On August 12, Twenty-one Israeli lawmakers sent a letter to members of Congress criticizing a bill that condemned the boycott of Israel because it endorsed a two-state solution.

House Resolution 246 (H.Res.246) overwhelmingly passed in the House last month, with just 17 members voting against it. The resolution condemns the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, identifying it as a roadblock in the quest for a two-state solution. "We would like to make our position clear that the establishment of a Palestinian state would be far more dangerous to Israel than BDS," the letter reads. Signatories include Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan (United Right), Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely (Likud), Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Avi Dichter (Likud), and MK Gideon Sa'ar (Likud).

The letter is addressed to the cosponsors of the bill-Rep. Brad Schneider (D-CO) , Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO), all of whom are staunchly pro-Israel. According to The Jerusalem Post, Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan helped develop the letter. Dagan has even criticized The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for promoting a two-state solution. "Unfortunately, in the last few years, AIPAC is independently advancing the two-state solution," he told the paper, "AIPAC portrays the two-state concept as an Israeli interest to elected officials in America and as the official position of the Israeli government, even though this is untrue. The two-state concept is not the policy of the current government coalition, nor is it stated as policy in the agreements between the coalition partners. Furthermore, this is not the policy of the Trump administration, which has even removed it from the National Security Strategic Report."

The last time reporters and photographers scrambled after the Washington power lawyer Greg Craig as he entered the federal courthouse blocks from the Capitol, he was shepherding a high-profile defendant — Gen. James "Hoss" Cartwright — to face charges of lying in a leak investigation.

On Monday, the press scrum will again descend on the former Obama White House counsel as he makes his way into U.S. District Court, but the cameras will be pointed squarely at him. This time, Craig's the one in the defendant's chair, set to face trial on a felony charge of lying to and misleading Justice Department officials about his work with Paul Manafort for Ukraine's government.

Craig, 74, isn't the only veteran of the Washington establishment to play a starring role in the two cases. Key to both narratives is a prominent and well-connected journalist: New York Times correspondent David Sanger.

Kyrgyz security officials have accused former President Almazbek Atambaev of plotting to stage a coup after a deadly confrontation with police during his arrest last week.

Zamir Beishekeev of the Prosecutor-General's Office said on August 13 that Atambaev is accused of using violence against representatives of the authorities, organizing mass unrest, and masterminding a murder attempt, among other charges.

Speaking at the same press conference in Bishkek, the head of the State National Security Committee, Orozbek Opumbaev, accused the ex-president of planning to carry out a coup.

Atambaev surrendered to police on August 8 following a deadly two-day standoff with security forces at his residential compound in the village of Koi-Tash near the capital.

A shorter work week will give Russians extra time for their families and to pursue their interests, without losing any pay, a senior lawmaker says. The measure is also expected to reduce unemployment.

The ruling United Russia party supports the idea of adopting a four-day work week, the deputy speaker of the parliament's lower house, Andrey Isayev, said on Tuesday.

He explained that the measure will allow workers "to take more time off and spend it with their families," as well as investing time in education and taking better care of their health. A shorter work week will also decrease unemployment, he added.

South Korea on Monday decided to remove Japan from its trusted trading partners, upping the ante in the trade haggling sparked by the neighboring country's export restrictions against Seoul.

The trade ministry said it will revamp its export list into three groups of trading partners from the current two, placing Tokyo in the newly established bracket, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

Tokyo had been on Seoul's top-tier list of 29 countries subject to preferential export procedures, which are members of the world's top four export control agreements, including the Wassenaar Arrangement.

The newly established bracket, between the two existing groups, is for a country that participates in the four international agreements "but operates an export control system that violates international norms," according to the ministry.

"We need to put an export control system into operation considering the fact that it is hard to work closely with a country that frequently violates basic rules of export controls or that operates an unlawful system," Industry Minister Sung Yun-mo said.

China's central bank is nearly ready to issue its own sovereign digital currency, according to a senior official.

Mu Changchun, deputy director of the People's Bank of China's payments department, said the institution's virtual currency was "almost ready" for release, according to Reuters. Mu's comments were also reported by Bloomberg.

Researchers at the bank have been working on the currency for five years. The PBOC hasn't been alone in exploring the possibility of issuing digital currency as an alternative to cash; Sweden's Riksbank is another central bank looking into the idea.

Where to start? For nearly 40 weeks hundreds of thousands of French people have been on the streets in anti-government demonstrations against President Emmanuel Macron's rule.

Some have lost eyes and hands in the police response. The public has begun to view the smell of tear gas as a normal part of a weekend in Paris. France is 29 miles from the coast of England. Siri just told me that "Hong Kong is about 5,992 miles from London as the crow flies."

So complete has been the British media blackout on the Yellow Vests that many believe, wrongly, that there is some British government order banning on any mention of "les événements en France." The truth is that there is no need for one.

Like a homing pigeon in reverse the entire UK media has flown like a bat out of hell away from France all the way to Hong Kong (as they had earlier flown to Caracas until the big protests turned into the wrong kind of protests).

America, resembling a mental patient inside some government-run psychiatric ward, truly believes the Russian bogeyman is out to get it. What will it take to shake the superpower from its delirium?

The question must be finally asked - on the proverbial shrink's couch if necessary - if America's deep-seated Russophobia, which has been gnawing away at the nation's brain since Soviet times, is symptomatic of some deeper psychological disorder. After all, a nation that is loaded to the eyeballs on antidepressants, armed to the teeth with military-grade weaponry and bursting at the seams with random violence could never be confused as a model sovereign state. So at the risk of sounding politically incorrect, has the United States of America finally cracked?

Insanity has been described, albeit a bit simplistically, as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Does that not sound remarkably similar to the situation in which Russia now finds itself with regards to the United States? A number of Americans, and not the least educated ones, insist on seeing the distant Motherland as the evil engineer behind every problem to befall their country.

China has pledged not to depreciate the yuan's exchange rate after Washington officially labeled Beijing a currency manipulator amid the escalation of the trade conflict between the world's two biggest economies.

The People's Bank of China, the nation's central bank, fixed the yuan's midpoint reference at 7.0326 per dollar on Tuesday. It was the fourth consecutive session in which the Chinese currency was below the psychologically important 7-yuan-per-dollar level.

The yuan fell in the beginning of last week, reaching the lowest level since December 2008. Washington was quick to accuse China of deliberately devaluating the yuan and designating the trade war rival a currency manipulator - a claim that Beijing has repeatedly denied.

In an article for the Financial News, a central bank-backed newspaper, the vice governor with the People's Bank of China and head of China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange, Pan Gongsheng, refuted the US' allegation once again, calling it a "political operation" that will be remembered as "a ridiculous case in global finance history."

The White House says the new rules restricting the ability of legal immigrants to receive welfare are enforcing existing laws and protecting poor and vulnerable Americans. Critics are calling them un-American and racist.

Announced Monday by acting Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services Ken Cuccinelli, the rules would make most legal immigrants ineligible for welfare benefits, public housing and food stamps. Being considered a "public charge" would also make foreigners ineligible for entry into the US, and those already in the country ineligible for citizenship or permanent residence. The rules go into effect on October 15, with exemptions for refugees and asylum seekers.

The move aims to "ensure that non-citizens do not abuse our public benefit programs and jeopardize the safety net needed by vulnerable Americans," the White House said in a statement.