Still, those who remain suspicious of Trump’s relationship with Moscow will have noticed that Trump himself did not personally announce or comment on the expulsions. And language from his spokesman Raj Shah appeared to show that the duality in administration policy on Russia remains.

While Shah said that the “brazen” attack on British soil forced the US to take action, he also issued repeated assurances that Trump “still wants to work with Russia.”

Russia’s foreign ministry called the mass expulsions an “unfriendly act” and said it would “not go without notice and we will react to it”.

The ministry is said to be drawing up a number of possible retaliatory measures for President Putin to consider.

One Russian senator, Vladimir Dzhabarov, was quoted as saying there would be a “tit-for-tat” response to the US’ decision to expel 48 envoys at the Russian Embassy in Washington and 12 more at the UN in New York.

A year and a half ago I wrote an NYT article under the headline “Israel Knows That Putin Is the Middle East’s New Sheriff”. You can now see what this means: the western world attempts to punish Russia by deporting its diplomats. Israel is silent. Israel does not play ball. Between a possible tension with Britain and Europe, and a possible tension with Russia – Israel fears Russia more. Theresa May is no match for Putin.

A year and a half ago I wrote that the next American President will need “to make the region both more trusting and more fearful of her or him than it is of Mr. Putin”. Did this happen? – I am far from certain. But Trump, thus far, did not test Israel. He made Israel’s dilemma simple by not applying pressure on it to join the rest of the west. Maybe this is another indication that he is Israel’s true friend?

Demography is studied closely on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because of its potential implications for both societies as they weigh possible solutions as Israel celebrates its 70th anniversary next month.

With over a “two-state solution” frozen since 2014, some argue that if Israel becomes a binational state through annexation of land seized 51 years ago, it could one day be forced to choose between remaining a democracy or securing a Jewish majority by denying Palestinians the vote.

The bureau counts the Jews in all areas under its control from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. But it counts only the Arabs living within the pre-1967 border, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are left out. Thus Jewish settlers in Hebron are residents of Israel and included in the count, while their Palestinian neighbors are not.

Many on the Right, backed by research by demographer and former ambassador Yoram Ettinger, do not believe there is a demographic threat to Israel. They argue that Palestinian statisticians inflate the numbers by including residents of east Jerusalem because they do not recognize Israel’s presence there, as well as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who moved abroad…

Yogev pointed to a Palestinian report that he discussed in the Subcommittee for Judea and Samaria, which he leads, that showed the PA does not report deaths, such that the population report shows ten times more births than deaths in the past decade, “a life expectancy that does not exist anywhere in the world.”

A concerted White House lobbying effort last week helped defeat a resolution in Congress that would have halted U.S. military support for the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen, but Riyadh’s troubles on Capitol Hill are far from over…

While Saudi Arabia may have dodged a bullet, the political climate in Congress is moving in a hostile direction for the kingdom — and another, more moderate bill aimed at curbing carte blanche U.S. support for the war in Yemen remains on the table.

Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s reforming but reckless de facto ruler, could badly use some guidance from his country’s most important ally, the United States. While he has embraced promising social reforms, such as loosening restrictions on women, the 32-year-old crown prince has also pursued aggressive and ill-considered foreign adventures — above all a disastrous military intervention in neighboring Yemen. Unfortunately, President Trump appears disinclined to pressure Prince Mohammed. At a White House meeting last Tuesday, the president instead showered the prince with praise, while boasting of Saudi purchases of U.S. weapons.

In November, 2015, despite American skepticism toward the Saudi war plan and evidence of heavy civilian casualties, the Obama Administration agreed to a giant weapons sale totaling $1.29 billion. The Saudis were authorized to buy seven thousand and twenty Paveway-II bombs. By the end of Obama’s Presidency, the U.S. had offered more than a hundred and fifteen billion dollars’ worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, the largest amount under any President, including warships, air-defense systems, and tanks.

Till now, China has managed to hold on to a surprising amount of low-end manufacturing by offsetting high costs with better infrastructure and more reliable and extensive supply networks. Poorer countries haven’t been able to capitalize on cheap wages as much as they should. For example, while U.S. textile and apparel imports from Vietnam and India rose last year, the value of China’s exports remains far larger, with shipments worth nearly $39 billion in 2017.

A wider U.S.-China trade war could accelerate the transition.

The real loser in all this, though, is likely to be Trump’s trade policy. Though some factory production in China may “reshore” to the U.S., much of it probably won’t. Such labor-intensive assembly would simply be too expensive in high-wage America. That means Trump could find closing the trade deficit to be much like a game of Whac-a-Mole. As he pounds down the deficit in China, it’ll bulge in other countries as production hops from place to place.

Investors shouldn’t be too pessimistic… if saner heads prevail—and news of behind-the-scenes trade talks between the U.S. and China is encouraging—the current tensions may not escalate into a full-blown trade war.

And even if tensions do ratchet up, it might be a commodities-buying opportunity, thanks to Beijing’s likely response: another big round of stimulus measures that would push metals demand higher again.

Its intent was obvious. It showed businessmen and bankers sitting counting their money. Not only did they look like obvious caricatures of Jews – in a style reminiscent of Nazi propaganda in the 1930s – the artist himself confirmed they were intended as such, writing: “Some of the older white Jewish folk in the local community had an issue with me portraying their beloved #Rothschild or #Warburg etc as the demons they are.”

Anyone with even a basic knowledge of politics, history and the world would see that the work was caricaturing Jews. And, to be blunt, anyone denying that is indulging in sophistry of the most pathetically unconvincing kind.

The real question is otherwise: why does Corbyn – admirably proactive in tackling other forms of prejudice – seem to squirm and dither when confronted with allegations of antisemitism? As Richard Gold, a party member active in the anti-racist Engage campaign, put it in his submission to Shami Chakrabarti’s inquiry into Labour antisemitism: “[It is] as though being unpleasant to Jews … should be excused or minimised, treated merely as rudeness or bad manners, rather than racist behaviour.”

There is the suspicion, well-attested by the Jewish voices rising up against this new “soft” persecution of them on social media especially, that too many people in the Labour Party do not understand the distinctions between antisemitism, anti-Zionism and opposition to the policies of the Israeli government in the Middle East. Overlaying that is a lazy and dangerous belief that all Jewish people everywhere offer unconditional or clandestine financial, political and diplomatic support to the state of Israel, either directly or through the United States, which appears to be exactly the beliefs portrayed in the east London mural.

The gig economy is the future workplace, once associated with less industrialized countries in the 1970s, where temporary, unstable employment is commonplace and companies tend toward hiring employees who are all but in name performing the work of permanent workers but are denied permanent employee rights. It is glamorized by some, but the truth is, it undermines the traditional economy, and will aggravate unemployment, poverty and immigration. The “gigzombie” is the alienated gig employee whose vitality has been sapped by rapid technological advancements that are changing the nature of work and increasingly threatening job security.

The problem with Uber was never that the chief executive had created a thuggish “Game of Thrones”-type culture, as Susan Fowler, an engineer, described it in a blog post. The problem was, and still is, Uber’s business model: Its modus operandi is to subsidize fares and flood streets with its cars to achieve a transportation monopoly. In city after city, this has led to huge increases in traffic congestion, increased carbon emissions and the undermining of public transportation.

Uber leverages the surplus vehicle that can be repurposed as a potential means to some financial end in the same way that Airbnb does for surplus rooms in a home and that Task Rabbit does for surplus time. It’s Econ 101…

The problem, of course, is that there’s an uneven distribution. There are far more who need the money and are willing to sacrifice — and “sacrifice” is the correct term — their time and resources in order to attempt to be the first to satisfy the demand of someone who needs a ride, a vacation rental or a fence painted.