Iran claimed on Friday that international surveillance gear mounted at a sensitive nuclear facility may have been hacked by saboteurs ahead of their attack in June, Bloomberg News reported.

The facility, located in Karaj northwest of Tehran, was shaken by a mysterious blast in June that destroyed monitoring equipment.

"There was a sabotage there by Israel and some cameras were damaged and there was some investigation going on," said Iran's ambassador to the U.K., Mohsen Baharvand, in comments which appear to shed some light on why the Islamic Republic continues to stonewall International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors looking to reinstall cameras at the Karaj centrifuge workshop.

He added that Iranian judiciary investigators looked into whether the cameras may have been used to aid the attack.

Still sore about being left out of the recently held 'Summit for democracy", China has labelled American democracy as a 'weapon of mass destruction'.

Along with Russia and Hungary, China was not invited to be a part of the two-day virtual summit hosted by the US. China responded angrily to this and alleged Biden-led US of still following Cold War-era ideologies.


"'Democracy' has long become a 'weapon of mass destruction' used by the US to interfere in other countries," a foreign ministry spokesperson said in an online statement.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, on Friday, that he would not rule out the possibility of a referendum on the status of two breakaway regions, in the east of his country, or direct negotiations with Moscow.

Zelensky was speaking to Kiev's 1+1 TV network, following a call with the French President Emmanuel Macron. He was referring to Donetsk and Lugansk, which have been largely controlled by separatists, with Russian support, since shortly after the Kiev Maidan in 2014. The president explained:

"I do not rule out a referendum on Donbass as a whole. It's not a question of status. This could be about the Donbass, Crimea, and maybe in general on halting the war."

Zelensky also said he would not rule out direct negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and saw support for it from Ukraine's European partners and the US.

A readout of the Macron-Zelensky call provided by Paris said the two presidents agreed to resume the talks in the so-called Normandy format, with the mediation of France and Germany. Macron pledged to discuss reviving the model with the new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz next week.

US President Joe Biden also spoke with Zelensky on Thursday, briefing the Ukrainian leader on his talks with Putin earlier in the week.

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis will take a major step on Friday morning to stop the influx of illegal aliens claiming to be unaccompanied children into his state thanks to Democrat President Joe Biden's secret nighttime flights, Breitbart News has learned exclusively from the governor's team.

DeSantis's administration, through the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF), will issue what is called an "emergency order" blocking the issuance or renewal of state licenses to DCF facilities throughout the state of Florida if any of those facilities are currently housing illegal migrant children — or illegal migrants claiming to be children — that the Biden administration flew into Florida.

DeSantis will appear in Jacksonville on Friday morning at a press conference to announce the new order as well, and the governor's office conveyed to Breitbart News just how significant of a development this policy represents.

DeSantis spokeswoman Christina Pushaw told Breitbart News on Thursday evening:

"The mission of the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) is to protect the health, safety, and well-being of Floridians, especially children. To this end, DCF licenses facilities that house children whose families are unable to care for them. As a state agency, DCF serves the people of Florida. Diverting resources away from kids in need in Florida, to illegal aliens being smuggled here by the Biden Administration for clandestine resettlement, does not serve the people of our state. Under the new emergency rule, the federal government's resettlement of illegal aliens (unaccompanied minors) from outside Florida does not constitute 'evidence of need' as required for issuance or renewal of a state license for a child-care facility. Therefore, no licenses shall be issued or renewed with respect to any child-care agency that provides services to illegal aliens transported to Florida from outside our state."

The U.S. government has won its appeal against a lower British court's rejection of its extradition request to prosecute Julian Assange for journalistic activity under the Espionage Act. Rather than going free, the WikiLeaks founder will continue to languish in Belmarsh Prison where he has already spent over two and a half years despite having been convicted of no crime. Glenn Greenwald writes:

"As a result, that extradition request will now be sent to British Home Secretary Prita Patel, who technically must approve all extradition requests but, given the U.K. Government's long-time subservience to the U.S. security state, is all but certain to rubber-stamp it. Assange's representatives, including his fiancee Stella Morris, have vowed to appeal the ruling, but today's victory for the U.S. means that Assange's freedom, if it ever comes, is further away than ever: not months but years even under the best of circumstances."

"Mark this day as fascism casts off its disguises," tweeted journalist John Pilger of the ruling.

The upcoming French presidential election isn't just another vote. According to one candidate, it's a potential opportunity to reverse course and stop being "vassals of the US, NATO, and the EU." Will the people take it, though?

For far too long, French voters have wanted their presidential candidates to bring them change. Just not too much of it, s'il vous plaît. For far too long, they have watched their social security system provide them with less and less - meaning more out-of-pocket costs - as taxation on their increasingly poorly compensated work fails to follow the same trajectory, while their cost of living increases.

Meanwhile, France has fallen into bed with the US-led Western economic collective suicide to the point of mimicking the American establishment's worst tendencies, from deindustrialisation and outsourcing of industry to low-cost foreign jurisdictions, to adhering to whatever globalist narratives are cooked up. The entire system is sold as some kind of benefit to the entirety of the Western economic and political sphere, but it really just benefits global corporatism and its ruling elites.

France is a middle power, like Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and others. And there's a real role for such countries in the world that they repeatedly fail to exploit, preferring instead to shoot themselves in the foot by simply going along with the conventional narrative. Yet on the rare occasion when one of these countries dares to assert its own sovereignty and breaks away from the globalist straitjacket, it finds a distinct advantage. Which is why they should do so more often.

Lawyers acting for constitutional law professor John Eastman have picked apart the raison d'etre for the January 6th Congressional committee, as well pointing out the potential for abuse of power and breaches of House rules.

Eastman - a target of the commission - is held up as guilty of insurrection by the political left for having the constitutional opinion that Vice President Mike Pence had no obligation to count ballots for states where political and legal proceedings were underway regarding election fraud.

The fisking of the committee will irk the already enfeebled group of Democrats, fresh off their latest round of embarrassments at the hands of another target: former Trump advisor Stephen K. Bannon.

Lawyer Charles Burnham wrote to committee chairman and violent black nationalist supporter Rep. Bennie Thompson:

We also have several objections to the legal propriety of your subpoena. These objections are important in their own right and as relevant context for Dr. Eastman's assertion of his Fifth Amendment right. First, your committee lacks a ranking minority member, which makes it impossible to comply with relevant House Rules, including those applicable to subpoenas and depositions.

Secondly, your extraordinarily broad subpoena goes far beyond even the most expansive reading of the Committees authorizing resolution in asking for materials bearing no reasonable relation to the events of January 6.

Finally, the lack of true minority representation combined with your decision to take testimony in secret proceedings creates an extreme risk of gross unfairness to the subjects of your investigation. As I already stated, these are serious issues, both in their own right and as critical context for Dr. Eastman's invocation of the Fifth Amendment.

To read the full letter, which deals with a number of critical flaws with the committee's existence and understanding of the law, download this PDF.

It's time to admit it. Less than a year in, Joe Biden's is a failed presidency. Biden knows it, the press knows it, and voters know it. And our foreign adversaries like China and Russia know it.

It's also time to look at the "cabal" of business, labor and political leaders who foisted the Biden administration on us. That won't be hard, as they were openly bragging about their efforts less than a year ago.

The failure is obvious. The administration is so desperate, it's begging the press for better coverage. (What, they're supposed to lie about gas and food prices? I guess so.) The Chinese and Russians are moving aggressively against the United States and its allies, on the ground, on the seas and even in outer space, because they don't fear repercussions from a tired, incoherent president who presides over an administration of woke incompetents and Obama retreads.

And voters? Voters know firsthand. A staggering 63 percent of them think the country is on the wrong track, according to this week's Wall Street Journal poll.

Hungary's Constitutional Court has struck down a bid by Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government to challenge a ruling by the EU's top court against Budapest's asylum policy.

Orban's justice minister asked the court earlier this year to review a ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) that Budapest broke EU law by allowing police to physically "push back" asylum seekers across the Serbian border.

In its decision on December 10, the Constitutional Court ruled that the legal challenge by the Hungarian government "cannot be the subject of a review" of the CJEU's judgment, nor can it lead to an "examination of the primacy of EU law."

The judges did, however, rule that Budapest has the right to apply its own measures in areas where the European Union has yet to take adequate steps for common implementation of EU rules.

The judges said Hungary can also decide whether a person can remain in the country, where there is "incomplete effectiveness" in terms of EU rules. They added that Hungary's constitution protects the "inalienable right" of the country to "determine its territorial unity, population, form of government, and state structure."

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie says UK a 'lackey' of US and journalism is not a crime

Australian parliamentarians have demanded the prime minister, Scott Morrison, intervene in the case of Julian Assange, an Australian citizen, after the United States won a crucial appeal in its fight to extradite the WikiLeaks founder on espionage charges.

"The prime minister must get Assange home," the Australian Greens leader, Adam Bandt, told Guardian Australia on Saturday.

"An Australian citizen is being prosecuted for publishing details of war crimes, yet our government sits on its hands and does nothing."

The independent MP Andrew Wilkie called on Morrison to "end this lunacy" and demand the US and UK release Assange.