With the United States imposing significant pressure on its long time ally Turkey, one of the NATO alliance's oldest members, to cancel its planned acquisition of the Russian S-400 long range air defence system in favour of a Western made alternative, details have emerged regarding the terms proposed by the U.S. in closed door talks with Turkey.

The United States previously threatened Turkey with both economic sanctions and the cancellation of sales of the F-35 single engine stealth fighter, though the Turkish government for its part remained adamant that it would not be influenced by external pressure. With Turkey increasingly in need of an advanced and reliable air defence system, and Western made alternatives costing far more than their Russian counterpart and having a highly questionable performance record, the country has sought to minimise damage to its relations with the Western bloc without compromising on the acquisition of the critical weapons system.

On June 29, 2018 Sergey Lavrov gave a wide-ranging interview to Channel 4's Cathy Newman covering such diverse topics as trade, the unexpected beneficial effect sanctions has had on Russia, the Skripal poisoning case and the inevitable development of a multi-polar world.

Full transcript below:

A stunning revelation buried deep inside Department of Justice inspector general Michael Horowitz's report on the FBI's Hillary Clinton email investigation suggests the controversial June 2016 tarmac meeting between then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton was coordinated.

If true, it blows a hole in the narrative Lynch and Clinton have maintained for two years. Lynch claimed the "social" meeting was spontaneous and the two discussed grandchildren.

The meeting was extremely controversial at the time because it came just days before then-FBI Director James Comey announced the FBI would not recommend criminal charges against Clinton for using a private email server while secretary of state.

President Vladimir Putin has congratulated the Russian team on its historic World Cup win against Spain in Moscow, which sent the hosts into the quarter-finals of their home tournament.

Russia claimed a stunning penalty shootout win over a heavily-fancied Spain team after the scores ended 1-1 at the end of extra time. Goalkeeper Igor Akinfeev was the hero as he saved two spot-kicks to send the team into a first World Cup quarter-final competing as an independent nation.

The Ukrainian Military has been playing war games on the Crimean border, but they'd best be careful not to force Russia to defend herself - that would NOT be a game.

RIA Novosti is reporting that Ukraine has been conducting military drills at the Russian border in Crimea, and Crimean leader Grigory Ioffe, head of Crimea's Public Chamber has said Ukraine is playing with the live's of its military members like they're tin soldiers.

But of course, they're not tin soldiers, they're real people, and Russia is more concerned for the lives of Ukrainian soldiers than the Ukrainian leaders playing war to score political points.

Ukrainian Naval Infantry (Marines) have been conducting exercises with supporting artillery units - the kind which could fire into Russia - in Kherson Oblast, southern Ukraine, the area which connects Crimea to the mainland.

I remember when America was a free country. You could get on an airliner without an ID. Driving licenses didn't even have photos. If a friend was coming through your city on a flight and had a few hours layover, you could meet them inside the airport for lunch or dinner. You could meet friends, children, and relatives at the gate or see them off at the gate. Parents could actually put children on the plane and grandparents could take them off.

Your flight ticket was good at any airline. If something happened to your flight or you missed it, you could use the ticket on another airline going to the same place. On international flights you were permitted two free stopovers prior to your destination. If you were going to Athens, Greece, for example, you could first visit Paris and then Rome. It worked both ways, over and back. So one air ticket, six cities.

I can remember when you could enter a Manhatten office building without having to show an ID, be looked up on a list, and cleared in, and when you could check in a hotel without an ID and paid your bill when you checked out, with cash if you preferred. The only evidence of your name was the one you gave when you checked in. Cars didn't beep at you and neither did appliances nor construction machinery. The world was a quieter, less noise-disturbed place.

Common sense was more prevalent. Today it is hard to find any common sense. The British parliament is debating a law that would criminalize upskirt photographs. The "invasion of privacy" would have a price tag of two years imprisonment. Yet government can invade our privacy at will with street cameras, traffic cameras, read our emails, listen to our telephone calls, monitor our credit card purchases. Serious kinds of privacy invasion run amuck, but parents cannot find out if an underaged daughter is pregnant or has VD. As kids we ran free. Heaven help a parent that permitted that today.

The agenda of the United States government to extradite WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange is kind of like Israel's nuclear arsenal: everyone knows it exists, but government officials refuse to openly confirm it. US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has admitted that Assange's arrest is a priority, President Trump has said he'd support Sessions in taking that action, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has labeled WikiLeaks a "hostile non-state intelligence service," and the ranking Democrat in the US House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff has stated that he plans on questioning Assange "when he is in US custody." But so far none have come right out and admitted that there is an extradition request for Assange or what the legal basis for it might be.

Unlike Israel's nukes, however, you'll still see empire loyalists pretending that they don't believe there's an agenda to extradite Assange. You'll often see social media accounts patrolling all posts about Julian Assange any time he's in the news, stating in remarkably uniform language that Assange is free to leave the embassy whenever he wants because there is no extradition agenda. To be clear, these people do not believe what they are saying; nobody actually believes that Assange is choosing to remain in effective solitary confinement because it's his idea of a fun time. But there are individuals with a vested interest in reinforcing the narrative that the US isn't the sort of government that would try to imprison a journalist for telling the truth.

It is this false narrative manipulation which makes it essential to document such events as ten Democratic Senators writing a letter to Vice President Mike Pence demanding that he confront Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno about continuing to give political asylum to Assange.

The Saudi-led coalition of mostly Persian Gulf nations has suspended the offensive on the Yemeni port of Al Hodeidah in order to promote peace talks with the Houthi rebel movement, UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash said on Sunday.

"We welcome continuing efforts by UN Special Envoy, Martin Griffiths, to achieve an unconditional Houthi withdrawal from Hodeida city and port. We have paused our campaign to allow enough time for this option to be fully explored. We hope he will succeed," Gargash wrote on Twitter.

The foreign minister went on to clarify that the pause was initially introduced for a week on June 23, but is still remaining in place as the coalition awaits the results of the UN envoy's visit to the Yemeni capital.

The predictions have come true about the emergence of a new defense group that will change the European security environment. On June 25, the defense chiefs from nine EU countries signed off on the creation of a new force called the European Intervention Initiative (EII), which is spearheaded by French President Emmanuel Macron.

The new organization will have a common budget and a doctrine establishing its guidelines for acting and joint planning for contingencies in which NATO may not get involved. The group includes the UK, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Estonia, Spain, and Portugal [and France]. Italy may join soon. The initiative is not tied to the EU's Common European Defense, which includes the PESCO agreement as well as NATO. Great Britain has always opposed the idea of creating a European defense alliance, fearing it would undermine transatlantic unity. Now it has done an about-face, as the rifts within the US grow deeper.

The new force is to be much more efficient than anything else the EU has to offer, with a streamlined decision-making process that will permit a quick reaction time. Its relatively small number of members will give it more flexibility in comparison with the EU or NATO. For instance, the EU's four multinational military battle groups that were created as far back as 2007 have never been deployed.

Following Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's exposure of former FBI Director James Comey's mishandling of the Hillary Clinton email case, investigative journalist John Solomon has shed light on Comey's meddling in the DOJ's negotiations with Julian Assange ahead of a massive disclosure of CIA cyber malpractice.

In a single shot, former FBI Director James Comey had put the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under fire and killed an opportunity to find out who had hacked the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) email server during the 2016 presidential race, writes award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon.

In his op-ed for The Hill, Solomon described how US Justice Department (DOJ) officials negotiated an "immunity deal" with WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange ahead of the famous "Vault 7" release. The leak exposed the CIA's global hacking techniques, which "damaged [the agency's] cyber warfare capabilities for a long time to come," as the investigative journalist remarked, citing US officials.