After the Biden administration's Department of Education was forced to walk back guidance on schools reopening that included counsel from critical race theory purveyors Abolitionist Teaching Network, the White House disavowed the group in a press briefing on Thursday.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki took a question on the retraction from the Department of Education from Fox News' correspondent Peter Doocy.

"Now that the education department admits that they made a mistake in their guidance for reopening — "

After extraordinary revelations that the Israeli company NSO Group's mercenary cyber-surveillance tool, Pegasus, was allegedly used to target political dissidents, human rights activists, journalists and politicians around the world, Israel should be asking itself a few questions. Does its groundbreaking hi-tech industry have a dark side? Do the actors involved in exporting lucrative surveillance products - including the defence ministry, which must approve such sales, or perhaps the top levels of the previous government - bear responsibility?

While top Israeli officials are taking the revelations seriously, Israelis appear neither shamed nor shaken. The day after the NSO story broke, there was an announcement from another company that would eclipse talk of the rogue use of surveillance spyware. Ben & Jerry's announced that it would cease the sale of its products in the "occupied Palestinian territories". By midweek one had to squint to find NSO in the Israeli media, as the ice cream incident was dominating headlines. Persecution of human rights defenders, sabotaging freedom of the press, surveillance of political opposition and possible links to grisly murder all took second place, while a non-violent political protest by a single private company, set to begin a year and a half from now (when Ben and Jerry's licensing deal runs out), overshadowed everything.

The ensuing ice cream fever offers a penetrating view into Israel's public priorities. Orna Barbivai, Israel's minister of economy, made a video of her dumping Ben & Jerry's containers in the bin, while former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote a cheeky tweet supporting a counter-boycott. Foreign minister and alternate prime minster Yair Lapid called Ben and Jerry's move a "shameful surrender to antisemitism". Channel 13's US-based correspondent raced to the company's home state of Vermont to cover breaking developments, and Israel's president called it "a new kind of terrorism".

Representatives from Russia and the US have already held four rounds of discussions over cybersecurity, it was revealed on Thursday. The topic was a focus of the meeting between the countries' presidents when they met last month.

On the topic of Russian-American dialogue on urgent nuclear issues, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov explained that Moscow has spoken to the new US administration four times about the subject, but he did not reveal any results.

The revelation came after Ryabkov was asked a question regarding a recent announcement that the two countries had made contact about the issue. However, according to the senior diplomat, Washington is only interested in discussing attacks on American infrastructure, and won't engage Moscow in discussions about other aspects.

Russia and China are betting that autocracy will beat democracy. That's according to US President Joe Biden. But apart from generating headlines, his explosive claim seems to have little to do with the reality in either country.

Not only is lumping the two states together a mistake, so too is the act of contrasting the two ideologies. The language of political philosophy is, sadly, unsuited to the task of describing political realities. We bandy about words such as "liberalism," "socialism," and "fascism," as if we know what they mean. In fact, they are horribly loose categories that even the brightest political philosopher struggles to define, and confuse more often than they help.

Biden fits neatly within an American tradition that regards the United States as the natural leader of the "free" world, splitting countries neatly into two - democracies on the one hand, and everybody else on the other.

Regardless of the huge variety of differences between the nations in the "other" category, they tend to be lumped in together under a single heading: autocracy. There is no room for shades of gray. Thus, in the president's rhetoric, the world consists of two parts: democracies and autocracies.

The United States, the European Union, individual European states and NATO are urging the Taliban to stop its military offensive in Afghanistan and engage in peace talks, the US-Europe Communiqué on Afghanistan and Peace Efforts said on Friday.

"We call on the Taliban to end their military offensive, and on both the Islamic Republic and the Taliban to engage meaningfully in the peace process," said the joint communiqué, issued by the United States, European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom and NATO.

Moreover, the US, European Union, NATO and several European states said in a joint statement that they welcome the group's commitments and openness to negotiating with Kabul as a mechanism for a representative government in Afghanistan.

"We welcome in particular the commitments made by the Taliban yesterday to inclusive governance, respecting human rights, including the rights of women and minorities, to abide by international law, including international humanitarian law, and to upholding counter-terrorism commitments."

Biden's suggestion that he would seek to "eliminate" 9mm pistols is likely to upset a lot of people, even among his own party's supporters. Could it end up costing the Democrats both the House and Senate in the upcoming midterms? Speaking on Wednesday on CNN, US President Biden once again seemed to make the serious political mistake of saying the quiet part out loud.

When asked how he would address gun violence from a federal point of view, so as to bring about 'change' and make cities safer, Biden gave an answer that showed the Democrats want to do more than just get rid of what they define as an assault weapon. He harped on about the sizes of magazines and fire rates, but also mentioned 9mm pistols as a type he'd like to remove from sale.

As President Joe Biden faces concerns over the economy and the crisis at the southern border, his polling numbers have dipped to the lowest point since he took office.

Polling data released by Gallup found that Biden's approval rating has dropped to 50%, down six points from the previous month. Gallup explained:

"The new rating is from a July 6-21 Gallup poll, which also finds that 45% of U.S. adults disapprove of Biden's performance and 5% do not have an opinion. It comes at a time when U.S. progress in fighting the coronavirus has stalled, with vaccination rates slowing and case levels now rising. The economic recovery continues, with unemployment declining and stock market values near record highs. But consumers are paying higher prices for gas and other goods. Biden has also struggled to deliver on his promise of greater bipartisanship, although negotiations on an infrastructure bill continue in the Senate."

A drop in approval rating at this point in the presidency is not uncommon. Gallup qualified:

"It essentially matches the change for Trump and George W. Bush, and is slightly more than the one-point decline in Obama's average. Clinton's approval rating declined nearly 11 points between his first and second quarters."

"Why do you need to have that information?" .

A reporter asks Psaki, "This administration has long claimed the you're trying to be the most transparent in history. If that's the case, why won't you just release the number of breakthrough cases that you have of vaccinated staffers?"

"Well, I think, first we are in a very different place than we were six to seven months ago, as it relates to the virus."

"As many medical experts have said, inside and outside of the government, those who are vaccinated are protected from serious illness. Most are asymptomatic if they are individuals who are vaccinated to get the virus."

The French parliament has after a months-long debate passed a controversial anti-Muslim bill despite strong criticisms from lawmakers who assert that the legislation breaches religious freedom.

The French National Assembly -- France's lower house -- approved the so-called Anti-Separatism Bill after seven months of controversy on Friday, with the government saying the legislation was needed to bolster the country's secular system.

Passed by 49 votes to 19 and with five abstentions, the bill, which the French government claims is aimed at fighting "Islamist extremism," will go to the Constitutional Council before President Emmanuel Macron signs the legislation into law.

In a disappointing yet unsurprising development, President Joe Biden's Justice Department has formally declined to investigate the nursing home policies in three states with Democrat governors that resulted in thousands of elderly citizens dying from COVID-19.

In a letter sent to House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), the DOJ informed the congressman that it would not open an investigation into New York, Pennsylvania, or Michigan's treatment of nursing home patients during the coronavirus pandemic. The DOJ has, however, opened an investigation into New Jersey's nursing home policies relating to two specific nursing homes in the state.