US/Russian relations get even dicier – Fighting keeps out investigators from getting to the MH17 crash site – Teenyboppers have Two Directions on Gaza?  Really? Heavy sigh… – And a lot more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

The US is accusing Russia of violating a 1987 arms control treaty by testing a ground-launched cruise missile.  The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty bars signatories from possessing, producing or flight-testing cruise missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers.  The US believes Russia began violating the treaty as early as 2008, and has repeatedly tried to raise the issue with the Kremlin for more than a year.

Ukraine says the black boxes recovered from Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 show that shrapnel from an exploding missile caused the pressurized cabin to burst open, sending the plane plunging into the ground in eastern Ukraine.  Investigators from the Netherlands, which is leading the investigation into the crash, would not confirm what Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko alleged.  Kiev, Australia, and the US believe that pro-Russian separatists fired the missile by mistake, and that they got the missile from Russia.

For a second day in a row, fighting around the MH17 crash site prevented Australian investigators from doing their jobs.  The convoy was on its way, but turned back because of heavy shelling.  Foreign Minister Julie Bishop in Kiev said another attempt to access the crash site will be made on Tuesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is warning of a “prolonged” campaign in Gaza, saying Israel will continue to bombard suspected Hamas tunnels until the underground network is destroyed.  This comes as the US and United Nations call for an immediate cessation of violence fell on deaf ears.  Hamas fired three rockets from Gaza, with two hitting open areas in Israel and the third intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system.  Israel destroyed the home of a senior Hamas leader and his son, who were not believed to have been at home at the time.  And a blast near a playground killed eight children and two adults.

Nigeria has evacuated, shut down, and quarantined the hospital where the country’s first Ebola Disease patient died last week.  The man is now identified as Patrick Sawyer, a consultant for the Liberian Finance Ministry.  He was violently ill on the flight from Liberia on 20 July, and collapsed upon arrival in Lagos.  They took him to First Consultants Hospital – a crowded hospital in the most crowded neighborhood, Obalende, in Lagos – a city of 21 million people.  Sawyer died on Friday.  Hospital workers who came in contact with Sawyer have been quarantined for observation.  Nigeria’s main airline suspended fights to and from Liberia.

Oh, and Sawyer’s flight stopped in Lome, the capital of tiny Togo.  The World Health Organization (WHO) has dispatched a team to see if the Ebola virus could have been brought into Togo by someone who caught it from Sawyer and then departed.  Ebola is easily spread by bodily fluids, and Sawyer was terribly ill on the flight.

Meanwhile, Liberia has closed most of its border crossings to contain the Ebola outbreak.  President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is also restricting public gatherings and quarantining communities heavily affected by the Ebola outbreak which has killed 129 people in Liberia and more than 670 people across the region, the worst outbreak on record.

Japan’s plan to freeze the ground beneath the crippled, radiation-spewing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is not working.  The idea is that an ice wall would keep radioactive ground water from seeping into the Pacific Ocean.  However, the cooling tubes sunk into the ground have only managed to drop the temperature 15 degrees – not nearly enough.  Starting 1 August, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) plans to drop about 10 tons of ice and one ton of dry ice per day into the trenches surrounding the reactors, in hopes of accelerating the process.

Well, it had to happen.  People disagreeing over Gaza has led to family rifts, workmates ignoring each other, and Facebook friends clicking ‘defriend’ and ‘block’.  And now there are signs of cracks in the bubblegum boy band One Direction.  Singer Zayn Malik set his fans to arguing with by tweeting, “#FreePalestine” to his 13 Million followers.  Last week, the other singer, Harry Styles – the one who looks like Peter Noone – was criticized for allegedly being too pro-Israel by following an Israeli journalist on twitter.  Guys, guys.  Couldn’t we all just get along and make truly awful music?