US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has revealed a list of diplomatic requests sent to his counterpart in Moscow in response to Russia's security proposals, describing the paper as a "serious diplomatic path forward, should Russia choose it" during a Wednesday press conference.

However, while he restated several of Washington's talking points with regard to the confrontation over Ukraine, he declined to go into specifics, arguing that "diplomacy has the best chance to succeed when we provide space for confidential talks."

The top US diplomat described the document as addressing "core principles" that Washington is determined to uphold, such as "Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the right of states to choose their own security arrangements and alliances."

The prime minister tells MPs that he welcomes the Met's decision to look into a number of gatherings during COVID-19 restrictions in 2020 and 2021 "because I believe this will help to give the public the clarity it needs and help to draw a line under matters".

Boris Johnson is willing to be interviewed by police investigating events in Downing Street and Whitehall for potential breaches of coronavirus regulations but does not believe he has broken the law, Downing Street has said.


The comments from Number 10 come after the Metropolitan Police announced it was launching an investigation into a "number of" gatherings during COVID-19 restrictions in 2020 and 2021, putting more pressure on the prime minister.


Speaking in the Commons, Mr Johnson told MPs: "I welcome the Met's decision to conduct its own investigation because I believe this will help to give the public the clarity it needs and help to draw a line under matters."

Britain and the United States have announced the departure of some embassy staff and dependents from Ukraine in a move that Kyiv has called "premature" following several rounds of inconclusive diplomatic talks between Washington and Moscow prompted by Russia's build up of tens of thousands of troops near the border with its western neighbor.

The European Union, however, signaled that it was not immediately following the U.S. and British moves, with a senior EU official saying on January 24 that there was no need to "dramatize" the situation as long as diplomatic talks with Russia continue.

The bloc also announced a 1.2 billion euro ($1.36 billion) financial aid package for Ukraine to mitigate the effects of the conflict with Russia, which has amassed some 100,000 troops on Ukraine's border.

Special Report obtained documents showing what was happening behind the scenes in the early days of the pandemic.

Fresh questions are being raised about what American scientists and federal health officials knew about the origins of the coronavirus and whether conflicting evidence was suppressed and hidden from the public.

On Tuesday night's episode of Special Report with Bret Baier, Fox News dove into the early days of the coronavirus pandemic and explored documents obtained showing that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was warned early on that the virus may have originated in a Wuhan, China lab.

The liberal justice's decision to step down after more than 27 years on the court allows the president to appoint a successor who could serve for decades.

Justice Stephen Breyer will step down from the Supreme Court at the end of the current term, according to people familiar with his thinking.

President Joe Biden and Breyer are scheduled to appear together at the White House Thursday as the Supreme Court justice is set to announce his retirement, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News.

Breyer is one of the three remaining liberal justices, and his decision to retire after more than 27 years on the court allows Biden to appoint a successor who could serve for decades and, in the short term, maintain the current 6-3 split between conservative and liberal justices.

The government in Sofia is calling for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis, strengthening its own military

Bulgaria is a "loyal ally in NATO" and the alliance's unity is the best response to the current crisis over Ukraine, Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said on Wednesday, amid conflicting reports on Sofia's participation in the US military buildup in Eastern Europe.

Petkov's government voted on Wednesday to follow the "Bulgarian strategy" of reducing tensions between NATO and Russia, including "absolutely all options for resolving this dispute by diplomatic means," according to the state news agency BTA.

The strategy will be based on rebuilding the Bulgarian military, Petkov said. Defense Minister Stefan Yanev explained that the "top priority" will be investing in building a battalion combat team, a unit of around 1,000 soldiers.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not mince words in describing participants of the freedom convoy, set to arrive in Ottawa from across Canada this weekend.

The group, which spawned following a flip-flop from the Trudeau government on whether or not truckers would require vaccination to enter into Canada, has received support from several high-level Conservative politicians, excluding party leader Erin O'Toole.

The Pentagon is continuing to install a fresh software upgrade on its F-35 fighter jets, even though the programming turned out to be riddled with flaws, Bloomberg reports, citing a military testing report soon to be published.

The fighter jet operators discovered deficiencies "in weapons, fusion, communications and navigation, cybersecurity and targeting processes," following the upgrade, the 13-page assessment viewed by the media says.

It adds that the software required further "modification and additional time and resources, which caused delays."

The Lockheed Martin jet is heavily reliant on onboard software that includes more than eight million lines of code. The upgrade "does not adhere to the published best practices" and had "consistently failed to deliver the capabilities contained in their master schedule," the assessment notes.

The upgrade was designed to provide the jets with new capabilities and increase their computing power and memory. It should have also allowed the fighters to carry new munition types, such as AIM-9X Block II air-to-air missiles, all-weather Small Diameter Bomb II munitions or radar-killing AARGM-ER missiles, and even the B-61 nuclear bomb.

The fatal mistake committed by Brussels in 2014 was to force Kiev to make an impossible choice between Europe and Russia.

A specter haunts the collective West: total zombification, courtesy of an across-the-board 24/7 psy ops imprinting the inevitability of "Russian aggression".

Let's pierce the fog of hysteria by asking Ukrainian Defense Minister Reznikov what's going on:

"I can absolutely say that to date, the Russian armed forces have not created a strike group that could make a forceful invasion of Ukraine."

Well, Reznikov is obviously not aware that the White House, with access to arguably privileged intel, is convinced that Russia will invade "any-minute-now".

The Pentagon doubles down: "It's very clear the Russians have no intention right now of deescalating". Thus the necessity, expressed by spokesman John Kirby, of readying a multinational NATO response force (NRF) of 40,000 troops: "If it is activated...to defeat aggression, if necessary".

So "aggression" is a given. The White House is "refining" military plans - 18 at the last count - for all manners of "aggression". As for responding - in writing - to the Russian proposals on security guarantees, well, that's far too complex.

The drama currently unfolding in which the Biden Administration is doing everything it can to provoke a war with Russia over Ukraine is possibly the most frightening foreign policy misadventure since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1967 Lyndon Johnson attempt to sink the USS Liberty and blame it on Egypt, either of which could have gone nuclear. I can well recall the Robert Heinlein sci-fi book The Puppet Masters, later made into a movie, which described how alien-slugs, arriving by way of a flying saucer landing in Iowa, invaded the earth and parasitically attached themselves to the central nervous systems of humans and became able to completely control their minds.

What the humans know, they know. What the slugs want, no matter what, the human will do. And the tale gets really scary in geopolitical terms when some Secret Service Agents are "occupied" by the invaders and they are thereby poised to capture the President of the United States. I would point out that the movie came out when Bill Clinton was president, which should have provoked some concerns about whether it was fact or fiction.

Well, does anyone currently wonder why I think of The Puppet Masters when an incoherent Joe Biden in particular makes a speech? And also consider the befuddled look of Secretary of State Tony Blinken or the bewildered expressions of Vice President Kamala Harris or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, all of which might also suggest that the slugs now completely control the Administration. The Biden and Blinken possibly slug-controlled automatons are now stating their conviction, based on no evidence whatsoever, that Russia is about to invade Ukraine and they are threatening sanctions like Putin "has never seen before."

There will no doubt be more slug-derived pronouncements to reinforce that warning in the next few days after the latest round of talks breaks down. Evacuation of US Embassy staff families in Kiev is already underway, deliberately escalating rather than attempting to defuse the crisis which could lead to nuclear war, destroying the human race and replacing it with the alien slugs.