ISRAEL - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has put on hold a controversial plan to apply Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank, after receiving sharp warnings from both regional allies and Western nations. The issue was slated for a ministerial discussion on Thursday but has been replaced by a session focused on the mounting security challenges in the area. The Jerusalem Post reported that defense officials will caution ministers that the West Bank “could erupt instantly” as momentum builds at the United Nations for several Western countries to recognize a Palestinian state later this month. The decision follows a stern warning from the United Arab Emirates to both Israel and President Trump that annexing the West Bank would threaten the Abraham Accords, signed nearly five years ago as a cornerstone of Israel’s normalization with Arab states. Emirati special envoy Lana Nusseibeh told The Times of Israel that annexation would be a “red line” for Abu Dhabi, foreclosing peace efforts and “the idea of regional integration.”

MIDDLE EAST - US President Donald Trump called for Hamas to "IMMEDIATELY give back all 20 hostages" in a Wednesday post on Truth Social. "Not 2 or 5 or 7!" he added. If Hamas does this, then "things will change rapidly," he added, concluding, "IT WILL END!" Trump notably only referred to the 20 hostages presumed to be alive, rather than the total 48 hostages held in captivity. In a direct message to the US president, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said: "This nightmare cannot end for our nation until ALL 48 hostages are accounted for - both those who survived and those who were brutally murdered during these 700 days of hell." They reiterated their demand for Trump to make every effort to ensure that all 48 hostages held in captivity are returned to Israel.

ISRAEL - The Hostage Families Forum on Friday staged “an emergency call” calling for the release of the remaining 48 hostages held in Gaza as Israel marks 700 days since October 7, 2023. Representatives from the forum stood dressed in yellow, spelling out “S.O.S,” along with an hourglass representing the time running out for the hostages. “700 days since they were abducted, and we are with them,” the forum wrote on X/Twitter on Thursday night. “Government of Israel - the excuses are over! A deal must be made now, before it's too late.”

HOLLAND - Global sea levels have not continued to rise at the rates predicted by many scientists — and there is no evidence that climate change has contributed to any such acceleration, a new first-of-its-kind study has claimed. The research found that the average sea level rise in 2020 was only around 1.5mm per year, or 6 inches per century, according to the paper’s authors, Dutch engineering consultant Hessel Voortman and independent researcher Rob de Vos. “This is significantly lower than the 3 to 4 mm/year often reported by climate scientists in scientific literature and the media,” Voortman told independent journalist Michael Shellenberger. Voortman was shocked that no researcher before had performed an analysis of real-world local data.

MIDDLE EAST - A very dangerous geopolitical chess match is playing out right in front of our eyes. As I discussed yesterday, France and Saudi Arabia will co-chair “the Conference on the Two-State Solution” at the United Nations on September 22nd. The goal of this conference is to create an unstoppable wave of international momentum toward the creation of a Palestinian state. Israeli officials are very upset about this conference, and they are considering annexing large portions of the West Bank in response. If that happens, Israel’s Islamic neighbors will go absolutely berserk and a catastrophic war could break out in the Middle East. So let us hope that cooler heads prevail, because we are rapidly approaching a point of no return. This is something that could POTENTIALLY UNITE ALL OF THE SURROUNDING NATIONS. So what would Israel do if it was suddenly confronted with a military threat from a large Islamic coalition? It appears that this thing could spiral out of control very easily.

CHINA - The latest gathering of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tianjin looks at first like another summit – handshakes, family portraits, scripted statements. But the meeting on August 31–September 1 is more than diplomatic theater: it is another marker of the end of the unipolar era dominated by the United States, and the rise of a multipolar system centered on Asia, Eurasia, and the Global South. At the table were Chinese President Xi Jinping, his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi – together representing more than a third of humanity and 3 of the largest countries on Earth. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin was less about formal speeches than about symbolism. It signalled that the unipolar world has ended. From development banks to energy corridors to parades of missiles, a new multipolar order is taking shape – and it no longer asks for Western permission.

USA - Besides the harm the transgender ideology does to individuals, leaving boys being less than boys and girls less than girls after “treatment,” the lost families and lives, the multiple mass killers that have come from that lifestyle, there is a “threat” to public safety, and “as such, it should be outlawed and eradicated from public life.” That’s according to an article by John Daniel Davidson, a book author and writer whose work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, the New York Post and more.

USA - The grid is snapping. Not metaphorically. Not slowly. It’s breaking under unrelenting pressure, pressure from machines that never rest, never blink, never care. Data centers are not a part of the future. They are the future’s parasite. And they are feeding on your power. “Electricity prices across the country rose at more than twice the rate of overall inflation in the past year and are holding near a record high. Residential electricity prices have climbed about 10% from January until May and are projected to gain another 5.8% next year.” This isn’t inflation. It’s extraction. A siphon from your wall socket to their server racks. You pay more. They expand. You dim the lights. They light up the cloud. Every kilowatt is a vote of surrender. The grid wasn’t built for this. It was built for homes, neighborhoods, people. Now it’s twisted to serve machines.

EUROPE - German defence minister Boris Pistorius says VdL is 'totally wrong' to discuss possible troop deployment plans for Ukraine in public. Boris Pistorius told reporters during a visit to a Cologne ammunition factory on Monday (September 1): "Those are things that you don't discuss before you sit down at the negotiating table with many parties that have a say in the matter." He added: "I would know better than to comment or confirm such considerations in any way, apart from the fact that the European Union has no mandate or competency whatsoever when it comes to positioning troops."

USA - Pharmaceutical commercials are nearly impossible to avoid in the United States. On average, American TV viewers see as many as nine drug ads per day, totaling about 16 hours a year — far more time than most people spend with their primary-care physician. Only the US and New Zealand allow direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug ads, making American airwaves a primary battleground for pharma marketing.