Ex-CIA chief John Brennan was among the first on Twitter to slam President Trump for his press conference performance with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but Brennan has a history of questionable political decisions himself.

After the much-anticipated Helsinki summit on Monday, Presidents Trump and Putin faced the press. Trump declined to goad his Russian counterpart on allegations of election meddling, and took Putin's denial at face value. Brennan called this decision "nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump's comments imbecilic," Brennan added, "he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???"

Brennan's comments were echoed by the vast majority of the US political and media establishment, always keen to stir up tension with the big bad Russians. To some observers, though, Brennan's tweet was all noise and no substance.

"Whenever John Brennan opens his mouth or tweets he removes all doubt about his ignorance," said Fox News analyst Gregg Jarrett. "He clearly knows nothing about treason. The U.S. is not at war with Russia."

The risk of current trade tensions escalating further is the greatest near-term threat to global growth, said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its latest World Economic Outlook report.

"Our modeling suggests that if current trade policy threats are realized and business confidence falls as a result, global output could be about 0.5 percent below current projections by 2020," the IMF said, adding that the cost to the global economy could reach $430 billion.

Growth remains generally strong in advanced economies, according to the IMF, which warns it has slowed in many of them, including in the United Kingdom, Japan and countries in the euro area.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has confirmed that Iran has filed a lawsuit against the United States over the reimposition of sanctions against Tehran by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, claiming the move violates the nuclear treaty Tehran signed with the United States and five other world powers.

Confirmation by the court on July 17 came a day after Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Twitter that the case was filed at the ICJ to hold the United States

"accountable for its unlawful reimposition of unilateral sanctions. Iran is committed to the rule of law in the face of U.S. contempt for diplomacy and legal obligations," Zarif tweeted. "It's imperative to counter its habit of violating international law."

He may have been called an ally-betraying Putin-loving traitor by the US liberal media, but Donald Trump is not making any apologies after his European tour that culminated in ground-breaking talks with the Russian president.

"While I had a great meeting with NATO, raising vast amounts of money, I had an even better meeting with Vladimir Putin of Russia. Sadly, it is not being reported that way - the Fake News is going Crazy!" Trump tweeted on Tuesday.

In a message twenty minutes previously, the US president said the mainstream media was not reporting the extra funding commitments he secured from other members of the alliance to bolster collective defense.

"I had a great meeting with NATO. They have paid $33 Billion more and will pay hundreds of Billions of Dollars more in the future, only because of me. NATO was weak, but now it is strong again (bad for Russia). The media only says I was rude to leaders, never mentions the money!" tweeted Trump.

Trump had also been complimentary about his face-to-face talks with Vladimir Putin, during which the American leader appeared satisfied with the Russian president's assurances that the Kremlin did not meddle in the 2016 US election. The US president also praised military cooperation between the two countries, and vowed to better relations that he accused his predecessors of letting lapse.

Beginning his joint press conference with Vladimir Putin, President Trump declared that U.S. relations with Russia have "never been worse."

He then added pointedly, that just changed "about four hours ago."

It certainly did. With his remarks in Helsinki and at the NATO summit in Brussels, Trump has signaled a historic shift in U.S. foreign policy that may determine the future of this nation and the fate of his presidency.

He has rejected the fundamental premises of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War and blamed our wretched relations with Russia, not on Vladimir Putin, but squarely on the U.S. establishment.

In a tweet prior to the meeting, Trump indicted the elites of both parties: "Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!"

Trump thereby repudiated the records and agendas of the neocons and their liberal interventionist allies, as well as the archipelago of War Party think tanks beavering away inside the Beltway.

The Russian military is ready to work with the US colleagues on all the areas discussed by the two presidents during the Helsinki summit, namely cooperation in Syria and mutual reduction of the strategic nuclear arsenals.

"Russian Defense Ministry is ready to implement the agreements on the international security, reached by Russia's President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump during the Helsinki summit yesterday," Ministry's spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov told reporters on Tuesday.

On Monday, Russian and the US leaders agreed to revitalize the military cooperation in several fields. During the press conference in the aftermath of the summit, Trump stated that Russian and US militaries proved to actually get along better than the politicians of the two countries over the past few years, naming deconfliction communication in Syria as an example.

President Trump expressed doubt about the accuracy of U.S. spy agencies and prosecutors that accuse Russia's government of intervening in the 2016 U.S. election to help him win.

Trump, speaking at a joint press conference in Finland with Russian President Vladimir Putin, defiantly said he retains an open mind about possible Russian culpability.

"I have President Putin, he just said it is not Russia. I will say this. I don't see any reason why it would be," Trump said.

Later, Trump said, "As you know, the whole concept of that came up perhaps a little bit before, but it came out as a reason why the Democrats lost an election, which frankly they should have been able to win because of the Electoral College."

Trump opened the press conference saying Putin had an "interesting idea" relating to alleged Russian interference, potentially referring to a subsequent Putin offer to facilitate interrogations of 12 Russian officials indicted last week for allegedly hacking Democratic emails.

The indictment of 12 Russian 'agents,' which included no collusion with Trump's team, is essentially a political and not legal document because it is almost certain the U.S. government will never have to present any evidence in court.

Charges against 12 Russian intelligence agents for allegedly hacking emails from the Democratic Party during the 2016 presidential election were announced by the U.S. Justice Department on Friday at the very moment President Donald Trump was meeting Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle and just days before a summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.

A central claim of Russia-gate has been that the Russian government with help from the Trump campaign stole emails from the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign and then gave those emails to WikiLeaks for publication to damage Clinton's quest for the White House.

US President Donald Trump claims he got many calls from NATO leaders thanking him for bringing them together during a tense summit in Brussels last week. He also changed his tune towards the bloc, moving from disdain to praise.

"We had a truly great summit that was inaccurately covered by much of the media. NATO is now strong and rich!" Trump tweeted on Monday. The US president also claimed that he had taken "many calls" from NATO leaders thanking him for "helping to bring them together" during the annual meeting in Brussels on July 11-12.

The allies did their best to display signs of unity last week, but the summit was dominated by clashes between the US and other NATO member states. As expected, President Trump hammered home his longstanding belief that his country is treated unfairly within the alliance, and other nations should do more burden-sharing in terms of defense spending.

Vladimir Putin made a bombshell claim during Monday's joint press conference with President Trump in Helsinki, Finland, when the Russian President said some $400 million in illegally earned profits was funneled to the Clinton campaign by associates of American-born British financier Bill Browder - at one time the largest foreign portfolio investors in Russia. The scheme involved members of the U.S. intelligence community, said Putin, who he said "accompanied and guided these transactions."

Browder made billions in Russia during the 90's. In December, a Moscow court sentenced Browder in absentia to nine years in prison for tax fraud, while he was also found guilty of tax evasion in a separate 2013 case. Putin accused Browder's associates of illegally earning over than $1.5 billion without paying Russian taxes, before sending $400 million to Clinton.

After offering to allow special counsel Robert Mueller's team to come to Russia for their investigation - as long as there was a reciprocal arrangement for Russian intelligence to investigate in the U.S., Putin said this:

For instance, we can bring up Mr. Browder, in this particular case. Business associates of Mr. Browder have earned over $1.5 billion in Russia and never paid any taxes neither in Russia or the United States and yet the money escaped the country. They were transferred to the United States. They sent [a] huge amount of money, $400,000,000, as a contribution to the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Well that's their personal case.

It might have been legal, the contribution itself but the way the money was earned was illegal. So we have solid reason to believe that some [US] intelligence officers accompanied and guided these transactions. So we have an interest in questioning them.