Alan Dershowitz has penned a staunch defence of Ghislaine Maxwell following her arrest by the FBI. But his touting of her friendship with the Clintons as evidence of her character has left many incredulously scoffing.

The famous lawyer penned an op-ed for The Spectator in which he sought to set out his own relationship with Jeffrey Epstein's alleged madam and argue that she must be presumed innocent.

Dershowitz, who has himself faced accusations of involvement in Epstein's sex ring, explains that he was first introduced to the British socialite by a member of the Rothschild family and when he subsequently met her, on "several occasions", she was in the presence of esteemed people such as Nobel Prize winners, university presidents and even Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The irony of citing the Clintons as character references for a person accused of misconduct relating to sex didn't go unnoticed and many took to Twitter to point this out.

A Dutch court investigating the downing of MH17 has agreed to hear from Almaz-Antey, a Russian arms manufacturer, which argues that the prevailing Western narrative - that rebels in eastern Ukraine shot down the plane - is false.

The hearing in Badhoevedorp, Netherlands says it will explore alternative scenarios in the high-profile trial, in which four anti-Kiev fighters stand accused of using a Russian anti-aircraft missile to destroy the civilian plane, killing 283 passengers - mostly Dutch - and 15 crew on board.

Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was downed over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. It was crossing airspace which had not been closed despite the Ukrainian civil war raging below.

Iranian President Hassan Rohani says Iranians who do not wear masks will be denied public services and workplaces that fail to comply with health protocols will be shut for a week.

Rohani made the comments on July 4 as he announced new steps to try to curb the coronavirus pandemic that was first confirmed in Iran in February.

"Not wearing a mask is a de facto violation of other people's rights," the Iranian president said, according to the presidential website.

The death toll from the outbreak in the country stood at 11,408, while the total number of infections reached 237,878, according to official figures released by the Health Ministry on July 4. The actual number of cases is believed to be significantly higher.

Wearing masks becomes mandatory from July 5 in covered public places, Rohani announced, after tougher curbs were imposed in cities and towns in five provinces where the number of infections are rising after a gradual easing of lockdowns from mid-April.

Aguila Saleh, the president of the eastern-based Libyan Parliament, arrived in Moscow on Thursday to meet with Russian officials to discuss several issues, at the top of which was the initiative on a ceasefire, the return to the political process, and the Cairo Declaration on Libya, as well as the output of the Berlin Conference.

The President of the eastern-based Libyan Parliament, Aguila Saleh, said on Friday that the Cairo Declaration is the only solution to the crisis in Libya, pointing out that there is consensus among Libyans.

"In the Cairo Declaration, of course, as I mentioned [...] we believe that it is the only solution to the crisis in Libya because there is no marginalization or exclusion for anyone, and therefore, we even see that there is consensus among the Libyans on this declaration," Saleh said on Friday. "We came [to Moscow], actually, to confirm this declaration and urge our Russian friends to move forward in this direction".

The President said that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is in favor of the Cairo Declaration, adding that he would be visiting Geneva within two days to meet with Acting Special Representative of the UN, Secretary-General for Libya Stephanie Williams and urge her to "come to Libya to work on the implementation of this declaration, which we believe is the only way out of the crisis in Libya".

Saleh also said that he is intending to visit Rome, Algeria and other countries with the same purpose.

Billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein forged a close relationship with former President Bill Clinton and helped conceive an arm of the Clinton Foundation, his lawyers said in a 2007 letter to federal prosecutors.

"Mr. Epstein was part of the original group that conceived the Clinton Global Initiative, which is described as a project 'bringing together a community of global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges," lawyers Alan Dershowitz and Gerald Lefcourt wrote in the letter, according to Fox News, which first reported the matter in 2016.

The letter was written to boost Epstein's public image during plea negotiations that ultimately led to a highly criticized sweetheart deal in 2008 where the financier served only 13 months in prison and home detention after allegedly soliciting an underage girl.

Days after being marked "urgent" by President Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines' House of Representatives last week approved the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020, adopting the Senate's version, which was passed in February.

The bill has triggered online and street protests even as community quarantine restrictions are in place due to the coronavirus outbreak. A multisectoral backlash has also ensued, but supporters of the bill are pressing on.

Here are five things to know about the legislation that has polarized the Southeast Asian nation as it grapples with the pandemic's economic fallout.

The standards are poor at the Bank of England these days, I don't know why anyone would want to do business with them. George Galloway gives British banking, and justice, a triple-fail rating.

It used to be "a thing" when I was growing up. "As safe as the Bank of England" was the acme of trustworthiness and security. But as Venezuela - and any other Global South country foolish enough to entrust the British with their sovereign wealth just found out in the High Court in London - the Bank of England isn't any longer safe at all.

Almost a billion dollars worth of Venzuelan gold bullion has just been stolen by the British government, theft has just been legalized, and the thieves didn't even bother to wear a mask.

The prime minister lauding Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal" this week is just the latest step along the Conservative Party's long road to leftism. He's not so much a "Brexity Hezza" as a wetter version of Ted Heath.

The Conservative Party appears to be increasingly in need of a name change. Devotees of the Guardian, New Statesman and lefty Twitter would have you believe that Boris Johnson's Tories are the "most right-wing government in 50 years." They act as if BoJo is Maggie Thatcher on amphetamines, about to deregulate everything, slash the top rate of income tax to about 15 percent, deport anyone who doesn't have a double-barrelled surname, and sell Wales to Best Western Hotels. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There is virtually nothing about this government, nor the previous nine years of Tory-led rule in Britain, that can be construed as a "conservative" policy. Indeed, in many ways they have in fact been more left wing than any Labour government in history, particularly on cultural and social issues.

Just by asking the question of whether the next Presidential election matters, I am obviously suggesting that it might not. To explain my reasons for this opinion, I need to reset the upcoming election in the context of the previous one. So let's begin here.

The 2016 election of Donald Trump

The first thing which, I believe, ought to be self-evident to all by now is that there was no secret operation by any deep state, not even a Zionist controlled one, to put Donald Trump in power. I would even argue that the election of Donald Trump was the biggest slap in the face of US deep state and of the covert transnational ruling elites this deep state serves. Ever. My evidence? Simple, look what these ruling "elites" did both before and after Trump's election: before, they ridiculed the very idea of "President Trump" as both utterly impossible and utterly evil.

As somebody who has had years of experience reading the Soviet press or, in another style, the French press, I can honestly say that I have never seen a more ridiculously outlandish hate campaign against anybody that would come even close to the kind of total hate campaign which Trump was subjected to. Then, as soon as he was elected, the US neo-liberals (who are not liberals at all!) declared that Trump was "not their President", that Trump was put into power by Putin and that he was a "Russian asset" (using pseudo-professional jargon is what journos typically do to conceal their abject ignorance of a complex topic) and, finally, that he was a White racist and misogynist who will deeply divide the country (thereby dividing the country themselves by making such claims).

The fact is that for the past four years the US liberals have waged a total informational war against Trump and it would be absolutely unthinkable for them to ever accept a Trump re-election, even if he wins by a landslide. For the US Dems and neo-liberals, Trump is the personification of evil, literally, and that means that "resistance" to him and everything he represents must be total. And if he is re-elected, then there is only one possible explanation: the Russians stole the election, or the Chinese did. But the notion that Trump has the support of a majority of people is literally unthinkable for these folks.

While accusing Russia, without proof, of paying the Taliban to kill American soldiers, US politicians are conveniently ignoring facts about who really armed and financed terrorist groups in Afghanistan.

The allegation by some US intelligence agencies that Russia paid the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan has kicked up a partisan furore in Washington. It has renewed the tirade by the Democratic Party that President Donald Trump is soft on Russia and raised fresh demands for additional sanctions on Russia.

With a US presidential election due shortly, reusing the 'Russia' card to paint Trump as incompetent on national security or as a commander-in-chief who treacherously colluded with Russia to spill the blood of American troops is a handy political attack tool.