Good morning. Welcome, Naxios today. We've made it to Wednesday. It's September 21st. I'm Nailibudu.

Here's what we're covering today. The pandemic made more Americans want to straighten their teeth

and now orthodontists and direct to consumer companies are battling it out.

But first, does the UN General Assembly matter? That's today's one big thing.

For the first time in three years, leaders from around the world are gathering in New York City for the UN General Assembly.

The war on Ukraine is set to dominate this week's meetings. President Biden is also going to give a speech today,

as well as Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelinsky, who will be addressing the assembly remotely.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is staying home and has sent his foreign minister in his place despite gathering last week

at a summit in Uzbekistan with leaders from China and India.

Naxios' Middle East correspondent, Barack Roveed, is in New York City covering the meetings. Hey, Barack.

Hi, Naila.

So the Biden administration is using this assembly as a way to rally international support for Ukraine.

What can we expect to come out of all of that?

I hope that nobody is waiting for anything practical to come out of this. This is never the goal of the UN General Assembly.

The UN General Assembly is the annual meeting of leaders who want to give speeches for their domestic audiences.

All of them come, they stand there with this green wall behind them and give speeches when they only care what the people in their country,

whether they are watching or not. For Zelensky, this is end for Biden.

This is also a way to continue the diplomatic pressure on Russia and rally public opinion against Russia and I'll just give you an anecdote.

So there was a separate vote a few days ago in the General Assembly on whether Zelensky should be allowed to give a speech virtually.

I think that other than Russia and three other countries, the entire world voted in favor of that.

So even just this small issue of whether he's allowed to speak virtually or not turned into a vote against the Russians.

So if this is about domestic agendas, the Turkish president in the Israeli Prime Minister met yesterday for the first time since 2008.

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