Moscow on Thursday warned of “consequences” if Ukraine does not release a seized Russian ship it detained on the Black Sea.
Earlier on Thursday, Ukraine’s secret service said it captured a Russia-flagged oil tanker for allegedly blocking maritime traffic in the Kerch Strait last year.
The action comes as the two nations negotiate over the release of 24 Ukrainian sailors currently being held by Russia. The servicemen were taken captive last year, RT reported.
Read more at i24NEWS.
{Matzav.com}

Britain now has its first celebrity prime minister.
On Tuesday, Boris Johnson was elected leader of the Tory Party following Theresa May’s resignation over her failure to deliver Brexit. On Wednesday, Johnson “kissed hands” with the Queen and thus succeeded Mrs. May as Britain’s PM.
As with all social or political developments of note, the Jewish world is predictably asking about this one: “Will it be good for the Jews?”
Johnson has entertained and scandalized Britain for years through his many scrapes, his jokes, his politically incorrect gaffes, his chaotic personal life, his classically trained erudition—he will surely be the first prime minister to install a bust of Pericles in 10 Downing Street—and his ebullient disregard of boring details, such as facts.

Boris Johnson, on his first full day as British prime minister, went to the House of Commons on Thursday and pronounced “the beginning of a new golden age” and promised to make the United Kingdom “the greatest place on Earth.”
Standing for the first time as prime minister at the Despatch Box, punching the air with his fist and shoving his other hand in the coat jacket, just as his hero Winston Churchill did, Johnson vowed to slash knife crime, hire 20,000 more police, make home ownership affordable, protect Scottish fishing grounds, shrink school class sizes, cut taxes, care for the grandparents, build railways, cut carbon emissions, provide high-speed 5G mobile to all, and bring the “best and brightest” to Britain, with “a radical rewriting of our immigration system.”

A devasting heat wave inflicted life-threatening temperatures on Europe and shattered all-time highs in several countries on Thursday.
Temperatures in Paris reached a jaw-dropping 108.7 degrees Fahrenheit (42.6 Celsius) in the later afternoon local time, according to Météo-France, the national weather service, breaking the previous record of 104.7F (40.4C) set in 1947.
The inferno began Wednesday in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, where many record high temperatures were set. But some of these records stood for only one day and were beaten on Thursday, when temperatures climbed even higher from France north into Britain and eastward to Germany.

Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello resigned Wednesday after two weeks of furious protests, throwing the leadership of the U.S. commonwealth into uncertainty as it crawls back from a ruinous hurricane and navigates a record bankruptcy.

Robert Mueller testifies in front of the House intelligence and Judiciary Committees.
WATCH:

The Israeli embassy in Finland has been vandalized by neo-Nazi and far right extremists at least 15 times in the last year and a half.
The embassy, located in the Finnish capital of Helsinki, was most recently attacked last weekend, Ynet reported. In that attack, the glass front door of the embassy was shattered, and images of swastikas and Adolf Hitler were hung in the entrance to the building.
Israel’s Foreign Affairs Ministry in a statement called the attack on the embassy last weekend: “(A)nother link in the chain of anti-Semitic attacks targeting the embassy.
Read more at Arutz Sheva.
{Matzav.com}

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