Brussels has reacted to Viktor Orban's "peace mission" to Moscow by snubbing Hungary's six months as European Council president. It will only send civil servants, not Commissioners, to meetings chaired by Hungary.

The executive arm of the EU in Brussels is partially boycotting Hungary's six-month stint holding the bloc's rotating presidency, in response to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's self-styled "peace mission" that he embarked on after taking up the position at the start of the month. 

In the first days of Hungary's presidency, Orban visited Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing, and Washington for a NATO summit, and then Donald Trump in Florida.

The trip to Kyiv was Orban's first since Russia's invasion, despite Hungary bordering Ukraine.

He called the trip a peace mission and tried to portray himself as one of the "very few" EU and NATO heads of government still able to hold productive talks in Moscow and negotiate with all sides.

A top Russian tank touted by Russian President Vladimir Putin as the "world's best" has suffered at least 100 losses in the war in Ukraine, according to open-source information.

The losses were recorded by Oryx, an open-source intelligence site that relies on visual evidence to confirm and track war losses on both sides. More T-90Ms may have also been lost in combat but not recorded. Business Insider was unable to independently verify the information.

Losses, per the site's analysis, include destroyed, damaged, and captured vehicles.

Five poultry workers from a farm in northeast Colorado have bird flu, state and federal health officials reported Sunday. Four of the cases have been confirmed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and one is presumptively positive for H5N1, also known as avian influenza, and is pending confirmation.

The disease was contracted while working at a "commercial egg layer operation," the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said in a statement Sunday.

On Friday, when only three cases were confirmed, the CDC said they worked "at a poultry facility experiencing an outbreak of the H5N1 virus that is circulating in wild birds and has been causing multistate outbreaks in dairy cows and poultry."

Clarence Thomas has struck again.

To his impressive list of recent supreme court victories – abolishing the right to an abortion, eradicating affirmative action, undermining federal regulations, and more – the ultraconservative justice can now add thwarting the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump for hoarding classified documents.

On Monday, Judge Aileen Cannon astonished the judicial world by dismissing the case. She did so based on a widely discredited legal argument that the special counsel who brought the prosecution, Jack Smith, had been improperly appointed.

The argument, initially aired by the former US president’s lawyers, had received scant support in judicial circles, given that stretching back a quarter of a century it has been repeatedly rejected by the courts. But there was one jurist who encouraged Cannon to pursue such contrarian thinking: Thomas.

Two weeks before Cannon’s stunning dismissal, Thomas essentially prodded her into making the move. In a concurring opinion to Trump v US, the US supreme court ruling awarding the former president immunity over his “official acts” in the lead-up to the January 6 insurrection, the hard-right justice sketched a legal roadmap that Cannon then duly followed.

The climate crisis is causing the length of each day to get longer, analysis shows, as the mass melting of polar ice reshapes the planet.

The phenomenon is a striking demonstration of how humanity’s actions are transforming the Earth, scientists said, rivalling natural processes that have existed for billions of years.

The change in the length of the day is on the scale of milliseconds but this is enough to potentially disrupt internet traffic, financial transactions and GPS navigation, all of which rely on precise timekeeping.

The hikers were a father and daughter lost in Canyonlands and a woman who passed out at Snow Canyon state park

Three hikers died over the weekend in suspected heat-related cases at state and national parks in Utah, including a father and daughter who got lost on a strenuous hike in Canyonlands national park in triple-digit temperatures.

The daughter, 23, and her father, 52, sent a 911 text alerting dispatchers that they were lost and had run out of water while hiking the 8.1-mile (13km) Syncline Loop, described by the National Park Service as the most challenging trail in the Island in the Sky district of the south-east Utah park.

The pair set out on Friday to navigate steep switchbacks and scramble through boulder fields with limited trail markers as the air temperature surpassed 100F (38C).

Federal investigators are analyzing device’s content, although it is unclear how agency gained access

The FBI has gained access to the phone of the suspected gunman who opened fire on Donald Trump’s rally and is analyzing the device’s contents, the agency stated in a press release on Monday afternoon. The shooting, which killed one audience member and left Trump bleeding from one ear, is being investigated as an assassination attempt.

Authorities have been working to determine the motive behind the attack at Trump’s campaign rally on Saturday, but no clear picture has yet emerged. The gunman, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks by the FBI, was shot and killed in the incident.

Federal investigators announced on Sunday that they had obtained Crooks’s cellphone, but had issues with bypassing its password protections to access the data within. FBI investigators then shipped the phone to a lab in Virginia, where agents successfully gained access, per the bureau’s press release.

Elizabeth Warren calls Vance faux populist while party says he will ‘take women back decades’ on abortion

Democrats were quick to seize on Donald Trump’s decision to name as his running mate JD Vance, the hard-right Ohio senator whose past opposition to the former president and Republican nominee included calling him “America’s Hitler” but who now supports Trump with fiery populist rhetoric.

A Democratic party statement said: “Vance is an ultra-Maga extremist who’s ready to help Trump pass his Project 2025 agenda. Stop Trump-Vance. Vote Biden-Harris.”

Vance has praised Project 2025, a far-right blueprint for a second Trump term. Trump has tried to distance himself from the effort, which is co-ordinated by the Heritage Foundation. Democrats want to tie him to it.

Joe Biden’s campaign warned that Vance should not be trusted to put country over party, as Mike Pence did as vice-president when, on 6 January 2021, he refused to do as Trump demanded and block certification of Biden’s election win.

Dozens of Indian farm labourers have been freed from slave-like working conditions in northern Italy, police have said.

The 33 workers were lured to Italy on the promise of jobs and a better future by two fellow Indian nationals, police say.

But instead, they were allegedly forced to work more than 10 hours a day, seven days a week for a tiny wage which was used to pay off debts to the alleged gangmasters.

The two men - who were found with approximately $545,300 (£420,000) - have been arrested.

The exploitation of farmhands – both Italian and migrant - in Italy is a well-known issue. Thousands of people work in fields, vineyards and greenhouses dotted across the country, often without contracts and in highly dangerous conditions.

Scientists have for the first time discovered a cave on the Moon.

At least 100m deep, it could be an ideal place for humans to build a permanent base, they say.

It is just one in probably hundreds of caves hidden in an “underground, undiscovered world”, according to the researchers.

Countries are racing to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon, but they will need to protect astronauts from radiation, extreme temperatures, and space weather.

Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut to travel to space, told BBC News that the newly-discovered cave looked like a good place for a base, and suggested humans could potentially be living in lunar pits in 20-30 years.

Media in China recently reported that fuel tankers are being used to transport cooking oil. The report has ignited public outrage over food safety, which has long been an issues as suppliers cut corners to save costs.

A scandal over cooking-oil contamination in China that came to light earlier in July highlights the long-standing struggle to improve food safety measures. 

The scandal, first revealed by state-backed media The Beijing News on July 2, involves two Chinese companies that reportedly used fuel trucks to transport edible oil without any cleaning process between loads.

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In 2005 and 2015, Chinese media uncovered similar practices of improperly transporting food oil.

Another food safety problem known to authorities is the use of "gutter oil," which is cooking oil recycled from drains and grease traps, and cheaply sold off to restaurants.