Germany had to introduce its new levy to help utilities cover the cost of replacing Russian supplies or else its energy market would collapse, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Monday.

"The alternative would have been the collapse of the German energy market, and with it large parts of the European energy market," Habeck told reporters in Berlin.

Russia's defence ministry has warned Britain against a planned spy plane flight over Russian territory, saying its air force has been given orders to prevent an intrusion.

The ministry said on Tuesday that the UK had sent a notice informing about a planned flight of an RC-135 reconnaissance plane along a route that partly passes over Russian territory.

"We regard this action as a deliberate provocation," the ministry said, adding that the Russian air force had been "given the task to prevent the violation of the Russian border".

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has bought $7bn of shares in US companies including Starbucks, Zoom and Microsoft.

The purchases bring the market value of the sovereign wealth fund's investment portfolio to about $40.8bn at the end of the second quarter.

Bloomberg reported that the move echoed the PIF's strategy in early 2020, when the fund spent billions on stakes in US firms whose valuations had been rocked by the coronavirus pandemic.

While most of us thought that we had a government of the people, by the people, for the people, we do not and have not had one for many decades. The transformation has been in the works for over 100 years, but the final weapon to take us to a one-world government was the two-part President's Council on Sustainable Development/National Partnership for Reinventing Government. The first part embedded Agenda 21 into even the most minor areas of government — from federal to Podunkville. The second, while we heard even less about it, is the dangerous "focus on leading a fundamental culture change in the government", that transfers(ed) power from Congress to the bureaucracy; from representatives of the people to unelected bodies (and thus we have no ability to oust them) who "ultimately control international finance, all corporate & business activity, government policy, and international relations." And thus, they "have constructed a system that will enable them to seize the "global commons (ed: control of the entire world)."[1]

The Senate Intelligence Committee issued a bipartisan request for more information regarding the FBI's search of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago property.

In a letter reported by Axios, Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote over the weekend to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting a classified briefing on the documents unveiled by the search, as well as an assessment of national security risks tied to any mishandling of those documents. A committee spokesperson told Axios:

"The Senate Intelligence Committee is charged with overseeing counterintelligence matters, including the handling and mishandling of classified information, which appears to be at the core of the search of Mar-a-Lago."

The effort by Warner and Rubio marks the first bipartisan effort at oversight of the FBI's decision, which Trump and his allies have painted as political persecution.

Russia's Defense Ministry on Tuesday confirmed a rare act of what appears to be a Ukrainian sabotage operation in Crimea. This after video emerged online showing a series of explosions after a fire engulfed a munitions depot there.

"On the morning of Aug. 16, as a result of an act of sabotage, a military storage facility near the village of Dzhankoi was damaged," the ministry said. "Damage was caused to a number of civilian facilities, including power lines, a power plant, a railway track as well as a number of residential buildings. There were no serious injuries," it added.

One of former President Donald Trump's attorneys has revealed new details regarding the raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., early last week.

Lawyer Christina Bobb said that the former president and many family members watched the FBI during "the whole" raid, meaning that they likely would have been able to see if agents planted any evidence, as Trump suggested last week.

According to the New York Post, Bobb told the streaming network, Real America's Voice:

"It's kind of funny. I think the folks in New York, President Trump and his family, probably had a better view than I did because they had the CCTV, they were able to watch. I was, you know, I was stuck in the parking lot there to you know, collect paper and answer questions. But they were actually able to see the whole thing. So they actually have a better idea of what took place inside."

Bobb said that the FBI had initially instructed Trump's staff and his attorneys to shut off the closed circuit TV security system, but they refused to do so and allowed it to remain in operation the entire raid.

Due to the fact that the composite war of the West against Russia through the use of Ukraine as a springboard and tool is clearly failing, the puppet government of "independent Ukraine" has made a criminal deal with the Polish authorities, and sells to Warsaw for a penny what is still left in Kiev's zone of influence.

The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service reported that Poland, in addition to preparing a provocation with the introduction of an occupation contingent into the western territories of Ukraine under the guise of "Polish peacekeeping forces," is already trying to organise control over the most promising sectors of the neighbouring state's economy.

With the obvious consent of the Ukrainian authorities, Polish companies organised the purchase of products of Ukrainian agricultural producers at low prices, condemning Ukrainian entrepreneurs to bankruptcy. The main goal is the purchase of assets and land from bankrupt enterprises for a penny.

As an example, the Russian intelligence agencies cite the fact of purchasing barley of a new crop at $30 per ton, which is almost 5 times cheaper than the real cost of this product. Recall that grain is exported from the territory of Ukraine under the cover of a powerful propaganda campaign, allegedly in order to "save the world from hunger" and "liberate it from Putin".

Dear western politicians!

Leaving aside the usual sycophantic nonsense, which applauds your continuing efforts to bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East with missile attacks, trying to change the earth's climate using beliefs, promising an unknown source of 'green' energy whilst promoting vaccines to save us from certain death from a dose of flu, here's an alternative open letter.

As a UK citizen now retired, having recently returned to the UK after over a decade of living and working in Asia and the Far East I'm stunned by the stupification around me. Have I inadvertently fallen down an alternative universe Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole, or is there a hidden factory somewhere mass-producing stupid politicians?

As yet another British Prime Minister resigns following the resignations of two others before him producing a failing economy, soaring inflation, sky-high taxes, an energy crisis and a falling pound ... The indoctrinated cheer on men with beards wearing dresses and it's left to a dwindling minority to explain why carrots don't grow on trees in a socially engineered ideological dystopia! The consequences of which you blame on the Russians, or the Chinese depending on who the US has currently fallen out with.

As you sit in your elitist tax payer funded ivory towers, let's briefly detail the chaos and mayhem you've produced.

Did you think the outside world believed you were trying to bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East and not trying to control the world's major oil producers who just all happened to have abandoned the petrodollar? How many millions lost their lives in that failed adventure?

How many of you swooned over a 16-year-old autistic Swedish school drop out with Asperger's syndrome, OCD and selective mutism whose mother said she had "special eyes" that could see carbon rising from a dying planet? As a self-inflicted energy crisis looms and both Britain and Germany re-open coal-fired power stations, are you still cheering for mentally ill Greta and her windmills?

Professor Jordan Peterson has written a fantastic essay for the Telegraph attacking the global political and business elite and their court astrologers for promoting a completely unworkable net zero agenda that will have to be paid for by the poor and the vulnerable, thereby fuelling civil unrest. The essay articulates so clearly my own point of view, and I suspect the view of most other Daily Sceptic contributors, it reads almost like an in-house editorial. His central point is that this corporate environmental activism is underpinned by the same strain of misguided utopianism that has been responsible for so much human misery. Here's how it begins: