It was Wednesday when the German chancellor herself came out to announce it was Novichok. Alexey Navalny, the Kremlin’s most outspoken critic, poisoned with the same Soviet-era nerve agent used against former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal two years ago in Salisbury, England. It’s been exactly one month since that massive explosion that rocked the port of Beirut. Just after the blast, the French president upstaged local leaders by doing what they didn’t – meet with ordinary citizens. So when Emmanuel Macron returned to Beirut this week, how could he go one better? By first – before meeting politicians – paying a call to Fairouz, the reclusive icon of Arab song who’d not been seen in public for 10 years. Ordinary citizens marveled at pictures of the 84-year old diva and her Beirut apartment. Macron prefering reform to revolution, giving Lebanon’s leadership two months to clean up its act. Inside of two months until election day in the United States and after the conventions, there is the definite sense that the gloves are off with both candidates visiting Kenosha and Donald Trump ratcheting up the rhetoric on law and order. When Trump visited Kenosha Tuesday, he posed with police. His rival met with Jacob Blake, the unnarmed black man who was shot seven times in the back.
Navalny poisoning, Macron in the Middle East, Schools reopen in EU, Kenosha
