VATICAN - The Vatican has created a special committee to draw out the principles contained in the controversial Abu Dhabi document, signed last February by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of al-Azhar. The text was subsequently criticized by prominent theologians for “devaluing the person of Jesus” and “undermining the gospel itself” since it seemed to propose that God willed the existence of a plurality of religions just as he wills a plurality of sexes, races, and languages, rather than willing that all people find their salvation in Jesus Christ. The passage that caused the most furor reads, “The pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race and language are willed by God in his wisdom, through which he created human beings.” At a later date, the pope seemed to walk back that passage, but he never requested to have it amended and the entire statement reads today just as it did last February. The joint declaration will now be the foundation and reference point for a committee set up for its implementation.

USA - Marlow proposed that President Donald Trump was “one of only one or two people, at the most, who seemed to understand how big of a threat China was,” but now “everyone kind of gets it.” “I think that the Chinese are seeing now that they can’t simply fob the president off with some purchases of soybeans and a temporary reduction in the trade deficit. Consequently, I don’t think the negotiations are going well,” Olsen said of the current status of the trade war. “I think that’s a good thing, because I think it’s time for the American economy to disengage from China,” he judged. “We need to stop funding and building our geopolitical adversary with our minds, money, and market. Consequently, not having a quick deal, an end to the trade negotiations, is in the American interest, even if it’s not in the interest of every American business,” he said.

FRANCE - French President Emmanuel Macron has warned Western nations against the “strategic mistake” of alienating Russia – but in doing so, he seeks a bigger role for himself in international politics. “We are living at the end of Western hegemony,” Macron told diplomats on Tuesday, after hosting the G7 meeting in the city of Biarritz on France’s Atlantic coast over the weekend. He named the rise of Beijing and Moscow as signs of a shift on the world scene. Pushing Russia away from Europe is a profound strategic mistake. President Macron went further, even saying that the main problem in the world is no longer Russia but instead the United States. he world order is being shaken like never before. “It’s being shaken because of errors made by the West in certain crises, but also by the choices made by the United States in the past few years – and not just by the current administration.” These “choices” are impacting “the conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, making it necessary to rethink military and diplomatic strategies,” the president noted.

USA - Buffett became one of the wealthiest people in the entire country by aggressively investing his money. His keen instincts have enabled him to make the right move far more often than not, and that is why what he is doing with his money right now has so many people concerned.

USA - Los Angeles recently launched an initiative intended to improve public health, empower the destitute, and advance sanitation efforts in the epicenter of the city’s homeless crisis: Skid Row. On Monday, Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the formation of the Skid Row Clean Team - a new street cleaning program targeting the roughly 54-block area best known for rat-infested piles of garbage, a typhus outbreak, and sidewalks lined with tent encampments. He said the new project currently employs “about two dozen” homeless and formerly homeless individuals to help pick up the trash in their neighborhood. Garcetti maintained that the team members are all determined to make a better life for themselves, adding, the endeavor is “just as much about cleaning the streets as it is about lifting up the people who live on them.”

UK - The United Kingdom's National Health Service is considering a plan that would allow patients, including young children, to consult with a doctor about gender transition remotely via video conference services, according to the Daily Mail. A clinic in the UK that evaluates patients for potential gender transition treatments has seen an increase in patient volume of more than 400 percent since 2013, resulting in a waiting list of about two years. More than 2,500 children were referred to the clinic just last year, including some 3 and 4 year olds. The Daily Mail reported that the clinic has already faced criticism "from psychologists who say it uses untested drugs on troubled children and 'rushes' them toward becoming transgender."

USA - Hurricane Dorian caused limited damage in the northern Caribbean as it left the region Wednesday night, setting its sights on the US mainland as it threatened to grow into a dangerous Category 3 storm. Power outages and flooding were reported across the US Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands and the Puerto Rican islands of Vieques and Culebra after Dorian hit St Thomas as a Category 1 storm. The Hurricane Center said the storm could grow into a dangerous Category 3 storm as it pushes northwest in the general direction of Florida. Dennis Feltgen, a Hurricane Center meteorologist in Miami, said Dorian may grow in size and could land anywhere from South Florida to South Carolina on Sunday or Monday.

UK - What did they expect? The great and the good, the men and women we empower with our votes to carry out a sacred duty to enact the will of the people? What did they expect? Our MPs who have again and again stood in the way of a democratically mandated instruction to leave the European Union. What did they expect? The we-know-better than you 'experts', the London political elite who see all those who voted for Brexit as the enemy. They talk of democracy but since losing the vote on 23 June 2016 this rabble of disrespectful MPs have done nothing to honour the referendum result but have again and again sabotaged Brexit, and by extension sabotaged Britain. But it's now game over.

USA - In the US, corporate insiders have been selling stocks at an average rate of 600 million dollars per day during the month of August. This kind of wild selling indicates that there is a tremendous amount of fear among corporate insiders right now, and such selling would only make sense if a stock market crash is imminent. And without a doubt, we have already seen volatility return to Wall Street in a major way as our trade war with China has dramatically escalated. Many Americans are hoping that things will start to calm down and that our trade conflict with China can be resolved calmly, because if things take a bad turn many analysts are warning that we could soon be facing the worst financial crisis since 2008.

MIDDLE EAST - Are we about to see World War 3 erupt in the Middle East? Over the past several days, Israel has attempted to prevent attacks by Iranian forces and their allies by striking targets in Syria, Gaza, Lebanon and Iraq. As you will see below, political leaders in both Lebanon and Iraq are now accusing Israel of a “declaration of war”, and Hezbollah is pledging to strike Israel back extremely hard. Of course if a full-blown war erupts between Israel and one of her neighbors, it is likely to become a multi-front war almost immediately. But at the core, this is a conflict between Israel and Iran. The Iranians have repeatedly pledged to wipe the nation of Israel off the face of the planet, and the coming “final war” is going to literally be a matter of life or death for those two nations. Both sides have been preparing for this “final war” for a very long time, and once it fully erupts the death and destruction that we will witness will be off the charts.

UK - Boris Johnson has repeatedly refused to rule out proroguing parliament to try to push through his Brexit policy. Pressed repeatedly at a press conference at the end of the G7 summit about what he would do if MPs tried to thwart his policy, the British prime minister declined to rule out shutting down parliament. “I think that this really is a matter for parliamentarians to get right ourselves,” he said. “We asked the people to vote on whether they wanted to stay in or leave the EU; they voted to leave by a big majority.” “I think people have just about had enough of this conversation, and I think they’re yearning for the moment when Brexit comes off the front pages of the national papers, and that will only happen when we come out of the EU on 31 October, and that is what I am calling on all my fellow MPs to do.”

UK - Boris Johnson has asked the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, whether parliament can be shut down for five weeks from 9 September in what appears to be a concerted plan to stop MPs forcing a further extension to Brexit, according to leaked government correspondence. An email from senior government advisers to an adviser in No 10 – written within the last 10 days and seen by the Observer – makes clear that the prime minister has recently requested guidance on the legality of such a move, known as prorogation. The initial legal guidance given in the email is that shutting parliament may well be possible, unless action being taken in the courts to block such a move by anti-Brexit campaigners succeeds in the meantime.

GERMANY - All eyes are on eastern Germany as elections take place in Saxony and Brandenburg on Sunday, September 1st. For the first time in German history, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) could win in state elections – and make it extremely difficult for the established parties to form a government. The elections will also send shock waves to Berlin where the so-called grand coalition between Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) is already on shaky grounds. The AfD in Brandenburg is making waves over their use of campaign posters – not for the first time. For this election, the slogan is "Wende 2.0". Wende (turnaround) describes the period of political change when the Berlin Wall fell and Germany was reunified.

USA - Donald Trump escalated his attacks on China on Friday, bumping up tariffs on Chinese imports and ordering US companies to leave China. Trump’s announcements on Friday – all on Twitter – came after the president launched another blistering criticism of the Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, asking: “Who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or [China’s] Chairman Xi?” Moments after Powell warned the US central bank was facing a “new challenge” as it deals with the Trump administration’s seesaw trade policies and continuing dispute with China on Friday morning, Trump went on a Twitter rampage calling for a US boycott. “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.”

USA - Reflecting a demographic shift, 109 US counties have become majority nonwhite since 2000. In the United States, the white share of the population is declining as Hispanic, Asian and black populations grow. But the shift to a more diverse nation is happening more quickly in some places than in others. As the nation’s racial and ethnic diversity grows, whites remain the single largest racial or ethnic group in the US when looking at the country as a whole, accounting for 60% of all Americans.