AFRICA - Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso sign a security pact against islamic insurgence and foreign invasion – French Official Is freed from prison in Niger, and US restarts drone operations from its airbase. The geopolitical situation in the Sahel region of Western Africa continues in a flux, as the coup leaders in three former French colonies have enacted a security agreement against internal insurgents or external invasion. Reuters reported: “Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, three West African Sahel nations ruled by military juntas, signed a security pact on Saturday promising to come to the aid of each other in case of any rebellion or external aggression.” The three countries are fighting insurgents linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State and are under pressure by the Western Powers and also by the African neighbors from ECOWAS regional block, who have threatened the use of force to reinstate deposed president Bazoum, after the coup in Niger.

SAUDI ARABIA - Saudi Arabia informed the Biden administration of its decision to halt all talks of normalizing ties with Israel on Sunday, the Arab news outlet Elaph cited an Israeli official in the Prime Minister’s Office as saying. According to the unconfirmed report, Riyadh issued a message through the US, explaining that the “extremist” nature of Israel’s right-wing government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “torpedoing any possibility of rapprochement with the Palestinians, and thus with the Saudis,” as per Elaph.

USA - An Arabic media report had claimed Riyadh withdrew from normalization talks due to Benjamin Netanyahu's "extremist" government. The US State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs denied reports that efforts to reach a normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel had been halted on Monday. “The United States remains committed to furthering Israel’s regional integration, including through active diplomacy aimed at Israel-Saudi normalization. Talks are ongoing, and we look forward to further conversations with both parties,” the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs posted on X. Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said in remarks to state TV on Monday that there will be no solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict without an independent Palestinian state. "The two-state solution must return to the forefront," he added.

ISRAEL - 'We will return to the Intifada'. Palestinian officials from Hamas and the Popular Front called to escalate terrorist activities against Israel. Saleh al-Arouri, Deputy Head of Hamas' political bureau, met in Beirut on Saturday with a delegation from the leadership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - led by its Deputy Secretary-General, Jamil Mazhar. The two called on Hamas and the Popular Front to escalate their opposition against Israel. The two factions also called on the Palestinian Authority leadership to "return to the intifada in order to achieve national unity and the settlement of the Palestinian home on national and democratic bases."

ISRAEL - Two attacks in three hours: The rise in violence and escalation of Palestinian threats coincided with the beginning and end of Rosh Hashanah. Several shooting and stabbing attacks, as well as riots along the Gaza border, took place over the last two days, in an escalation in violence that coincided with the beginning and end of Rosh Hashanah. On Monday morning, as Israelis returned to work after the three-day holiday, Border Police officers foiled an attempted stabbing attack near the Mazmuriyeh crossing near east Jerusalem. The terrorist was shot by security forces at the scene, Border Police confirmed. On Saturday, a report was received about a shooting attack targeting an IDF post near the town of Shuwaika, the IDF said. No injuries or damage to the post were reported. On Sunday, riots took place along the Gaza border, spearheaded by the Hamas terrorist organization, part of a wider wave of escalation. Reports said that rockets were also fired from Gaza toward the sea.

USA - With summer nearing the end, and fall set to begin, so does the colder weather, but we as a nation will once again be dealing with higher electricity bills as the price of gas continues to rise. Autumn is when we start pulling out our warmer clothes and begin our preparations for the upcoming winter which starts on December 21 of this year.

ISRAEL - Which events over the past year have enhanced the presence of God in our world, and which events have diminished His presence? ‘All of humanity pass before You as sheep.’ On Rosh Hashanah, God reviews all human behavior, scrutinizes our inner hearts, and determines our fate for the coming year. On this solemn Day of Judgment, we also celebrate Divine sovereignty. The shofar blast recalls historical milestones: creation, the binding of Isaac, Jewish selection, Sinai, and, of course, the Messianic endpoint of history. Rosh Hashanah is both a somber day of judgment, but also a celebration of Divine majesty and religious glory. As the new year commences, what is the “state of God” in our world? The ongoing Russian invasion of the Ukraine has taken hundreds of thousands of lives, while also reviving dormant Cold War-era tensions. Worried about potential future wars, many European countries have undergone rapid weaponization, while other superpowers such as China are forging dangerous new alliances in pursuit of regional influence. Often, the world doesn’t realize that it is on a path to war and doesn’t hear the drumbeats of war until it is too late.

SOUTH KOREA - The deployment of such weapons would result in the end of the government of North Korea, President Yoon Suk Yeol says. Seoul and Washington will retaliate harshly if North Korea were to resort to the use of nuclear weapons, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has warned. The US and South Korea have “reaffirmed that any nuclear attack by North Korea will be met with a swift, overwhelming and decisive response,” Yoon said in an interview with AP on Sunday. A decision by the neighboring country to deploy nuclear weapons would “bring about the end of the regime” in Pyongyang, he said. North Korea, which has carried out a series of ballistic missile tests this year, has warned many times that it won’t hesitate to use nuclear weapons in order to defend itself.

GERMANY - The German economy is weakening, but it does not deserve the nickname “the sick man of Europe,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in an interview released on Saturday. Scholz pushed back against the criticism of what he called the “Anglo-Saxon newspaper.” According to the chancellor, The Economist disliked “the alleged German obsession with not taking on endless debt.” “The text basically recommends taking on €100 to 200 billion euros of additional debt every year. But I say: No! Going into endless debt doesn’t solve our problems, but it creates new ones,” he stressed.

GERMANY - The convention by which Germany's far right is kept far from government regardless of how many parliamentary seats it wins was dealt another blow on Thursday when its votes were used to defeat a regional government in a crucial budget bill. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has been leading in polls in parts of eastern Germany for months, benefiting from dismay at rising prices and uncertain economic prospects, but a so-called "firewall" of all other parties joining together has kept it far from power.

USA - Never before have all the burgeoning cities of the future, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland, started to shrink. This is, at least in part, a reaction to high prices, relentless property crime, homelessness — San Francisco’s rate of homelessness, for example, is twelve times the national average — and diminished economic opportunity, particularly for the middle and working classes. At the same time, big companies like Tesla, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, Jacobs Engineering, Fluor, Bechtel and McKesson have moved headquarters; others are shifting their operations elsewhere, largely to more business-friendly and less costly regions in Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Florida and Tennessee. Hundreds of other less notable companies, most paying above average wages, have also gone east and south.

USA - We were told they would be one of the key facets of a “clean, green” future, but electric vehicles (EVs) are rapidly losing their luster – and here is why. You see, the EV scam was hastily hatched by far-leftists who are so detached from reality that they actually believe it is possible to just stop using earth-based fossil fuels on some arbitrary timeline with nothing viable to replace them. Not only that, but “green” enthusiasts seem to lack the cognition necessary to see that there is no workable infrastructure in place to even accommodate the use of EVs as a total replacement for cars with internal combustion engines.

USA - US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has claimed the world is transitioning to a new diplomatic order in which Washington must lead the way in overcoming increasing threats from Russia and China. “One era is ending, a new one is beginning, and the decisions that we make now will shape the future for decades to come,” Blinken said on Wednesday in a speech at John Hopkins University in Washington. He said the “post-Cold War order” ended as “decades of relative geopolitical stability have given way to an intensifying competition with authoritarian powers.”

RUSSIA - The global community is tired of “blackmail and pressure” by Western elites, Russia's foreign minister has claimed. Attempts by the “collective West” to preserve its hegemony have had the opposite effect, encouraging the real “world majority” to dismiss and reject the exploitation of their resources by foreign states, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has argued. “Tectonic shifts are taking place in the world today… We are witnessing the emergence of a more just multipolar world order,” Lavrov wrote.

UKRAINE - If we really cared for Ukraine, we'd find a lasting peace - and not prolong this war. Is Ukraine stuck? Wars can be very unpredictable – especially in their early weeks – but there are a lot of signs that Ukraine has run into political and military trouble. It is not that its forces are likely to be defeated or that the Russians are about to sweep into Kiev. Far from it. They are in a mess too.