Former President Donald Trump denounced Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Judge Juan Merchan after being convicted Thursday.

A Manhattan jury of seven men and five women convicted Trump on 34 counts of falsification of business records Thursday after nearly 12 hours of deliberations. Trump accused Merchan of being corrupt and said the trial was a "disgrace."

"It's a rigged trial, a disgrace. They wouldn't give us a venue change. We were at 5% or 6% in this district, in this area. This was a rigged, disgraceful trial. The real verdict is going to be November 5th, by the people, and they know what happened here, and everybody knows what happened here. You have a Soros-backed DA, and the whole thing, we didn't do a thing wrong, I'm a very innocent man and it's okay, I am fighting for our country, I am fighting for our constitution."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has urged the Islamic world to make a "common decision" to oppose Israel. In a speech to lawmakers from his AKP party on Wednesday, he said:

"I have some words to say to the Islamic world: What are you waiting for to take a common decision? Israel is not just a threat to Gaza but to all of humanity. No state is safe as long as Israel does not follow international law and does not feel bound by international law."

He then accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of committing 'genocide'.

Erdogan's remarks came days after Israeli forces bombed a refugee camp in the southern Gazan city of Rafah, killing 45 people. The airstrike, which was carried out less than a week after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to cease military operations in the city, triggered a wave of international condemnation and was described by Netanyahu as a "tragic mistake."

Erdogan said:

"No ideology sees the burning to death of innocent civilians in their tents as legitimate. The world is watching the barbarism of this vampire called Netanyahu live."

The Turkish president also condemned his NATO allies, declaring:

"America, this blood is also on your hands. Heads of the states in Europe, you have become complicit in Israel's vampirism because you remained silent."

For decades, Israel has been "one of the club", a proud member of the "good-guy countries". A handful of regimes protected by a bubble that makes them almost immune to criticism or consequence, whatever crimes and evils they might commit.

No matter how many ships they bombed or children they shot or open air prison camps they ran, the general tone of Western media was the same - Israel are good guys.

Now, there are signs that could change, that the next step in the Gaza narrative will be a heel-turn that makes Israel an official "bad guy".

The hints have been there for a while, starting almost immediately following October 7th attack last year, and picking up pace in the last couple of weeks.

In fact the Israeli Prime Minister became the first non-African and non-Russian charged with war crimes by the ICC earlier this year.

Now let's be quite clear here. Netanyahu IS a war criminal. He is a blood-soaked tyrant, guilty of vast amounts of illicit slaughter.

But let's remember that in the real world blood-soaked war criminals go unpunished - and indeed sometimes get awarded Nobel Peace Prizes - every day. The ICC never moved against Bush or Blair or Obama or Brown or their cadre of war criminal subordinates.

Until recently "Bibi" was in that Teflon-coated club. He has been slaughtering innocents for years and years, while institutions and the legacy media happily ignored the fact. Now suddenly he's not.

This needs to be interrogated.

The question must be - what is different now?

The Prime Minister of Georgia, Irakli Kobakhidze, stated that there will be no "Maidan" in the country amid the ongoing protests against the law on "foreign agents."

"As for the parallel between the 'Maidan' and the processes taking place in Georgia, I want to inform everyone that no one will attain 'Maidan' in Georgia. Let me remind what consequences the 'Maidan' had for Ukraine. Then the leadership of Ukraine was appointed from outside, once, then a second time, and in the end the appointer took no accountability for the development of events," the Georgian PM told reporters.

According to him, the most important thing for the Georgian authorities is the concern about the country's independence.

Washington could soon flood social media with videos provoking "universal fear" in Sweden and Finland, Russian intelligence claims

Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service claims that the US is preparing a major propaganda campaign aimed at sparking fear among the population of Sweden and Finland about Moscow's alleged "territorial appetites."

In a press release on Thursday, the service claimed that the US State Department, "gripped with anti-Russian hysteria," has transformed into an "unprincipled propaganda mouthpiece" that is now striving to turn the entire international community against Russia.

The first targets of this propaganda machine, according to Moscow, are the residents of Sweden and Finland, which recently joined NATO.

Italy and Greece will reportedly take in some Latin American asylum seekers

Some migrants applying for asylum at US outposts in Latin America may be sent to Italy or Greece instead, CBS News reported on Thursday, citing anonymous sources and documents from the US Department of Homeland Security.

Washington set up 'Safe Mobility Offices' (SMO) in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Guatemala last year, with the idea to reduce illegal border crossings by letting people apply to immigrate legally. Arrangements have already been made with Spain and Canada to take some of these migrants.

Greece and Italy would likely accept "roughly 500 or fewer" migrants each under the new arrangements, which have not yet been officially announced, one source told CBS.

The guilty verdict is the first in American history for a former president.

Former US president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump has been found guilty of falsifying business records to influence the 2016 election, in a case related to alleged 'hush money' payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, charged Trump last year with 34 counts of criminal behavior, alleging that the Republican politician sought "to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election."

The jury deliberated for two days and returned the verdict just before 5pm on Thursday: guilty on all counts, making Trump the first US president to ever be convicted of a felony.

"This was a rigged, disgraceful trial," Trump told reporters after the verdict was announced. "The real verdict will be on November 5, by the people. And we will keep fighting, and we'll fight till the end and we'll win."

An Israeli father gave a frightening TV interview back in February.

Thomas Hand grasped the small palm of his 9-year-old daughter Emily. The girl had been released in a prisoner exchange with Hamas only a few months prior.

As she watched on, her father told Israeli interviewer Tali Moreno he had been willing to sacrifice her, in order to further Israel's genocidal war effort against the Palestinians in Gaza.

Speaking of her short time in Palestinian captivity, he said that the Israeli military "had to do everything in its powers to destroy Hamas," even if that meant killing his own daughter.

"I realized that she could be bombed, could be shot by friendly fire," he said. And yet: "That was a price that in my head, I could say: 'Yeah okay.' So long as we destroy Hamas."


You can watch the relevant clip in the video above.

The interview was with Israel's Kan, a state-funded channel. Although conducted mostly in English, there are a few exchanges in Hebrew with Emily herself. You can watch a subtitled version of the full interview here.

But Hand's cold-blooded attitude towards his own child is only one example of a wider phenomenon in Israeli society.

Many Israelis seem willing to sacrifice their own civilians on the altar of Zionism - and sometimes even themselves too.

Kiev has allegedly attempted to damage Russian radar stations designed to detect ICBMs.

Reports that Ukraine has attacked Russia's early ballistic missile warning stations are unnerving the country's American backers, according to the Washington Post on Wednesday.

Last week, Ukrainian sources claimed that two operations had been carried out against Russian long-range facilities designed to detect intercontinental ballistic missile launches. The Russian Defense Ministry did not comment on the claim. Footage shared online suggests that at least one of the attacks caused damage.

In a statement on Saturday, Senator Dmitry Rogozin, who previously headed up the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said Moscow should hold the US responsible for these attacks if they were carried out by Ukraine.

"Washington has hired a reckless bandit, who is trying to damage...a key element of our system of strategic nuclear forces combat control."

A US official told the Post that Washington was "concerned" with the news.

In a notable shift from past acrimony, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has engaged in discussions with Elon Musk about a possible advisory role for the Tesla mogul should Trump retake the White House, the Wall Street Journal reports. The move could see Musk influencing policies on border security and the economy.

Musk, known for his outspoken views and innovative leadership at Tesla and SpaceX, has increasingly voiced his concerns over national issues, aligning more with conservative viewpoints in recent months. Alongside billionaire investor Nelson Peltz, Musk has also taken a proactive stance against what they perceive as electoral vulnerabilities, briefing Trump on a data-centric project aimed at curbing voter fraud — a topic of significant controversy and debate.

The discussion around the advisory role and voting project took place at a March gathering at Montsorrel, Peltz's sprawling oceanfront estate in Palm Beach, Fla., with a group of wealthy and powerful friends, some of the people familiar with the discussions said. The New York Times earlier reported the meeting had occurred, but details of the discussions haven't been previously disclosed.

As guests nibbled on a Sunday morning breakfast of eggs, bacon and fresh fruit served by Peltz's household staff, Peltz, Trump and Musk held forth on the November elections, criticizing Biden's stewardship of the country, the people said. -WSJ

The discussions, still in preliminary stages and without definitive roles, would mark a notable pivot in Trump's strategy - embracing influential tech and business leaders to bolster his campaign promises of economic revitalization and stringent border controls. The meeting with Peltz suggests a concerted effort to integrate Musk's technological prowess and worldview into the fabric of Trump's policy initiatives.