Forensic investigators in the Netherlands now have the first 40 bodies to come from the crash site of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, which was likely shot down by a missile fired by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.  The country lost 193 of its citizens in the crash.

It was the Netherlands first national day of mourning since 1962.  Church bells rang out and flags flew at half-staff to honor those killed on the ill-fated Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur flight.  The 40 coffins coming off of the two transport planes were met by Dutch king Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima, as well as the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

While the Dutch commence examinations of the victims, Britain has taken possession over MH17’s black box flight data and cockpit voice recorders.  The Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) will download the data to determine the circumstances surrounding the plane crash, a process that should take 24 hours per recorder.

US intelligence says it tracked a missile launch from rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine, and its satellites also detected Russians moving anti-aircraft missiles into the area.  The US says the most likely scenario is that a poorly trained crew of Russian-backed rebels shot down MH17 in some sort of mistake.

But the rebels now claim they never possessed the SA-11 surface to air missile suspected in the disaster.  Alexander Borodai is the perpetually unshaved “prime minister” of the self-declared “Donetsk People's Republic (DPR)”, which is recognized by absolutely no one in the world.  He says the rebels never had a SA-11 system and that evidence that showed otherwise was “fake”.