UK - Britain’s establishment is scrambling to limit the damage caused by a leak of the UK ambassador’s classified criticism of Donald Trump, even if it’s clear that most of them agree with it. In fact, the outrage caused by the views of Britain’s man in Washington being publicly aired underlines what most of us know – that honesty has absolutely no place in international relations. Sir Kim Darroch called Trump, among other things, “incompetent,” “inept,” and “clumsy.” That all looks pretty rich now that his innermost thoughts on the one man he is supposed to be buttering up have been released for all to see. However it happened, it does seem clumsy and inept. Almost Trumpian, allegedly. Make no mistake, this is the mainstream view of Britain’s snobbish and superior political class, but the anger is directed at the act of leaking and not at the views held by the ambassador.

EUROPE - Mogherini successor Josep Borrell last year denounced Netanyahu’s ‘warlike arrogance’ and advocated for unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood. Israeli officials are warily following the changing of the guard at the European Union, where someone who has recently floated the idea of unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood and has expressed strong support for Iran was tapped to be its next foreign policy chief. On Tuesday, the European Council nominated Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell Fontelles, a member of the country’s ruling Socialist Workers’ Party, as the EU’s top diplomat, Borrell, a veteran statesman who has been in politics since 1993, is seen as very critical of Israel. “More difficult times are ahead between the EU and Israel I fear,” tweeted Bas Belder, a Dutch member of the European Parliament and veteran pro-Israel advocate.

USA - Strangely, the media have suddenly taken an intense interest in the case of pedophile and major Democratic donor Jeffrey Epstein. In 2005, the Palm Beach police were told by the mother of a young girl in West Palm Beach that her daughter had been brought to the Democratic donor’s mansion and asked to have sex with him for money. This kicked off an intensive, one-year undercover investigation. But recently, the very news outlets that spiked any news about this case for the past 13 years are suddenly hot on the trail of Jeffrey Epstein.

USA - The establishment media is attempting to link President Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein without any evidence connecting him to the underage sex trafficking case against the billionaire hedge fund manager. Immediately following a Daily Beast report revealing Epstein’s Saturday arrest, a handful of news figures and outlets posted social media posts and stories painting a picture that the wealthy investor’s arrest was bad news for President Trump — with one editor even going as far to suggest he could be directly implicated in the case. In a Monday op-ed titled “Epstein Arrest Is a Worry for Donald Trump,” O’Brien speculated that the hedge fund manager has damaging information on the president.

CANADA - Disagree with gender transition practices? Ontario just passed a law that will allow them to seize children of parents that are not supportive of their child’s “gender identity” or “gender expression.” The Supporting Children, Youth and Families Act of 2017, or Bill 89, was approved by a vote of 63 to 23, “I would consider that a form of abuse, when a child identifies one way and a caregiver is saying no, you need to do this differently,” Minister of Child and Family Services Michael Coteau, who introduced the bill, was quoted as saying. “If it’s abuse, and if it’s within the definition, a child can be removed from that environment and placed into protection where the abuse stops.”

USA - Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia have seized a container ship operated by the Mediterranean Shipping Co, weeks after authorities found more than $1 billion worth of cocaine on the vessel in what was one of the largest drug busts in American history. US Customs and Border Protection seized the ship on July 4, a statement out Monday said. The ship is owned by client assets in a maritime strategy offered by JPMorgan Asset Management, according to a person familiar with the matter. It is operated by the Switzerland-based MSC. On June 18, CBP agents found 39,525 pounds of cocaine stashed in several containers on the MSC Gayane at the Philadelphia seaport. The street value of the drugs was estimated at about $1.3 billion, making it the largest cocaine seizure by the agency.

EUROPE - Freak weather has struck Spain, unleashing record-breaking floods and unprecedented snow storms - just a week after a scorching heatwave in the country. Shocking footage showed rivers made of ice flow through the city in Utiel, Valencia. Residents reported that this level of hailstorm had “never happened before” in the region. The weather chaos was worsened by what local news reported as "hurricane winds". Valencia experienced a dramatic plunge in temperatures, with the mercury falling from 33.5C to 20C within just ten minutes. The intense weather in northeastern Spain has already left at least one person dead, following torrential rainfall. BBC Weather has warned that heavy thunderstorms will continue to batter Europe this week with warnings of localised flooding.

USA - Donald Trump has launched a scathing attack on Theresa May and said the US would no longer deal with the British ambassador to Washington after the diplomat’s frank assessments of the president as “inept” and “dysfunctional” were leaked to the Mail on Sunday. In a sign of the damage to the US-UK relationship, Trump hit out at Sir Kim Darroch for a second day in a row, threatening to cut ties over the memos that described him as “radiating insecurity”. The US president also said May and her representatives had made a “mess” over Brexit, contrary to his advice. “The good news for the wonderful United Kingdom is that they will soon have a new Prime Minister. While I thoroughly enjoyed the magnificent State Visit last month, it was the Queen who I was most impressed with!”

ISRAEL - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday tweeted that the Palestinians’ connection to the Land of Israel is nothing compared to the 4,000 year connection that the Jewish people have with the land. He cited a recent article stating that Biblical Philistines had come from Europe, according to DNA uncovered in the coastal city of Ashkelon. His attempt to delegitimise the Palestinians’ right to their homeland was criticised by many as “race science”, which is often promoted by extreme right-wingers to justify ethno-nationalist policies.

USA - Recently the Institute for Responsible Technology, a research organization dedicated to educating on the oft-overlooked dangers of genetically engineered crops, posted the results of a farmer’s experiment on their Facebook page. The farmer, a friend of IRT founder and best-selling author Jeffrey M Smith, left two bags of corn, one GMO and one non-GMO, in a work room. The mice broke into both bags, but quickly stopped eating after taking a few bites of the GMO corn. “They just took a nibble from one of the kernels of this and never came back to eat it,” Smith said. “They devoured the non-GMO corn.” According to Smith, many different animals including squirrels, geese, elk, deer, raccoons, mice, rats, buffalo and chickens have all been observed avoiding GMO corn in the past. It’s a trend that Bayer, Monsanto and the GMO industry have done their best to avoid discussing…

USA - Steve Wozniak is the latest high-profile naysayer to speak out against Facebook. The Apple co-founder, who deleted his own Facebook profile last year, told TMZ recently that he recommends most people ‘figure out a way to get off’ the site due to ongoing privacy concerns. Wozniak warned that people often assume they have much more privacy online than they really do, and said he’s now ‘worried about everything’ when it comes to potential eavesdropping and data sharing. The prevalence of connected devices today means your conversations might not be as private as you think they are, Wozniak said. ‘There’s almost no way to stop it,’ he added. ‘People think they have a level of privacy that they don’t.’

USA - You may think Wikipedia — [allegedly] originally funded with revenue from soft-core pornography — is the best thing since Cliff Notes, with quick and easy access to all the facts and news you ever needed to know. Some believe Wikipedia is even better than Encyclopedia Britannica; indeed, Wikipedia’s founders intended it to be a replacement for it. But is Wikipedia really a trustworthy source?

USA - The US Hispanic population surged another 1.2 million last year and now is a record 59.9 million, according to newly released US Census Bureau population estimates. The percentage of Hispanics as part of the overall US population also jumped to 18%. A Pew Research Center analysis of the new data also found that between 2008 and 2018, “Latinos accounted for about half (52%) of all US population growth over this period.”

USA - The latest measles outbreak that’s gripped communities across the country in recent months pushed the topic of vaccinations (and those who choose to forgo them) right back onto centerstage for many Americans. Now a new survey delving into feelings over immunizations finds the country may be more split on the issue than [previously] believed, with 45% of adults admitting to harboring some doubt about the safety of vaccines. That said, the vast majority — more than eight in 10 surveyed — still view vaccines as effective and continue to support them, despite their concerns.

USA - Wearing wading boots and a wide-brimmed hat, Derrick Currie casts his green fishing line into a pool of brown water along a rural Tennessee road. In a couple of minutes, he reels in a nice-sized catfish that he puts in a cooler to take home. Currie’s fishing hole looks like a lake, but it isn’t one. It’s farmland inundated by floodwater. Lush green fields of cotton and soybeans turned into lakes Tuesday as flooding from the overfull Mississippi River covered thousands of acres of farmland in Lauderdale County in west Tennessee. July flooding means farmers won’t be able to replant in time for the fall harvest, ruining countless numbers of crops. The Mississippi River was cresting at 35 feet (10.7 meters) Tuesday near Ripley. Flood stage is 28 feet (8.5 meters), according to the National Weather Service. Parts of the county look more like Florida’s Everglades than Tennessee’s Mississippi River valley.