ISRAEL UNREST: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a press conference yesterday in which he refused to bow to domestic and international pressure to stop the war in Gaza to win release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas militants. After two days in which hundreds of thousands of people marched following the deaths of six hostages in Gaza, Netanyahu said the fighting would continue. “What message would it send Hamas,” he asked. “Slay hostages and you’ll get concessions?”

  He called the criticism of his approach to a cease-fire “shameful” and asked for forgiveness from the families of the six dead hostages.

  Crowds of protesters during the day broke through police lines near the prime minister’s private residence in Jerusalem and moved on toward his family apartment. 

  President Biden added to the pressure when he said Netanyahu is not doing enough to get the hostages released and Britain said it would suspend some weapon exports to Israel.

  Netanyahu said in his press conference that the war would end, “When Hamas no longer rules Gaza.” He went on at some length about Israel continuing to control the strip of land known as the Philadelphicorridor which connects Gaza to Egypt and is the prime entry point for everything from food to weapons into Gaza. A lead negotiator for Hamas told Al Jazeera there would be no deal without the Israeli military withdrawing from the corridor.

  Yesterday at a funeral for Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year-old hostage who was one of the six murdered by Hamas, his mother said, “Finally, my sweet boy, finally, finally, finally, finally, you’re free.” 

IT’S POLITICAL: President Joe Biden made his first campaign appearance yesterday with Kamala Harris in which she was the candidate for president and he was the cheerleader.

  In Pennsylvania, a state that could decide the election, Biden said, “I promise you, if you elect Kamala Harris president as president it will be the best decision you will have ever made.” 

  Pursuing the union vote in Detroit and Pittsburgh, Harris said no matter whether you are a union member, “You better thank a union member for the five day work week. You better thank a union member for sick leave.” And, “You better thank a union member for vacation time!”

  Contrary to political and Labor Day tradition, Donald Trump did not campaign yesterday. 

RIGGED: A Venezuelan judge ordered the arrest of opposition candidate Edmundo González, who the United States and other countries say clearly beat the country’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, in the July 28th presidential election.

  The country’s attorney general filed an arrest as part of an investigation into the opposition’s publication of vote tallies showing that González won more than twice as many votes as Maduro. 

  In what may be an event related to that election and Maduro’s refusal to leave, the US seized a jet belonging to the Venezuelan president claiming it was bought illegally for $13 million and smuggled out of the country. The plane was seized in the Dominican Republic and transferred to Florida. 

THE SHOOTING GALLERY: Five people were shot and wounded yesterday in what police say was a targeted shooting at New York’s West Indian Day Parade.

  In Chicago, four people were shot dead on a transit train as it approached suburban Forest Park. Surveillance video helped the police identify and arrest the shooter. No motive was given, but the victims appeared to be homeless.

THE OBIT PAGE: Linda Deutsch, a reporter for the Associated Press who was a fixture in Los Angeles area courtrooms on every case from Charles Manson to Sirhan Sirhan, Patty Hearst, OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson, and more, died of pancreatic cancer in Los Angeles at age 80.

  Deutsch took a seat for every major trial and whenever there was a scrum of reporters and cameras outside the courtroom, she was in there. 

  When she was 20 as a summer intern at the Perth Amboy Evening News she covered the March on Washington.  She was there for Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. When Deutsch joined the Associated Press Los Angeles bureau in 1967, she was the only woman.

  She once recalled seeing Charles Manson leap up and try to stab the judge with a pencil and thinking, “‘Oh, this is really something,’ I didn’t know trials could be like this.”

THE SPIN RACK:  President Vladimir Putin of Russia arrived in Mongolia last night for his first visit to a member country of the International Criminal Court since it issued a warrant for his arrest in March of last year. The ICC said that Mongolia is obligated to arrest Putin, but Mongolia is dependent on Russia for fuel, making an arrest unlikely.  — An Iranian writer and activist was sentenced to 12 years in prison for replying with a single dot, a period, to a post on Twitter/X by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. — Voters in the states of Thüringen and Saxony in eastern Germany have given a far-right party its best result since World War II. Alternative for Germany, known as AfD, has capitalized on anti-immigrant sentiments.

BELOW THE FOLD: In the dog eat dog world of professional hotdog eating, perpetual champion Joey Chestnut yesterday set a world record of 83 hotdogs in 10 minutes to defeat Japan’s Takeru Kobayashi, who ate merely 67 tubesteaks before the bell.

  For some reason this event is reported in the sports pages rather than the dining section of the newspaper.

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