Russia and Belarus have both agreed to "take action" to secure the security of both countries if there were to be any expansion of NATO infrastructure into neighboring Ukraine, the Kremlin revealed on Monday.

At a meeting in Sochi as part of a personal visit by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the pair agreed that another move eastwards by the US-led alliance would be met with a strong response, according to the Russian president's spokesman.

Dmitry Peskov added that the two leaders discussed the subject of Ukraine's potential accession to the bloc on numerous occasions, and that any kind of move would cross one of Putin's "'red lines' that he has repeatedly spoken about before." Such an event would require some form of retaliatory action "that would ensure the security of our two allied states," the press secretary added.

The number of nuclear power units in Russia will be increased at most of the country's operational nuclear power plants, according to Director General of the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom, Aleksey Likhachev.

Likhachev, who's heading the Russian delegation at the 65th IAEA General Conference in Vienna, Austria told reporters:

"We will be gradually decommissioning Soviet units built in the 1970s. They will be replaced with about 15 units by 2035. Our task is to build them on the existing sites, to expand the existing plants with new units. All of them will be generations 3+, with a capacity of 1,200 MW."

Rosatom's chief also talked about low-power nuclear power plants:

"A relevant decision has been made, and we switched to its practical implementation, namely the construction of a flotilla of small nuclear power plants based on RITM reactors that will be used in the development of the Baimskoye ore deposit, as well as the land-based version of the RITM-200 for the Kyuchus gold deposit in Yakutia. That means that we have already started implementing low-capacity projects both in Chukotka and Yakutia."

Russia is in negotiations with developers of foreign Covid-19 vaccines, a government epidemiologist has revealed, noting that the country is analyzing "all data available" to determine the safety and effectiveness of the jabs.

As things stand, just Russian-made vaccines are currently available, including the popular Sputnik V.

Speaking on Radio Komsomolskaya Pravda, Tatyana Ruzhentsova revealed that Russians may soon be able to choose to be inoculated with jabs produced abroad. Ruzhentsova is deputy director for clinical work at the Gabrichevsky Moscow Scientific Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, run by the government health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic says foreign partners are turning a blind eye to a security crackdown in Serb-majority areas of Kosovo, where the breakaway region's forces have brought essential cross-border traffic to a halt.

"The complete occupation of northern Kosovo and Metohija with armored vehicles by Pristina has been going on for the past seven days, and everyone in the international community stays thunderously silent," Vucic said on Sunday, referring to the region by its Serbian name.

The statement refers to the ongoing crisis in northern Kosovo, involving several crossings into inner Serbia, which have been effectively blocked by the partially recognized authorities of Kosovo after the government in Pristina banned cars with Serbian license plates from entering the region.

Did you ever see Connections? It was a late 1970's British TV series hosted by author and historian James Burke and it was devoted to exploring "the various paths of how technological change happens and the social effects of these changes on Western society." Each episode is a telescoping, kaleidoscopic, pyschedelic tour of hundreds of years of history that, as the title would suggest, reveals the chain of connections linking seemingly disparate people, places and events.

Take Episode 05, for example. Entitled "The Wheel of Fortune," it spins a narrative web connecting ancient Arab astronomers to the invention of the water clock alarm to the development of crucible steel to the assembly line revolution and then concludes with an existential question: if none of the products in our pocket are handmade, who are we?

Don't feel bad if that episode description leaves you confused, disoriented and feeling that you are on the verge of (but have not yet quite achieved) epiphany. That is, as near as I can tell, the point of the show.

But as entertaining as the Connections program makes these types of relationships appear, there's a darker side to the exploration of these historical narrative threads. Personally, I often encounter connections of this sort during the course of my research, but, far from a fun intellectual exercise in dot connecting, they tend to reveal dark truths about the problems we're facing. Do you want to see a wild example?

As you should know by now (and don't worry if you don't because you will shortly!), it was Ramzi Yousef — a mysterious (and allegedly CIA-connected) terrorist superstar who is, we are told, the nephew of "9/11 mastermind" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — who built the bomb used in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and drove it to the parking garage on that fateful morning. There are many, many serious problems with the official story of that event (again, more on which shortly!), but, according to that story, Yousef fled the US before even becoming a suspect in the bombing investigation. This terrorist extraordinaire supposedly managed to hop from country to country, plotting assassinations and bombings in Pakistan, Thailand and Iran before ending up in the Philippines, where he was finally apprehended and turned over to the FBI. . . .

. . . But not before he allegedly met with OKC co-conspirator Terry Nichols, who, it has been claimed, he instructed in the art of bomb-making. But the strange WTC 1993/OKC connection doesn't end there. After being convicted for the World Trade Center bombing, Yousef was sent to the Administrative Maximum U.S. Penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, where he not only met but befriended convicted OKC bomber Timothy McVeigh.

Crazy connection, huh? Well, let's add to that story this little nugget: So-called 9/11 hijackers Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi and so-called "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui allegedly stayed at the same Oklahoma City motel where Timothy McVeigh and a bunch of Iraqis stayed when McVeigh was preparing the OKC bombing.

The result of Germany's parliamentary election is unlikely to lead to any improvement in relations between Berlin and Moscow, because the government will likely be formed with a foreign minister from a hostile coalition partner.

That's according to Senator Konstantin Kosachev, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of Russia's parliament.

Kosachev wrote his views on Facebook on Monday morning, following the release of the preliminary results from Germany. The European Union's biggest country went to the polls on Sunday, marking the end of Angela Merkel's 16-year reign as chancellor.

The winner of the election, with 25.7% of the vote, is the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), led by Olaf Scholz. However, because neither faction won a majority, the SPD must make an agreement with other groups in parliament.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has teased fellow Australians with a return to some normalcy by Christmas, provided they vaccinate in large enough numbers and pressure provincial governments to cooperate.

The Australian leader hailed his government's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic on the sidelines of a multilateral Pacific security summit in Washington, DC. "Sadly, here in the US more lives have been lost in one day than we've had over our entire experience in the pandemic... But we've also got to give people their lives back," he said in an interview with Channel Seven.

"We can ensure that Australians can go forward and not be held back by the strong controls we've had to live with. They've got a use-by date on them."

After a not-so-hearty reception from a crowd outside Queen's University in Belfast as it honored her with the title of its first-ever female chancellor, ex-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton flaunted caped pics on Twitter.

Clinton became the chancellor of Queen's University on Friday to the cries of "war criminal" from a small crowd of hecklers outside, but reactions to her visit and social media mockery of the images of her wardrobe have done little to deter her from celebrating the newly acquired title.

"Just call me Madam Chancellor," Clinton tweeted on Saturday, attaching images of her in a large gown at Friday's ceremony, while a child carried her cape behind her.

Sir Keir Starmer has criticised a Labour MP's remarks about trans women and called for laws to go further to protect trans rights.

The Labour leader said Rosie Duffield, who is not attending the party conference in Brighton after receiving threats and being branded transphobic, was wrong to say "only women have a cervix".

He called for a "mature and respectful debate" around trans rights, as he warned that trans individuals are among the "most marginalised and abused communities".

In 2017, as Julian Assange began his fifth year holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London, the CIA plotted to kidnap the WikiLeaks founder, spurring heated debate among Trump administration officials over the legality and practicality of such an operation.

Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request "sketches" or "options" for how to assassinate him. Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred "at the highest levels" of the Trump administration, said a former senior counterintelligence official. "There seemed to be no boundaries."

The conversations were part of an unprecedented CIA campaign directed against WikiLeaks and its founder. The agency's multipronged plans also included extensive spying on WikiLeaks associates, sowing discord among the group's members, and stealing their electronic devices.