The European Union's foreign policy chief on Tuesday said moves by President Trump to sanction officials associated with the International Criminal Court (ICC) are "unacceptable and unprecedented."

"The European Union expresses grave concern about the announced measures and reconfirms its unwavering support for the International Criminal Court," Josep Borrell, the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, said in a statement.

"Sanctions against those involved in the work of the ICC, its staff and their families as well as persons associated with the ICC are unacceptable and unprecedented in scope and content," he continued.

The plane used by Boris Johnson and members of the royal family for international travel is being repainted in the colours of the Union flag to "better represent" the UK abroad.

The red, white and blue "rebranding" will cost about £900,000, No 10 said.

Downing Street said it represented "value for money" and that all of the work was being done in the UK.

But opposition parties were critical, saying the money would be better spent on helping the victims of coronavirus.

No 10 said the aircraft was currently in Cambridgeshire for pre-planned repainting in "national branding".

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) isn't likely to have heard the old Australian working-class expression that a man is too crooked to lie straight in bed. It meant that lying and cheating are in the nature of a deformity, and can't be operated on or cured. "The Salisbury Poisonings", the three-part, three-hour film which concluded its run on Tuesday evening, was composed by individuals like that.

That isn't news. From the beginning in March 2018, the BBC has been a platform for the British Government's narrative that Russia, directed by President Vladimir Putin, waged chemical warfare on British soil, attempting to assassinate Sergei and Yulia Skripal, and then killing Dawn Sturgess. In May of 2018 - almost three months after the Skripals were attacked on March 4; one month before Sturgess was hospitalised — the corporation broadcast a series of interviews with the medical staff at Salisbury District Hospital attempting to prove that a Russian-made nerve agent called Novichok had been the weapon of the crime. The BBC broadcaster, Mark Urban — he admitted later - had been preparing interviews with Skripal by arrangement with the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), and then to have produced his book on the case with the NATO information warfare unit, Bellingcat. In November 2018, the corporation broadcast a fresh hour claiming to be the "inside story" of the Salisbury nerve agent attack.

The corporation then began negotiations on an even longer version of the story. By mid-May 2019 money was committed and other terms agreed for what was initially planned to be "a two-part factual drama". Casting followed; filming began in October of that year. The drama was stretched into three parts. The facts were stretched, too.

Unravelling the facts composed by a crooked man trying to lie straight can be a whodunit of the conventional English type. This time, though, the BBC has revealed the complicated plot of a true crime hatched in the Cabinet Office in London by a character the new film introduces with an untraceable name.

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said the removal was not a reflection on New Zealand's relationship with Iraq.

"Although the embassy is closing, our strong commitment to the global fight against terrorism remains," Mr Peters said.

"New Zealand will continue to contribute its other lines of effort against ISIS, including through a small number of military roles in the coalition and the provision of stabilisation funding to Iraq."

"The embassy was opened in 2015 to support the New Zealand Defence Force military deployment to Iraq and, with the withdrawal of the majority NZDF troops from Taji earlier this year, the primary rationale for the embassy in Baghdad has been removed."

Recently released documents have revealed details about a shipment of deadly pathogens in 2019 from Canada's National Microbiology Lab to China — confirming publicly for the first time who sent them, what was shipped, and where it ended up.

Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, her husband Keding Cheng, and her students from China were removed from Canada's only level-4 lab over what has been described as a possible "policy breach," according to CBC.

The Public Health Agency of Canada had requested the RCMP to step in several months earlier.

Shipments of the viruses are said not to be related to the outbreak of COVID-19 or research into the pandemic. PHAC also said the shipment and Qiu's eviction from the lab were not related in any way.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on policing Tuesday amid increasing pressure and nationwide protests over the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and other Black people in custody or at the hands of law enforcement officers.

"Today is about pursuing common sense and fighting, fighting for a cause like we seldom get the chance to fight for," Trump said. "We have to find common ground."

Trump said that his executive order would set standards on the use of force "as high and as strong as there is on Earth" and that he would prioritize federal grants to police departments that met those standards.

The order would leverage federal grant money to encourage police departments to meet a set of standards, including a ban on chokeholds except when an officer's life is at risk, the president said. The Supreme Court, however, has already said that under the Constitution, deadly force is allowed only when police officers fear for their own safety or that of others.

If Canada's current foreign policy is any indication, should it win a UN Security Council seat on Wednesday, it would more likely buttress the positions of Washington than to pursue independent, let alone principled positions.

When Canada's largest online news site asked readers whether they support Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's efforts to get a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council (UNSC) or not, it should have probably been little more than a formality.

Not only does the Toronto Star often reflect the positions of the Liberal Party, but its readership tends to lean to the Center and hold the sort of values that align with the UN mission as well as with Canada's projected image as a sort of international 'good neighbor.'

Surprisingly, however, patrons weren't convinced with the idea that "Canada deserves a seat on the UNSC."

At the last meeting of the Tripartite Contact Group in Minsk (TKG) on June 15th, (the body which led to creation of the Normandy Four and the Minsk Agreement), Kiev arrived at a surprising position which effectively eliminates a path to regain control over the Donbass. Kiev's change of position leaves only a military option open.

The Minsk Agreement contained a number of requirements from both sides; from Kiev it required a change in the constitution in the direction of a federal state. Such changes would trigger on the Donbass side the eventual hand-over of rule back to Kiev. But Kiev to date has failed to make constitutional changes, contrary to the terms of the Minsk Agreement.

On The Ukrainian delegation at the talks of the Tripartite Contact Group in Minsk (TKG) predictably stated the need for the full resumption of Ukrainian rule over the territory of the DPR and LPR. With this, Kiev insisted on the resumption of work of Ukrainian state institutions in these territories, as well as tax and settlement systems "within the framework of the Ukrainian legal field".

According to the office of the President of Ukraine, such demands were put forward during the next meeting of the group, held on June 15. Obviously, these requirements are clearly contrary to the package of measures to implement the Minsk agreements, approved by the UN Security Council. Aware of this fact, the Ukrainian side stated the optionality of its implementation.

The Department of Justice has slapped ex-national security advisor John Bolton with a lawsuit, seeking to stop the publication of his upcoming book, insisting it contains classified material and must complete a pre-print review.

Filed on Tuesday, the 27-page complaint requests that Bolton be ordered to obtain "written authorization" to publish the memoir - The Room Where It Happened - which has been billed as a tell-all account of his time working in the White House under the Donald Trump administration.

Publishing the book would be a "clear breach of agreements [Bolton] signed as a condition of his employment and as a condition of gaining access to highly classified information," DOJ said in its filing, arguing the book is "rife" with such material.

There has been remarkable news in the last few days: much of the Israel lobby in the United States is in open revolt against the Israeli government to try and stop annexation of the West Bank.

The rightwing group AIPAC has for once given politicians a green light to criticize Israel over annexation; hardliners such as Robert Satloff, David Makovsky and Democratic Majority for Israel are urging Israel not to annex West Bank lands, and the Democratic group J Street is pushing a letter to Netanyahu signed by 28 Democratic senators saying it would "betray our shared democratic values" by denying the possibility of a Palestinian state, along with statements from nine Senate candidates.

Maybe most important, Haim Saban, a leading Democratic donor, is reported to have sherpa'd an op-ed by a UAE ambassador urging Israel not to annex. The bombshell op-ed in a rightwing Israeli publication has enraged Trump's pro-Israel ideologues who paved the way for annexation under the Trump "peace plan."