On Sunday, two Chinese fighter jets gave chase to an American reconnaissance aircraft over the international waters of the East China Sea, forcing the American plane to maneuver away from them rapidly. American officials with knowledge of the situation described the Chinese jets’ behavior as “unsafe,” while the Pentagon clarified that the American plane was conducting a “routine” mission.

“The ‘righteousness’ of the Pentagon is ridiculous,” the Times complained. “US military reconnaissance threatens China’s national security and an intercept by the Chinese navy is justified.”

The article goes on to praise the Chinese military for its “restraint,” suggesting that the will of the Chinese people would have been to see the incident turn deadly. “The public actually wanted the US reconnaissance plane to be shot down directly,” the article claims.

Scientists have long been able to make specific changes in the DNA code. Now, they're taking the more radical step of starting over, and building redesigned life forms from scratch. Boeke, a researcher at New York University, directs an international team of 11 labs on four continents working to "rewrite" the yeast genome, following a detailed plan they published in March.

Their work is part of a bold and controversial pursuit aimed at creating custom-made DNA codes to be inserted into living cells to change how they function, or even provide a treatment for diseases. It could also someday help give scientists the profound and unsettling ability to create entirely new organisms.

The genome is the entire genetic code of a living thing. Learning how to make one from scratch, Boeke said, means "you really can construct something that's completely new."

On the one side, there is Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who, along with his Fatah movement, explicitly called Tuesday for an escalation of the struggle and for large-scale demonstrations against Israel on Friday. This seems to be an attempt to extricate the PA leader from the depths of irrelevance.

On the other is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who seemed to be profoundly impacted by the results of Tuesday’s Channel 2 survey, which indicated deep public dissatisfaction with his response to the Temple Mount crisis. Hours after the poll’s publication, he ordered the Defense Ministry not to evacuate some 120 settlers who illegally occupied a contested home in Hebron, in addition to instructing police to individually check every worshiper ascending to pray at the Temple Mount — a decision perceived by the Palestinian public as a declaration of war.

Both sides continue their gallop toward a deeper, bloodier confrontation, and there is no responsible adult in the room to stop the deterioration. Many on the Israeli side are now saying, rightfully, “It’s not about the metal detectors.” The detectors were the excuse. They were the magic word that called forth the religious and nationalistic demons that the defense establishment has feared for so long.

And now go try and put the genie back in the bottle. Go try and calm the Palestinian public in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. If something dramatically positive does not happen in the next few days, we may find ourselves marching into the abyss.

However, on Tuesday and Wednesday, many protesters in the Old City repeated the same line: “The smart cameras are worse.” Worse, they explained, because such cameras represent a more sophisticated way of controlling the entrances to the Temple Mount.

And therein lies the real issue: The initial quarrel over metal detectors has evolved into a battle over sovereignty at what is possibly the world’s most sensitive holy site. Complicating matters for Israel is the fact that the thousands of Palestinians heading to pray in the streets of the Old City of Jerusalem every day have no clear leader.

The Waqf tried to buy time by saying it would wait to make a decision until a full assessment of Israeli measures taken inside and at the entrances to the Temple Mount had been completed. But worshipers in the streets of the Old City that morning had already made up their minds. Some thought the smart cameras had already been set up. Many said they believed these cameras would show their naked bodies, or perhaps give them cancer. Whatever these cameras could or couldn’t do, many agreed, they couldn’t be tolerated.

The protesters in Jerusalem are fond of saying that they are neither Fatah (Abbas’s party) nor rival party Hamas. They are, rather, they say, “the street, the people, the Jerusalemites. ” The Waqf, many have said this week, is no longer pulling the strings. It’s now the street controlling the Waqf. As one worshiper at nighttime prayers outside the Mount put it on Tuesday, “Do we have a leader? Yes. The unified voice of the people.”

On Tuesday night, some in the crowd said this could all end if Israel fully restored conditions at the Temple Mount entrances to the July 14 status quo ante. But others believed it was too late for that now. Mohammas Rowais, from Ras al-Amud, said goals now included “for the police to be completely removed from the site, and for religious Jews to stop going up there.” “Maybe,” he added, more analytically than provocatively, “this is the beginning of a new uprising.”

The EU originally imposed travel bans and asset freezes on the Gaza-based Palestinian terrorist group, after the September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda terror attacks on New York and Washington. Hamas opposed the sanctions from the start, arguing that it is a legally elected government and therefore has the right to conduct military operations against Israel.

It refuses to recognize that some of Judaism’s holiest sites are located in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and Western Wall in Jerusalem; the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron; and Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus.

The EU maintains an active sanctions policy, targeting individuals, groups and states, including several other Palestinian entities, and Hamas will now be added to the list of terrorist organizations after Wednesday’s decision.

In an eagerly awaited ruling judges at the ECJ confirmed that Austria and Slovenia can send migrants back to Croatia to have their asylum cases determined there instead. The case came before the court after Croatian authorities infuriated their neighbours at the height of the 2015 crisis by laying on state-funded transport to help migrants cross their territory. 

Officials in Zagreb had argued that they were dealing with an unprecedented situation as hundreds of thousands of migrants moved northwards towards Germany, and that this exempted them from the need to process visas. But Austria and Slovenia, where some of the asylum seekers ended up, brought legal proceedings saying that Croatia had a duty to decide on asylum cases, and not simply bus people northwards, under the Dublin Convention. 

The landmark EU migration law, first agreed in 1990, specifically states that it is the responsibility of the first EU member state a migrant enters to determine their case. Today’s ruling could have a significant impact on the future of the EU’s rapidly sinking migrant quota scheme, under which all countries have been allocated a mandatory number of refugees to take in from Greece and Italy. 

Both of the countries bringing the lawsuit have strongly opposed the enforced system and refused to take part, drawing a furious response from Rome which is struggling to cope with huge numbers of new arrivals. And whilst today's case was focussed on Croatia, the ruling theoretically strips Italy and Greece of similar legal arguments against having to take migrants back under the Dublin system. 

The prime minister will appear before a special committee focused on the Jewish nation-state bill, led by Likud MK Amir Ohana (Likud), that is meant to make sure it will pass quickly. The Jewish nation-state bill is meant to anchor in a Basic Law, legislation meant to form an eventual constitution, Israel’s status as the nation-state of the Jewish people and its Jewish and democratic character.

Its proponents point out that there are Basic Laws that say Israel is democratic, but none that say it is Jewish. The proposal includes the state symbols, Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the Hebrew calendar, the Law of Return and ingathering of the exiles.

Another section of the bill states that all communities in Israel have the right to preserve their culture, heritage, language and identity, have days off for their holidays and build their own, separate communities, and that the holy sites of all religions will be protected.

Another much-disputed article of the bill is one that says the principles of the Jewish heritage should serve as inspiration to the judiciary.

It claimed that the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) had mis-translated Shahin’s prayer, and that he prayed that Allah “destroy” rather than “annihilate” the Jews responsible for temporarily closing access to the Al-Aqsa mosque (after a terror attack).

The word “destroy,” the mosque claimed, was not a call to violence but merely a “supplication that is generally used against oppressors.” Moreover, as Breitbart News reported on Monday — after watching the entire video, and not just the portion excerpted by MEMRI — Imam Shahin specifically referred to “a war of faith” against Jews.

Compared to our ancient ancestors, we are shorter, slower and we have been losing mental capacity for thousands of years.  And just this week, a groundbreaking study that discovered that large numbers of human males in the western world may soon be incapable of reproducing made headlines all over the planet.

Dr Hagai Levine was one of the lead scientists involved in the study, and he found that for men in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, sperm concentrations declined by 52.4 percent during the study period, and total sperm count declined by a whopping 59.3 percent. If these trends continue, we will soon have tens of millions of young men that are incapable of producing children. 

There are certainly lots of factors involved, but one study from a few years ago pointed much of the blame at our heavy use of cellphones… The new study shows that having a mobile phone close to the testicles – or within a foot or two of the body – can lower sperm levels so much that conceiving could be difficult.

And of course where do most men carry their phones? Most of us carry them in our pockets, and that is about the worst possible place that we could carry them.