press (Israel), 7/2/2026

Israeli organization Save a Child’s Heart completed a weeklong mission in Rwanda, performing life-saving cardiac procedures on 21 children and train-ing the country’s first pediatric interventional cardiologist.
— United With Israel, 7/1/2026

Israel’s Firewave is an AI-powered acoustic sensor that detects wildfires in under two minutes by listening for combustion sounds, far outpacing traditional camera-based systems. Firewave says it “listens to nature, to protect it.”
— World Israel News, 7/1/2026

After decades of shadow warfare, Iran and Israel have now attacked each other’s homelands directly. Israel and the United States have joined forces in a genuinely novel way to wage war against Iran. The Islamic Republic has lost its supreme leader of 36 years and much of its defense infrastructure. The Gulf states, once largely able to stay out of harm’s way, have seen their energy facilities, airports, and hotels go up in flames. Hezbollah has dragged Lebanon, which was just starting to recover from its last war, back into conflict. The Assad regime, which had ruled Syria for nearly half a century, was swept away when its partners in Beirut and Tehran were battered and unable to offer help. Israel, for its part, has flattened Gaza, tiptoed toward annexing the West Bank, reoccupied parts of southern Lebanon, and extended its control over Syrian territory beyond the Golan Heights. Despite two and a half years of fighting and the deaths of tens of thousands of people, the situation in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank is largely the same as it was before the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023.
— Foreign Affairs, Sep-tember/October, 2026

Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Egypt for the first time in a decade, as countries across the Middle East reassess security and economic ties amid the fallout from the Iran war. The conflict has disrupted global energy markets and raised questions about whether regional countries can count on the United States as a long-term security partner. Egyptian state media has trumpeted Cairo’s growing economic and military ties with Beijing and Egypt’s role as the first Arab and African country to establish diplomatic ties with China 70 years ago. Egypt — which receives about $1.3 billion a year in U.S. military aid — hosted its second annual military exercises with China, launched last year as Beijing sought to chip away at U.S. influence in the region. The drills marked the first deployment of China’s J-16 jets to Africa and a rare air combat drill involving the Chinese-made fighters and French-made Rafales, according to Chinese state media. — Reuters, 9/1/2026