Politics

An angry Italy summoned Austria's ambassador after the government in Vienna announced it was ready to re-introduce border controls and deploy troops and armored vehicles along the border to block any migrant influx out of Italy. Austrian Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil told Kronen Zeitung daily that troops could go to the Brenner Pass and that four Pandur armoured personnel carriers had been sent to the Tyrol region with 750 troops were on standby.

After a three day state of emergency and government shutdown, on Tuesday morning New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed a compromise budget bill ending the state shutdown that became an embarrassment for the outgoing governor when he was photographed lounging on a beach that had been closed to the public for the holiday weekend.

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

It's difficult to say what most Americans commemorate or celebrate on Independence Day nowadays. Many appear to focus on some vague notion of "America." Others even take to jingoism equating the United States government with the very notion of "freedom." 

Lost in all of this is the fact that the Declaration of Independence - the document we're supposed to remember today - is a document that promotes secession, rebellion, and what the British at the time regarded as treason. 

US President Trump will hold his first "full fledged" meeting with Russian President Putin on Friday, July 7 on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg, the Kremlin announced on Tuesday.

"A date has been agreed, the seventh of July" said Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy advisor while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov specified it will not merely be a brief contact on the sidelines.

There was something different - and symbolic - about last night's North Korean ballistic missile launch which not coincidentally took place on US Independence Day, because shortly after the event, North Korea announced it would have an important announcement to make.