Investments promised by the US and its allies are nothing but bait, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin has warned

The US and its allies promise Central Asian governments benefits to entice cooperation, but the West will be quick to topple them once they are no longer of use, a senior Russian diplomat has said.

Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin issued the warning in a speech at an event on Central Asian politics hosted by the Valdai Discussion Club in Ufa, Russia on Tuesday.

According to him, the West wants "to reformat" the region for itself, "to call dibs on its natural resources, impose control on transport corridors that run through it, and to turn Central Asia into a staging ground for threats against Russian security."

Israeli officials hyped their country's 5th place Eurovision finish as proof of quiet global grassroots support for their assault on Gaza. Now, they admit they manipulated the results through an international propaganda blitz.

On May 11, Israeli candidate Eden Golan took home 5th place at the Eurovision contest in Malmo, Sweden. The decision to allow the Israeli singer to participate sparked heated protests and calls to boycott the event. Against the rancorous backdrop, many were surprised by Golan's apparent success, which was driven almost entirely to votes by individual audience members. Israeli media and government officials quickly seized on the news as proof that deep down, Europeans secretly support Israel's military rampage in Gaza.

While the mere 52 points that judges awarded Golan would have left her in 12th place, viewers managed to propel the Israeli singer into 5th place by awarding her an astonishing 323 points via televoting. In the end, Golan received the maximum possible 12 points from audiences in Australia, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, and received the second-highest possible 10 points from Albania, Austria, Cyprus, Czechia, Moldova, Slovenia, and Ireland.

Terror group claims to target missile-detecting balloon in deepest strike in Israel amid war; in response, air force attacks weapon manufacturing plant in northeastern Lebanon

Hezbollah managed to hit a sensitive military facility in the Lower Galilee with an explosive drone on Wednesday evening, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed Thursday, as fighter jets responded by striking targets belonging to the terror group in northeastern Lebanon.

In the attack on Wednesday, Hezbollah claimed to have launched explosive-laden drones at an Israeli Air Force base from which a giant missile-detecting blimp, known as Sky Dew, is operated.

The base is located near Golani Junction, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) from the Lebanon border.

The young American generation of today says: We will not identify with suspect genocidal tendencies against an indigenous people.

The core issues at the heart of release of hostages held in Gaza were two: A complete cessation to the war and full withdrawal of all Israeli forces.

Netanyahu's position was that whatever the hostage outcome, the IDF would return to Gaza and that the war there might continue for ten years, he said.

These were the most sensitive words in Israeli politics - with Israeli politics electrically polarised around them. The continuation or fall of the Israeli government could hinge on them:

The Right had warned that they would quit the government unless the invasion of Rafah were green-lighted; the Biden position, however, was communicated to Netanyahu by phone as not just 'no Rafah light', but rather, 'Rafah zero'.

Then these explosive words - cessation of military operations and complete Israeli withdrawal - burst forth in the final text as agreed by the mediators in Cairo; and subsequently in Doha, on Monday, taking Israel by complete surprise. CIA Chief Bill Burns had represented the U.S. in both sessions, but Israel had chosen not to send a negotiations team.

"Nowhere is safe" in Gaza, the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees has warned.

Some 450,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah since Israel ordered more of the city evacuated on Saturday, the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday. Reports from the city suggest that Israeli forces are closing in on its densely-populated urban core.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ordered people in the southeastern neighborhoods of Rafah to leave "immediately" on Saturday, with IDF spokesman Avichai Adraee warning that Israeli forces were preparing to strike Hamas targets there "with great force." The IDF has now evacuated the entire eastern third of the city following a similar order given earlier this month.

In a statement on Tuesday, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said that 450,000 people had heeded the orders. "People face constant exhaustion, hunger and fear. Nowhere is safe," the statement read. "An immediate cease-fire is the only hope."

Igor Krasnov blasted Ottawa's refusal to prosecute SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka, honored last year by Parliament.

Ottawa's failure to prosecute a former Nazi soldier amounts to its government "whitewashing" the crimes of Adolf Hitler's regime, Russian Prosecutor-General Igor Krasnov has claimed.

Last September, SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka, 98 at the time, was invited to the Canadian parliament and given a standing ovation for his role in fighting "for Ukrainian independence against the Russians" during World War II. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had blamed a "mistake" amid the ensuing scandal. He claimed that his government was unaware of the former Nazi allegiance of the man.

China has vowed to resolutely defend its interests in the face of huge new US tariffs and warned that the trade barriers would affect the wider relationship between the two economic superpowers.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced that tariffs on $18 billion worth of imports of Chinese electric vehicles and an array of other products would soar over the next two years.

The White House said the measures were designed to protect American workers and businesses in the face of China's unfair trade practices, including "flooding global markets with artificially low-priced exports."

China "firmly opposes" the new tariffs, the country's Commerce Ministry said in a statement.

"The increase in ... tariffs by the United States contradicts President Joe Biden's commitment to 'not seek to suppress and contain China's development' and 'not to seek to decouple and break links with China'. This action will seriously impact the atmosphere of bilateral cooperation."

EVs imported from China will see their tariffs more than quadrupled from 27.5% to 100% — a policy lever meant to challenge Beijing's practice of encouraging aggressively low pricing by domestic EV manufacturers while levying a 40% tariff on US car imports.

Former Iranian President Hassan Rohani has issued a stern rebuke of the country's Guardians Council following his disqualification from elections to the Assembly of Experts earlier this year, accusing the body of undermining the role and freedom of future presidents.

Rohani said in a statement:

"The disqualification notice was as an indictment against the institution of the presidency that signals a 'crisis' for political independence in Iran.

"What is mentioned in the letter from the secretary of the Guardians Council as the reasons for my disqualification is not only not a crime, but in some cases, I consider it an honor."

Rohani criticized the council for charging him with "insulting the judiciary and the Guardians Council," "a lack of political insight," "nonadherence to the constitution," and "an assault on genuine religious beliefs."

The 88-member Assembly of Experts, founded in 1982, appoints and can dismiss the supreme leader, but rarely intervenes directly in policymaking.

The "lone gunman," that cartoonish figure that for the last several decades - at least since November 1963 - has regularly framed most high-profile assassinations, has struck again, this time in disobedient Slovakia. He always pops up whenever his presence is required to warn misfits and discipline even team players who are inattentive to their tasks.

The assassination attempt on the Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico fits (no pun intended) that pattern. Fico's political record going back for decades may have provoked a measure of distrust in globalist circles. However, his electoral victory and return to power in the fall of last year probably would have been treated as a manageable challenge had Fico been rotten enough to act as his colleagues routinely do, saying one thing before elections and doing the opposite afterwards.

He has, instead, turned out to be a man true to his word, certainly quashing any rumours that he had ever been recruited as one of WEF's Young Leaders. At a critical juncture for the globalist string-pullers, when being a cooperative team player is considered de rigeuer, he chose to go off the beaten path with other outcasts like Victor Orban and to champion old fashioned values, such as Slovakia's national sovereignty.

Fico however did not just insist on Slovakia's sovereignty, which would have been bad enough, but also on other despised notions, equally discredited in present-day Europe: Statehood, Nationhood, Religion, and Family. It is his adherence to those values, once the cornerstone of the European civilisation before its cultural implosion, that made Fico a lone gunman target.

But to these shortcomings several other, no less bothersome and also potentially life threatening faults, should be added. Over the last several months, as Project Ukraine was turning into a shipwreck, Fico defiantly refused to allow military aid for the Kiev regime, called for cancelling anti-Russia sanctions, and repeatedly expressed the prohibited notion that Ukraine will be defeated.

Moscow is ready to settle on the battlefield what could be resolved through diplomacy, Russia's acting foreign minister has said

The Ukrainian conflict will be decided on the battlefield if that is the wish of the US and its allies, Acting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday.

The veteran diplomat was speaking to members of the upper chamber of the Russian parliament as part of the process of his reappointment after a government reshuffle. The assessment he offered is that Western nations have no desire for a negotiated end to the hostilities.