Nothing more could have illustrated the massive divide between the concerns of many of the nations of the world and those of the United States, which is rapidly descending into second-rate power status, along with its NATO allies Britain, France, and Germany.

While Mr Trump was threatening to fire his senior White House staff, reprising his one-time role in his reality television show ‘The Apprentice’, China’s President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and presidents and prime ministers from around the world sat down to discuss the creation of new international and intercontinental highways, railways, and maritime routes under China’s proposed Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

Even countries that are cool on the Chinese initiative, including India and Japan, sent representatives to the summit that carried a bit more clout than the pathetic representation of the United States, Matt Pottinger, a little-known special assistant to Trump and the senior director for East Asia of National Security Council. In fact, the only reason Trump sent anyone to represent the United States at the Beijing gathering was because of a special request made by President Xi during his recent meeting with Trump at the president’s private Mar-a-Lago Club resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

Even North Korea, which rankled South Korea, Japan, and the United States by firing a ballistic missile into waters near Russia, sent a delegation to the Beijing meeting headed by Kim Yong Jae, the North’s Minister of External Economic Relations. The Trump administration, which sent a virtual unknown to Beijing, complained loudly about North Korea’s representation at the Silk Road summit.

But Washington’s complaint was conveyed by someone as unknown as Mr Pottinger, Anna Richey-Allen, a low-level spokesperson for the US State Department’s East Asia Bureau. The reason why the United States is being spoken for by middle-grade bureaucrats is that the nation that still believes it is the world’s only remaining ‘superpower’ is now governed by an administration rife with top-level vacancies, inter-agency squabbling, and amateur league players.

Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella told a news conference in Moscow that martial rule took effect Tuesday evening in the southern region of Mindanao “on the grounds of existence of rebellion.” “The whole of Marawi city is blacked out, there is no light, and there are Maute snipers all around,” Lorenzana said in the news conference in Moscow, which was broadcast live in the Philippines.

While pursuing peace talks with two large Muslim rebel groups in the south of the predominantly Roman Catholic nation, Duterte has ordered the military to destroy smaller extremist groups which have tried to align with the Islamic State group.

Duterte had repeatedly threatened to place the south, the scene of decades-long Muslim uprisings, under martial law if terrorism spiraled out of control. Human rights groups have expressed fears that martial law powers could further embolden Duterte, whom they have accused of allowing extrajudicial killings of thousands of drug suspects in a crackdown on illegal drugs.

Every successive president starting with Franklin D Roosevelt has been bought — lock, stock and barrel — and made to dance to the tune of the Deep State. Even Dwight D Eisenhower, the retired five-star Army general-turned-president who warned against the disastrous rise of misplaced power by the military industrial complex was complicit in contributing to the build-up of the military’s role in dictating national and international policy.

Enter Donald Trump, the candidate who swore to drain the swamp in Washington DC. Instead of putting an end to the corruption, however, Trump has paved the way for lobbyists, corporations, the military industrial complex, and the Deep State to feast on the carcass of the dying American republic.

Just recently, for instance, Trump — boasting about the purchase of lots of beautiful military equipment because nobody makes it like the United States — agreed to sell Saudi Arabia more than $110 billion in military weapons and “tanks and helicopters for border security, ships for coastal security, intelligence-gathering aircraft, a missile-defense radar system, and cybersecurity tools.” Meanwhile, Trump — purportedly in an effort to balance the budget in 10 years — wants to slash government funding for programs for the poor, ranging from health care and food stamps to student loans and disability payments.

The military doesn’t have to worry about tightening its belt, however. No, the military’s budget — with its trillion dollar wars, its $125 billion in administrative waste, and its contractor-driven price gouging that hits the American taxpayer where it hurts the most — will continue to grow, thanks to Trump. This is how you keep the Deep State in power. The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer, the military will get more militaristic, America’s endless wars will get more endless, and the prospect of peace will grow ever dimmer.

The Queen held a minute's silence at Buckingham Palace at 16:00 BST. In a statement in Downing Street on Tuesday, the prime minister said the bombing had been a "callous terrorist attack" that targeted "defenceless young people". She said the security services believed they knew the attacker's identity but were not yet able to confirm it.

Number 10 later said Mrs May had been updated "through [Monday] night" and had phoned Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at 04:00 BST to brief him. It is the worst terrorist attack in the UK since the 7 July bombings in 2005, in which 52 people were killed by four suicide bombers.

So-called Islamic State has said - via IS channels on the messaging app Telegram - it was behind the Manchester attack, but this has not been verified. The UK threat level has been judged to be severe for nearly three years - which means an attack is considered highly likely.

But in recent months the tempo of counter terrorist activity has been increasing with - on average - an arrest every day. After the attack in Westminster by Khalid Masood in March, police and security officials have been warning that further attacks were almost inevitable.

But they also believed that those were more likely to be low-tech involving knives or vehicles. The fact that the Manchester attack involved explosives will worry them. It may not have been at the level of complexity seen in Paris in 2015, when multiple attackers sent from Syria used guns and suicide belts, but it will still have required planning.

“This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it,” Trump said Sunday in Saudi Arabia, referring to the fight against terrorism. “This is a battle between good and evil.”

Addressing political leaders from Arab and Muslim countries, Trump mentioned “God” a whopping nine times. The theme of his speech was the joint need to combat terrorism, but it was infused with a spiritual message. “Religious leaders must make this absolutely clear: Barbarism will deliver you no glory — piety to evil will bring you no dignity,” he warned. “If you choose the path of terror, your life will be empty, your life will be brief, and your soul will be condemned.”

For “many centuries,” Christians, Muslims and Jews have been living “side by side” in the Middle East, Trump went on. “We must practice tolerance and respect for each other once again — and make this region a place where every man and woman, no matter their faith or ethnicity, can enjoy a life of dignity and hope.”

“The Americans want to emphasize that what they’re looking for is harmony between the main religions, that all three religions might be united around the idea of peace,” said Major General (res) Yaakov Amidror, Netanyahu’s former national security adviser.

The architects of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians entirely ignored the religious aspects of the conflict, he said. “That was a huge mistake.” Talking about interfaith dialogue and tolerance will not bring peace tomorrow, Amidror stressed. “But we have to begin somewhere,” and the understanding that there is a religious element to the Israeli-Palestinian dynamic is a welcome first step.

Promoting religious tolerance is, of course, not the only element of Trump’s Middle East strategy. In his meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders this week he will also want to talk business, and will seek to find out what concrete policy proposals each side can bring to the table to foster a climate conducive to peace.

His predecessors have done exactly that and failed spectacularly. It is by no means guaranteed — and that’s an understatement — that Trump’s attempt to clinch what he’s called the “ultimate deal” will see any more success. But at the very least, an approach that pairs political pressure on both sides with an effort to create goodwill among the region’s religious groups is something fresh.

Described as the Riyadh Declaration, the document was signed following US President Donald Trump’s visit to the Saudi capital for a summit that brought in Islamic representatives from 55 countries, and vowed “to combat terrorism in all its forms, address its intellectual roots, dry up its sources of funding and to take all necessary measures to prevent and combat terrorist crimes in close cooperation among their states.”

“The leaders welcomed the establishment of a global center for countering extremist thought to take base in Riyadh, and praised the center's strategic objectives of combating intellectual, media and digital extremism and promoting coexistence and tolerance among peoples,” said the text of the document, published by the Saudi Press Agency.

The exact membership of what the communique called the Middle East Strategic Alliance will be decided next year, but putative members have committed to assembling “a reserve force of 34,000 troops to support operations against terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria when needed.” While rich in specific epithets, the declaration broadly followed the agenda of Sunday’s Sunni-dominated Riyadh summit, and the speech delivered by Trump, which mentioned Iran a dozen times, and accused it of “spreading destruction and chaos across the region.”

Erekat’s warning is the latest of a series of similar declarations from Arab and Muslim leaders. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is slated to meet with Trump in Bethlehem on Tuesday, said in January that if Trump moves the embassy, it will “destroy the peace process.” Abbas’ senior aide and the PA’s supreme Sharia judge Mahmoud Al-Habbash stated that an embassy transfer would be a “declaration of war.” And earlier this month, Turkish President Recep Erdogan said it would be “extremely ill-advised” for Trump to move the embassy.

Erekat said a Palestinian state without eastern Jerusalem as its capital would have “no meaning.” He also expressed his hope that “President Trump would give us a chance.” “He said … he will not impose solutions on us or on the Israelis,” Erekat said. “(But) the fact that he is going to move the embassy is imposition, is dictation.”

Erekat also met with opposition member Tzipi Livni (Zionist Union) – his counterpart in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations – and the two expressed their hope that Trump would be successful in his efforts to jumpstart the moribund peace process. The new US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, welcomed the notion of an embassy relocation but said the decision was ultimately Trump’s.

Perhaps the only thing that’s preventing a war from breaking out right now, is the fact that North Korea doesn’t have an effective way to deliver a nuke, nor have they been making much progress in that arena. It seems like every time they test a long range missile, it fails spectacularly. So long as that state of affairs continues, war can be averted.

Unfortunately, North Korea’s missile program has just made a huge leap. On Sunday they tested a new missile that was arguably far more effective than anything they’ve ever launched before. A Hwasong-12, a new medium long-range surface-to-surface missile, was launched from Kusong early Sunday morning. The missile flew roughly 430 miles, but the weapon was intentionally lofted. Analysts suspect the missile could potentially hit targets 2,800 miles away if fired along a standard trajectory.

Is it any wonder why North Korea is the perfect trigger for World War 3? This unstable nation is rapidly increasing its nuclear capabilities, and it’s a nation that China and Russia have a vested interest in keeping alive. They want a buffer state between their borders and South Korea, which is allied with the United States. So any conflict with North Korea (a conflict that is looking more likely every day) could easily drag more nuclear armed nations into the fray.

Unless one side of this fight backs down, World War 3 is inevitable. And so far it doesn’t look like either side is willing to compromise on North Korea’s missile program.

The returning diseases are;

1. Tuberculosis

2. Measles

3. Whooping Cough

4. Mumps

5. Scarlet Fever

6. Bubonic Plague

The near eradication of these diseases in the United States during the twentieth century was a remarkable accomplishment of American civilization. Until recently, most Americans believed these diseases were gone from our shores for good.

But a politicized public health system, and a rise in the subsidized migration into the United States, however, have combined to reverse a century of progress. These six “comeback” diseases are not the only ones of concern to America’s public health.

A number of other diseases, some of which are prevalent among foreign born residents of the United States and foreign visitors, also present a current problem, to varying degrees, including zika, flesh eating parasites—cutaneous leishmaniasis, ebola, leprosy, intestinal parasites, HIV, scabies, and diptheria.

In this land so rich in history, Israel has built one of the world’s great civilizations, a strong, resilient, determined and prosperous nation. It is also a nation forged in the commitment that we will never allow the horrors and atrocities of the last century to be repeated. Now we must work together to build a future where the nations of the region are at peace, and all of our children can grow and grow up strong and grow up free from terrorism and violence.

During my travels in recent days, I have found new reasons for hope. I have just concluded a visit to Saudi Arabia where yesterday I met with King Salman and with the leaders from across the Muslim and Arab world. In that visit, we reached historic agreements to pursue greater and greater cooperation in the fight against terrorism and its evil ideology.

My future travels will take me to visit Pope Francis at the Vatican and then our NATO and European allies. We have before us a rare opportunity to bring security and stability and peace to this region and to its people, defeating terrorism and creating a future of harmony, prosperity and peace. But we can only get there working together. There is no other way.

Mr President, Mr Prime Minister, I look forward to working closely with both of you during my stay. We love Israel; we respect Israel. And I send your people the warmest greetings from your friend and ally, all of the people in the United States of America. We are with you. Thank you and God bless you.”

The US president was greeted outside the ancient church by the Armenian and Greek Orthodox patriarchs of Jerusalem. After briefly stopping to be photographed, he entered the building, along with his son-in-law and daughter, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. From there, the US delegation walked back to Jaffa Gate, where they entered the convoy of dozens of vehicles to drive to the Western Wall.

Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch and Western Wall Heritage Foundation director Mordechai Eliav met the black kippah-clad Trump at the entrance to the plaza, which was emptied of worshipers for the presidential visit. From there, Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner strolled to the men’s section of the wall, in accordance with the gender-segregated Orthodox practice at the site, while Ivanka and Melania Trump headed to the women’s section.

Trump approached the wall, lingering to touch the stones for some 30 seconds and slipping a note inside. On the women’s side, Ivanka Trump, who is Jewish, prayed at the wall, eyes shut, before stepping away. Melania Trump, too, stood in reverence at the wall. Monday’s visit comes two days before the 50th anniversary of Israel’s recapture of the city.

In a bid to keep the tour free of political undertones, US officials reportedly rejected a request for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to join the visit, saying it would be “a private visit” by the President and that he would go on his own. Last week, the White House confirmed that Trump would not be accompanied by any Israeli officials when he visits the holy site.