Hunter Biden's laptop shows he brought his Mexican business partners to a meeting with his then-VP father in Washington, while his emails list favors he did for them - including one sent from Air Force Two with Joe Biden on board.

Now president, Biden has steadfastly denied involvement in his son Hunter's business schemes, most of which appear to involve trading on the family name to score lucrative deals abroad. Yet the newest batch of information from his laptop, published by the New York Post, shows him posing with Hunter, his US business partner, and three Mexican magnates at the official vice-presidential residence after a breakfast meeting in 2015.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has said it's awaiting explanations from Berlin following a reported top-secret meeting with officials from Luxembourg over a broadcasting license for RT's planned German-language TV channel.

The media outlet is attempting to secure a license in the small central European country for a station under the provisional name RT auf Deutsch. The signal would come from a studio in Moscow, with existing sister company RT DE Productions GmbH, which is based in the German capital, providing talk shows, exclusive interviews, and news reports.

Meanwhile, the plan to expand news coverage is facing a pushback from German media. For instance, newspaper Der Tagesspiegel alleged in June that RT was waging a smear campaign against Annalena Baerbock, the candidate for the German chancellorship from the Green party. Tagesspiegel claimed Baerbock's critical views on the policies of Russia had angered President Vladimir Putin.

While not singling out this particular report, the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, on Thursday lambasted media attacks against the outlet, saying the German media is essentially behaving "beyond any professional ethic line." She recalled RT being labelled ''Kremlin's mouthpiece" as well as a "weapon of propaganda."

"It's not even negative [coverage]... It's an outright information war that has been declared on the Russian channel by the German media."

A new think tank founded by a group of US neoconservative figures aims to turn Turkey back into a "democracy" and a "reliably ally" of the United States once more. Although the Turkish Democracy Project" stops short of calling for regime change, its staff is littered with men whose careers have been built on it.

"For the better part of the last century, Turkey was a reliable ally and a model in the region of liberal ideals and cultural freedom," the Turkish Democracy Project (TDP) says on its website. "But in recent years, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has dramatically altered Turkey's position in the international community and its status as a free and liberal democracy."


The group, whose website went active on June 23, describes itself as "a nonprofit, non-partisan, international policy organization" which "opposes its destabilizing behavior, supports genuine democratic reform, and holds the forces of corruption and oppression within Turkey to account."

Why this is the task of a bunch of American former diplomats and academics is never stated.

US-Turkish Relations Slowly Implode

Turkey joined the NATO alliance in 1952, meaning the US is pledged to defend the country if it comes under attack, and Turkey has long been a key partner for the US in the region, including housing a large air force base at Incirlik that held nuclear weapons. However, the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has butted heads with US policymakers several times in recent years, helping to create a rift between the allies.

NATO began its annual Dynamnic Mongoose anti-submarine warfare exercise on June 28 off the coast of Norway in what the military bloc deems the High North: the Arctic region, which it has identified as its domain since 2009. (As it has the Mediterranean Sea, Baltic Sea and Black Sea.)

The code name for the war games may seem puzzling; there's a noticeable incongruity with the name of an animal primarily associated with South Asia and Africa used for maneuvers on the top of the world. It's less baffling when one recalls the mongoose is used to kill snakes. Russian submarines are the snakes.

This year's iteration includes warships, warplanes and submarines from NATO member states Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Norway and the U.S. Five of those states - Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and the U.S. - are Arctic coastal nations. The others are Finland and Sweden, both NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partners, and Russia. Isolated Russia. Targeted Russia.

Two submarines, six military vessels and eight aircraft are involved.

The Russian submarine fleet is that part of its nuclear triad of delivery systems least vulnerable to a first-strike attack. Missile silos and aircraft on the ground could be destroyed within hours of such an attack. Submarines, then, are Russia's last line of defense, the only retaliatory force left and as such its main deterrent force.

At a joint press conference with Texas governor Greg Abbott at the U.S. border with Mexico, former president Donald Trump suggested that the border crisis could have been averted if Biden simply did "nothing."

"All Biden had to do was go to the beach," he commented. "If he would have just done nothing, we would have had the strongest border we ever had."

After Vice President Kamala Harris failed to make an appearance at the border site for weeks, despite being appointed to manage the migrant crisis, Abbott invited Trump to accompany him on a tour of the border to witness the deteriorating situation there, marked by overcrowded detention facilities, overwhelmed border-patrol personnel, and high rates of immigrant apprehensions. Harris eventually did take a trip last week to El Paso, Texas, a town technically in proximity to the border but many miles away from the location where the real fiasco is unfolding.

Investigators raided the French Justice Ministry as part of a conflict of interest probe into Eric Dupond-Moretti, the minister whose drive to introduce filmed court proceedings and re-write the judges' training book has angered the legal profession.

A source with first hand knowledge of the case said the raid was carried out by investigators working for a special court that deals with complaints against serving ministers.

The Justice Ministry, housed in an elegant 18th century palace in central Paris next to the Ritz Hotel, declined to give immediate comment.

In my time as a US intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector, I was twice privy to the former US defense secretary's MO: to manufacture and manipulate 'intelligence' so as to start wars. The Devil will need to watch his back.

While I never met Donald Rumsfeld in person, our paths crossed indirectly on several occasions. What I learnt from these experiences hardened my heart toward a man who caused so much harm based on actions that placed ambition over integrity.

In the days following my September 3, 1998, testimony before a joint session of the Senate Armed Forces and Foreign Affairs Committees, where I challenged the US government's inconsistent policies regarding the disarmament of Iraq, I received a letter from the former defense secretary. When I heard yesterday that Rumsfeld had passed away at the age of 88, I re-read the letter and ruminated about the man who wrote it, and how I felt about him in retrospect.

So, the War on Reality is going splendidly. Societies all across the world have been split into opposing, irreconcilable realities. Neighbors, friends, and even family members are bitterly divided into two hostile camps, each regarding the other as paranoid psychotics, delusional fanatics, dangerous idiots, and, in any event, as mortal enemies.

In the UK, Germany, and many other countries, and in numerous states throughout the US, a "state of emergency" remains in effect. An apocalyptic virus is on the loose. Mutant variants are spreading like wildfire. Most of society is still shut down or subject to emergency health restrictions. People are still walking around in public with plastic face shields and medical-looking masks. The police are showing up at people's homes to arrest them for "illegally gathering outdoors." Any deviation from official reality is being censored by the Internet corporations. Constitutional rights are still suspended. Entire populations are being coerced into being injected with experimental "vaccines." Pseudo-medical segregation systems are being brought online. And so on ... you're familiar with the details.

Meanwhile, in Sweden, and a few other countries, and in various other states throughout the US, there is no apocalyptic pandemic. People are just going about their lives as normal. OK, sure, there is a nasty virus going around, so people are taking common sense precautions, as people typically do for any nasty virus, but there is no "state of emergency" in effect, and no reason to radically transform society into a paranoid, pathologized-totalitarian dystopia.

This state of affairs, in which two contradictory, mutually-exclusive realities exist, is ... well, it's impossible, and so it cannot continue. Either there exists a devastating global pandemic that justifies a global "state of emergency," the suspension of constitutional rights, and the other totalitarian "emergency measures" we have been subjected to since March of 2020 or there doesn't. It really is as simple as that.

Secret military documents found at a Kent bus stop show us how British foreign policy works. The papers were reportedly found by a member of the public and then ended up with the BBC.

The documents contained important details of a naval confrontation between Russian forces and a UK warship. And an investigation is being conducted into their loss. The documents provide a brief snapshot of the UK's international conduct and also ask serious questions about it.

We do live in extraordinary times.

On the day of the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), President Xi Jinping, in Tiananmen square, amid all the pomp and circumstance, delivered a stark geopolitical message:

The Chinese people will never allow foreign forces to intimidate, oppress or subjugate them. Anyone who tries to do this will find themselves on a collision course with a large steel wall forged by more than 1.4 billion Chinese.

I have offered a concise version of the modern Chinese miracle - which has nothing to do with divine intervention, but "searching truth from facts" (copyright Deng Xiaoping), inspired by a solid cultural and historical tradition.

The "large steel wall" evoked by Xi now permeates a dynamic "moderately prosperous society" - a goal achieved by the CCP on the eve of the centennial. Lifting over 800 million people out of poverty is a historical first - in every aspect.

As in all things China, the past informs the future. This is all about xiaokang - which may be loosely translated as "moderately prosperous society".

The concept first appeared no less than 2,500 years ago, in the classic Shijing ("The Book of Poetry"). The Little Helmsman Deng, with his historical eagle eye, revived it in 1979, right at the start of the "opening up" economic reforms.

Now compare the breakthrough celebrated in Tiananmen - which will be interpreted all across the Global South as evidence of the success of a Chinese model for economic development - with footage being circulated of the Taliban riding captured T-55 tanks across impoverished villages in northern Afghanistan.

History Repeating: this is something I saw with my own eyes over twenty years ago.

The Taliban now control nearly the same amount of Afghan territory they did immediately before 9/11. They control the border with Tajikistan and are closing in on the border with Uzbekistan.

Exactly twenty years ago I was deep into yet another epic journey across Karachi, Peshawar, the Pakistan tribal areas, Tajikistan and finally the Panjshir valley, where I interviewed Commander Masoud - who told me the Taliban at the time were controlling 85% of Afghanistan.

Three weeks later Masoud was assassinated by an al-Qaeda-linked commando disguised as "journalists" - two days before 9/11. The empire - at the height of the unipolar moment - went into Forever Wars on overdrive, while China - and Russia - went deep into consolidating their emergence, geopolitically and geoeconomically.

We are now living the consequences of these opposed strategies.