27 September 2023; MEMO: British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has urged Germany to approve the delivery of fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, in an apparent bid to save the United Kingdom’s economy from further detriment.

28 September 2023; MEMO: The Israeli opposition has called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fire his National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, local media reported yesterday, after five members of an Arab family were shot dead in their home.

A sixth person, 50-year-old Ataf Abu Kalib, was also shot dead in broad daylight in Haifa yesterday.

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. (AP) — Several of Donald Trump’s rivals stepped up their attacks against him in the second Republican presidential debate, urgently trying to dent the former president’s commanding primary lead during an event that often seemed like an undercard without him.

WASHINGTON, Sept 28 (Reuters) - U.S. Army Private Travis King faces an uncertain future following his arrival at a U.S. military base in Texas on Thursday after being expelled from North Korea.

A U.S. military flight carrying King, who in July made a surprise dash across the heavily militarized Korean border, landed at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston at about 0530 GMT, a U.S. defense official told Reuters. Television footage showed a group of people leaving a plane at the base at that time.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — From Sunday, workers at the main United States base in Antarctica will no longer be able to walk into a bar and order a beer, after the federal agency that oversees the research program decided to stop serving alcohol.

McMurdo Station will not be going entirely dry, the National Science Foundation confirmed. Researchers and support staff will still be able to buy a weekly ration of alcohol from the station store. But the policy shift could prove significant because the bars have been central to social life in the isolated environment.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy grew at a 2.1% annual pace from April through June, extending its sturdy performance in the face of higher interest rates, the government said Thursday, leaving its previous estimate unchanged.

The second-quarter expansion of the nation’s gross domestic product — its total output of goods and services — marked a modest deceleration from the economy’s 2.2% annual growth from January through March.

Consumer spending, business investment and state and local government outlays drove the second-quarter economic expansion.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI and other government agencies should be required to get court approval before reviewing the communications of U.S. citizens collected through a secretive foreign surveillance program, a sharply divided privacy oversight board recommended on Thursday.

PHOENIX (AP) —

President Joe Biden is arguing that “there is something dangerous happening in America” as he revives his warnings that Donald Trump and his allies represent an existential threat to the country’s democratic institutions.

“There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy. The MAGA movement,” Biden says in excerpts of the speech Thursday in Arizona, released in advance by the White House, referring Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan.

27 September 2023; MEMO: Israeli media revealed that a young man had broken into a security room in front of the home of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to steal a bag of security equipment. The man was later arrested and charged with theft.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss the status of the war and needs of troops on Thursday, the day after Russia accused Ukraine’s Western allies of helping plan and conduct last week’s missile strike on the Black Sea Fleet’s headquarters on the annexed Crimean Peninsula.

BALTIMORE (AP) — Police had been searching for the man arrested in the killing of a Baltimore tech entrepreneur since last week as a suspect in a separate rape and arson, officials said Thursday.

Jason Billingsley, who is charged with first-degree murder in the death of 26-year-old Pava LaPere, was released from prison last October after earning good behavior credits to reduce the time he served for a 2013 sexual assault.

Sept 28 (Reuters) - Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said he discussed his region's contribution to Russia's war effort in Ukraine at talks with President Vladimir Putin on Thursday that came at a sensitive moment in relations between the two sides.

Kadyrov enjoys wide leeway from Putin to run Chechnya ruthlessly as his personal fiefdom, but he angered even pro-Kremlin hardliners this week by praising his 15-year-old son for beating up an ethnic Russian prisoner in Chechen custody.