Nightly Brief

Top CNS stories for today including wealthy pedophile Jeffrey Epstein has been charged with sexually trafficking girls at his New York mansion; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a controversial commission expected to focus on issues such as religious freedom and abortion; Former Congolese warlord Bosco Ntaganda was convicted of all 18 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and more.

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National

In this July 30, 2008, file photo, Jeffrey Epstein, center, is shown in custody in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Uma Sanghvi/Palm Beach Post via AP, File)

1.) Federal authorities recovered nude photographs of underage girls from the Upper East Side mansion of extraordinarily wealthy pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, prosecutors revealed after unsealing a sex-trafficking indictment on Monday morning.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, right, unveils the creation of Commission on Unalienable Rights, headed by Mary Ann Glendon, left, a Harvard Law School professor and a former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, during an announcement at the US State Department in Washington, Monday, July 8, 2019. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

2.) Emphasizing the Trump administration’s review of the role of human rights in U.S. foreign policy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday announced a controversial commission expected to focus on issues such as religious freedom and abortion.

International

3.) Former Congolese warlord Bosco Ntaganda was convicted Monday of all 18 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, by the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

Mali war crimes suspect Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz attends a hearing at the International Criminal Court on Monday, July 8, 2019. (Photo via International Criminal Court)

4.) The International Criminal Court opened a week-long preliminary hearing Monday to decide whether evidence is strong enough to put a Malian man on trial for charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Timbuktu.

A woman walks by the entrance to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg on Oct. 5, 2015. (Geert Vanden Wijngaert, File)

5.) Europe’s top court fined Belgium on Monday to the tune of $5,600 a day for noncompliance with rules on high-speed electronic communications networks.

Science

In this April 11, 2018, photo, production workers stack newspapers onto a cart at the Janesville Gazette Printing & Distribution plant in Janesville, Wis. Members of Congress are warning that newspapers in their home states are in danger of cutting coverage or going out of business if the United States maintains recently imposed tariffs on Canadian newsprint. (Angela Major/The Janesville Gazette via AP)

6.) News sources that are considered honest may still lose credibility with people if they are seen as biased, according to a study released Monday that shows news audiences distinguish between sources that are dishonest and those that might be biased.

7.) Parents bringing a new baby into their home can sometimes feel like they’ve been hit by a meteor that leaves a crater in their wallets and sleep schedule. But a study published Sunday says caring for that bundle of joy can improve the household diet.

Large grazing animals have a strong selective force on plants, certain plants have evolved traits to thrive on pastoral landscapes. Spengler and Mueller theorize that yak herding may have helped drive buckwheat domestication in the southern Himalaya. This lone yak in the Lhasa region of Tibet is a significant evolutionary force on the plant communities around where it grazes. (Robert Spengler)

8.) Ancient grains and crops may have evolved their ability to reproduce in response to humanity’s farming of them, according to research released Monday.

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