Since July 2015, another British-born CEO has been at the helm. But John Cryan speaks German. And he’s singing a very different tune: He recently promised employees that Deutsche’s focus in the coming years will be its business back home, in Germany. After more than two decades of brash foreign expansion that turned it into Europe’s largest investment bank, Deutsche is thus quietly returning to its roots. Last year it fell out of the top five in a ranking of global investment banks. That might seem like a bad thing, but it could be the bank’s only hope of survival over the long term.

So now at last Deutsche wants to make a clean cut with this past, and what Germans consider a Wall Street mentality. For John Cryan that means taking the bank back to its German roots. He may be British, but he has a German earnestness about him and comes from the relatively conservative world of consulting. He is less interested in investment banking, where growing capital requirements and paper work are making profits more elusive. He even accepts that Deutsche might shrink, for the lower that Deutsche slips on the list of banks considered “too big to fail,” the less cash it is required by regulators to keep in reserve.

The good news is that, even as it expanded abroad, Deutsche Bank always maintained a strong presence in Germany. In 2008 it quietly bought Postbank, a German retail lender, which now fits into Mr Cryan’s revised home-base strategy. Mr Cryan’s contract runs until 2020, and the odds are that the bank’s next leader is a German again. Two princelings, Christian Sewing and Marcus Schenck, were named co-presidents in March. Both are German and have a more conservative reputation. “The German faction has won a battle,” said Dieter Hein, a banking analyst at Fairesearch. Everything suggests that Deutsche Bank will, after 150 years, again become a deutsche bank.

Thousands were present for Netanyahu's speech and the celebrations at the walls of Jerusalem's Old City. The event was attended by President Reuven Rivlin, the Prime Minister and Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev.

"Fifty years ago, we didn't occupy, we liberated; by the heroism of our warriors and the love of our people, Jerusalem was liberated," said Netanyahu. "I say to the world with a clear voice: Jerusalem was and always will be the capital of Israel. The Temple Mount and the Western Wall will always remain under Israeli sovereignty."

According to Netanyahu, despite Jewish connection to Jerusalem "that shines like the sun at noon, there are those who choose to deny this obvious connection and brazenly paint us as strangers in our land."

When similar reports emerged in the past, official spokesmen, Arab and Israeli alike, would quickly issue a denial. But this time there were no denials either. That suggests that there is a solid foundation to the principles of the proposal – at least between Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.

Syria’s membership in the Arab League has been suspended, Iraq is considered Iran’s ally, Libya is falling apart, Yemen is at war, Jordan and Egypt are supported by Saudi Arabia, as are some of the Maghreb states. Thus, partial or full normalization between the Gulf States and Israel will not obligate other Arab countries. But it will decide the question of who is to blame for the stalled peace process if the initiative doesn’t get off the ground. And if Israel and the Palestinians advance toward renewal of negotiations on major issues, it can serve as essential leverage.

The US President added that people in Iran had “endured hardship and despair under their leaders’ reckless pursuit of conflict and terror”. Earlier, King Salman of Saudi Arabia also railed against Iran calling the country “the spearhead of terrorism”. Most of the 19 terrorists who murdered nearly 3,000 people in New York in 2001 were Saudi citizens and there have been repeated accusations that members of the Saudi hierarchy were complicit in the attack.

Iran’s foreign secretary Javad Zarif pointed out Mr Trump had himself previously suggested the Saudis were behind the 9/11 attacks. Mr Zarif said: “He must enter into dialogue with them [the Saudis] about ways to prevent terrorists from continuing to fuel the fire in the region and repeating the likes of the September 11 incident by their sponsors in Western countries.

"You will find out who really knocked down the World Trade Centre because they have papers out there that are very secret. You will find it’s the Saudis, you will find that is the case.”

This is the same Saudi Arabia that Trump bluntly accused of masterminding 9/11, of loving to kill gays and enslaving women, the same country that Trump said, after his election, should be banned from exporting any oil to the United States. This is the same Islam that Trump said hates America, and therefore requires a travel ban to protect it.

...this is the same Saudi Arabia, you will recall, that Israel fought tooth and nail in an attempt to prevent it from getting AWACS intelligence planes or F-15 fighters, for fear they would ultimately be turned against Israel itself. The same Saudi Arabia that spreads anti-Semitism and fundamentalist extremism, the country that spawned Osama bin Laden. The Saudi Arabia that Netanyahu’s longtime aide and former Foreign Ministry Director General, Dore Gold, labeled a Kingdom of Hate in his 2004 book, describing it as the mother lode of global terror. This is the Saudi Arabia that will now get tanks, planes and anti-missile systems no less sophisticated than Israel’s.

In contemplating what kind of Israeli-Palestinian peace deal Trump will propose, now or in the future, it’s worth remembering that the Saudis now have a half-a-trillion dollar hold on the US president, which means he won’t be quick to cross them. His shifting attitude toward the Saudi kingdom shows that he can change his mind violently literally from one day to the next, and turn his worst enemy into his greatest ally without thinking twice.

And that he can do just the opposite as well, as he did with Comey, who morphed from Trump’s hero into a grandstanding nut job, without a blink of the president’s eye. And that Israel could also be tossed overboard from one moment to the next if Trump decides that it will make America great and possibly save his hide.

Friday’s supposed “bombshell” stories follow the same pattern. The Times reports that Trump told the visiting Russians that former FBI director James Comey was a “nut job,” and that firing him had eased “pressure” in his ability to conduct foreign policy — though the Times takes Trump to mean the legal pressure of the investigation. (That spin makes no sense: firing Comey created more pressure, which was so obvious the Russians joked about it.) The Times describes its source as “a document summarizing the meeting” that was “circulated” (it does not say by whom). The Times does not have the document. An “American official” simply “read quotations” to the Times.

The Post‘s story, which reports that the probe into potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign has reached “someone close to the president,” cites “people familiar with the matter.” That does not prove the story is untrue, but the sources are so flimsy that there is no way to have confidence in what the Post calls its “revelation.”

In their effort to impugn Trump, the Times and the Post violate the most basic journalistic standards. Publishing parts of a document that you do not possess and cannot verify, and timing the release to cause maximum political damage (right after the president leaves the country), is not investigative journalism. It is political propaganda.

Trump was said to believe a new approach to negotiations was needed, though his suggested tactic was not given. Trump told the Israel Hayom newspaper in an interview Thursday that he “honestly, truly” thinks he can broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. “I think that there is a great opportunity to reach a deal,” the president said. “I am working very hard so that finally the Israelis and Palestinians will have peace, and I hope that this can happen quicker than anyone ever imagined.”

Trump said that he believes that there is a good chance for peace because it is the right time and he has the right people negotiating a deal. “It is a great opportunity and it is good for everyone,” he said. “This deal is good for all. We have the right people working on it, [Ambassador] David Friedman and [Middle East envoy] Jason Greenblatt.”

A Palestinian minister said Thursday that the PA was taking seriously Trump’s efforts to help resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict. “The US president assured [Abbas] he will be able to find a settlement within one year,” Foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki said.

The host of the event declared that Trump was being honored for “his quest to enhance security and stability in the region and around the world.” The honor has also been bestowed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, British Prime Minister Theresa May and Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.

Trump was joined by first lady Melania Trump and several senior White House aides who were interspersed with Saudi officials throughout a grand ballroom. More than a dozen horses flanked the presidential limousine Saturday as Trump was slowly driven to the Royal Court in Riyadh. Trumpets played and soldiers stood at attention as the president walked in. As he arrived, Trump told the king the spectacle was “very impressive.”

The kingdom, said Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir at a press conference with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, is optimistic that Trump, “with a new approach and determination, can bring a conclusion to this long conflict. He certainly has the vision, and we believe he has the strength and the decisiveness.” Furthermore, said al-Jubeir, “the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia stands prepared to work with the United States in order to bring about peace between Israelis and Palestinians and Israelis and Arabs.”

The personal praise and deference to Trump — the fact that elderly King Salman came to the airport to greet the president, and reached out to shake the hand of the bare-headed First Lady Melania — underlined that, like Mahmoud Abbas at the White House earlier this month, the Saudis have recognized the importance of keeping on the new US leader’s good side, and maximizing the flattery.

It’s a tactic that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is doubtless observing with dismay, although not surprise. ...Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is acutely aware of the dangers of saying no to President Trump. To a president who has already told him to hold back a little on the settlements. To a president who says he believes he can “honestly, truly” cut an Israeli-Palestinian deal “quicker than anyone ever imagined.”

It is highly unlikely that Netanyahu has lately become an adherent of the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative.

The prime minister will, therefore, be watching anxiously right now, as the heavily US-invested Saudis give Trump the most royal of welcomes. And he will be wondering how successful they will be in persuading the president to rely on their peace initiative as the basis for the deal with which Trump intends to make Israeli-Palestinian history.

An Israeli soldier and a Border Policeman were lightly wounded by rock throwers during a riot near the West Bank village of Aboud, north of Ramallah. The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that between 30 and 40 people had been injured throughout the territories, mostly by tear gas and rubber bullets. In Gaza one man was said to be in serious condition and two others reportedly suffered moderate injuries.

Hamas had called for a “day of rage” on Thursday, in an apparent attempt to inflame the Palestinian streets ahead of US President Donald Trump’s visit next week, as well as a show of solidarity with hunger-striking prisoners in Israeli jails.

The Washington Post, which was not present at the meeting of President Trump with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, purports to know that Trump gave Lavrov US national security information. The Russian government has offered the presstitute media a transcript of the meeting, but, of course, the pressitutes are not interested.

The latest story is that Trump tried to bribe FBI Director Comey, before he fired him, not to investigate Trump as part of the “Russian investigation.” Clearly there is no intelligence left in the American media. The President doesn’t need to bribe someone he can fire. What we are witnessing is the determination of the national security state to keep their prized “Russian Threat” in its assigned role as the Number One Threat to the US. The liberal media, owned by the CIA since the 1950s is in accord with this goal.

The American media is so accustomed to its enslavement by the national security state that it does not think of the consequences. But Professor Stephen Cohen does. I agree with him that the greatest threat to national security “is this assault on President Trump.” Cohen said that there is a 4th branch of government, the intelligence community, which obstructs the management of American foreign affairs by the executive branch and Congress.

The US military/security complex sits on a budget extracted from very hard-pressed American taxpayers of $1,000 billion dollars annually. By threatening to normalize relations with the enemy which was created in order to justify this vast budget, Trump presented as the major threat to the American National Security State’s power and profit. This is why Trump will be broken and/or removed as President of the United States.