IMAGE: Top: Wounded Palestinian girl following strike in northern Gaza strip. Below: Israeli strike on buildings in Khan Younis / Palestinian boy with wounded sibling upon learning family was killed in a strike. (DriveByPlanet)

The death toll from ten days of Israeli attacks against the Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip has reached 227, with more than 1,600 others having been injured. ● In the latest deaths, four members of the same family, including two children, were killed after Israeli warplanes fired missiles in Khan Yunis. Several others were also killed in Rafah. The new deaths follow the killings of four children between the ages of 9 and 11 after an Israeli naval ship fired multiple artillery shells, as they were playing on a beach in Gaza City. The attacks were witnessed by foreign journalists staying in Gaza. Since July 8, the Israeli regime has struck more than 1,800 targets across Gaza, which is home to around 1.8 million Palestinians. According to the UN humanitarian agencies, about a third of the dead are women and children. Some 18,000 people have taken shelter in Gaza schools. The Israeli military is going on with its airstrikes on the besieged Gaza Strip while Palestinians are responding by firing a barrage of rockets into Israel. ● Meanwhile, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has slammed as illegal and unfounded an interpretation presented by an Israeli army spokesman who has said that the neighboring houses of Palestinians suspected of carrying out military activities were considered to be legitimate targets of attacks. Israel has blockaded Gaza since 2007, denying the Palestinian people there of their basic rights, such as freedom of movement, jobs that pay proper wages, and adequate healthcare and education.

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● A Ukrainian security spokesman has accused Russia's air force of shooting down one of its jets while it was on a mission over Ukrainian territory. Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council, said an Su-25 ground attack plane was downed on Wednesday evening. There was no comment from Moscow but rebels in eastern Ukraine say they shot down two Su-25 jets on Wednesday. Ukraine also alleges rockets were fired at its forces from Russian territory. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko ordered his foreign ministry to react officially after reports that Grad rockets were fired at Ukrainian forces in Luhansk region, from over the border near the Russian village of Gukovo. ● Russian President Vladimir Putin has denounced a new round of US sanctions against his country, saying they will damage relations and hurt businesses from both countries. He said the sanctions were driving bilateral relations towards a "dead end".

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Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday Moscow didn’t object to Ukraine receiving financial aid from the International Monetary Fund and other big lenders, but stressed they should prevent the money from being used to wage war on civilians in the east. ● “Of course, we are all up for supporting Ukraine financially, meaning the people of Ukraine, and not some oligarchs or swindlers,” Putin said during a press conference in Brazil. “The [IMF] fund has traditionally abstained from providing financial assistance to countries at war, and I think it is the right thing to do. I believe this tradition must be upheld in Ukraine’s case. As a rule, a country at war is given money for one goal and it spends the cash on quite another,” Putin noted. Kiev received the first IMF tranche of $3.16 billion in early May after the fund approved a $17 billion loan to Ukraine in the form of a two-year stabilization program. Ukraine is expected to receive a total of $27 billion from international donors such as the IMF, the World Bank, the US and the EU. From this sum about $14 billion is to come in 2014. Putin urged the IMF to think of such control instruments to monitor the distribution of financial aid in Ukraine so as to see to it that this money is channeled into the nation’s social and economic spheres, and not siphoned off by murky private banks or stolen.

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The group of emerging economies signed the long-anticipated document to create the $100 bn BRICS Development Bank and a reserve currency pool worth over another $100 bn. Both will counter the influence of Western-based lending institutions and the dollar. ● The new bank will provide money for infrastructure and development projects in BRICS countries, and unlike the IMF or World Bank, each nation has equal say, regardless of GDP size. Each BRICS member is expected to put an equal share into establishing the startup capital of $50 billion with a goal to reach $100 billion. The BRICS bank will be headquartered in Shanghai, India will preside as president the first year, and Russia will be the chairman of the representatives. “BRICS Bank will be one of the major multilateral development finance institutions in this world,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday at the 6th BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil. The big launch of the BRICS bank is seen as a first step to break the dominance of the US dollar in global trade, as well as dollar-backed institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, both US-based institutions BRICS countries have little influence within.

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A Stockholm city court upheld a detention order against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange Wednesday, rejecting a challenge mounted by Assange’s legal team. Judge Lena Egelin deliberated for barely an hour before turning down the legal challenge. ● “The court believes there is probable cause for the crimes of which he is accused,” Egelin said. Assange’s lawyers have already announced that they will appeal the decision. ● June 19 marked two years since Assange was forced to take refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in London to avoid transfer to Sweden followed by extradition to the US to face espionage charges punishable by life in prison or even death. The detention order upheld by Judge Egelin stems from trumped-up sexual assault allegations relating to two women with whom Assange stayed in August of 2010. ● Lawyers for Assange argued that Swedish prosecutors lacked sufficient evidence that their client committed any form of sexual assault to demand that he return to Sweden. According to one of Assange’s lawyers, Swedish police reports show that one of the accusers later said she was “railroaded” by the authorities into making the sexual assault allegations. Documents filed by the lawyers also asserted that text messages sent by one of the accusers indicated her opposition to the filing of an arrest warrant. “The message strongly suggests that there is no basis for the arrest,” the lawyers wrote.A substantial body of evidence supports the position of the Assange defense team.

The members of US Congress during a Wednesday Rules Committee hearing considered arguments from legal experts explaining the reasons and grounds to follow through on a lawsuit against President Barack Obama. ● Elizabeth Price Foley, Professor of Law at Florida International University College of Law, told members of the Committee “the House has standing” to sue the President for “institutional injury,” making the case that the lawsuit against Obama, initiated by House Speaker John A. Boehner, could succeed. Foley believes that even if the current President does not fully abuse executive authority, his unilateral decision-taking will set a precedent of executive overreach that could become dangerous in the hands of a future president. ● Drawing on the subject of violating constitutional provisions, Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, stated that the President has no authority “to go it alone, ordering changes to the law as a majority of one.” He continued in his opening statements, that the President's “executive prerogative” is a “sirens call,” which should be heeded.

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