Europe’s top human rights court delivered damning judgments on Wednesday against Russia in four cases brought by Kyiv and the Netherlands, including finding Moscow shot down flight MH17, killing all passengers, including 38 Australians.
Judges at the European court of human rights ruled that Russia was responsible for widespread violations of international law in backing anti-Kyiv separatists in eastern Ukraine from 2014, in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight 17 that year and in invading Ukraine in 2022.
Reading the decisions in a packed courtroom in Strasbourg, the court’s president, Mattias Guyomar, said Russian forces engaged in “manifestly unlawful” conduct in the July 2014 attack on the flight.
“The court agreed that the evidence suggested that the missile had been intentionally fired at flight MH17 most likely in the mistaken belief that it had been a military aircraft,” the court said in a statement.
Landmark ruling finds Russia shot down MH17 with 38 Australians on board
Trump praises English of the leader of Liberia – where English is the official language
Donald Trump was basking in the praise of a group of African leaders on Wednesday, when the Liberian president took the microphone.
“Liberia is a longtime friend of the United States and we believe in your policy of making America great again,” President Joseph Boakai said in English at a White House meeting before advocating for US investment in his country. “We just want to thank you so much for this opportunity.”
Trump, clearly impressed, inquired where Boakai got his language skills.
“Such good English, such beautiful …” Trump said. “Where did you learn to speak so beautifully? Where were you educated?”
Boakai seemed to chuckle. English is the official language of Liberia.
TVNL Comment: How embarrassing to have a moron president.
Democrats gloat as MAGA World explodes over Epstein files
Democrats are experiencing a devilish glee as MAGA World clashes over the Trump administration’s push to defuse conspiracy theories surrounding the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
In cable news interviews, social media posts and formal calls to release more Epstein files, Democrats are highlighting the administration’s handling of the case in hopes of exacerbating the unusual tensions betwon my 8-year-old and his friends on the short hoops at school,” Democratic strategist Eddie Vale told The Hill. “They set themselves up for it with their MAGA base, and now the pedo chickens are coming home to roost.”een President Trump and a conservative base that’s stood firmly behind the president on virtually every issue he tackles.
And they are not veiling their sense of schadenfreude.
“This is like me dunking on my 8-year-old and his friends on the short hoops at school,” Democratic strategist Eddie Vale told The Hill. “They set themselves up for it with their MAGA base, and now the pedo chickens are coming home to roost.”
Trump Sets 50% U.S. Tariffs On Copper, Brazilian Imports Starting In August
U.S. President Donald Trump launched his global tariff assault into overdrive on Wednesday, announcing a new 50% tariff on U.S. copper imports and a 50% duty on goods from Brazil, both to start on August 1.
“I am announcing a 50% TARIFF on Copper, effective August 1, 2025, after receiving a robust NATIONAL SECURITY ASSESSMENT,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social media platform, a reference to a “Section 232″ national security trade investigation into the red metal that has been underway.
The announcement came hours after he also informed Brazil that its “reciprocal” tariff on August 1 would rise to 50% from 10%, a shockingly high level for a country with a balanced U.S. trade relationship.
Trump first broached the copper tariff during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, setting off a scramble by companies to import as much copper as soon as possible from Chile and other major suppliers.
He blamed the decline of the U.S. copper industry on past administrations, saying copper was needed for semiconductors, aircraft, electric vehicle batteries and military hardware.
Supreme Court won't let Florida enforce controversial immigration law
Florida can't enforce a controversial new law targeting undocumented immigrants entering Florida, the Supreme Court said on July 9 in rejecting an emergency appeal from the state.
The decision leaves in place a lower court's pause on the law while it's being challenged.
The law, which made it a felony for certain immigrants to enter Florida, was passed to help carry out President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier told the Supreme Court the law is needed to protect residents from "the deluge of illegal immigration."
"If a State's police powers are powers at all, they allow a State to criminalize harms destructive to the community," he wrote in the appeal.
Seventeen states told the Supreme Court they're backing Florida's position as did the Trump administration.
Trump caught off guard by Pentagon’s abrupt move to pause Ukraine weapons deliveries, AP sources say
The Pentagon, which announced last week that it would hold back some air defense missiles, precision-guided artillery and other weapons pledged to Ukraine because of what U.S. officials said were concerns that American stockpiles were in short supply. Trump said Monday that the U.S. will have to send more weapons to Ukraine, effectively reversing the move.
Two of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the sensitive internal discussions, said there was some internal opposition among Pentagon brass to the pause — coordinated by Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby — before it was announced.
‘Could become a death spiral’: scientists discover what’s driving record die-offs of US honeybees
Bret Adee is one of the largest beekeepers in the US, with 2 billion bees across 55,000 hives. The business has been in his family since the 1930s, and sends truckloads of bees across the country from South Dakota, pollinating crops such as almonds, onions, watermelons and cucumbers.
Last December, his bees were wintering in California when the weather turned cold. Bees grouped on top of hives trying to keep warm. “Every time I went out to the beehive there were less and less,” says Adee. “Then a week later, there’d be more dead ones to pick up … every week there is attrition, just continually going down.”
Adee went on to lose 75% of his bees. “It’s almost depressingly sad,” he says. “If we have a similar situation this year – I sure hope we don’t – then we’re in a death spiral.”
It developed into the largest US honeybee die-off on record, with beekeepers losing on average 60% of their colonies, at a cost of $600m (£440m).
Scientists have been scrambling to discover what happened; now the culprits are emerging. A research paper published by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), though not yet peer-reviewed, has found nearly all colonies had contracted a bee virus spread by parasitic mites that appear to have developed resistance to the main chemicals used to control them.
Pentagon provided $2.4tn to private arms firms to ‘fund war and weapons’, report finds
Most of defense department’s discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 went to military contractors.
A new study of defense department spending previewed exclusively to the Guardian shows that most of the Pentagon’s discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 has gone to outside military contractors, providing a $2.4tn boon in public funds to private firms in what was descrhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/08/pentagon-military-spendingibed as a “continuing and massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to fund war and weapons manufacturing”.
Responsible Statecraft and Costs of War project at Brown University said that the Trump administration’s new Pentagon budget will push annual US military spending past the $1tn mark.
That will deliver a projected windfall of more than half a trillion dollars that will be shared among top arms firms such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon as well as a growing military tech sector with close allies in the administration such as JD Vance, the report said.
Supreme Court Clears The Way For Trump 's Plans To Downsize The Federal Work Force
The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for President Donald Trump’s plans to downsize the federal workforce despite warnings that critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be out of their jobs.
The justices overrode lower court orders that temporarily froze the cuts, which have been led by the Department of Government Efficiency.
The court said in an unsigned order that no specific cuts were in front of the justices, only an executive order issued by Trump and an administration directive for agencies to undertake job reductions.
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