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Republican presidential candidate and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took another swipe at former President Trump on Friday, claiming he’s a “con artist” amid his legal woes. The Trump campaign’s financial disclosures for the first quarter revealed that just over half of the money he raised for his 2024 bid has been used to pay legal fees, the Washington Post reported. Christie called the move “ridiculous,” and claimed the former president’s supporters were likely left in the dark. “You really need to have people who are donating $10, $20, $50 to your campaign, pay for your high priced lawyers for indictments that you’ve all put on yourself by paying off a porn star by holding back classified documents, despite the fact that they’ve been asked for voluntarily for 18 months?” Christie said in an interview on CNN. “I mean, this is ridiculous. And he is using these people in a way that I don’t think that they completely know about.” “People are giving to him and because they think it’s going to help him get reelected president when all he’s doing is grifting off these people,” he continued. “He is a con artist, who is conning them out of their money, pretending he wants to be their president. Well, what he wants is a free ride for the legal defense he’s getting for the criminal charges he personally faces.” FULL STORY

From Video footage A drone attack on an ammunition depot in Crimea has led to civilian evacuations and disrupted transport, Russian authorities have said. Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed governor of occupied Crimea, said Ukraine was behind the attack, without providing evidence. Mr Aksyonov said local residents living within five kilometres of the blast were being evacuated. Rail services across the Kerch bridge have also reportedly been halted. Earlier on Saturday, Russian authorities stopped traffic on the bridge, but then swiftly reopened it to cars. A later update from the Moscow-installed government said road traffic was again halted until further notice. Kerch bridge is hated symbol of Russian occupation Mr Aksyonov said infrastructure facilities in the Krasnogvardeysky district in Crimea were the target. FULL STORY

A top Senate Republican has released an FBI document detailing an allegation President Joe Biden and his son accepted bribes from a Ukrainian firm. Chuck Grassley, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said: "The American people can now read this document for themselves." The unclassified memo is a June 2020 internal FBI report outlining claims by a foreign informant. There is no evidence that Joe Biden received any payments from Ukraine. Senior congressional Republicans have acknowledged the allegation is unverified. The memo contains a claim that Hunter Biden was hired by the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, in 2013 as a way to gain support from his father, who was the US vice-president at the time. Hunter Biden: Who are the IRS tax whistleblowers? FULL STORY

Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner revealed the one statement that "conclusively" proves former President Donald Trump's "corrupt intent" in the January 6 probe during an MSNBC interview on Saturday morning. On Tuesday, Trump said he received a letter from the Department of Justice (DOJ) stating that he is a target of the investigation into the January 6, 2021, riot at the United States Capitol building that saw a mob of his supporters—allegedly motivated by his unfounded election fraud claims—violently protest in a failed effort to block Joe Biden's Electoral College victory. Trump said he anticipates that he will be indicted, with legal experts adding that an indictment could be handed down in the coming weeks. The former president, meanwhile, has declared his innocence in the case. Kirschner, a legal analyst who frequently vocalizes criticisms of the former president, weighed in on the DOJ's probe during an appearance on MSNBC's The Katie Phang Show. Full Story and Video

Thousands of people have been evacuated from homes and hotels on the Greek island of Rhodes after wildfires engulfed large parts of the island. The country's fire service has described the fires as the most difficult it is currently facing. It is estimated more than 3,500 people have been moved by land and sea to safer locations. The island has been battling wildfires fanned by strong winds since Tuesday, amidst a heatwave in Europe. No injuries have been reported, according to the Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection in Greece. It said visitors are being evacuated safely from the affected areas of Rhodes - which represent less than 10% of the island's tourist accommodation - and are being redirected to other hotels on the island. New Greece heatwave warning as fires still burn FULL STORY

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People often bemoan gray hair and wrinkled skin as some of the most unpleasant side effects of aging. It may be discouraging to watch your youthful visage slip away, but the status of your strength, balance and flexibility is of much greater concern. Significant declines in these areas can lead to pain, falls and fractures, and an overall loss of mobility and functionality. Think about the inability to play with the grandkids, climb stairs or carry groceries. No matter how active we are, our muscle mass and strength decline as we age. In fact, muscle mass and strength peak at 30 to 35 years old. After that, they slowly but steadily decline. At age 65 for women and 70 for men, the pace of these declines increases, according to the National Institutes of Health. Similarly, everyone’s balance and flexibility decrease with age due to changes in vision, sensory nerves, joints, ligaments and more. Full Article

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Global air forces transitioning to Lockheed Martin's prized F-35 fifth-generation jets are freeing up F-16s for countries like Ukraine, the former head of the defense giant's F-35 program told Newsweek. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 drove many nations to turn to the F-35 in a rapidly-changing security environment, former Lockheed Martin F-35 general manager, Tom Burbage, told Newsweek. Some of these countries had "been on the fence" about procuring F-35s before early 2022, added Burbage, who is co-author of F-35: The Inside Story of the Lightning II. But with Finland having hopped onto the F-35 program, joining other nations bordering the Arctic such as Canada and Norway, another group of "natural alliances" is coalescing in the Pacific, he said. FULL ARTICLE

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As part of his candidature for president in 2024, the former President Trump launched a tough-on-crime proposal on Friday to punish human traffickers with the death penalty. In a video published by his campaign, Trump promised to "immediately end the Biden border nightmare that traffickers are using to exploit vulnerable women and children." “I will urge Congress to ensure that anyone caught trafficking children across our border receives the death penalty immediately,” he added. Title 42, a pandemic-era legislation that was repealed earlier this year, was suggested to be reinstated by the former president in order to expeditiously remove migrants and send people who had been smuggled across the border back to their native countries. Trump additionally promoted "Sound of Freedom," the divisive box office success about a Homeland Security Department agent who claims to have looked into paedophiles and trafficking organisations, in the campaign video. This week, the former president showed the movie at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club. Copyright 07.22.2023

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President Biden’s video featuring clips from a Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speech to tout his legislative accomplishments reached more than 30 million views in 12 hours after it was posted Tuesday evening, according to statistics first shared with The Hill. The video received the second-highest impressions on a Biden video since he was inaugurated, only behind his reelection campaign launch video that dropped in April. The video received more than 34 million views as of Wednesday around 10:30 a.m. and more than 10 million of those were in the first three hours since it dropped. It also received more than 200,000 shares and more than 2 million engagements as of Wednesday morning. FULL STORY

Hunter Biden’s lawyer filed an ethics complaint against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) Friday, requesting that an ethics watchdog “immediately” initiate a review of Greene’s conduct after she showed sexually explicit photos of Biden at a congressional hearing this week. In a letter to the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), Biden attorney Abbe David Lowell slammed Greene’s actions as “abhorrent behavior that blatantly violates House Ethics rules and standards of official conduct.” “This week, your colleague has lowered herself, and by extension the entire House of Representatives, to a new level of abhorrent behavior that blatantly violates House Ethics rules and standards of official conduct. If the OCE takes its responsibilities seriously, it will promptly and decisively condemn and discipline Ms. Greene for her latest actions,” Lowell wrote. FULL STORY

A prominent Russian pro-war blogger who has criticized President Vladimir Putin and his military’s mishaps in Ukraine was arrested on Friday, in a move that suggested the Kremlin’s patience with dissent has grown thinner in the wake of the Wagner mercenary rebellion last month. Igor Girkin, a former KGB officer who helped Russia seize Crimea and was convicted of mass murder for his role in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine, was taken from his home in Moscow by security agents on Friday and charged with “extremist activity,” according to state media and a post on his Telegram account attributed to his wife. Girkin, who also goes by the nom de guerre Igor Strelkov, is among the best-known of Russia’s “milbloggers,” a group of war correspondents who support the invasion but have grown increasingly critical of the military’s faltering operations in Ukraine. Girkin had in recent months taken his criticisms to another level, lambasting the Russian state and even Putin himself. FULL STORY

A few years ago, Cambodia's ruler launched the most ruthless crackdown of his career to annihilate his opponents. Facing popular opposition, Hun Sen used the courts to dismantle the political party threatening his rule. Ranks of MPs were thrown out of parliament while the leaders were arrested. Having crushed his rivals, he cruised to victory six months later at the 2018 election, winning all 125 seats in Cambodia's parliament. For voters heading to the polls again this Sunday - it's déjà vu with their only alternative banned. "It's a rigged election because there are no real strong opposition parties," one voter, an aid worker in Phnom Penh, told the BBC. Hun Sen, now 70, has ruled Cambodia since 1985. A former Khmer Rouge official who defected to Vietnam before the regime's fall, his survivalist grip on power has led to his boast that he is the world's longest-serving prime minister. For nearly 40 years, he has consolidated power through a network of interests, including the military, police and intelligence groups. FULL STORY

Seven leading companies in artificial intelligence have committed to managing risks posed by the tech, the White House has said. This will include testing the security of AI, and making the results of those tests public. Representatives from Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI joined US President Joe Biden to make the announcement. It follows a number of warnings about the capabilities of the technology. The pace at which the companies have been developing their tools have prompted fears over the spread of disinformation, especially in the run up to the 2024 US presidential election. "We must be clear-eyed and vigilant about the threats emerging from emerging technologies that can pose - don't have to but can pose - to our democracy and our values," President Joe Biden said during remarks on Friday. On Wednesday, Meta, Facebook's parent company, announced its own AI tool called Llama 2. Sir Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, told the BBC the "hype has somewhat run ahead of the technology". FULL STORY

A series of climate records on temperature, ocean heat, and Antarctic sea ice have alarmed some scientists who say their speed and timing is "unprecedented". Dangerous heatwaves sweeping Europe could break further records, according to the UN. It is hard to immediately link these events to climate change because weather - and the Earth's oceans - are so complex. Studies are underway, but scientists already fear some worst-case scenarios are unfolding. "I'm not aware of a similar period when all parts of the climate system were in record-breaking or abnormal territory," Thomas Smith, an environmental geographer at London School of Economics, says. "The Earth is in uncharted territory" now due to global warming from burning fossil fuels, as well as heat from the first El Niño - a warming natural weather system - since 2018, says Imperial College London climate science lecturer Dr Paulo Ceppi. Here are four climate records broken so far this summer - and what they mean. FULL STORY

Rub some Tiger balm on it, seems to cure everything else here.

Cracks between the two emerged after the diplomat's public criticism of Ukraine's president days ago. Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday dismissed Ukraine's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Vadim Pristaiko. Pristaiko was a key figure in relations between Kyiv and London, one of its primary European allies. In an interview on Sky News days before he was sacked, Pristaiko criticised Zelenskyy for his "sarcasm", while discussing contentious comments by UK defence secretary Ben Wallace. The outgoing British official said people wanted Kyiv to show more gratitude for the massive amounts of support given by allies, during a NATO summit in Vilnius. He quipped the UK is not "an Amazon" delivery service for weapons for Ukraine.