NATO officials are discussing taking action to reclaim some Chinese-owned infrastructure projects in Europe should a wider conflict with Russia break out in the east of the continent, three officials involved in the discussions told CNN.

A decade ago, when Europe was still crawling out of the economic crater caused by the global financial crisis, the promise of infrastructure funding from Chinese-owned investment firms seemed like a major windfall.


Now, with the largest land war being waged in Europe since World War II - and the West warning of Beijing's support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine - NATO countries now see those investments as a liability, with allies beginning to discuss ways to reclaim some of those projects, the officials said.

Biden and Trump are two rotten figureheads of a rotting empire. Ignore the tribal rhetoric: neither poses an existential threat. But the system behind them does.

The outpouring of opinions on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump mostly offers little insight or honesty - apart from the all-too-obvious concern that the shooting of the former president is likely to make the United States even more of a tinderbox than it is already.

There's a reason for this. The responses - whether from Trump supporters or Trump opponents - are all embedded in the same ideology of political tribalism that provoked the gunman. Neither side is capable of self-reflection because the US system is designed to avoid such self-reflection.

Despite what the political class wants you to believe, "political violence" is as American as apple pie. The US global empire was built on political violence, or the threat of it, most especially after the Second World War. Just ask the people of Vietnam, Serbia, Latin America, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine and Gaza.

The difference now is that Washington's imperial grip is all too clearly weakening.

President Joe Biden is not alone in refusing to recognise this fact. He recently told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos: "I'm running the world."

But US elites are rapidly finding that the world is no longer prepared to submit.

Washington's international military arm, Nato, is being run into the ground by Russia in a proxy war in Ukraine.
Washington's key military client state in the oil-rich Middle East, Israel, is being flooded with US weaponry to destroy Gaza. But in the midst of a genocide, Israel is exposing how weak it is. Hamas has not been defeated. In fact, it has been strengthened. And greater cooperation is being encouraged among those opposed to Israel's regional hegemony.

Current domestic US politics can only be properly understood through the prism of the gradual decline of US influence abroad. The building of alternative international power formations, such as BRICS, is weakening Washington's military and economic reach.

Adding to its woes, Washington's ideological hegemony is crumbling too. Transnational capitalism - headquartered in the US - has no answers to the environmental fall-out from the endless resource extraction required to feed the appetite for wasteful, mass consumption it has to cultivate to generate greater profits for a corporate elite.

As the plundering of the planet's finite resources gets harder, especially as corporations continue to stoke our hunger for material excess, other states are less willing to sit back and let the US take its pound of flesh.

The result is a growing political and economic instability that is hard to miss.

Political analysts discuss with RT how the election of President Masoud Pezeshkian will impact the Islamic Republic, the region and the world.

Last week, it became clear that Iran's conservative turn, which saw Ibrahim Raisi take power in August 2021, was over. Following the president's tragic death in a helicopter crash in May, the reformist coalition's sole candidate won snap elections.

Iranians cast their votes in the first round of the presidential race at the end of June, but the winner could not be determined, prompting a runoff. On July 5, Iranians elected the moderate Masoud Pezeshkian with 53.6 percent of votes. The 69-year-old cardiac surgeon is expected to resign from his current post as a member of the Iranian parliament at the end of July ahead of an inauguration in August.

Much is expected from a man who pledged to unite a quite divided nation, solve Iran's economic problems, ease tensions with the West triggered by the Islamic Republic's drive for nuclear energy, and improve relations with regional and international players. But given the events that have affected Iran in recent years and mounting international pressure, will Pezeshkian's presidency be as liberal as that of Hassan Rouhani, who held the post for eight years from 2013?

To understand how likely it is for the new president to achieve these goals, RT spoke to a number of political analysts and this is their take on what the future might hold for Iran.

America just got a reality check about how close it is to descending into chaos.

Former President and impending Republican Nominee Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt at an outdoor rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday days before his party's national convention after suddenly turning his head at the last second and thus miraculously dodging a bullet that only ended up grazing his ear. The shooter was killed by the Secret Service, but an eyewitness told the media that he warned the police about a man crawling on the roof a few minutes earlier, though no action was taken.

This security lapse is suspicious and prompts speculation that at least one member of the Secret Service might have purposely waited until after the shooter took his shot before neutralizing him, whether out of sympathy for his cause or perhaps because they were in on some sort of plot. About the shooter, he's been identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a registered Republican. It remains unclear at the time of writing what his online history was and whether there's more to his party affiliation than meets the eye.

At the very least, there's no doubt that the Democrats' and their allied "Never Trumpers'" hatemongering played a role in radicalizing the suspect. Had he succeeded in assassinating Trump, then the US would have certainly plunged into socio-political disaster, which it literally missed by less than an inch. Many expect that powerful Democrat donors might soon force Biden to drop out of the race, thus leading to the party selecting their nominee outside of the notionally democratic primary process.

Former first lady Melania Trump on Sunday condemned the attack on her husband at a rally the previous day, urging fellow Americans to come together and "reunite" in the wake of the incident.

She described the suspected attacker as a "monster", his deed a "heinous crime" and in a statement, said:

"When I watched that violent bullet strike my husband, Donald, I realized my life, and Barron's life, were on the brink of devastating change. I am grateful to the brave secret service agents and law enforcement officials who risked their own lives to protect my husband."

The ex-first lady also urged fellow Americans to focus on arguably more important things, such as "love, compassion, kindness and empathy," rather than on political rivalry. She stated:

"Let us reunite. Now. This morning, ascend above the hate, the vitriol, and the simple-minded ideas that ignite violence. We all want a world where respect is paramount, family is first, and love transcends. We can realize this world again. Each of us must demand to get it back. We must insist that respect fills the cornerstone of our relationships, again."

The battle for a small settlement with an unusual name is part of Moscow's grand strategic plan.

Recent reports from the front lines of the conflict in Ukraine have included references to a place with a name that nearly everyone on the planet recognizes: Russian forces have reached the outskirts of New York. No, it's not a joke. Here's what's happening, why the troops are advancing on New York, and what their objectives might be.

For the Russian military, expanding the front line seems to be its main goal this summer. Seizing the initiative, it is steadily widening the battlefront, forcing Kiev to respond to new threats in various locations. While each attack may not yield an immediate breakthrough, they wear down Ukrainian troops by forcing their commanders to redeploy brigades. This continuous strain results in the overall exhaustion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).

One such unexpectedly active front is around the town of Toretsk and the neighboring settlement of New York, areas long overlooked as sites of conflict.

Law enforcement continues to search for the shooter's motive

Law enforcement officials are still trying to determine what motivated a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man to shoot former President Donald Trump yesterday but believe he had no accomplices. The attack, which superficially injured Trump, killed one rallygoer and severely injured two others.

The FBI, however, stated in a Sunday briefing that it "believes the shooter acted alone," The Associated Press reported.

The injured rallygoers "were listed in stable condition as of Sunday." The one fatality, Corey Comperatore, was a former volunteer fire chief who shielded his family with his body.

The Trump campaign has raised more than $2.6 million for the victims and their families.

Former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Khan were arrested by Pakistani authorities in a case involving the illegal sale of state gifts on Saturday after a court accepted their appeals against a ruling that they had violated the country's marriage law and ordered their immediate release.

Khan and his wife were sentenced to seven years in prison and fined in February by a court that ruled their 2018 marriage broke the law. Bushra was accused of not completing the waiting period mandated by Islam, called "Iddat," after divorcing her previous husband and marrying Khan.

Khan has been in jail after being convicted in four cases since last August. Two of the cases have since been suspended and he was acquitted in a third, so the Iddat case was the only one keeping him in prison.

However, shortly after the local court's verdict in his favor, the former prime minister and his wife were arrested in a lingering corruption reference against them, commonly known as the Toshakhana - or state repository - case, preventing the possibility of them walking out of the jail.

Former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Monday that soldiers are plagued by nightmares, the economy is collapsing, and diplomacy is eroding.

"Nine months have passed since the deadly surprise attack by Hamas on the state of Israel and its people, and it seems as though nothing has changed within the Israeli leadership," Lieberman wrote in an article published on the Israeli news site Walla.


"Children and adults, soldiers, and reservists are suffering from nightmares about what has happened and what might happen. The Israeli economy is collapsing, and Israeli diplomacy is eroding," the leader of the right-wing opposition party added.

That was close, REALLY close...

Joe and Niall with their initial thoughts on the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

The shooter was probably put up to it, and it's miraculous that the first shot only grazed Trump's right ear.

What an amazing turn of events...


Running Time: 01:23:43

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