Foreign governments instigated a "coup" attempt in Georgia, the mayor Tbilisi, Kakha Kaladze, has claimed, referring to recent protests in the South Caucasus nation.

The Georgian government has repeatedly cried foul over alleged external interference in the nation's internal affairs. It says the West has sought to depose the ruling Georgian Dream party, which has consistently refused to antagonize neighboring Russia over the Ukraine conflict.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Kaladze claimed that ahead of the municipal elections on October 4, "a campaign had been underway for months regarding a coup d'état," backed by foreign actors.

Awarded by the Nobel Committee for advancing a "peaceful transition," US govt-sponsored politician Maria Corina Machado is a veteran coup leader who's called for Israel to invade Venezuela.
The Nobel Committee has decided to make the case for Trump's war on Venezuela, giving its "Peace Prize" to Maria Corina Machado, a US government-funded regime change activist who's helped lead several failed coups, violent street riots that have left scores dead, and appears to have promised her country's oil and mineral wealth to a consortium of MAGA aligned billionaires in exchange for financing her campaign of political arsonism.

Hailed by the Nobel Committee for supposedly attempting to achieve "a peaceful transition" in her country, Machado has personally appealed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lead a military invasion of Venezuela.

One year after she called for Israel to destroy her country, she issued a proclamation demanding the US launch a Libya-style regime change war on Venezuela.

US President Donald Trump has said he would impose an additional 100% tariff on imports from China from next month.

In a post on social media, Trump said the US would also put export controls on critical software.

In an earlier post on Friday, he hit back at Beijing's move this week to tighten its rules for exports of rare earths, accusing China of "becoming very hostile" and trying to hold the world "captive".

He threatened to pull out of a meeting with China's President Xi Jinping. He later said he had not cancelled it, but that he did not know "that we're going to have it".

"I'm going to be there regardless," he told reporters at the White House.

The First Lady and the Russian president have been working to reunite Ukrainian children with their families, she has said.

First Lady Melania Trump has revealed that she has been in direct communication with Russian President Vladimir Putin for months, engaging in a behind-the-scenes diplomatic initiative to reunite Ukrainian children, displaced by the conflict, with their families.

Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Moscow has evacuated children from the combat zone and relocated them to safety until they could be reunited with their families. Kiev, however, has accused Russia of "kidnapping".

Speaking on Friday, the First Lady said the outreach began after she sent a letter to Putin last August. "He responded in writing, signaling a willingness to engage with me directly," she stated. Since then, the two have maintained an "open channel of communication regarding the welfare of these children."

Russia has long maintained that establishing a Palestinian state is the only way to achieve lasting peace in the region.

The unresolved issue of Palestinian statehood is the "main factor fueling extremism" in the Middle East, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

In an interview with RT on Thursday, Lavrov welcomed US President Donald Trump's peace plan aimed at ending the Gaza war. Earlier that day, Israel and the militant group Hamas agreed to begin implementing the plan's initial steps toward a potential ceasefire.

"We have repeatedly made it clear to Israel that the unresolved Palestinian issue, lingering for nearly 80 years, remains the main factor fueling extremism in the Middle East," Lavrov said.

He added that generations of Palestinian children grow up believing they should have their own state - a goal backed by a UN resolution - yet, as he noted:

"Israel was created, whereas Palestine was not. True, extremism is being fueled there... When generation after generation grows up in a society where their legitimate UN-approved aspirations are ignored, such sentiments can hardly be contained."

A detailed analysis of the Jan. 6 pipe bombs found new problems with the FBI evidence and advances the notion that the case could turn out to be a government-created hoax.

A video engineer who spent more than a year examining the pipe bomb evidence submitted a 26-page report to the House Select Subcommittee to Investigate the Remaining Questions Surrounding Jan. 6.

Known on social media as Armitas, the analyst was asked on Oct. 4 to submit his report by the legal counsel for the House Committee on the Judiciary. Armitas said he has been working with a Washington-based FBI special agent since March on a forensic re-examination of a case that had seemed no closer to a solution than it was over 1,700 days ago.

Armitas carefully laid out every step the hoodie-wearing suspect took in planting devices at the Democratic National Committee and the Capitol Hill Club, a private Republican social club, on Jan. 5, 2021.

"Ordinary judicial proceedings become impracticable when the people paid to execute federal law coordinate to prevent its execution."
— EKO on "X"

Now, try to imagine Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (Jabba the Pritzker) as a Confederate general, his juddering bulk astride a panting war-horse, as he gallops into battle against federal positions in Millennium Park, Chicago. . . . Yeah, in the immortal words of Homey D. Clown, I don't think so. Yet these seem to be the fantasies typically entertained in our times by the Big Dawgs of the Democratic Party: a confederacy of dweebs.

While Mr. Trump uses presidential power to bring the Gaza War to resolution, officials in the Party of Chaos, distributed through the federal bureaucracy, and down into the state and city ranks, maneuver to ignite Civil War 2.0 in our country. They seem to be mighty pissed-off about something, but what could it really be? Surely not just the removal by deportation of countless border jumpers they ushered in during the baleful term of "Joe Biden" to beef-up their voter rolls.

No, what galls them is the sheer hemorrhaging of their power. The people of this land increasingly reject them and their insane claims and are walking away from the party, at the same time that Mr. Trump seeks to methodically disassemble the scaffold of all their roguery because it is bent on wrecking the republic.

The US has finalised an agreement that will allow Qatar to build an air force facility in Idaho, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced.

He said the facility - where pilots from the Gulf state would be trained to fly F-15 fighter jets - would be established at the Mountain Home Airbase in the north-western US state.

"It's just another example of our partnership," Hegseth said during a meeting with his Qatari counterpart, Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, at the Pentagon on Friday.

Hegseth also praised Qatar for playing a "substantial role" in efforts led by President Donald Trump to secure a Gaza ceasefire and hostage return deal.

Qatar - along with Egypt and Turkey - has been an active mediator during months of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

Since the United States-led NATO proxy war against Russia erupted in February 2022, the European Union has doled out $216 billion in aid to Ukraine. That's equivalent to €186 billion, according to the EU's latest official count. The true figure is likely to be even more.

The United States has given a similar amount to Ukraine. All paid for by taxpayers.

That's about $400 billion total in three years, with the EU promising more over the next few years.

To put this in perspective, the EU aid to Ukraine is multiples more than all of the 27 member nations have received - combined - from the bloc's collective budget and administration. According to Euronews reporting, some of the biggest recipients of EU subsidies each year are Germany (€14 bn), France (€16.5 bn), and Poland (€14 bn). Some of the smaller recipient countries are Austria, Denmark, and Ireland (around €2 bn).

That means Ukraine has received heaps more than all of the EU members combined.

Get your head around that. Ukraine, which is not a member of the European Union, is receiving manifold what actual member states are receiving. And you wonder why people in France are angrily taking to the streets because their shambolic government wants to cut pensions and other social welfare services to save money. Elsewhere, European governments are collapsing from unsustainable debt. And, at the same time, European citizens are constantly being lectured that their states need to spend more and more money on the NATO alliance, even to the insulting point of having to accept the cutting of social benefits and public services.

Ukraine and its corrupt Kiev regime of NeoNazis has bled Europe dry. The so-called president, Vladimir Zelensky (who canceled elections last year, so he's not really a legitimate president), is reported to be funneling €50 million a month to overseas funds for his retirement while his wife goes luxury shopping in New York and Paris. Other members of the regime, like former prime minister and now "defense" minister Denys Shmyhal, are also reportedly up to their eyes in corruption, siphoning off billions in the military aid that Western taxpayers have paid for.

This week, Zelensky took his brassneckery to new levels - if that's possible. He is demanding that Ukraine be made a member of the EU, and he wants to change the rules of the bloc to speed up the process. The EU has granted Ukraine (and Moldova) a fast-track path to membership, but, to its credit, Hungary has objected to this.

In June, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán cast a veto on continuing access talks for Ukraine. According to EU rules, there must be unanimity among member nations for the approval of new members. Orbán said Ukraine is not eligible because of the current war against Russia. "We would be importing a war," he said.

The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize has gone to María Corina Machado, one of the most prominent faces of Venezuela's opposition. The committee's language is familiar - "rights," "peaceful transition" - but the story behind it isn't. Machado's record blends volunteer election networks with long-running fights over foreign funding; her name has appeared in cases tied to efforts to unseat the government - charges she rejects; and a country remains split over where legitimate politics ends and regime change begins.

The award lifts a domestic struggle onto a global stage and drops it into a fresh context: for much of the year, chatter about a "Nobel for Trump" hung in the air, and the very idea of what counts as peacemaking is once again up for debate far beyond Caracas.