Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the US had long sought to incite “third-party” states against Iran but “such third parties are only deceived puppets,” the Islamic republic’s Fars news agency reported. “The root cause of the problems returns to their real enemies, the US and Israel,” he said. The bullying powers, as he called them, are conspiring “against the Quran and not Shiism and Iran, because they know that the Quran and Islam are the center of awakening nations.”

Iranians, he said, “have realized that their real stubborn enemy is the world arrogance and Zionism and that’s why they chant slogans against the US and Zionism.” Khamenei was speaking to Iranian officials in charge of the Hajj — the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims from all over the world undertake.

He explained to them that the pilgrimage to Mecca was a prime opportunity for Iranians to convey their aforementioned insights to other Muslims and thus encourage Islamic unity against its true enemies.

According to Sheikholeslam, Iran “will do everything to renew” its support for Hamas, which Tehran lessened in retaliation to the Sunni group’s opposition to the regime of Bashar al-Assad after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war. Sheikholeslam’s comments are the latest in a series of threats issued against Israel by Iran since the Islamic Republic signed a nuclear agreement with the P5+1 powers last month.

A video posted on a website linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), titled “Preparation of the complete destruction of Israel by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Islamic Revolution in Iran,” called for Israel’s “erasure from the annals of history,” according to another report in The Times of Israel on Wednesday. The clip depicts an invasion of Jerusalem by an Islamic army that includes Hamas and Hezbollah among its ranks.

Earlier this week, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on his English-language Twitter account that Iran will “take all possible means to support anyone who fights Israel, is against the Zionist regime and supports resistance.”

The agreement would not prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear device that it could detonate at high altitude over the US to create an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, that would destroy the nation’s critical infrastructure, write James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Peter Vincent Pry, executive director of the EMP task Force on National and Homeland Security, in the Washington Times. Iran could obtain such a device relatively easily “by cheating in the use of the nuclear infrastructure permitted them under the agreement,” they assert. “Because an EMP destroys electronics directly but people indirectly, it is regarded by some Muslim scholars as a ‘Shariah-compliant’ use of a nuclear weapon,” Woolsey and Pry explain.

Pry suggested to WND that the Obama administration may already know that Iran has a nuclear EMP capability that could “threaten America’s existence.” “Does this explain why Obama is virtually abandoning the Middle East to Iran, abandoning longstanding US allies, is appeasing Iran and even apparently trying to forge a new strategic relationship that replaces Israel with Iran as the primary US partner in the Middle East?” Pry asked.

“And the EMP could damage the necessary means to identify the attacker and US retaliatory capabilities,” they said. Urging Congress to oppose the Iranian agreement, they added, “One Iranian nuclear weapon is one too many for an Iran ruled by theocratic totalitarian genocidal imperialists.”

Hot money is already fleeing emerging markets. Higher rates in the US will drain more capital out of countries that need it the most. It will pressure emerging market currencies and further increase the likelihood of a debt crisis in countries whose governments, banks, and corporations borrow in a currency other than their own.

This scenario would be bad enough for the emerging economies. But now China has devalued the yuan to stimulate its exports and thus its economy at the expense of others. And one thing has become clear on Wednesday: these struggling economies that compete with China are going to protect their exports against Chinese encroachment. Hence a currency war.

The first two explosions that took place late in the evening on Wednesday, were registered as an earthquake with a magnitude of 3.0. The photos taken from space show the territory spanning 3 km being completely burnt, as after the use of napalm. The images are compared to a nuclear bombardment. As the blasts have been going on on Saturday and Sunday, nothing has been explained so far. The losses reach billions of yuans. 5,000 new cars were burnt at a parking place, residential district situated 800m from the port was completely destroyed.

Victor Ivanov, President of the Russian Union of Chemists told Pravda.Ru that “there are three compounds there, that is sodium cyanide, potassium cyanide and ammonium cyanide. They are used to produce plastic and extract silver and diamonds. These are dangerous substances, but they cannot explode by themselves. There should have been some other explosive substances. And nothing has been said on it so far. If three or four chemical products are mixed together, you never know what can be obtained.”

According to the official data, the number of those dead reached 114 people, and about 70 are unaccounted for.

The Greek government has agreed to give Fraport, which runs Frankfurt airport among others, along with Greek partner Copelouzos Group the right to run the airports for the next 40 years, according to details of the deal published in the government gazette overnight on August 17.

Fraport had won the bidding process for the concession last November for €1.234 billion, but Syriza, firmly against privatisation, put it on hold when it won power in January. But after the Greek government was forced to agree to selling off public assets as part of its latest, €86 billion, bailout, the airport deal was revived. It could be a fruitful one for Fraport: several of the airports are located in the country’s prime tourism hotspots, including Rhodes, Kos, Mykonos, Santorini and Skiathos, as well as Greece’s second-largest city Thessaloniki.

In fact, Zechariah 14:16-19 states:

“And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.

“And it shall be, that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, even upon them shall be no rain.

“And if the family of Egypt go not up, and come not, that have no rain; there shall be the plague, wherewith the Lord will smite the heathen that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles.

“This shall be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all nations that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles.”

So they were observed from the time of Moses through the time of Jesus, through the time of the Apostles and early church and will be practiced again in Jesus’ Millennial Kingdom. That raises the question of why believers in Jesus don’t observe them today. Will you be observing the fall feasts in 2015 – or will you be waiting until Jesus comes back?

Mr Tsipras will lead his leftist Syriza party into the polls, but he has faced a rebellion by some members angry at the bailout's austerity measures. He had to agree to painful state sector cuts, including far-reaching pension reforms, in exchange for the bailout - and keeping Greece in the eurozone. Greece received the first €13 billion ($14.5 billion) tranche of the bailout on Thursday after it was approved by relevant European parliaments. It allowed Greece to repay a €3.2 billion debt to the European Central Bank and avoid a messy default.

Mr Tsipras said he would seek the Greek people's approval to continue his government's programme. "The political mandate of the 25 January elections has exhausted its limits and now the Greek people have to have their say," he said. "I want to be honest with you. We did not achieve the agreement we expected before the January elections." Mr Tsipras said he would seek the Greek people's approval to continue his government's programme.

Some 43 of Syriza's 149 MPs had either opposed the bailout or abstained in last Friday's Greek parliamentary vote that approved the deal. The rebellion meant Mr Tsipras had effectively lost his parliamentary majority. Mr Tsipras had won power on a manifesto of opposing the stringent austerity conditions that he has now accepted. He said he was forced to do so because a majority of Greeks wanted to stay in the eurozone, and this could not be achieved in any other way. Greece remains under strict capital controls, with weekly limits on cash withdrawals for Greek citizens.

According to Northern Ireland's Public Prosecution Service (PPS), McConnell — whose sermon was streamed live on the Internet — violated the 2003 Communications Act by "sending, or causing to be sent, by means of a public electronic communications network, a message or other matter that was grossly offensive."

Pastor McConnell's prosecution is one of a growing number of examples in which British authorities — who routinely ignore incendiary speech by Muslim extremists — are using hate speech laws to silence Christians. In what was described as an "extraordinary morning," more than 1,000 people appeared outside the courthouse singing hymns and waving placards — declaring "Christianity under persecution" and "Evil Sharia law is not welcome in our country" — in a mass show of solidarity for McConnell, who was cheered and applauded as he entered and exited the courthouse.

Preaching with an oratorical flourish common to traditional Protestantism, McConnell said that it is impossible that the God of the Hebrew and Christian Bible is the Allah of the Koran. He said:

"To judge by some of what I have heard in the past few months, you would think that Islam was little more than a variation of Christianity and Judaism. Not so. Islam's ideas about God, about humanity, about salvation are vastly different from the teachings of the Holy Scriptures. Islam is heathen. Islam is satanic. Islam is a doctrine spawned in Hell."

The blowback was as swift as it was predictable. The Belfast Islamic Center, which claims to represent all of the 4,000 Muslims thought to be living in Northern Ireland, complained to police, who dutifully launched an investigation into whether there was a "hate crime motive" behind McConnell's remarks.

McConnell later issued a public apology, but he refused to recant. He also rejected a so-called informed warning. Such warnings are not convictions, but they are recorded on a person's criminal record for 12 months. Anyone who refuses to accept the warning can be prosecuted, and McConnell now faces six months in prison. The case has been adjourned until September 3.

Rouhani referenced the libel at a meeting for International Mosques Day on Thursday, reports the semi-official Fars News Agency. Speaking about the arson, he said, "that event meant that the aggressor and occupier Zionist regime does not respect any social and human principle, doesn’t show mercy to the people, children and women, continues massacre and aggression and even desecrates the Muslim world's first Qibla and a place which is also respected by other divine religions."

His talk of the "first Qibla" refers to a Muslim tradition not found in the Koran, which claims Mohammed originally prayed towards the Temple Mount copying Jewish prayers. After a few years he allegedly changed the practice and faced towards the Kaaba in Mecca, which Muslims tradition says houses the stone on which Abraham sacrificed Ishmael, in a distortion of the original Torah story.

Rouhani went on to say the 1969 arson is a "warning to Muslims to be vigilant against the Israeli plots," as paraphrased by Fars. He also called for Muslim unity against Israel. There's just one problem with Rouhani's Al-Aqsa arson libel - an insane Australian Christian did it, not Israel. Denis Michael Rohan of Australia lit a fire in the mosque on August 21, 1969, before Israeli firefighters quickly put out the flames, and the damage was then repaired.

Rohan soon confessed to the arson, and after being arrested by Israel he was found to be mentally insane and hospitalized in a mental institution before being deported back to Australia in 1974 for continued mental treatment. He had set the fire to try and clear the Mount of the mosque so that the Third Temple could be built, given his evangelical Protestant Christian beliefs that Jesus would return after it was built. And yet the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Arab world at large quickly invented the lie that Israel was responsible for the arson, alternately claiming that a Jew set the fire, or else that Israel paid Rohan to launch the arson.