Science
Mormon Church Fined For Obscuring $32 Billion Investment Portfolio
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — The Securities and Exchange Commission fined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its investment arm $5 million on Tuesday for using shell companies to conceal the size of the portfolio under church control.
As commonly known, the Mormon Church has billions of dollars invested in stocks, bonds, real estate, and agriculture. The presiding bishopric, which is made up of religious leaders, is in charge of Ensign Peak Advisers, which is a non-profit investment manager.
The Mormon church has agreed to pay $1 million in penalties, while Ensign Peak will pay $4 million.
According to Gurbir Grewal, the SEC’s enforcement director, Ensign Peak avoided disclosing investments “with the church’s knowledge,” denying the SEC and the accurate public information required by law.
According to federal investigators, the firm violated agency rules and the Securities Exchange Act for 22 years by failing to file paperwork that disclosed the value of its assets.
The Mormon Church Needs to Start Paying Taxes
Instead, they claimed Ensign Peak filed the forms through 13 shell companies they established while retaining decision-making authority. They also had “business managers,” most church employees, sign the required shell company filings.
“The Mormon Church was concerned that disclosing its portfolio, which had grown to approximately $32 billion by 2018,” the SEC said in a statement announcing the charges.
Because religious organizations are exempt from paying US taxes, the church and its Salt Lake City-based investment arm have come under increased scrutiny. Ensign Peak is a church-registered supporting organization and integrated auxiliary. Large investment managers are required to report stock holdings quarterly.
It gained traction in 2019 after a whistleblower claimed the church had amassed nearly $100 billion in funds instead of directing them to charitable causes. Since then, Ensign Peak has been a source of fascination and mystery for the nearly 17-million-member Utah-based faith, encouraging members worldwide to give 10% of their income in practice known as “tithing.”
Two years later, prominent church member James Huntsman filed a lawsuit against the mormon church, alleging that it misrepresented how it used donations and invested them in assets such as real estate and an insurance company rather than directing them to charitable causes. Last year, a judge dismissed the complaint, and Huntsman appealed the decision.
Earlier this month, the 2019 whistleblower, David Nielsen, a former Ensign Peak investment manager, submitted a 90-page memorandum to the United States Senate Finance Committee demanding oversight of the mormon church’s finances.
Church officials said that none of their holdings went unreported.
Mormon Church officials said that none of their holdings went unreported during the investigation period, and all were disclosed through separate companies. They stated that they had “relied on legal counsel regarding how to comply with its reporting obligations while attempting to maintain the portfolio’s privacy” and that Ensign Peak had changed its reporting strategy after learning of the SEC’s concerns in 2019.
“We affirm our commitment to following the law, apologize for any errors, and now consider this matter closed,” they said.
Sam Brunson, a Mormon church member and Loyola University Chicago tax law professor, said the $5 million fine differed from previous accusations against Ensign Peak because the church appears to have admitted some fault.
Failure to file SEC paperwork may not spark broader discussions about how the church manages its money, but it does reflect an “incredibly aggressive” strategy to keep certain information hidden from the public, he said.
“The Mormon Church has had an ethos of keeping its finances private for the last 70 years,” Brunson said.
SOURCE – (AP)
Science
A Spacecraft Is On Its Way To A Harmless Asteroid Slammed By NASA In A Previous Save-The-Earth Test
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida – A spacecraft launched Monday to probe the site of a cosmic accident.
The European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft launched on a two-year trip to the little, harmless asteroid slammed by NASA two years ago as a practice run for the day when a murderous space rock threatens Earth. It’s the second phase of a planetary defense experiment that could one day save the globe.
SpaceX’s Falcon rocket vanished with Hera into the late morning clouds. An hour later, cheering erupted in the control center in Germany as the spacecraft split from the rocket’s upper stage and returned home. “It’s an amazing day,” the space agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, said later.
The 2022 crash of NASA’s Dart spacecraft reduced Dimorphos’ orbit around its larger companion, indicating that if a harmful rock was heading our way, it might be pushed off course with adequate warning.
nasa
A Spacecraft Is On Its Way To A Harmless Asteroid Slammed By NASA In A Previous Save-The-Earth Test
Scientists are eager to analyze the aftermath of the impact up close to determine how effective Dart was and what improvements may be required to protect Earth in the future.
“The more detail we can glean the better as it may be important for planning a future deflection mission should one be needed,” University of Maryland astronomer Derek Richardson stated before launch.
Researchers want to know if Dart (short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test) created a crater or changed the 500-foot (150-meter) asteroid more dramatically. It seemed to be a flying saucer before Dart’s blow and may now resemble a kidney bean, according to Richardson, who participated in the Dart mission and is assisting Hera.
Dart’s wallop sent rubble and boulders hurtling off Dimorphos, adding to the impact’s momentum. For months, the debris track extended thousands of miles (almost 10,000 kilometers) into space.
According to flight director Ignacio Tanco, some rocks and debris may still be hovering about the asteroid, posing a threat to Hera.
A Spacecraft Is On Its Way To A Harmless Asteroid Slammed By NASA In A Previous Save-The-Earth Test
“We don’t really know very well the environment in which we are going to operate,” Tanco informed me. “But that’s the whole point of the mission is to go there and find out.”
European authorities refer to the $400 million (363 million euros) effort as a “crash scene investigation.”
“Hera is going back to the crime scene and getting all the scientific and technical information,” said project manager Ian Carnelli.
Carrying a dozen science instruments, the compact car-sized Hera must swing past Mars in 2025 for a gravitational boost before landing at Dimorphos by the end of 2026. It’s a moonlet of Didymos, the Greek word for twin, a five-times larger asteroid that spins quickly. At that point, the asteroids will be 120 million miles (195 million kilometers) from Earth.
Hera will attempt to enter orbit around the rocky duo, progressively reducing flyby distances from 18 miles (30 kilometers) to a half-mile (1 kilometer). The spacecraft will examine the moonlet for at least six months to determine its mass, shape, composition, and orbit around Didymos.
Before the crash, Dimorphos circled its larger partner from three-quarters of a mile (1,189 meters) away. Scientists believe the orbit has become tighter and more oval-shaped, and that the moonlet may be tumbling.
Two shoebox-sized Cubesats will launch from Hera for even closer drone-like examinations, with one employing radar to peek beneath the moonlet’s boulder-strewn surface. Scientists believe Dimorphos was produced from particles shed by Didymos. The radar measurements should assist in determining whether Didymos is the small moon’s parent.
A Spacecraft Is On Its Way To A Harmless Asteroid Slammed By NASA In A Previous Save-The-Earth Test
After their survey, the CubeSats will attempt to land on the moonlet. If the moonlet tumbles, the situation will become more complicated. Hera may potentially conclude its mission with a perilous touchdown but on the bigger Didymos.
Asteroids, which are remnants of the solar system’s origin 4.6 billion years ago, circle the sun principally between Mars and Jupiter in what is known as the main asteroid belt, where millions of them live. When they fall from the belt and land in our area, they become near-Earth objects.
NASA now has around 36,000 near-Earth objects, the majority of which are asteroids, although there are also some comets. More than 2,400 of them are deemed potentially dangerous to the Earth.
SOURCE | AP
NEW YORK — Prepare to spot a rare and dazzling comet.
The space rock is hurling toward Earth from the far reaches of the solar system and will make its closest approach on Saturday. It should be visible through the end of October, assuming clear skies.
A Rare Comet Brightens The Night Skies In October
Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas should be visible to the naked eye, but binoculars and telescopes will provide a clearer view.
“It’ll be this fuzzy circle with a long tail stretching away from it,” explained Sally Brummel, planetarium manager at the Bell Museum in Minnesota.
What is a comet?
They are frozen remains from billions of years ago when the solar system was formed. They heat up as they swing toward the sun, revealing their distinctive streaming tails.
In 2023, a green one that had last visited Earth 50,000 years ago flew past again. Other significant flybys were Neowise in 2020 and Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake in the mid to late 1990s.
Where did Tsuchinshan-Atlas come from?
Also known as C/2023 A3, was found last year and named after the observatories in China and South Africa that spotted it.
It originated in the Oort Cloud, which extends far beyond Pluto. After making its closest approach to Earth at 44 million miles (71 million kilometers), it will not return for another 80,000 years, provided it survives the journey.
A Rare Comet Brightens The Night Skies In October
Every year, several comets are detected, but many of them burn up near the sun or are too far away to be observed without special equipment, according to Larry Denneau, a key researcher with the Atlas telescope that helped discover it.
How to View
Those seeking to see Tsuchinshan-Atlas should go outside about an hour after sunset on a clear night and look to the west.
The comet should be visible from both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
SOURCE | AP
NEW YORK — To save power, NASA turned off another scientific equipment on its long-running Voyager 2 spacecraft.
NASA Switches Off Instrument On the Spacecraft To Save Power
The space agency announced on Tuesday that 2’s plasma science instrument, meant to study the movement of charged atoms, was turned off in late September to allow the spacecraft to continue exploring for as long as possible, which is estimated to be into the 2030s.
NASA turned off a suite of instruments on Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, after exploring the gas giant planets in the 1980s. Both are currently in interstellar space or the region between stars. The plasma instrument on Voyager 1 stopped working years ago and was finally shut off in 2007.
The remaining four instruments on 2 will continue to collect data on magnetic fields and particles. Its mission is to investigate the regions of space beyond the sun’s protective sphere.
NASA Switches Off Instrument On Voyager 2 Spacecraft To Save Power
It launched in 1977, is the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and Neptune. It is now more than 12 billion miles (19.31 billion kilometers) from Earth. 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24.14 billion kilometers) beyond Earth.
SOURCE | AP
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