In an interview last week on Sudanese television, Mubarak Al-Fadil Al-Mahdi, Sudan’s minister for investment, said any decision to establish ties with Israel should be based “on the interests of Sudan” and not emotions, while adding that the “Palestinians themselves have normalized their relations with Israel.” “The entire issue is very complex. It’s not black and white. The Palestinians themselves meet with the Israelis. They coexist with the Israelis, earn their living there, and get their electricity from them. These people live together,” he added.

Al-Mahdi said the Palestinians bear “much of the responsibility” for their loss of lands and displacement. “I think that the Palestinians share much of the responsibility for what has happened to them. They sold their lands and caused many problems. The Arabs made grave mistakes by rejecting the Partition Plan and other resolutions,” he said.

He also blamed the “Palestinian cause” for holding back developmental progress in the Arab world and said it has been used by leaders to maintain a grip on power. “They are meeting with the Israelis. Even Hamas. Disagreements or not, they are meeting with them. They have the Oslo Accords and other agreements,” he said. “The Arab countries think about their own interests. In Egypt, the Israelis developed the citrus agriculture. They introduced drip irrigation.”

Al-Mahdi also praised Israel’s “moral values” and “democratic regime.” “The Israelis are Westerners. They were ‘imported’ from America, Russia, Europe, and so on. They have the moral values of Westerners,” he said. “They operate scientifically. They have a democratic regime, their presidents stand trial and go to jail… They have a transparent regime, whether you agree with them or not.”

According to the PA-affiliated Al-Quds newspaper, Kushner once again told Abbas in their Thursday meeting in Ramallah that the “pay to slay” program – in which convicted terrorists and their families are paid a monthly stipend, sometimes to the tune of $3,300 – must stop.

The article quoted Gal Berger, an Israeli journalist covering Arab affairs, as saying that “Abbas informed Kushner that he would never stop paying these salaries until his dying day, even if this cost him the presidency.”

After his meeting with Kushner, Abbas issued a statement on Facebook confirming the Al-Quds article in which he vowed: “I will never stop [paying] the allowances to the families of the prisoners and released prisoners, even if this costs me my position and my presidency.” “I will pay them until my dying day,” he added. The PA has paid out over $1 billion in terrorist salaries over the past four years.

Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, peace envoy Jason Greenblatt and Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategy Dina Powell met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday as part of a visit to the region in a bid to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.

During that meeting, the embassy move “was brought up by both sides as part of a productive broad conversation about a number of issues,” a US source familiar with the discussions said Sunday, declining to reveal the specifics of discussion.

Trump backtracked on the pledge in June, signing a waiver which pushed off moving the embassy for at least another six months. “Needless to say, the administration’s policy is ‘when not if,'” the source added, referring to statements US officials made when signing the waiver promising that the move would take place during Trump’s presidency.

Harvey has already dumped more rain in the past few days than some affected areas normally see in a year. The storm was the most powerful hurricane to strike Texas in more than 50 years when it hit land on Friday near Corpus Christi, 220 miles (354 km) southwest of Houston. The worst is far from over because the slow-moving storm will continue to dump rain over the next few days in an area hit by "unprecedented" flooding, the National Weather Service said.

"Additional heavy rainfall overnight is expected to worsen the flood situation in southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana," the National Hurricane Center said. Forecasts show that some spots in and around Houston could see an additional 12 inches (30 cm) of rain on Tuesday, bringing the total rainfall from Harvey to about 50 inches (127 cm) in parts of the city's metro area.

The floods could destroy as much as $20 billion in insured property, making the storm one of the costliest in history for US insurers, Wall Street analysts say.

If one is able to observe American society in an objective manner (granted no easy task) it becomes clear that the country is suffering from an epidemic of arrested emotional development (AED). This particular illness is characterized by some combination of: addiction, greed, immaturity, fear, blame, shame, resentments, anger, confusion and suffering. What it means is that the vast majority of Americans are stuck in adolescence exhibiting behavior like lying, negative attitudes, disobedience and disrespect, drug and alcohol abuse, depression, and issues of sexuality.

One has only to watch American movies or television shows to get a snapshot of juvenile, puerile, and base comedy characteristic of adolescent humor. It’s no accident that 42 year old Jimmy Fallon is essentially the “eternal teenager” performing comedy that mostly includes bathroom humor and gags that are based on and appeal to a silly sense of immaturity. The other darling of late-night shows in America is Stephen Colbert who specializes in insulting public figues in an overtly adolescent display of negative attitude and disrespect.

Another hallmark of AED is to evade responsibility and blame others for failure. One has only to observe the millions of Hillary supporters to understand this phenomenon. Also common for AED sufferers is to show disrespect in sophomoric ways usually by damaging property as we see with monuments being defaced and destroyed.

Teenagers, of course, tend to have identity issues often involving sexuality which is another phenomenon all too apparent in contemporary America. It’s almost uncool not to be LGBT or confused about your gender nowadays. Soon there will be as many genders as ice-cream flavors for it’s all just a matter of taste!

The teenage attempt to rebel and show disobedience is often manifested through the use of profanity intended to shock the older generation. Gratuitous profanity is pervasive in American culture and has replaced the imagination as a form of creativity. It is not an accident that Pussy Riot - a group of “performance artists" using profanity in a Cathedral considered sacred to “shock” the Russian public and “disobey” authorities - has found a home in the United States and been befriended by Madonna, another symbol of eternal adolescence. Keep in mind we’re talking about a 59 year old mother of six.

You see… if everyone is a teenager there is no adult supervision. That is the problem. After an autopsy is conducted years from now to ascertain how and why the American Empire expired, the obituary will include multiple causes of death and AED will be listed prominently. Perhaps a precocious teenager will be allowed to write the epitaph that will read… “When extended, the bridge between adolescence and adulthood can take a heavy toll”.

It’s time we also protect ourselves from the harms of drinking chlorine – particularly because that turns out to be a pretty easy thing to do for your health and the health of your family. Chlorine plays an important role in protecting water from harmful pathogens. But when it isn’t filtered out, it can also do real harm to your health.

If you want to remove chlorine from your water, the most low-tech solution is to fill a glass water bottle with tap water, and then let it sit in the refrigerator open to the air for 24 hours. During that time, the chlorine will evaporate. You can also boil your water to remove chlorine.

These two solutions will rid your water of most of the chlorine, but they can be inconvenient and they can also leave other pathogens behind. So for most people, the best and easiest solution is to invest in a quality water filter.

Emmanuel Macron has become embroiled in a bitter war of words with Poland and Hungary, and threatened to dissolve the EU if he does not get his way. Mr Macron wants to reform EU labour laws and reduce the amount of time posted workers can work abroad from three years to one. "France is going against Poland, Hungary and even the European Commission which wants the posted worker term time to be two years."

"The support he has might be enough to overcome the blocking minority in the EU council. This is end of the European consensus politics." Mrs Krumbmuller said the row opened up an irreversible wound across the block that divided the eastern and western EU states. She warned France and Germany risked appearing as bullies if they forced through their plans, and predicted a widespread rebellion and dissolution of the bloc if Mr Macron's plans go ahead.