The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system has successfully shot down a target over Alaska, in the system's first intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM) intercept, according to the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA).

THAAD managed to shoot down the IRBM target launched from the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak, Alaska, on Tuesday, the MDA said in a statement cited by Reuters.

"The successful demonstration of THAAD against an IRBM-range missile threat bolsters the country's defensive capability against developing missile threats in North Korea and other countries around the globe and contributes to the broader strategic deterrence architecture," the MDA said in the statement.

"I couldn't be more proud of the government and contractor team who executed this flight test today," MDA director Lt. Gen. Sam Greaves said, as quoted by Fox News. "This test further demonstrates the capabilities of the THAAD weapon system and its ability to intercept and destroy ballistic missile threats. THAAD continues to protect our citizens, deployed forces and allies from a real and growing threat."

The intelligence community does not want Donald Trump to succeed, yet there are overarching issues that require US-Russia cooperation, former Pentagon official Michael Maloof told RT. Ray McGovern, a former CIA officer, joins the conversation.

After the G20 summit in Hamburg at the weekend, US President Donald Trump wrote an optimistic tweet, on a potential joint cyber security unit.

Moreover, Trump said that after a significant deal on Syria it's time to move forward and work with Russia. Despite his optimism, he may be facing opposition from within his administration.

The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, claims that "everybody" knows Russia meddled in last year's US presidential election. No evidence has been provided to prove the allegation.

US President Donald Trump's support came in no small part from those Americans who believe terrorism, and more specifically, "Islamic" terrorism pose an existential threat to the United States and the wider Western World.

It is curious then that President Trump's first trip abroad was to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the sociocultural source code of the very extremism infecting both the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as well as the wider, global extremism it inspires and fuels everywhere from Southeast Asia, western China and even in the streets of North America and Europe.

Far from a geopolitical gaff, US associations with Saudi Arabia and their mutual link and contribution to (not fighting against) terrorism is increasingly becoming an embarrassing, "open secret."

French President Emmanuel Macron is in hot water for saying that one of Africa's main problems is women having too many children. Social media has been grilling him for blaming innocent children rather than Western companies that are "looting" Africa.

Macron addressed African issues during the June 7-8 G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. However, the video of his speech was released on social media only on Monday.

The president said the African continent's problems were not economic, ecological, or political, but demographic.

"When countries still have seven to eight children per woman, you can decide to spend billions of euros, but you will not stabilize anything," he stated.

Donald Trump Jr. was informed ahead of a June 2016 meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer that material damaging to Hillary Clinton that he was offered was "part of a Russian government effort to aid his father's candidacy," the New York Times reported Monday evening.

The latest bombshell report comes after the White House spent Monday defending President Trump's eldest son following another Times report that the meeting last summer was intended to get damaging information about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. In a statement Sunday, Trump Jr. said he didn't know who he was meeting with beforehand, but had been told the person "might have information helpful to the campaign." He said the meeting with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya yielded no useful details.

The Human Rights Watch report called for the coalition to take more care in conducting its bombing campaign, particularly with regards to the types and size of bombs it is dropping, explains the organization's senior Iraq researcher Belkis Wille.

The Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi traveled to the city of Mosul to declare victory over ISIS on Sunday. After the terror group's former stronghold had been recaptured celebrations sprang up nationwide to mark the victory.

The Iraqi military, along with US support, started the campaign to liberate Mosul from ISIS terrorists in October 2016. Since then, human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have raised grave concerns about the civilian casualties being caused by coalition forces.

RT: Could you tell us more about the operation? What are the consequences of it?

Belkis Wille: The operation to retake Mosul, particularly the west of the city that has been raging since February, has come at an incredibly high cost. We've seen much of the west of the city destroyed by ground fire and by airstrikes, and we saw a mass spike in civilian casualties - thousands of civilians being wounded and killed in the fighting. The city has paid the price for this operation.

The White House Correspondents Association is considering a change to its bylaws that would keep outlets like Breitbart News from attaining a higher level of membership within the group, preventing them from taking part in decision-making.

CNN first reported the potential change, which the WHCA will vote on this week. The change would force the association's "regular members" to obtain credentials from the Standing Committee of Correspondents, which rejected a request from Breitbart News for permanent congressional press passes earlier this year.

Those "regular members" participate in voting and hold office within the association, which would effectively keep Breitbart reporters out of those roles within the group.

Six members of the association signed a letter opposing the potential bylaw change, including Charlie Spiering, Breitbart's White House correspondent; as well as reporters from conservative outlets Newsmax, Circa and The Daily Signal, according to CNN.

"The WHCA Board has in most cases done a great job in advocating for journalists' access, and showing respect to all members. The proposed bylaws change regarding membership is an unfortunate exception," the letter reads. "That's because the bylaws change would mean some members and hard pass holders who regularly cover the White House will not have full participation in the organization that is supposed to represent them regarding access among other things."

WHCA president Jeff Mason defended proposed change to CNN, saying the change "would affect a small handful of regular members."

"We gave all of them a heads up," Mason told CNN. "We've also given them a chance to voice their opposition in a public way."

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said Sunday that President Trump "absolutely" did not accept Russian President Vladimir Putin's denial that Moscow did not meddle in last year's presidential election, despite the Kremlin's assertions that Trump was convinced.

"No that is not true. The president absolutely did not believe the denial of President Putin," Priebus told host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.

The White House official stressed that Trump "immediately" addressed the allegations that Russia interfered. Priebus said Trump pushed the issue for a significant portion of their meeting, bringing up the topic more than once.

"[He] went after that issue at least two separate times. This was not just a five-minute piece of the conversation, this was an extensive portion of the meeting. And after going after it with President Putin more than once — two times maybe even three times — the president at that point, after spending a large portion of the meeting on the subject, moved on to other topics," Priebus told Wallace.

The New York Times reported Saturday that Trump pushed Putin on the subject for 40 minutes during a meeting that lasted over two hours.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also told reporters that Trump moved toward other topics such as the Syrian civil war after discussing Russian meddling.

Some critics, however, have questioned how strongly the president pushed on the issue.

Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have suggested in public remarks that the president believed the Kremlin leader's denial.

A future history of the G20 in Hamburg might start with a question posed by President Donald Trump — actually his speechwriter — a few days earlier in Warsaw:

"The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive."

What initially amounted to a juvenile/reductionist clash of civilizations tirade written by Stephen Miller — the same one who penned the "American carnage" epic on Trump's inauguration as well as the original Muslim travel ban — might actually have found some answers in Hamburg.

The G20 as a whole was a noxious military dystopia disguised as a global summit. "Welcome to Hell" and other assorted protests, on multiple levels, were sort of answering another Trump-in-Warsaw question; "Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?"

Democrats have filed amendments calling to block funding, including from the defense budget, to block any agreement between President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin on a joint cybersecurity unit.

Senator Don Beyer from Virginia introduced the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Monday.

"Donald Trump's proposal to form a 'cyber security unit' with Putin is a terrible idea that would immediately jeopardize American cybersecurity," Beyer said. "Trump must acknowledge that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and take strong, meaningful action to prevent it from happening again in future elections."

The amendment blocks all funding "authorized to be appropriated" by NDAA or "otherwise made available for fiscal year 2018 for the Department of Defense" to any Russia-US efforts on cybersecurity issues.

"None of the funds ... may be obligated or expended to share intelligence, information, equipment, personnel, or facilities related to any cyber agreement entered into with Russia after December 31, 2016," it states.