The WTO ruled so-called "launch aid" loans given to Airbus by EU members to develop its fleet had caused a “genuine and substantial” loss of sales for its competitor Boeing. It also slammed the EU for failing to rein in billions of dollars in illegal subsidies, despite being told to do so.

Four EU member states – France, Germany, Spain and Britain – had not complied with WTO calls to phase out subsidies, the intergovernmental trade body said. The dramatic ruling has set the stage for the United States to seek up to $10 billion (£7.6 billion) in annual trade tariffs on EU imports, according to Boeing. It's the latest step in a more than decade-old trade spat between rivals Airbus and Boeing, pitting the European Union against the United States.

However, the win is likely to be short-lived for Boeing, as the WTO is due to make another ruling, which is expected to fault the US for indirect subsidies to Boeing through, among other things, state tax breaks.

The group represents a faction of nations which have become increasingly concerned by authoritarian Brussels, with Poland and Hungary both locked in bitter legal battles with the EU. Their demands come after a separate clique of Mediterranean states, including France, Spain and Italy, formed their own interest group to counter the power wielded by Angela Merkel.

The developments are a sign of the spiralling disintegration of the EU which is seeing the bloc fray into a series of powerful factions, each fighting to impose their own interest on bureaucrats in Brussels. In their statement the Visegrad group said: "Our ambition is to reassert the vision and principles enshrined in the Treaties and win back the trust of our citizens."

The countries listed five key areas where they feel the European project has gone astray, and included concrete demands from other nations to fix the issues. The first ultimatum was over the erosion of democracy by the increasingly authoritarian EU Commission, which is swamping member states in thousands of dictatorial laws.

In his wide-ranging address, Obama sought to use his last appearance before the global body to define how his leadership had put the world on a better trajectory over the last eight years. At the heart of that approach, Obama said, is the notion that conflicts are best solved when nations cooperate. The president cited his administration’s outreach to former adversaries Cuba and Myanmar as key examples of progress. He also cited the resolution last year “of the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomacy” as a key achievement over the past eight years.

In his address, Obama spoke of a “less violent” and “more prosperous” world but one rife with “uncertainty, unease and strife,” as nations struggle with a devastating refugee crisis, terrorism and a breakdown of order in the Middle East. “Despite enormous progress, governing has become more difficult, and tensions are more quick to surface,” he said, adding that the world now faces a choice, to “press forward with a better model for cooperation and integration, or retreat into a world that is sharply divided.”

Sixteen police officers were injured overnight in a series of clashes, and there were reports early Wednesday of motorists on Interstate 85 being hurt and their vehicles damaged when protesters threw rocks, bottles and traffic cones off interstate overpasses onto traffic below.

It remains unclear whether Scott was pointing a gun at the officer when he was shot, Putney said. The officer was also African-American. Putney added that officers have not found a book at the scene of the shooting, contrary to social media claims that Scott was holding a book.“I can tell you we did not find a book that has been referenced to,” Putney said. “We did find a weapon. The weapon was there and witnesses have corroborated it, beyond just the officers.”

The destruction late Tuesday and early Wednesday included blocking all lanes of Interstate 85 and looting a Walmart on North Tryon Street at about 3:30 am. The store was closed early Wednesday, with wooden pallets piled in front of the doors and shopping carts blocking the driveway into the lot. Three or more tractor trailer trucks were stopped and looted on Interstate 85, and at least two fires were started on the interstate, as the protesters burned items removed from the trucks.

Whether it is a car, a truck, a van, a bus or an RV, an increasing number of Americans are using their vehicles as their homes. Just recently, someone that I know took a trip down the west coast of the United States and stayed at a number of campgrounds along the way. What she discovered was that a lot of people were actually living at these campgrounds. Of course there are some that actually prefer that lifestyle, but many others are doing it out of necessity.

Once upon a time, America was the land of opportunity. We were the place where anything was possible and where entrepreneurship was greatly encouraged. But today we strangle small businesses to death with rules, regulations, red tape and taxes. If we want a stronger middle class, we need to create a much better environment for the creation of small businesses. Small business ownership often lifts individuals into the middle class, and small businesses have traditionally been the primary engine for the growth of good jobs in this country.

If you will be sleeping in a warm bed in a comfortable home tonight, you should be thankful. An increasing number of Americans are sleeping in tent cities, in their vehicles or on the streets. These hurting people deserve our love, our compassion and our prayers.

The passages from the Book of Leviticus, scholars say, offer the first physical evidence of what has long been believed: that the version of the Hebrew Bible used today goes back 2,000 years. The discovery, announced in a Science Advances journal article by researchers in Kentucky and Jerusalem on Wednesday, was made using "virtual unwrapping," a 3D digital analysis of an X-ray scan. Researchers say it is the first time they have been able to read the text of an ancient scroll without having to physically open it.

In ancient times, many versions of the Hebrew Bible circulated. The Dead Sea Scrolls, dating to as early as the 3rd century BC, featured versions of the text that are radically different than today's Hebrew Bible. Scholars have believed the Hebrew Bible in its standard form first came about some 2,000 years ago, but never had physical proof, until now, according to the study. Previously the oldest known fragments of the modern biblical text dated back to the 8th century.

The text discovered in the charred Ein Gedi scroll is "100 percent identical" to the version of the Book of Leviticus that has been in use for centuries, said Dead Sea Scroll scholar Emmanuel Tov from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who participated in the study. "This is quite amazing for us," he said. "In 2,000 years, this text has not changed."

The Russian military called and asked to speak to this “point of contact” official at the coordinating center which is running the US-led bombing campaigns in Syria, and were told he wasn’t available. The Russians called back again and finally got somebody who understood that the US was bombing the wrong target.

The Pentagon dismissed concern about the lapse, saying the contact “wasn’t expecting a call” and therefore didn’t feel obliged to sit next to the phone. Yet as intense US airstrikes were ongoing, in the middle of a US-Russia negotiated ceasefire, it seems like it wasn’t a total shock that a call ended up made.

Russian officials have mostly complained about the lack of coordination before the attack, with the US only describing what they intended to bomb in vague terms as a bunch of ISIS fighters “out in the open.” Russian officials have noted that if the US would tell them exactly what they intended to bomb, they’d be able to tell them if it was actually a Syrian military base, and not ISIS at all.

If I hadn’t long passed the point of being shocked, I would find this breathtaking. Here it is, laid out in the most blithe, confident terms: the shameless contempt for a clear expression of democratic will, and the blatant use of the power of an unelected bureaucracy to undermine the intentions of a national government. Not to mention the utter, imperturbable belief in their own righteousness which justifies what might seem to the benighted oiks who think there is some sort of virtue in self-government, like an outrage.

The divisions that are making a unified Europe impossible are being caused (or exacerbated) by the insistence on conformity to what the European project has decided are optimal attitudes: the demand, for example, that the countries of southern Europe adopt the financial rectitude and economic attitudes of Germany whose particular national tragedy in the last century was preceded by hyper-inflation. Or that the poorer Eastern bloc countries adopt the generous liberality of the richest countries of the West.

The union is, in fact, split along its North-South axis over the euro and the devastating effect that economic union has had on the indebtedness of the Club Med countries. And it is split on its East-West axis by the consequences of mass migration, with some of the old Warsaw Pact states discovering that their new club has a penchant for issuing diktats too.

When some future Gibbon comes to chronicle the decline and fall of this modern European empire, it will be clear enough what went wrong: they enforced uniformity instead of trying to understand difference, and in the end, they revived exactly the hateful forces they had hoped to extinguish.

The mounting danger of such a war was underscored by the US bombing of a Syrian government military post on Saturday, killing dozens of Syrian army soldiers. The US claim that this was done accidentally — against a major, well-known Syrian military installation, the Deir ez-Zor Air Base —has no credibility. A similar US “mistake” could easily lead to the death of Russian soldiers and escalate into a full-scale military confrontation between the two powers that control 93 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.

The corporate-controlled American media is complicit in maintaining a blackout on the mounting danger of war. While US forces conduct almost daily dress rehearsals on the Russian border with Eastern Europe, in the coastal waters adjacent to China, and on the Korean peninsula, the media diverts public attention to such comparatively trivial questions as Clinton’s bout with pneumonia, Trump’s brazen lying about his role in the anti-Obama “birther” campaign, and endless speculation on which candidate is gaining an edge in their mutual mudslinging.

All over the planet radical Islam is on the rise, and we have seen more than 1000 Islamic terror attacks worldwide so far this year. But an extreme form of political correctness is causing many of our leaders to deny what is happening right in front of their eyes. In fact, Barack Obama refused to use the word terrorism when talking about the attack in New York…

Throughout his entire presidency, Barack Obama has been extremely reluctant to link radical Islam and terror. When he has spoken of Islam, his remarks have almost always been extremely positive. And it is understandable why Obama would be so hesitant to say anything that could be construed to be negative about Islam. There are people working in his administration that are Muslim, and he has a whole host of friends and relatives that are Muslim.

But to deny that Ahmad Khan Rahami had a religious motivation because it would not be politically correct to admit that he did is insane. Of course he had a religious motivation and of course this was yet another instance of Islamic terror. Barack Obama and his politically correct friends want to see the world a certain way. They believe what they want to believe. But the truth is that radical Islam is a rapidly growing evil, and virtually every nation on the planet is now starting to feel the pain.

In his remarks, Obama said “powerful nations” like the United States will have to accept constraints and give up some of their freedom. The president acknowledged that he has been criticized by his own citizens for this belief, but that he remains convinced he is right. Obama also stated that, while countries will have to accept some limits on their freedom, they should not give up the right to defend themselves.

“We can only realize the promise of this institution’s founding to replace the ravages of war with cooperation if powerful nations like my own accept constraints,” Obama said. “I’m convinced in the long run giving up some freedom of action, not giving up our ability to protect ourselves or pursue our core interests but binding ourselves to international rules, over the long-term, enhances our security.”

• First, nobody died.

• They sure found the mystery bomber quickly and efficiently.

• Although experts say this type of thing is usually a group activity, no other persons of interest are being sought.

• The culprit was just hanging around, asleep in a doorway like a homeless person, waiting to get busted.

• The placement of these bombs wasn’t very strategic.

• ISIS wants nothing to do with this one.

• It wasn’t a very good bomb.

• Somehow, the bomber didn’t really raise any eyebrows until now.

What do we need to be distracted from? This always has to be the question when these situations take over the news. And the list is long, my friends. This freakshow of an election, the fact that Russia is accusing the US of starting WW3 in Syria, the upgraded effort to take away guns and personal medical decisions, the newest Wikileaks… we could go on and on about the things no one wants us paying attention to.

See what I mean? Weird stuff. Lots of weird stuff. I’m not saying it never happened or that this dude wasn’t a terrorist or that someone else was responsible or that this was a false flag. I’m saying that there are holes in the official story that one could drive an 18-wheeler truck through. But the official story sure does seem a bit questionable. Or maybe Rahami is just so bad at being a terrorist that the Islamic State doesn’t want to claim him as one of theirs.