Cover-up: Ukraine rebels destroying all links to MH17 air atrocity  —  UN demands full inquiry but armed Russian separatists block access to crash site amid confusion over black boxes  —  Russian separatist groups in eastern Ukraine are hastily covering up all links to the Buk missile battery suspected …

Understanding What Hamas Wants  —  Five observations about the Gaza conflict, including praise for an ex-president's insight into the particular nature of Hamas' evil  —  1. We can thank former President Bill Clinton for perfect clarity in his comments about the chaos and horror of Gaza.

Could southern black voters save the Senate for Democrats?  —  Yes, that could happen.  Nate Cohn has a terrific piece today arguing that, for the first time since Reconstruction, southern black voters could be pivotal to the outcome of a national election.  That would be the battle for the Senate this fall:

Income Inequality Is Not Rising Globally.  It's Falling.  —  Income inequality has surged as a political and economic issue, but the numbers don't show that inequality is rising from a global perspective.  Yes, the problem has become more acute within most individual nations …

Some candidates' super PACs are a family affair  —  Is a super PAC independent when it's funded and run by your Mom and Dad?  —  WASHINGTON — An outside political committee has spent thousands of dollars on signs and billboards to boost Florida Democrat Gabriel Rothblatt's long-shot bid for Congress.

For the G.O.P., Fine Line Seen on Migration  —  WASHINGTON — In 1996, when a surge in illegal immigration collided with the overheated politics of a presidential election, Republicans demanded a strict crackdown.  —  They passed a measure in the House that would have allowed states …

Islamic State overwhelms Iraqi forces at Tikrit in major defeat  —  IRBIL, IRAQ — Islamic State gunmen overran a former U.S. military base early Friday and killed or captured hundreds of Iraqi government troops who'd been trying to retake Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit …

Bodies rained down on Ukraine village after plane disaster  —  (Reuters) - First came the loud explosion that made buildings rattle: then it started raining bodies.  —  One of the corpses fell through the rickety roof of Irina Tipunova's house in this sleepy village, just after Malaysia …

The Pentagon's War Against Climate Change  —  U.S. conservatives make at least two arguments against action on climate change: We don't have enough conclusive evidence to prove it is happening, and even if we did, the cost of cutting our carbon emissions would be too high.

298 souls on MH17 have paid the price for Obama's “flexibility” [VIDEO]  —  Back in his first term, while taking part in a global nuclear security summit in South Korea — and believing the microphones were off -President Barack Hussein Obama was caught leaning over to then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev …