An earlier form of the sanctions legislation had sailed through the Senate with a 97-2 vote last month. But that legislation focused only on Russia and Iran. It then lost momentum in the House after representatives said they wanted to include North Korea. That conflict has been resolved, lawmakers say.

A vote is expected in the House on Tuesday. On the same day, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a hearing on assessing US policy toward North Korea. "Those who threaten America and our interests should take notice — your actions have consequences," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a tweet as news of the agreement emerged on Saturday.

The sanctions bill "will hold Russia and Iran accountable for their destabilizing actions around the world," Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland said. "The legislation ensures that both the majority and minority are able to exercise our oversight role over the administration's implementation of sanctions." Lawmakers are looking to approve the sanctions before leaving Washington for the August recess.

And while it remained unclear if President Donald Trump would sign the bill if it reaches his desk, which is now likely, the loudest complaint about the bill to date has emerged not from the Oval Office, but from Brussels, after the EU once again urged (and warned, and threatened) US lawmakers to coordinate their anti-Russia actions with European partners, or else.

As Reuters reports, the European Union "sounded an alarm on Saturday" about moves in the US Congress to step up US sanctions on Russia, urging Washington to keep coordinating with its G7 partners.  In a statement by a spokeswoman after Republicans and Democrats in the US Congress reached a deal that could see new legislation pass, the European Commission warned of possibly "wide and indiscriminate" "unintended consequences", especially on the EU's efforts to diversify energy sources away from Russia, adding that "unilateral measures" by the US could undermine transatlantic unity.

Furthermore, Germany has already warned of "possible retaliation" if the United States moves to sanction German firms involved with building a new Baltic pipeline for Russian gas. EU diplomats are concerned that a German-US row over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline being built by Russia's state-owned Gazprom could complicate efforts in Brussels to forge an EU consensus on negotiating with Russia over the project.

But it wasn't just Russia and Europe eager to warn the US that any ongoing attempts to trap Trump into perpetuating the Deep State's Russian policies would backfire: ahead of Congress clearing all potential hurdles for the bill, a number of American multinationals – including ExxonMobil, General Electric and Boeing, as well as MasterCard and Visa – raised concerns that the punitive measures will ultimately harm their interests, rather than that of the Kremlin.

Without a doubt, we are in the midst of one of the largest stock market bubbles in US history, and many prominent investors are loudly warning of an imminent stock market collapse.  It doesn’t take a genius to see that this stock market bubble is going to end very badly just like all of the other stock market bubbles throughout history have, but if you could know the precise timing that it will end you could set yourself up financially for the rest of your life.

I want to be very clear about the fact that I do not know what will or will not happen by the end of October.  But one mystery investor is extremely convinced that market volatility is going to increase over the next few months, and if he is correct he will make an astounding amount of money. I will be watching to see what happens.  If this mystery investor is correct, it will essentially be like winning the lottery.

But just because he has made this wager does not mean that he has some special knowledge about what is going to happen. For example, just look at what Ruffer LLP has been doing. They are a $20 billion investment fund based in London, and they have been betting tens of millions of dollars on a stock market crash which has failed to materialize so far.  But even though they have lost so much money already, they continue to make extremely large bearish bets…

I can understand why Ruffer has been making these bets.  In a rational world, stocks would have already crashed long ago. The only way that stock prices have been able to continue to rise is because of unprecedented intervention by global central banks.  They have been pumping trillions of dollars into the financial markets, and this has essentially completely destroyed normal market forces.

The biggest players in this ongoing charade are the global central banks.  If they decide to keep pumping trillions of dollars into global financial markets, they may be able to keep the bubble going for a little while longer. But if at any point they decide to withdraw their artificial assistance, those that have placed huge bets against the market are going to make absolutely enormous piles of cash.

This has set off a crisis in the Holy City, where Friday prayers were canceled, and now a tense standoff exists after metal detectors were installed at the Aqsa Mosque compound, which threatens to kill off the already dying Middle East peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

So, yes, I get it: extremists don’t care about sacred places, and they will kill wherever they can get away with it. Still, this latest standoff in Jerusalem has deeply saddened me, and it makes me ask: why can’t we let sacred places just be sacred? Indeed, the Temple Mount has seen its share of violence before, and there have been both Muslims and Jews who have been victims of the violence. But, why does this have to be so?

And I am not blind to the fact that there still exists an intractable conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. I am not blind to the fact that there still exists a military occupation. Still, why can’t the Holy Places be somewhere Jews and Muslims can go to worship without harassment? Why can’t the Temple Mount be somewhere gunmen can’t attack, or security forces can’t fire tear gas and shoot rubber bullets?

Jews who visit the Temple Mount should not be harassed when going to pray at the Western Wall. Muslims wanting to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque should not have to be subjected to “security measures” and random closures of the mosque on Fridays to all men younger than 50. The word “Jerusalem” means the “City or Abode of Peace.” It needs to become one again today.

There’s no doubt that Americans are fraught with fear over the thought that a new war is on the horizon, especially if that war could lead to another global conflict. But most Americans forget that the world doesn’t revolve around them. They worry a lot about their nation engaging in another world war, but they forget that there are several powerful nations that could spark a global conflagration without America’s input.

Among them are China and India, who have been engaged in a border dispute for decades. That dispute has flared up once again, as China hurls threats of war with India. After accusing Indian troops of crossing over the disputed Sikkim border last month, Chinese Communist Party outlet Global Times published a commentary Tuesday urging restraint by both belligerents, but warning that China was prepared to engage India in a battle for the contested land.

Of course, if war did break out again between China and India, there would be one significant difference from the Sino-Indian war of 1962. This time around, both nations would have hundreds of nuclear weapons. And it’s possible that Pakistan, another nuclear armed nation that India has fought border disputes with in the past, could also be swept into the conflict. It should go without saying that billions of lives are at stake every time these nations hurl threats of war at each other.

Americans often worry about various geopolitical hotspots that could drag our nation into a world war. But they shouldn’t forget that there are plenty of places where another global war could start without our country ever lifting a finger. The whole planet is a powder keg.

Since Syria disintegrated in a brutal civil war that has left hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced, Israel has struggled with how to deal with the humanitarian disaster taking place just across the border, a dilemma made even more complicated by the fact that Israel and Syria remain officially at war. Israel initially responded by providing medical treatment to Syrians wounded in the war, treating more than 3,000 people in field hospitals on the border and in public hospitals, mostly in northern Israel since 2013.

But on Wednesday the army revealed that since June 2016 it has quietly been working on Operation Good Neighbor, a massive multi-faceted humanitarian relief operation to keep starvation away from the thousands of Syrians who live along the border and provide basic medical treatment to those who cannot access it in Syria because of the war.

In the year since the operation was launched, over 600 Syrian children, accompanied by their mothers, have come to Israel for treatment. Hundreds of tons of food, medical equipment and clothing have also been sent across the border to Syria, clearly bearing Hebrew labels from Israeli companies.