EUROPE - The president says he thinks China wants to make a deal and indicates he is open to meeting with Iran’s president. In a joint news conference following the conclusion of the G-7 summit, French President Emmanuel Macron and President Trump discussed US trade negotiations with China. President Trump struck a conciliatory tone on the final day of the Group of Seven summit, where he faced pressure from French President Emmanuel Macron to de-escalate the trade war with China and ease tensions with Iran. At a joint news conference with Mr Macron, Mr Trump said he was open to meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. The remarks came hours after the Iranian leader signaled that he too was open to talks, and Mr Macron said he hoped the two leaders would speak in the coming weeks.

ISRAEL - US President Donald Trump hinted on Monday that parts of his long-awaited Mideast peace plan may be released before the September 17 election, leading to some speculation that this may include elements of the plan that may help Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the polls. Speaking on the sidelines of the G7 meeting in France before a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel al-Sisi, Trump said that while the entire plan would not be released before the election, “I think you may see what the deal is before the election.”

USA - Are things about to break loose in a major way? At the end of last week, the trade war between the United States and China escalated dramatically, and investors all over the globe really started freaking out. Unfortunately, developments over the weekend have only made things worse, and that means that this could be a very “interesting” week for global financial markets. As I write this article, stock prices around the world are plunging, the price of gold is spiking and the Chinese yuan is crashing. There is clearly a lot of fear out there right now, and at this point even CNBC is warning that the last week of this month “could be highly volatile”…

EUROPE - The Eurozone is heading for an economic crisis far bigger than the 2011-2012 disaster and the German Chancellor has been urged to drastically increase domestic spending to save the 19 EU member states from plunging into recession. The Eurozone is headed for a “fresh crisis”, according to economist Liam Halligan as he warns that only Germany can save the monetary union from collapse. Germany, one of the eurozone’s largest economies is headed for a recession and Mr Halligan says that the country needs to make significant changes to fiscal policy to stimulate its own economy and the broader region. This, he says, will “spark growth elsewhere” and help prevent the “looming” eurozone crisis. But Mr Halligan, writing in the Sunday Telegraph suggests that German Chancellor Angela Merkel should “take steps to boost the economy”, by investing more at home and boosting both government and consumer spending. Such a policy won’t be easily adopted however, due to the Government’s enshrined policy of staunch fiscal restraint.

AFGHANISTAN - The Taliban maintained on Monday that a peace agreement with the United States to end the nearly 18-year-old war in Afghanistan is coming soon. “The US agreed to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan and resolve the Afghan issue peacefully,” Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban’s chief spokesperson, told Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency (AA) on Monday. Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanekzai, the top Taliban peace negotiator, recently described the potential agreement as a victory for the terrorist group. He boasted that the Taliban brought US-led foreign forces to “their knees” in war, VOA learned from a video disseminated Saturday by media outlets friendly to the terrorist group. “I believe that Americans will leave Afghanistan very soon. Americans stand defeated, and Afghanistan will again be liberated,” Stanekzai declared.

USA - America’s values are shifting at a pace that is unlike anything that we have ever seen before. During the 2020 election season, we are going to hear a lot about “the generation gap”, and the numbers clearly tell us that this gap is very, very real. And as older generations of Americans slowly die off, it appears inevitable that the values that are dominant among younger generations of Americans are going to become the values of the country as a whole. Essentially, “American values” are going to mean something completely different from what they meant to previous generations, and that should absolutely terrify all of us.

EUROPE - First they came for central banks, then they came for government bonds, then they came for rich depositors. Then they came for me. Negative interest rates are coming for us all, in one form or another, as central banks redouble their efforts to avert a global economic slowdown that threatens to unleash deflation. So how can we defend ourselves from the coming assault on our bank balances? How long before even lower balances are subject to monetary assault? This threatens to be a key political controversy in coming months. Negative rates send “a completely wrong signal and lead to a running down of savings,” Soeder told Bild newspaper this week.

NEW ZEALAND - The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) slashed its interest rate by a drastic 0.5 per cent (50 basis points) earlier this month, to 1 per cent. RBNZ governor Adrian Orr then declared that New Zealand was prepared to follow Japan, Sweden and other countries that have gone below zero into negative interest rates, and is also thinking about quantitative easing and helicopter money — basically the full suite of extreme measures to prop up the financial system. NZ already has the world’s most explicit and extreme “bail-in” system to take deposits to prop up failing banks, called Open Bank Resolution (OBR). They won’t admit it, but this sudden escalation in RBNZ’s actions and rhetoric is a strong indication that NZ’s authorities fear their economy is heading off a cliff. As NZ is such a small country, these developments are hard to disguise, so outsiders should pay attention to what is happening there, because it is certain the same thinking is under way in other countries, especially in NZ’s close cousin across the ditch, Australia.

FRANCE - The list of issues for this year's G7 summit is long, with escalating trade tensions with the US, the UK's pending exit from the EU and fires in the Amazon looming over leaders as they gather in southern France. Anxieties over trade war and climate change hung heavy as world leaders gathered, in the resort town of Biarritz, in southern France, for the start of this year's G7 summit on Saturday — with low hopes of leaders reaching a consensus by the end of the three-day meeting. French President Emmanuel Macron, who is hosting the summit in the resort town of Biarritz, said one of his main objectives is to "convince all our partners that tensions, especially trade tensions, are bad for everyone."

USA - The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged more than 600 points Friday after the latest escalation in the trade war between the US and China rattled investors. The broad sell-off sent the S&P 500 to its fourth straight weekly loss. Stocks tumbled after President Donald Trump responded angrily on Twitter following China’s announcement of new tariffs on $75 billion in US goods. In one of his tweets he “hereby ordered” US companies with operations in China to consider moving them to other countries — including the US Trump also said he’d respond directly to the tariffs — and after the market closed he delivered, announcing that the US would increase existing tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods to 30% from 25%, and that new tariffs on another $300 billion of imports would be 15% instead of 10%. Those announcements are likely to influence stock markets in Asia when trading opens there Monday.

USA - Over at far-left MSNBC, Republicans are under attack as being “incendiary” for stating the scientific fact that there are only two genders. MSNBC anchor Chris Jansing ripped into Louisiana Republican gubernatorial candidate Ralph Abraham — who happens to be a medical doctor — over his claim in a TV ad that there are only two genders.

GERMANY - At this year's global religion summit on Lake Constance, female delegates from Africa, Asia and the Middle East made clear women must have a greater say. More than 1,000 religious figures, activists and youths attended the Lindau gathering. At the 10th Religions for Peace World Assembly in Lindau, a town in southern Germany, a fourth of all participants were female. Indeed, even the Vatican sent a female delegate from Caritas International. But while there were more female attendants than at previous summits, many still bemoaned a lack of gender equality. And soon, Azza Karam will succeed William F Vendley to serve as the secretary-general of the World Conference of Religions for Peace. Karam, who was born in Cairo and today holds Dutch citizenship, will be the first woman to be elected to this position. She adheres to the Muslim faith, and makes clear that our religious world is slowly becoming more gender equal.

MIDDLE EAST - Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas threatened this week that "millions of fighters" would swarm Jerusalem and topple the Jewish state's capital city, warning that "no matter how many houses and how many settlements they declare that they [plan to build] here and there — they shall all be destroyed." Abbas, in an Arabic language speech at Jalazone Refugee Camp near Ramallah that was heavy with threats of destruction, doubled down on the Palestinian government's policy of using public money to pay convicted terrorists and their families, telling his audience, "We will not accept their designation of our martyrs as terrorists. Our martyrs are the martyrs of the homeland." Abbas went on to rally those in attendance to swarm the city of Jerusalem and destroy all Jewish people living there. His remarks are the clearest sign to date that the leader has no interest in playing a role in a revamped peace process spearheaded by President Donald Trump's White House.

NIGERIA - Boko Haram jihadis seized two towns in Nigeria’s Borno state on Wednesday, killing many people as they set houses and government buildings ablaze. Zanna Modu, the chairman of the Gubio Local Government Council, indicated that the terrorists “withdrew on Thursday,” according to the Punch. “The situation is calm; people returned to their homes on Thursday,” Usman Zanna, a Nigerian lawmaker who represents both the Gubio and Magumeri communities, reportedly added Thursday. However, the Premium Times reports that jihadis remain in control of the towns. According to CFR, [Council on Foreign Relations] the Boko Haram war has left 35,820 people dead, including jihadis, state actors, and civilians.

USA - Women are increasingly opting out of heterosexuality because it is “the bedrock of their global oppression,” NBC News asserted in a bizarre opinion piece this week. “Men need heterosexuality to maintain their societal dominance over women,” writes Marcie Bianco for the NBC News website. “Women, on the other hand, are increasingly realizing not only that they don’t need heterosexuality, but that it also is often the bedrock of their global oppression.”