“MI5 has increased the threat to Northern Ireland from Northern Ireland Related Terrorism from ‘substantial’ (an attack is likely) to ‘severe’ (an attack is highly likely),” Heaton-Hayes wrote in a statement to parliament. “The public should remain vigilant, but not be alarmed, and continue to report any concerns they have to the Police Service of Northern Ireland,” he added.

“As immigrants of this country who knew barely a word of English, they could not have imagined in their wildest dreams that their grandson would one day be on the cusp of being the next First Minister of Scotland,” Yousaf said of his grandparents at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium on Monday. “We should all take pride in the fact that today we have sent a clear message that your color of skin or indeed your faith is not a barrier to leading the country that we all call home.”

The other day, I asked my readers to “imagine what our country will look like if the banking system implodes and the economy plunges into a depression”, because if our banks continue to collapse that is precisely where we are headed.

Unfortunately, the recent banking panic has greatly accelerated matters. In fact, a whopping 98.4 billion dollars was pulled out of US banks during the week ending March 15th… The readout, released shortly after the market closed Friday, came around the same time as new Fed data showed that bank customers collectively pulled $98.4 billion from accounts for the week ended March 15.

That would have covered the period when the sudden failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank rocked the industry. Just think about that. Nearly 100 billion dollars in deposits evaporated in just one week. Overall, JPMorgan Chase is telling us that the “most vulnerable” banks in this country have “lost a total of about $1 trillion in deposits since last year”…

Israel's research universities and medical facilities also canceled their strikes, according to statements from the Israeli Medical Association and the heads of research universities.

This follows the announcement on Monday morning that the Histadrut would coordinate a far-reaching labor strike in order to prevent the government's judicial overhaul from being enacted. The Histadrut will be joined by the nation’s health care providers, according to the Medical Association.

All this happened the day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who had called for a halt to the legal reform legislation. Netanyahu’s decision sparked massive unrest among the Israeli populace, who took to the streets in historic numbers in order to protest the seemingly dictatorial move.

The top general published an open letter in the aftermath of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to fire his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for criticizing the reform. Israel “has never known such days of external threats combining with an internal storm,” Halevi wrote, urging the military to refrain from taking part in the protests. “Our enemies must know that we are standing guard and nobody is deserting,” he said.

A rally to support Netanyahu's plan is expected to take place in Jerusalem later in the day, with multiple right-wing politicians urging people to take to the streets to support both the controversial overhaul and the government. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a hardline Zionist, urged the public to back the changes, as scrapping it would jeopardize Israeli democracy.

MEP Guy Verhofstadt, a Euro-fantasist and former prime minister of Belgium, jeered on Twitter, “Putin's appalling legacy now includes turning Russia more and more into a Chinese vassal state,” oblivious to the irony of his own words. As the United States took the lead in denouncing China’s peace plan for the Ukraine conflict, publicly setting out the conditions on which it should end, the European Union was nowhere to be seen, or at least had nothing original to say.

This makes Verhofstadt’s comments a damning display of lacking self-awareness. Russia and China are setting out their vision for a new multipolar world, while the US struggles against them in seeking to maintain its hegemonic position. Meanwhile, the European Union has been reduced to the status of a mere bench player in it all, and has become effectively irrelevant.

These are no ordinary cows: they are red heifers, and as such any one of them might be the final missing ingredient needed for the coming of the Messiah — at least if you ask the rabbis who came to greet them. All of the rabbis are part of the Temple Mount movement, a loose coalition of groups and individuals working to rebuild the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem where the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque currently stand, and in so doing usher in the messianic age.

The Temple Mount movement, for all its ambition, long languished in one of the most ideologically idiosyncratic corners of Israeli society. They faced opposition from the Israeli public, mainstream rabbinical authorities, the government, and the police — in addition to Muslims worldwide, for whom the Temple Mount compound is Al-Haram Al-Sharif (“the Noble Sanctuary”), the third holiest site in Islam, and who regard attempts at reviving Jewish Temple worship as a threat to the sanctity of the mosques, and to the political fate of the holy city.

But over the last few years, the movement has been extraordinarily successful at pushing past each of these sources of opposition. In what may be its greatest achievement yet, a striking number of Temple Mount activists now make up Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, the most famous of whom is Itamar Ben Gvir, the Kahanist star of the last election who is now national security minister. With the surging movement at his back, Ben Gvir has returned the Temple Mount to the Israeli zeitgeist, inflaming tensions that have been steadily rising for years.

The two nations are preparing to reopen their respective embassies after the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr in April, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing a “source aligned with Damascus.” A second Syria-linked source told the agency that the breakthrough came after talks in Saudi Arabia involving a senior Syrian intelligence official.

Saudi sources appeared to confirm the news later on Thursday night, with a foreign-ministry official telling state TV that “discussions are underway with officials in Syria to resume consular services.”

Boris Pistorius’s zeal for his new role has catapulted him to the top of the public popularity rankings and drew admiration from allies, in stark contrast to Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose reputation took a hit in international circles due to his reluctance to approve military aid for Ukraine. Pistorius, meanwhile, has impressed opposition lawmakers, diplomats and defence industry executives.

Roderich Kiesewetter, a member of parliament with the opposition Christian Democrats (CDU) and a former colonel, said Pistorius “has shown a heart for the troops and his communication is excellent. As a former army guy, I must say in comparison to 13 or 14 defence ministers I’ve experienced since [joining the military in] 1982, he could become a really excellent one.”

Pistorius’s enthusiasm and direct style have made him a hit with the public, with polling by broadcaster ZDF naming him the country’s most popular politician in both February and March.

The failure to report for weekly training sessions has serious implications because pilots who miss them are not certified to fly operational missions. The protesters included pilots from different branches of the IAF including those who fly combat missions, helicopters and transport planes, Channel 12 reported.

Increasingly, reservists — who are a key part of the army’s routine activities, including in top units — have warned they will not be able to serve in an undemocratic Israel, which they charge the country will become under the government’s plan.

It came as all flights were grounded at Ben Gurion Airport, the nation's main international hub, after the head of the Israel Airports Authority workers' committee announced a strike. President Isaac Herzog said 'the eyes of the whole world are on you' following Netanyahu's dismissal of Yoav Gallant on Sunday.

Herzog said: 'I am addressing the prime minister, the members of the government and the companies and members of the coalition: the feelings are difficult and painful. Deep concern surrounds the entire nation.'

The minister stressed that the government wants to protect Hungarian consumers from foods containing insect protein authorized by Brussels in the European Union (EU) through strict product labeling and segregation rules. Hungary was the only member state not to support the EU’s intention to allow insects to be marketed as food and food ingredients in the EU.

He added that the European Commission is risking our gastronomic traditions and eating habits. That is why the Ministry of Agriculture has amended the food-labeling regulation to provide accurate information to consumers.

Such a viewpoint appears to largely be in keeping with the country’s own government, with the German Minister for Defence, Boris Pistorius, coming out earlier this month to say that the country’s armed forces would not be able to successfully defend the homefront should Germany become embroiled in war. “We have no armed forces that are capable of defence, ie capable of defending against an offensive brutally conducted war of aggression,” the minister admitted.

Such a situation has reportedly only been made worse by Germany’s support for Ukraine, with the nation’s military reportedly left with massive supply shortages after the ruling traffic light coalition decided to donate large swathes of its weapons and ammo stockpiles to the invaded nation.

Lieutenant General Alfons Mais, the chief of Germany’s army, has warned that such donations have now left the country’s armouries “bare”, and that weapon and ammo shortages will ultimately end up impacting the military’s defensive capabilities. “There comes a point where we can no longer do our jobs,” he reportedly warned in the wake of Germany announcing it was delivering tanks to the Zelensky administration.

Germany’s turning point and Japan’s “new prewar” are far from meaningless. The first hesitant, cautious, painful steps toward taking on more responsibility for their own defense have been taken. “Never again” can no longer be taken for granted. But, for better or worse, Pax Americana is far from exhausted. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have seen to that.

So, what explains this unprecedented uproar? The clue lies in the claim that the reforms spell the end of democracy in Israel, whose values will no longer be recognizably Jewish. In fact, at the core of the protests lies an attack on Jewish values. Judaism has something important to say about both law and politics. Law is central to the Torah and therefore to Judaism. Moreover, during the Davidic monarchy, judges — along with prophets and priests — provided an essential brake on the otherwise despotic powers of the monarch.

This is no longer a protest against government policy. It represents a fundamental split in the West over how to view the world and how society should be ordered. It is an extremely dangerous inflection point, not just for Israel but for Western civilization, in a battle for which Israel’s beleaguered government is now revealed to be the unwitting outlier.