Speaking to Army Radio on Wednesday morning, Ben-Gvir criticized Biden's comments, saying that while Israel "appreciates the democratic regime there, it is precisely for this region that they need to understand that Israel is an independent country and no longer a star on the US flag." He added that "it should be clear all over the world - the people here went to elections and they have their own desires." Other coalition MKs were quick to criticize Biden's statement as well, with Culture and Sport Minister Miki Zohar tweeting: "It's sad that Biden has fallen for all the fake news."

“There’s a lot to like about it. He talked about searching for compromise. He talked about working toward building consensus with respect to these potential judicial reforms. He talked about how unshakable he knows the relationship is between the United States and Israel. And he talked about his great respect for President Biden — that’s a respect that president Biden shares as well,” Kirby said upon being primed at a press briefing.

The latest and most severe blip in the bilateral relationship — which has slowly deteriorated since Netanyahu returned to office three months ago at the head of the most right-wing government in Israeli history — unfolded on Tuesday when Biden was asked about the state of Israeli democracy and the prime minister’s planned judicial overhaul before boarding Air Force One.

The president responded that he hoped Netanyahu would “walk away” from his current judicial overhaul legislation, and that he was “very concerned” about the health of Israeli democracy. “They cannot continue down this road. And I’ve sort of made that clear,” Biden said. “Hopefully the prime minister will act… to work out some genuine compromise, but that remains to be seen.”

Biden’s remarks drew a furious rebuke from Israeli lawmakers allied with Netanyahu, with one Likud MK even suggesting Israel reject the $3.8 billion in annual security assistancethat it receives from the US and fend for itself.

“The founding myth of the emerging economies has faded,” Günther Maihold, deputy director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, or SWP, confirmed. “The BRICS countries are experiencing their geopolitical moment.”

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are trying to position themselves as representatives of the Global South, providing “an alternative model to the G7”. The G7 is an “informal forum” of heads of state of the world’s most advanced economies, founded in 1975. Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, Canada, and the US are members, as is the EU.

Since the start of the Russian war in Ukraine, the BRICS countries have only distanced themselves further from the so-called West. Neither India, Brazil, South Africa nor China is taking part in sanctions against Russia. This is increasingly clear with near-historic levels of trade between India and Russia, or in Brazil’s dependence on Russian fertilizer.

“Diplomatically, the war in Ukraine appears to have drawn a stark dividing line between an eastern-backed Russia and the West,” political scientist Matthew Bishop from the University of Sheffield wrote for the Economics Observatory late last year. “Consequently, some European and US policymakers worry that the BRICS may become less an economic club of rising powers seeking to influence global growth and development, and more a political one defined by their authoritarian nationalism.”

Such cooperation will “pull the Philippines against China and tie the country to the chariot of geopolitical strife, seriously jeopardizing Philippine national interests and regional peace and stability,” the embassy warned.

Since Marcos took office last summer, relations with Beijing have been increasingly strained amid a territorial dispute in the South China Sea, where China claims sovereignty. US Vice President Kamala Harris visited the island nation last November, saying the world was “grappling with assaults on the rules-based international order.” The Chinese embassy urged the Marcos administration to avoid getting sucked into US efforts to maintain global hegemony.

But there is one elephant in the room which haunts Manilla’s ties with Beijing, and that is the country that perceives itself as the true and rightful master of the Philippines – the United States. Even as Marcos Jr develops his cooperation with China, the newly elected president is facing considerable pressure from Washington to allow it to increase its military presence in the country, and potentially get roped into a potential Taiwan contingency, owing to the Philippines’ critical geostrategic position. This has led the foreign policy of the archipelago country to become a tightrope balancing act, which could easily plunge it into disaster if something goes wrong.

Given this strategic value, the US sees the Philippines as a critical piece on the board for any future conflict against Beijing. The islands are essential to stopping China from realizing its claims over the entirety of the South China Sea and fighting back against a Taiwan contingency. The US could not have made that clearer in its recent overtures to Manilla.

In fulfilling those promises, The New York Times reported the US has sent Ukraine so many stockpiled Stinger missiles that it would take 13 years of production at recent capacity levels to replace them. The Times added that Raytheon, the company that helps make Javeline missile systems, said it would take five years at last year's production rates to replace the number of missiles sent to Ukraine in the last ten months.

Currently, the US produces just over 14,000 rounds of 155mm ammunition every month — and Ukrainian forces have previously fired that many rounds in the span of 48 hours, The Washington Post reported last month. US officials in January proposed a production increase up to 90,000 rounds of 155mm ammunition each month to keep up with demand.

In his prime-time address, Netanyahu, who had previously rejected calls to delay the legislation, took a more conciliatory tone than in recent speeches. He acknowledged the deep divisions in the country and said he was hitting the pause button 'to prevent a rift in the nation.'

'When there's an opportunity to avoid civil war through dialogue, I, as prime minister, am taking a timeout for dialogue,' he said. He vowed to reach a 'broad consensus' during the summer session of parliament, which begins on April 30.

Netanyahu and his religious and ultranationalist allies presented the overhaul in January just days after forming their government, the most right-wing in Israel's history. The proposal has plunged Israel into its worst domestic crisis in decades. Business leaders, top economists and former security chiefs have all come out against the plan, saying it is pushing the country toward an autocracy. Fighter pilots and military reservists have threatened not to report for duty, and the country's currency, the shekel, has tumbled in value.

As a result, drones, robots and other unmanned vehicles have become increasingly important. The combination of these factors created the “perfect storm” for the dramatic rise and adoption of unmanned systems by most militaries around the world. Perhaps the best proof of this has been the mass usage of drones by both sides of the Ukrainian conflict. Ranging from commercial quadcopters to HALE (high-altitude, long-endurance) military drones, these weapons are changing the face of warfare in a manner no less revolutionary than airplanes and tanks did during the First World War.

Interestingly, as both the Russian military and the Kiev regime forces deploy advanced long-range air defenses (particularly the former), the role of larger drones has subsided, leaving smaller platforms as the more cost-effective alternative, while also providing significant tactical advantages.

The strike began at midnight and is set to end at midnight on Tuesday. Eight major German airports were affected, with the German Airports Association estimating that around 380,000 travelers were left stranded. Munich Airport shut down entirely from Sunday onwards, with all flights canceled and its terminal deserted. Freight trains were halted too, as was shipping traffic in and out of Hamburg, Germany’s largest port and Europe’s third-busiest.

Roughly 400,000 workers took part in the strike, Verdi chief Frank Werneke told German media. Newspapers in Germany described the walkout as a “mega strike,” calling it the largest such disruption in decades. Werneke told the German newspaper Bild that securing a pay rise is “a matter of survival for many thousands of employees” struggling to cope with the rising cost of living.

“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.