At first glance, there was nothing unusual about U.S. President Donald Trump's introduction Tuesday at Turning Point USA's student summit. In many ways, it mirrored the production style that has become synonymous with Trump's campaign rallies.

Following a 12-minute video illustrating Trump's rise to the presidency, music blared as the president's name flashed across a giant screen in a bold shade of red. Trump took the stage and soaked in the raucous cheers from hundreds of young supporters packed inside the Marriott Marquis in Washington.

Charlie Kirk, Turning Point's outspoken founder and president, was on his left. But the image on the screen to Trump's right — captured in dozens of photos and videos from the event — is less familiar.

Ukraine's security service has seized a Russia-registered oil tanker that allegedly blocked maritime traffic in the Kerch Strait. It comes as both countries discuss the release of Ukrainian sailors detained in the area last year.

The Russian-flagged ship 'Nika Spirit' was detained by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the military prosecutors after it moored at the port of Izmail in southwestern Ukraine, according to the agency's statement. Ukrainian authorities have searched the vessel, seized her logs and communications records, as well as interviewed the crew.

The parliamentary majority that new Ukrainian President Zelensky's "Servant of the People" party just obtained in the country's latest legislative elections means that peace in Donbas has never been closer, but only so long as Kiev is willing to make a politically difficult compromise with Moscow that's sure to undoubtedly unsettle its Western patrons, unless the "New Detente" ends up saving the day.

The Obama-Trump Hybrid

New Ukrainian President Zelensky has been compared to US President Trump in many respects since both leaders are politically inexperienced populists who entered office on a wave of anti-elite discontent from the masses, but he might also have a little bit of former President Obama in him too if he forgoes his country's traditional foreign policy in order to focus more on internal matters. His "Servant of the People" party just obtained a parliamentary majority in the country's latest legislative elections, which is the first time in Ukraine's post-independence history that something of the sort has happened. This speaks to the people's desire to fundamentally restructure their state, hence the unprecedented mandate that they gave Zelensky despite the fake news fearmongering campaign backed by Ukraine's oligarchs and their foreign supporters alleging that such a scenario will lead to Ukraine "selling out" to Russia.

Mark Esper, who has recently been sworn in as the new US defence secretary, said Washington sought to de-escalate the situation in the Persian Gulf area.

Last week, the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) said the country was developing an intentional maritime security framework dubbed Operation Sentinel to enhance security in the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Oman in the wake of various incidents involving tankers in the area.


"And so that's the purpose of Operation Sentinel, as conceived, was to avoid those situations. So we don't get in a situation where there's a provocation where there's a seizure of a ship and something like that, and then we — and then it escalates. We're trying to de-escalate," Esper told a press conference, as quoted in a transcript published on the Pentagon website late on Wednesday.

New UK PM Boris Johnson conducted a cabinet bloodbath on his first day that saw Theresa May's ministers replaced with loyal, true Brexit believers. It has all the hallmarks of a government readying itself for a general election.

In what was less a 'reshuffle' and more a complete overhaul of a Tory government weighed down by the Brexit debacle, Wednesday saw 17 of 30 ministers either sacked or resign as Johnson stamped his authority on day one.

The new figures taking up some of the most powerful positions in Johnson's Conservative cabinet are ostensibly hardline Brexiteers who are comfortable with the thought of parliament being suspended to ram through a no-deal Brexit.

Johnson has hired the services of Dominic Cummings, the mastermind behind Vote Leave's victory in the 2016 EU referendum, as his chief of staff; and the new prime minister appears to have assembled a team intent on delivering Brexit without a deal if need be.

Perhaps, at long last, a serial rapist and pedophile may be brought to justice, more than a dozen years after he was first charged with crimes that have brutalized countless girls and women. But what won't change is this: the cesspool of elites, many of them in New York, who allowed Jeffrey Epstein to flourish with impunity.

For decades, important, influential, "serious" people attended Epstein's dinner parties, rode his private jet, and furthered the fiction that he was some kind of genius hedge-fund billionaire. How do we explain why they looked the other way, or flattered Epstein, even as they must have noticed he was often in the company of a young harem? Easy: They got something in exchange from him, whether it was a free ride on that airborne "Lolita Express," some other form of monetary largesse, entrée into the extravagant celebrity soirées he hosted at his townhouse, or, possibly and harrowingly, a pound or two of female flesh.

~ From the New York Magazine article: Who Was Jeffrey Epstein Calling?

An honest assessment of the current state of American politics and society in general leaves little room for optimism regarding the public's ability to accurately diagnose, much less tackle, our fundamental issues at a root level. A primary reason for this state of affairs boils down to the ease with which the American public is divided against itself and conquered.

Though there are certain issues pretty much everyone can agree on, we simply aren't focusing our collective energy on them or creating the mass movements necessary to address them. Things such as systemic bipartisan corruption, the institutionalization of a two-tier justice system in which the wealthy and powerful are above the law, a broken economy that requires both parents to work and still barely make ends meet, and a military-industrial complex consumed with profits and imperial aggression not national defense. These are just a few of the many issues that should easily unite us against an entrenched power structure, but it is not happening. At least not yet.

Boris Johnson's first speech as prime minister in the House of Commons touched on a number of policy platforms, many of which had the hallmarks of future election pledges. Here's what the new PM promised:

Brexit and the backstop

"A time limit is not enough. If an agreement is to be reached it must be clearly understood that the way to the deal goes by way of the abolition of the backstop.

"For our part we are ready to negotiate in good faith an alternative, with provisions to ensure that the Irish border issues are dealt with where they should always have been: in the negotiations on the future agreement between the UK and the EU."

This is a very tight corner for Johnson to have painted himself into. He is demanding the complete removal of the backstop and for all arrangements for the Irish border to be negotiated during the transition period as part of the future relationship.

Only on Wednesday, the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said: "I got the impression that he wasn't just talking about deleting the backstop, he was talking about a whole new deal... That is not going to happen. Any suggestion that there can be a whole new deal negotiated in weeks or months is totally not in the real world."

The US Army has been quietly conducting a secret flight operation in and around Washington DC for months, judging from recently released fiscal documents. US military experts have outlined the possible goals of the clandestine mission and the agencies behind it.

On 22 July, Bloomberg revealed that at least 10 Black Hawk helicopters are involved in conducting "a classified flight mission" in the National Capital Region (NPR), citing a $2.5 billion Army reprogramming request.

According to the document, the Pentagon asked the US Congress to allocate an additional $1.55 million for aircraft maintenance, aircrews, travel, and a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) capability in support of the mission.

"Soldiers from assault helicopter company and aviation maintenance units will be supporting the mission with 10 UH-60s and maintenance capabilities for four months", the document says, arguing that "without additional funding, the Army will not be able to perform this classified mission".

The task of the aforementioned flight mission, which, according to Bloomberg, kicked off "early in the fiscal year" that started on 1 October 2018, remains shrouded in secrecy

A Daily Beast investigation has uncovered ties between Epstein and the Clinton administration that date back to the president's earliest days in the White House.

Days after Jeffrey Epstein's arrest on sex-trafficking charges in New York, Bill Clinton distanced himself from the high-flying financier and convicted sex offender. The former president owned up to just six encounters with Epstein, starting in 2002: Four flights on the billionaire's private jet, a single trip to his Harlem office, and one "brief visit" to his New York apartment, all with staff and security detail in tow.

Now, a Daily Beast investigation has uncovered ties between Epstein and the Clinton administration that date back to the president's earliest days in the White House, casting doubt on the oft-circulated narrative that the two only began associating after Clinton left office.

As early as 1993, records show, Epstein donated $10,000 to the White House Historical Association and attended a donors' reception hosted by Bill and Hillary Clinton. Around the same time, according to a source familiar with the connection, Epstein visited presidential aide Mark Middleton several times at The White House. Two years later, businesswoman Lynn Forester de Rothschild wrote a personal letter to Clinton thanking him for their talk about the financier.

"President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York," Clinton's spokesperson, Angel Ureña, told The Daily Beast. "Any suggestion to the contrary, is both factually inaccurate and irresponsible." Representatives for Epstein, de Rothschild and Middleton did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The American and South Korean militaries are analyzing the details of the latest test launch by North Korea, in which a couple of short-range ballistic missiles were fired towards the Sea of Japan.

Pyongyang fired the projectiles using a transporter erector launcher (TEL) about 20 minutes apart from the Wonson area early Thursday morning, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, noting that the short-range missiles flew for around 430 kilometers at an altitude of around 50 kilometers before falling into the Sea of Japan. The South Korean military said it maintains "readiness posture."

The US has yet to comment on the launch, which could potentially undermine the American-N. Korean negotiations on the denuclearization of the peninsula, even though President Trump said earlier that such low-profile tests did not bother him much.

The missile test was the first in months and was held just weeks after US President Donald Trump met his N. Korean counterpart Kim Jong-un in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas and agreed to resume stalled nuclear talks.

In May, Pyongyang held a series of short-range missile launches, which US officials claim N. Korea has repeated on Thursday. JCS, however, insists that more analysis is needed to verify if the missiles fired Thursday had ballistic capabilities. On Tuesday, Chairman Kim inspected the country's new submarine and its combat weapons systems, which some experts suspect could be capable of launching ballistic missiles.