It's Friday the President's Day, welcome. Welcome to the end of another week. We're

another week. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the

world stage. All right. Let's get briefed. First up, the White House has directed the Pentagon to

draw up several options for increasing the American troop presence in Panama in order to achieve

President Trump's goal of, quote, retaking the Panama Canal. These plans reportedly

range from partnering with local security forces to seizing the strategic trade route by force.

Later in the show, negotiations between Israel and Hamas on extending their fragile ceasefire in Gaza

have reportedly stalled, though the White House is scrambling

to find a temporary fix to prevent a return to fighting. Plus, tensions are once again rising in the

South China Sea, as Taiwan's president warns that Beijing has expanded its influence campaigns,

infiltration efforts, and spying operations in an attempt to weaken the island's defenses.

And in today's back of the brief, former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte was taken into custody by the International Criminal Court, the ICC, in the Netherlands on Wednesday on murder charges, following his arrest in Manila over a bloody

years-long drug war that left thousands dead. But first, today's PDB spotlight. President Trump is

intensifying his push to carve out a new sphere of influence for America by potentially seizing overseas territories,

with his sites trained squarely right now on the Panama Canal. According to an exclusive report

from NBC News, the White House has directed the U.S. military to begin drawing up plans for boosting

America's troop presence in Panama in order to, quote, reclaim the

strategic waterway and diminish China's influence in the region. The options reportedly vary

from partnering with Panamanian security forces to secure the port operations to essentially

invading Panama and seizing the canal outright, though officials said the use of the

military force is a far less likely outcome. Sources with U.S. Southern Command told NBC News that

whether or not some form of military action is taken will depend entirely on how willing

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