A Malaysia Airlines plane crashed in eastern Ukraine on Thursday with 295 people on board, and U.S. intelligence later confirmed that it was brought down by an antiaircraft missile.


The Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine immediately blamed each other for the crash, which occurred as the Boeing 777 was flying its regular route from Amsterdam to the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

President Obama said his administration was "working to determine whether there were American citizens on board" the downed plane. "It looks like it may be a terrible tragedy," he told an audience in Wilmington, Del. Russia's Interfax news agency said as many as 23 Americans may have been among the passengers. More than half the passengers were Dutch, the airline said.


Obama said U.S. national security officials are in close contact with the Ukrainian government. "The United States will offer any assistance we can to help determine what happened and why," he said. Vice President Biden called Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to extend that offer, the White House said.


Hours later, a U.S. official said American intelligence agencies had confirmed that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile. The official, who was not authorized to speak on the record about an early intelligence assessment, said government analysts were scrambling to determine who fired the missile.

Apple will pay up to $400 million to compensate consumers for illegal price-fixing conspiracy for electronic books, officials said Wednesday.

The settlement would reimburse consumers in 33 states whose authorities sought damages for Apple's price-fixing, according to a statement from New York's attorney general.

But the settlement is contingent on the verdict being upheld in a July 2013 federal court ruling that Apple violated antitrust laws by orchestrating a conspiracy with five publishers to raise e-book prices.

If Apple's federal conviction is overturned, no money will be paid. If the case is retried, the settlement amount will be $50 million, the statement said.

Flying over warzone Ukraine, The probable and Convenient Happens

At no juncture during the Ukrainian crisis could the downing of Malaysian Boeing 777 flight MH17 have been more convenient for NATO and its proxy regime in Kiev.

Kiev's forces were being picked apart in eastern Ukraine with several units encircled and destroyed. In the west of the country, dissent was growing by Ukrainians unwilling to march off to fight in the east. NATO's attempts to bait Russia into moving into Ukrainian territory and shift global opinion against Moscow had repeatedly failed.

The final card to be played by the US was another round of sanctions that almost immediately was ridiculed as ineffective and impotent. Even US corporate-financier interests condemned the latest round of sanctions claiming they were "unilateral" in nature and thus limited US enterprise from interacting with Russia while leaving European competitors free to move into the void. An effective US policy of confronting, containing, and undermining Russia would require multilateral sanctions with almost universal support - but the impetus for such sweeping sanctions did not exist - until now.

The US FAA Declared Ukrainian Airspace Off-Limits 3 Months Ago

Indeed, the stars have aligned for NATO. While the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) declared Ukrainian airspace off limits to all aircraft under its jurisdiction, it appears other airlines continued flying over what has been a warzone for months. The Atlantic in a report titled, "The FAA's Notice Prohibiting Airline Flights Over Ukraine," stated clearly that:

Did aviation authorities know that this was a dangerous area?

Yes, they most certainly did. Nearly three months ago, on the "Special Rules" section of its site, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration put out an order prohibiting American pilots, airlines, charter carriers, and everyone else over whom the FAA has direct jurisdiction, from flying over parts of Ukraine.

Israeli forces, backed by artillery shells and airstrikes, launched a major ground offensive into Gaza late Thursday, marking a dramatic escalation in the 10 day-old conflict with the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Declaring a new phase in its operation, Israel's military said it was entering the coastal strip to wipe out Hamas's rocket capabilities and to dismantle what is believed to be an extensive network of tunnels used by the militants to infiltrate Israel.

The operation came hours after diplomatic efforts in Cairo to negotiate a sustainable truce between Israel and Hamas failed.

The ground offensive began at 10 p.m. Thursday and involves dozens of infantry, armed core, and artillery units, as well as air and naval support, said Israeli Defense Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner. The military, he added, plans to call up additional reservist troops to bolster the 50,000 reservists called up so far.


In Gaza City, from a high floor in an apartment building, reporters watched an hour of heavy fire along the eastern and northern borders of the Gaza Strip.

The sky was lit, as if by lightning strikes. There were sustained barrages, flares and drones flying overhead. Israeli warships fired from the Mediterranean Sea. Hamas' military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, reported fighting with Israeli troops near the Erez border crossing.

David Cameron's senior adviser on internet porn filters has appeared at crown court accused of child indecency offenses.

Patrick Rock is charged with three counts of making indecent photographs of children and one count of possessing indecent images of children.

The offences, said to have been committed last summer in the US, relate to more than 60 images, all described as category C - the lowest on the scale.

Before his arrest and resignation, Rock was an adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron on internet porn filters, introduced last year to curb children's ability to access adult content online.

According to the Open Rights Group, the government-backed ISP filters have been overzealous in blocking completely innocuous websites, raising concerns over web censorship. The percentage of sites hosting legal pornographic material online is thought to be close to 4 percent.

Kiev's accusations that Russia shot down a Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jet are "absurd," the Russian Ministry of Defense said.

"This is absurd, like all previous accusations from Kiev officials concerning Russia's Ministry of Defense," a ministerial official told journalists on Thursday.

Kiev has accused Russia of downing its Su-25 fighter jet on June 16. Andrey Lysenko, spokesman of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, said a Russian military jet shot down a plane that was fulfilling a military operation over the east of Ukraine at 19:00 local time. Earlier Kiev blamed the attack on self-defense forces.

On Wednesday, self-defense forces claimed they had shot down two of the Ukrainian Air Force Su-25 fighter jets.

The high-ranked Defense Ministry official said that "almost every day" Russia "gets exposed" and receives threats that "irrefutable evidence" will be released, but every time "this evidence disappears somewhere."

"And the confusion is being covered with new, more fantastic accusations," he added.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the military to start a ground operation in Gaza, his office has announced.

"The prime minister and defence minister have instructed the IDF to begin a ground operation tonight in order to hit the terror tunnels from Gaza into Israel," the statement said.

A large IDF force has launched a new phase of Operation Protective Edge starting a ground operation in the Gaza Strip, IDF spokesperson has confirmed.

BREAKING NEWS: A large IDF force has just launched a ground operation in the Gaza Strip. A new phase of Operation Protective Edge has begun.

- IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) July 17, 2014

A recent poll conducted by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's defense team, part of an effort to force a change of venue for his trial, found that a majority of Bostonians - 58 percent - are already convinced the accused Marathon bomber is "definitely guilty."

That may be persuasive to the presiding judge. But what's perhaps more interesting is that the poll found a sizable number of Boston residents - 42 percent - are still "unsure," indicating that even the population with the closest proximity to the April 15, 2013, act of terrorism still harbor doubts about the "official" version of events.

Without seeing the evidence the government claims to have of the younger Tsarnaev's guilt, and due to many anomalies and lingering questions about the bombing and its aftermath, we're siding with the 42 percent who just aren't sure yet.

Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe recently expressed surprise about the poll's results in a column in which he wrote: "Call me Pollyanna, but I'm shocked they were able to find the 42 percent who don't think he's guilty." While people answering that they're unsure about Tsarnaev's guilt isn't the same as thinking he's innocent, it does reflect a substantial feeling that the jury is still out in many Bostonians' minds.

Cullen's surprise makes sense when one considers the nature of the event, with its gut-wrenching imagery and suspenseful days-long manhunt. After an experience like that, it's understandable that Bostonians would want someone to hang.

And from the beginning, law-enforcement along with the vast majority of the media have implied that the evidence against Tsarnaev is so airtight, and that his guilt is so self-evident, that it's bordering on the absurd to assert some things in the official version may not be exactly as we've been told.

Ayman Mohyeldin, the NBC News correspondent who personally witnessed yesterday's killing by Israel of four Palestinian boys on a Gazan beach and who has received widespread praise for his brave and innovative coverage of the conflict, has been told by NBC executives to leave Gaza immediately. According to an NBC source upset at his treatment, the executives claimed the decision was motivated by "security concerns" as Israel prepares a ground invasion, a claim repeated to me by an NBC executive. But late yesterday, NBC sent another correspondent, Richard Engel, along with an American producer who has never been to Gaza and speaks no Arabic, into Gaza to cover the ongoing Israeli assault (both Mohyeldin and Engel speak Arabic).

Mohyeldin is an Egyptian-American with extensive experience reporting on that region. He has covered dozens of major Middle East events in the last decade for CNN, NBC and Al Jazeera English, where his reporting on the 2008 Israeli assault on Gaza made him a star of the network. NBC aggressively pursued him to leave Al Jazeera, paying him far more than the standard salary for its on-air correspondents.

Yesterday, Mohyeldin witnessed and then reported on the brutal killing by Israeli gunboats of four young boys as they played soccer on a beach in Gaza City. He was instrumental, both in social media and on the air, in conveying to the world the visceral horror of the attack.

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How the Iron Dome works:
Enemy fires missiles or artillery. Radar detects and tracks trajectory. Battle management and control unit analyze and estimate impact location. Two Tamir missiles are fired to intercept and destroy enemy projectile.

A US Senate panel has approved a measure that would double the funding for Israel's Iron Dome missile system as Tel Aviv's new wave of aggression against Palestinians continues.

More than 200 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds wounded, including women and children, by the Israeli offensive against the besieged Gaza Strip. In response to the attack, Palestinian resistance fighters fired rockets into Israeli cities. The Iron Dome has reportedly shot down most of the rockets fired from Gaza. One Israeli has died by a rocket.

On Tuesday, the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee approved a spending bill that would provide $621.6 million for Israeli missile defense, including $351 million for the Iron Dome.

"It works," said Senator Dick Durbin, the chairman of the subcommittee.

The Iron Dome is a short-range rocket defense system designed to intercept rockets and artillery shells fired from a range of between four and 70 kilometers.

In 2013, Congress allocated $235 million for the Iron Dome. And the Obama administration had requested about $176 million for the system for 2015, but the Senate panel doubled the amount.

Israel already receives billions of dollars of American taxpayers' money each year. Under an existing 10-year aid agreement between Washington and Tel Aviv signed in 2007, $30 billion of American money is flowing to Israel.

The US annual military aid to Israel has been elevated from $2.4 billion to $3.1 billion through 2017 under the existing agreement.

Meanwhile, US and Israeli officials have discussed a surge in US military aid to Israel in a new aid package that would extend through 2027.