World Leaders vs Trump 2026: SCO Summit, BRICS, NATO Crisis, Russia-Iran Nuclear Deal — Bill Clinton Responds Bill Clinton breaks down the most consequential two weeks in modern geopolitics.
As 17 world leaders gather at the SCO Summit in Bishkek and the BRICS Summit in New Delhi — without the United States at either table — Clinton explains what this global realignment means for every American. From Russia and Iran’s $25 billion nuclear deal, to the India-EU “mother of all deals” trade agreement, to the Mecca Defense Pact between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, to NATO’s credibility crisis after a Russian drone struck Romania — Clinton connects the dots between collapsing alliances abroad and rising costs at home. Why is America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a 44-year low? Why did India choose Europe over Washington? Why is a NATO ally seeking BRICS membership? And can America still course-correct? Clinton delivers the analysis cable news won’t give you — with facts, not fury.
US Senator Bernie Sanders has launched a blistering attack on Donald Trump, calling the president “mentally unstable,” “increasingly out of control,” a “pathological liar,” an authoritarian and a kleptocrat. Sanders also condemned Washington’s foreign policy, comparing the Iran war launched by Trump and Netanyahu with the wars in Vietnam and Iraq—and declaring that all three were “based on a lie.”
Watch. #berniesanders#donaldtrump#trump#iranwar#netanyahu#uspolitics#whitehouse#authoritarianism#foreignpolicy#endlesswars Times Of India (TOI) Is The Largest Selling English Daily In The World. Times Of India Videos Bring You Global News, Views And Sharp Analysis. We Track India’s Global Rise, Her Increasing Engagement With The World, The Changing Geopolitical Landscape Amid Conflicts And Wars And The Emerging World Order. INTERNATIONAL NEWS | GLOBAL CONFLICTS | MIDDLE EAST WAR | CHANGING WORLD ORDER #TOILive | #TOIVideos Subscribe to the Times Of India YT channel and press the bell icon to get notified when we go live. Join Millions Reading TOI; Download Our App At http://toi.in/app-yt
Iceland voted ~53% No on reopening EU accession talks (record 82% turnout, highest since the 1944 republic vote)—sovereignty and home-grown inflation/rates beat “join the bloc vs. Trump/Greenland” framing.
PM Frostadóttir concedes most see NATO + the U.S. defense pact + EEA/Schengen as enough safety and market access; she called the result a “victory for democracy” after asking Brussels to stay out.
Critics say the EU overrates its pull; a former FM argued Trump-fear doesn’t make Paris/Berlin look safer, and Norway (also EEA) will watch whether Iceland’s “solve our own problems” line travels.
(EurActiv) — The desire for national sovereignty outweighed the argument that EU membership was a necessary bulwark against geopolitical instability and Donald Trump.
Despite the US president’s threats against neighbouring Greenland, the allure of joining a big bloc failed to win over voters in a small Arctic nation far from the mainland of continental Europe.
The government moved forward a long planned EU referendum in the wake of Trump’s threats to annex neighbouring Greenland.
Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir pleaded in the last days of campaign that Trump’s behaviour should make Icelanders reconsider the island’s position in the world.
Conceding defeat she accepted that most Icelanders saw their biggest problems, mainly economic, as best fixed nationally rather than as part of the EU.
“It is our responsibility to deal with inflation and interest rates,” she said.
“A lot of Icelanders feel safe in this environment. They feel safe under the realm of NATO. We have a good bilateral defence agreement with the US. We have had strong ties to the EU through the EEA [European Economic Area] agreement.”
Historic turnout, same decision
Debate over reopening talks with the EU drove a record turnout with the participation of 82% of Iceland’s voters. That is the biggest turnout for a referendum since Iceland voted to leave the Kingdom of Denmark and form a republic in 1944.
As then, Iceland on Saturday rejected closer ties to its European neighbours. Almost 53% voted to not to reopen EU negotiations. The country previously began membership negotiations but shut them down in 2013.
“All of the issues that EU is supposed to solve, are problems that Iceland created ourselves,” said Haukur, a young voter who backed the ‘no’ side at the referendum on Saturday. “We should solve them ourselves.”
Already a member of the EEA, Iceland already enjoys access to the EU’s single market and is part of the Schengen free movement area. Voters felt Iceland did not have any urgency to bring it further.
“We have the EEA, so we do have access to the internal market,” Bjarni Benediktsson a former prime minister and currently CEO of the Confederation of Icelandic Enterprise, said. “And the second issue: we’re doing quite well.”
‘Victory for democracy’
Despite a more turbulent world, the EU tends to overestimate its own magnetism, said Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarson, a former foreign minister and current opposition MP.
“If you’re afraid of Trump, then you must be terrified when you see what’s going on in France and Germany with Le Pen and AfD,” he said on Sunday morning after the result was clear.
Closer ties to the EU will do little to help in case the US actually turns hostile on its allies, he said. “If the American system fails – regardless of the EU – then we’re fucked,” he said.
Frostadóttir praised the conduct of the referendum and promised to abide by the result.
“I see this as a victory for democracy,” she said. “Icelanders have shown that they’re wise, they can deliver on these matters, and the result is something that we will respect.”
Frostadóttir had specifically instructed Brussels to stay out of the campaign – but the EU struggled to do so.
The European Commission made no secret it would welcome Iceland at a time when Brussels is preparing for a new wave of EU enlargement.
A Commission spokesman said he “takes note” of the outcome, and that Iceland remains a close partner. “The Commission respects the choice of the Icelandic people,” he said.
António Costa, the European Council president, exchanged messages with Frostadóttir on Sunday. “Both leaders expressed their desire to continue to strengthen the relationship between the EU and Iceland,” Costa’s spokeswoman said.
Norway, also an EEA member, was keeping a watchful eye on Iceland’s decision. The EU will fear Norwegians draw the same conclusions as Icelanders.
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August 311980 Polish government signs accord with Gdansk shipyard workers
Representatives of the communist government of Poland agree to the demands of striking shipyard workers in the city of Gdansk.
On August 31, 1980, representatives of the communist government of Poland agree to the demands of striking shipyard workers in the city of Gdansk. Former electrician Lech Walesa led the striking workers, who went on to form Solidarity, the first independent labor union to develop in a Soviet bloc nation.
In July 1980, facing economic crisis, Poland’s government raised the price of food and other goods, while curbing the growth of wages. The price hikes made it difficult for many Poles to afford basic necessities, and a wave of strikes swept the country. Amid mounting tensions, a popular forklift operator named Anna Walentynowicz was fired from the Lenin Shipyard in the northern Polish city of Gdansk. In mid-August, some 17,000 of the shipyard’s workers began a sit-down strike to campaign for her reinstatement, as well as for a modest increase in wages. They were led by the former shipyard electrician Lech Walesa, who had himself been fired for union activism four years earlier.
Despite governmental censorship and attempts to keep news of the strike from getting out, similar protests broke out in industrial cities throughout Poland. On August 17, an Interfactory Strike Committee presented the Polish government with 21 ambitious demands, including the right to organize independent trade unions, the right to strike, the release of political prisoners and increased freedom of expression. Fearing the general strike would lead to a national revolt, the government sent a commission to Gdansk to negotiate with the rebellious workers. On August 31, Walesa and Deputy Premier Mieczyslaw Jagielski signed an agreement giving in to many of the workers’ demands. Walesa signed the document with a giant ballpoint pen decorated with a picture of the newly elected Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla, the former archbishop of Krakow).
In the wake of the Gdansk strike, leaders of the Interfactory Strike Committee voted to create a single national trade union known as Solidarnosc (Solidarity), which soon evolved into a mass social movement, with a membership of more than 10 million people. Solidarity attracted sympathy from Western leaders and hostility from Moscow, where the Kremlin considered a military invasion of Poland.
In late 1981, under Soviet pressure, the government of General Wojciech Jaruzelski annulled the recognition of Solidarity and declared martial law in Poland. Some 6,000 Solidarity activists were arrested, including Walesa, who was detained for almost a year. The Solidarity movement moved underground, where it continued to enjoy support from international leaders such as U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who imposed sanctions on Poland.Walesa was awarded the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize, and after the fall of communism in 1989 and the Soviet Union’s collapse, he became the first president of Poland ever to be elected by popular vote.
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images
AI has an image problem — and one way to fix it is for top companies to dive headlong into health care, Axios’ Adriel Bettelheim writes in Axios Future of Health Care.
Why it matters: Saving the world with AI-designed cures is better than being blamed for ruining the environment or driving up Americans’ utility bills.
The Wall Street Journal reported this monththat Anthropic is trying to shore up investor confidence ahead of its massive initial public offering with talk of pushing harder into health care and biotech.
Anthropic isn’t alone: Nvidia and Eli Lilly are building a $1 billion drug-discovery lab in San Francisco that will team life-sciences researchers with AI model builders and engineers.
Isomorphic Labs, the AI drug-discovery spinoff from Google, recently raised $2.1 billion to hire more AI and clinical talent and has ongoing research collaborations with Novartis, Lilly and Johnson & Johnson.
Reality check: AI is dramatically speeding up drug development and helping clinicians analyze medical scans and diagnose conditions. But there are concerns that AI-enabled research tools could be used for nefarious purposes, including making a biological weapon.
And breakthroughs may still be years away.Read on …
Sign up for Axios Future of Health Care, our daily briefing on the policy moves, business trends
Covers: Nicole Rifkin for The New Yorker, David Gahr/Getty Images“Pure Gold” — by illustrator Nicole Rifkin, who’s also a musician — is the title of the Dolly Parton tribute cover for The New Yorker’s new issue, out tomorrow.
“I admire not only her and her music but also her generosity,” Rifkin said. “She touched the lives of millions of kids with her Imagination Library.”TIME’s Dolly tribute (above right) goes on sale Sept. 18.
Go deeper: More New Yorker covers about musicians.
America’s grocery squeeze has been felt most painfully in expensive categories like beef, coffee and chocolate.
But new forces are pushing up food prices across the board: expensive grain, soaring fertilizer and fuel prices, plus unpredictable weather and raging wars, Axios’ Erica Pandey writes.
Why it matters: The next grocery price shock could hit much harder — and wider. And midterms are 65 days away.
The big picture: Your grocery store is fed by a vast global supply chain, and pressures are building all along it.
The Iran and Russia-Ukraine wars have driven up diesel prices, making it more expensive to operate harvesting equipment and to truck food from suppliers to stores.
The Iran war has disrupted fertilizer supplies and prices, since a large share of the world’s fertilizer passes through the Strait of Hormuz.
This past week, corn and wheat prices hit their highest level in three years. Bad weather has hit corn crop yields, and the Russia-Ukraine war has roiled wheat exports.
Friction point: Wheat’s a key ingredient in pantry staples, and corn is a major animal feed. So as they go up, so can meat, dairy and eggs.
The intrigue: Don’t assume those soaring commodity prices are a bonanza for farmers, either.
They’re still getting squeezed by all the other crises. Even the president of the National Corn Growers Association told Axios Future of Energy author Ben Geman that he himself wouldn’t be profitable this year.
Add all these pressures to the listof already inflated food items:
Instant coffee is up 15.8% year-over-year; tomatoes, 12.8%; beef roasts, 13.5%; apples, 11.1%.
In the latest Economist/YouGov poll, about three-quarters of people said grocery prices are still rising where they live.
Threat level: There’s reason to believe it’s only going to get worse.
J.P. Morgan analysts warned in a report this month that global food inflation would hit 5% in the first half of 2027, nearly doubling this year’s rate.
“Price pressures are expected to extend through [the first half of 2027], as crop and price effects are still building and agricultural impacts lag the oceanic peak by 6 to 12 months,” they wrote.
The bottom line: These forces don’t drive up your grocery budget overnight. But compounding strains on the cost of growing, harvesting and transporting food could make an already expensive grocery run even more expensive.
And for the average American family, one parent would need to be earning around $80,000 to sustain the other quitting their job to raise one child.Getty Images
For many Gen Zers, becoming a “tradwife” is the dream—with even teen girls taking to TikTok and sharing how they’re ditching aspirations of holding down a corporate career, in favor of getting married, having a family, and being supported by a doting partner. But now, research reveals exactly how much a husband (or wife) would need to earn to afford that lifestyle in the U.S.—and perhaps surprisingly, in most states, it’s below six figures.
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That’s according to new research from the financial advisory software SmartAsset, which ranked all 50 U.S. states by the minimum income one parent needs to earn to support their partner staying home to raise a single child.
For the average American family, one parent would need to earn around $80,000 to sustain the other quitting their job to raise one child.
It’s perhaps lower than you’d expect.
Although the researchers say it costs a staggering $40,000 before tax to raise a child, a stay-at-home parent cuts out the single biggest cost: daycare. And of course, the bigger the family, the bigger the salary needed. Plus, this figure is the minimum needed—not counting any extra life extravagances like the annual family holiday, private school, or a bigger home.
Hawaii is the most expensive state to be a stay-at-home-parent—you’d need to earn over $102,000
Some states make the “tradwife” dream a lot more affordable than others.
In West Virginia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, and North Dakota, a single-earning parent could support a stay-at-home spouse for under $71,000 a year—the lowest on the ranking.
Meanwhile, Hawaii sits at the opposite extreme. A single earner there needs to bring in at least $102,773 a year just to cover basic expenses for two adults and a young child. If both parents work instead, the household needs $119,226 between them—and even then, daycare alone runs about $33,363 a year.
California isn’t far behind, requiring a single income of $97,656 to support a stay-at-home parent, and a single earner in Massachusetts can support the family on a slightly lower $97,261.
But be warned: the full American Dream costs a lot more than an $80K salary can support
If you want the American Dream—the house in the suburbs, two children, and a cabriolet in the drive—it’ll cost you millions. Not thousands.
While research shows stay-at-home parents can raise one child on less than $100,000, that figure might be conservative or involve a lot of skimping. That’s because when you take into account needing to buy a home, forking out for kids’ college tuition and maybe even a pet, the price tag explodes.
The financial media site Investopedia has done the math and calculated that achieving those milestones now costs a staggering $4.4 million.
Plus, as inflation squeezes workers in a cost-of-living vise, paired with spiraling housing costs and AI cutting paychecks, the salary it takes to be considered comfortable could keep climbing. Just look at Gen X retirees, a quarter of whom have had to go back to work because the cost of staying retired outpaced what they’d saved for it. Proof that today’s “comfortable” number is no guarantee of comfort a decade from now.”
The Wall Street Journal 
Reality check: AI is dramatically 
Dolly gets her due
Covers: Nicole Rifkin for The New Yorker, David Gahr/Getty Images“Pure Gold” — by illustrator Nicole Rifkin, who’s also a musician — is the title of the Dolly Parton tribute cover for 
The big picture: Your grocery store is fed by a vast global supply chain, and pressures are building all along it.
Friction point: Wheat’s a key ingredient in pantry staples, and corn is a major animal feed. So as they go up, so can meat, dairy and eggs.
Add all these pressures to the list of 
canisgallicus 