Week in Review: Disunited DNC, Third Party Popularity Soars, Russia Pokes America’s Achilles’ Heel, and Much More

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Week in Review: Disunited DNC, Third Party Popularity Soars, Russia Pokes America’s Achilles’ Heel, and Much More

All you need to know about everything in the news this week

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Highlights:

The rise of third parties

  • As American voters prepare to choose between two of the most unpopular presidential candidates in recent history, an increasing number of people are seriously considering voting for a third party.
  • Many supporters of the #NeverTrump campaign are supporting Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, while many supporters of the #NeverHillary campaign are supporting Green Party candidate Jill Steyn.
  • Among the Democrats, revelation about the Democratic National Committee’s treatment of Bernie Sanders only exacerbated division and strife.
  • Russia and the Democratic National Committee e-mail leaks

  • As Thomas Rid wrote for Motherboard, “All Signs Point to Russia Being Behind the DNC Hack.”
  • News about the e-mail created an immediate backlash, particularly with the Democratic Party. But, as political scientist Ian Bremmer wrote, “Russian involvement in dnc leaks is a national security issue.”
  • Computer dependence and cyberwarfare, warned Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry, is the United States’ Achilles’ heel.
  • Jihad against Catholics

  • On June 26, two terrorists shouting Islamist slogans slit the throat of a priest in France and tried to take his congregation hostage.
  • That attack, wrote the Telegraphs Con Coughlin, is “just the kind of attack that could provoke sectarian tensions of the sort we are more used to seeing in the Middle East, as opposed to the heart of Europe.”
  • Assassination attempt on Sisi?

  • Reports of an assassination plot against Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi came out this week.
  • President Sisi was scheduled to travel Monday to Mauritania for a two-day Arab League summit on terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
  • The prime minister went instead of the president. No official explanation was given.
  • America’s sinking credibility

  • China has ignored a ruling by the international tribunal in The Hague regarding the South China Sea dispute. It has also ignored direct and indirect threats and warnings from the United States regarding its obstinacy.
  • “We already heard this red-line statement on Syria, and clearly saw how [it was] not [a] red line after all,” wrote author Richard Heydarian. Many Filipinos, including new President Rodrigo Duterte, fear the same “artificial posturing red line” on the Scarborough Shoal.
  • Iranian general on Israel’s border

  • Iranian Gen. Mohammed Reza Naqdi made a “mysterious” visit to the Israel-Syria border, the Washington Free Beacon reported Wednesday.
  • General Naqdi “traveled to the city of Quneitra in southwest Syria. He also inspected the demarcation line dividing the Golan Heights, a strategic rocky plateau by the border that Israel has controlled since the 1967 Six Day War.”
  • “Regional media outlets noted that the general’s visit marks the first time that Tehran has acknowledged such a trip by a senior Iranian official near the Israeli-Syrian border.”
  • Other news:

  • In its present, disunited form, the European Union is “unsustainable” and needs big changes, according to a report published on July 25 by credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s.
  • British Prime Minister Theresa May traveled to Belfast on Monday to reaffirm the United Kingdom’s commitment to Northern Ireland’s concern over the implications of Brexit.
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