Just one month after the inauguration of the 21st Knesset, parliamentarians voted to disband the government and send the country into national elections for the second time in six months.
The Knesset vote came after a tension-filled last-minute effort by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to formulate a majority ruling coalition of at least 61 Knesset members before the midnight deadline between Wednesday and Thursday. But that effort came up short. Netanyahu’s political nemesis, Avigdor Lieberman, refused to bring his five-member Yisrael Beiteinu Party into the government, despite recommending Netanyahu as prime minister, leaving the coalition just one Knesset member shy of a clear majority.

An Illinois high school district is withdrawing a course for educators titled “Teaching Palestine” after pushback from teachers and community members.
The Niles Township High School District 219 serves Lincolnwood and parts of Morton Grove, Niles and Skokie in Cook County, home to Chicago. There are an estimated 291,800 Jews in Illinois with most of them living in the Chicagoland area.
The district consists of Niles North High School and Niles West High School.

The U.S. envoy for peace in Afghanistan will meet with the Taliban this month during an international trip to promote peace talks to end the Afghan War, officials announced Saturday.
The Trump administration is currently negotiating with the armed group to facilitate a withdrawal of U.S. troops, though the talks have been met with bipartisan skepticism on Capitol Hill.
The talks between the administration and the Taliban have also failed to thus far make significant progress, though they did raise eyebrows earlier this year when the Pentagon reportedly asked Congress for funds to reimburse the armed group for transportation and other expenses related to attending the peace negotiations.

Apple is phasing out its content download and streaming service, Bloomberg reports. CEO Tim Cook will unveil a spread of new features geared to move the company’s focus away from the iPhone starting Monday at the tech giant’s Worldwide Developers Conference.
One of these changes is getting rid of iTunes, which has served since 2001 as the home for users’ music, television and podcast libraries. Going forward, three new desktop apps will be unveiled — Music, TV and Podcasts — to house and manage the data. This will match the format already used on iPhones and iPads.
Read more at NY POST.
{Matzav.com}

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on Saturday evening confirmed reports of two rockets launched from Syria into the northern Golan Heights region.
“Two projectiles were launched from Syria toward Mount Hermon,” the IDF said in a statement. “No injuries were reported. Details to follow.”
The Golan Regional Council released a statement detailing the IDF’s initial report, adding that one projectile landed in Israeli territory and another failed to cross the border from Syria.
Israeli media reported that the rocket fire was believed to be intentionally targeting Israel, not spillover from the final battles in Syria’s years-long war.

Over 10,000 police officers will reportedly be on hand during President Trump’s state visit to the United Kingdom next week as more than 250,000 protesters are expected to attend demonstrations during the president’s 3-day visit.
The Times reports that police chiefs in Britain are expected to spend £25 million, or roughly $31,600,000, on security costs related to the president’s visit.
The expansive security operation by The Metropolitan Police will reportedly include snipers, bomb-sniffing dogs and helicopters to watch over large-scale protests anticipated to coincide with the president’s stay.
Read more at The Hill.

Minister Tzachi Hanegbi of Likud said Saturday he could envision Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu inviting opposition Kichol v’Lavan to form a unity government following the next general election if the party stops “ruling out” the prime minister as a potential partner.
Speaking to Channel 12’s “Meet the Press,” Hanegbi indicated a Likud-Kichol v’Lavan government could solve the political deadlock that led to the collapse of recent attempts to build a coalition and which may very well persist following the September 17 national poll.
Hanegbi said he believed if Kichol v’Lavan party leaders Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid “make a switch and say ‘I am willing to sit in a government with Netanyahu,’ we’ll have a unity government with impressive achievements.”

As California prepares for its democratic party convention, at least a dozen of the state’s democratic lawmakers have filed draft resolutions presenting the deadly shooting in Pittsburgh last October as the partial responsibility of the Israeli government.
According to Fox News, the latest resolution characterizes the attack on a Jewish house of worship as “the culmination of an alarming re-emergence of virulent antisemitism that is a core element of historical and currently resurgent white supremacism in the United States and around the world.”

On the day before Israelis celebrate Yom Yerushalayim — which marks the city’s unification under Israeli rule after the country’s victory in a 1967 war — at least 20 Palestinians were reportedly arrested in East Jerusalem in a large-scale police sweep.
Palestinian Ma’an News reported Israeli police had arrested around 20 Palestinians in the East Jerusalem area on Shabbos morning as tension mount over the event.
The head of the Palestinian prisoner committee, Amjad Abu Assab, told Ma’an that Israeli forces carried out the arrests as a “precautionary” measure toward the security of Yom Yerushalayim celebrations, which have escalated into clashes in past years.
The Israeli police did not immediately comment on the arrests.