Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi on Aug. 19 to intensify bilateral ties that this year mark 30 years, reported the presidential press service.

The two leaders voiced solid optimism about the development of bilateral relations. According to Tokayev, the two countries "have every reason to be satisfied with the way the cooperation is developing."

"Indeed, Kazakhstan and Russia have a strategic partnership. This year we celebrate a very big date - the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations," said Tokayev during the meeting that lasted two and half hours.

Russian state gas company says the pipeline requires maintenance, deepening energy standoff with Europe.

Russia's state-owned energy company Gazprom has said a key pipeline conveying natural gas to Europe will shut down for three days at the end of this month to undergo "routine maintenance."

The unscheduled maintenance order on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which runs under the Baltic Sea to Germany, deepens an energy standoff between Moscow and Brussels which has already helped send inflation surging in the region and raised the risk of rationing and recession.

In a statement posted online on Friday, Gazprom said that the only operational turbine at a key compressor station along the pipeline, which links Western Russia and Germany, will shut down for routine maintenance from August 31 to September 2.

In a fiery speech denouncing US imperialism, Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega analyzed the shifting balance of power in the world today. He explained:

"A new order is being born in the world that buries imperialism, buries the colonialists, and opens the way to a democracy of nations, a multipolarism that is manifesting itself in various ways. North American imperialism is trying to maintain its hegemony at all costs, even at the risk of sinking its own economy."

But in an attempt to halt this transition to a multipolar world, the United States is waging war on China and Russia, he said.

The Nicaraguan revolutionary leader argued that "fascism left its roots and is embedded" in parts of the United States and Europe, and they "have the objective of trying to destroy the People's Republic of China" and the Russian Federation.

The Western "ideologues of imperialism" are "worried," Ortega added.

"They see the People's Republic of China providing benefits to the peoples" of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, "and they feel that they are losing the power to keep these peoples enslaved."

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Wednesday announced a "drastic" overhaul of the agency aimed at modernizing it and rescuing its reputation after widespread criticism of its COVID-19 response and, more recently, the monkeypox outbreak.

"For 75 years, CDC and public health have been preparing for COVID-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in an email to the agency's 11,000-person staff. Walensky said the overhaul will focus on making the agency more nimble and responsive to needs that arise in health emergencies.

The CDC in a statement said it has never in its 75-year history "had to make decisions so quickly, based on limited and evolving science," and that the agency's traditional scientific and communication processes were "not adequate to effectively respond to a crisis the size and scope of the COVID-19 pandemic."

According to CBS News, Walensky's proposed internal changes include:

• Expand the CDC staff focused on public health emergencies.
• Require officials to stay in those jobs for at least six months.
• Establish an office of intergovernmental affairs to facilitate partnerships with other agencies.
• Create a health equity office.
• Increase use of preprint scientific reports for issuing public health guidance, rather than waiting for research to be reviewed by peers and published by the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Darya Dugina will be flying like an eagle in an otherworldly sky.
Darya Dugina, 30, daughter of Alexander Dugin, a smart, strong, ebullient, enterprising young woman, whom I met in Moscow and had the honor to cherish as a friend, has been brutally murdered.

As a young journalist and analyst, one could see she would carve for herself a glowing path towards wide recognition and respect (here she is on feminism).

Not so long ago, the FSB was directly engaged in smashing assassination attempts, organized by the SBU, against Russian journalists, as in the case of Olga Skabaeyeva and Vladimir Soloviev. It's mind-boggling that Dugin and his family were not protected by the Russian intelligence/security apparatus.

The key facts of the tragedy have already been established. A Land Cruiser Prado SUV, owned by Dugin and with Darya at the wheel, exploded in a highway near the village of Bolchie Vyazemy, a little over 20km away from Moscow.

They were both coming from a family festival, where Dugin had delivered a talk. At the last minute, Darya took the SUV and Dugin followed her in another car. According to eyewitnesses, there was an explosion under the SUV, which was immediately engulfed in flames and hit a roadside building. Darya's body was burned beyond recognition.

The Russian Investigative Committee soon established that the IED - approximately 400g of TNT, unencapsulated - was planted under the bottom of the SUV, on the driver's side.

The investigators consider that was a premeditated car bombing.

What is not already known is whether the IED was on a timer or if some goon nearby pressed the button.

What is already known is that Alexander Dugin was a target on the Myrotvorets list. Myrotvorets stands for a Center for Research of Signs of Crimes against the National Security of Ukraine. It works side by side with NATO collecting info on "pro-Russian terrorists and separatists".

Denis Pushilin, the head of the DPR, took no time to accuse "the terrorists of the Ukrainian regime" for Darya's assassination. The inestimable Maria Zakharova was more, well, diplomatic: she said that if the Ukrainian lead is confirmed, that will configure a policy of state terrorism deployed by Kiev.

In military terms, the crude, locally assembled drone dropping a country-made bomb or two on unguarded sites in Crimea are at best pin pricks in the big picture of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine. But it can be profoundly consequential in certain other ways.

For a start, this escalation has Washington's approval. A senior Biden administration official told NatSec Daily the US supports strikes on Crimea if Kiev deems them necessary. "We don't select targets, of course, and everything we've provided is for self-defence purposes. Any target they choose to pursue on sovereign Ukrainian soil is by definition self defense," this person said.

But Washington knows — and Moscow knows — that like any sophistry, this one too is a clever argument but inherently fallacious and deceptive. The New York Times has interpreted the drone attack on Crimea as a challenge to the leadership of President Vladimir Putin. The Times wrote that the Crimea attacks "put domestic political pressure on the Kremlin, with criticism and debate about the war increasingly being unleashed on social media and underscoring that even what the Russian government considers to be Russian territory is not safe."

Times claimed that "as images of antiaircraft fire streaking through the blue Crimean sky ricocheted through social media, the visceral reality of war was becoming more and more apparent to Russians — many of whom have rallied behind the Kremlin's line, hammered home in state media, that the "special military operation" to save Ukraine from Nazi domination is going smoothly and according to plan."

The paper quoted a prominent establishment think tanker in Moscow acknowledging that the Crimean attack is a "serious" development insofar as "People are beginning to feel that the war is coming to them." The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky claimed in a nationwide address on Saturday, "One can literally feel in the air of Crimea that the occupation there is temporary, and Ukraine is returning."

The Israeli army raided the offices of seven Palestinian civil society organizations in the occupied West Bank overnight on Thursday, confiscating and damaging items belonging to the organizations, and sealing off their offices.

Six of the seven organizations were designated as "terrorist institutions" by the Israeli government in October 2021, and were subsequently outlawed by the Israeli military commander in the occupied West Bank.

The original six organizations are human rights group Al-Haq, prisoners rights group Addameer, Defense for Children International - Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), The Bisan Center for Research and Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women's Committees.

Former President Donald Trump announced he will file a Fourth Amendment unlawful search and seizure motion over the FBI's "illegal" raid on Mar-a-Lago in a post made on TRUTH Social on Friday.

"A major motion pertaining to the Fourth Amendment will soon be filed concerning the illegal Break-In of my home, Mar-a-Lago, right before the ever important Mid-Term Elections," Trump posted.

The former President said the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago violated his rights, "together with the rights of all Americans," and added that it is part of a continued witch hunt against him. Trump added:

My rights, together with the rights of all Americans, have been violated at a level rarely seen before in our Country. Remember, they even spied on my campaign. The greatest Witch Hunt in USA history has been going on for six years, with no consequences to the scammers. It should not be allowed to continue!

Claims made by Russian President Vladimir Putin that the United States is intentionally prolonging the Russia-Ukraine conflict may not be as implausible as described, says one U.S. military veteran and journalist.

In a speech this week, Putin called out "Western globalist elites" who he said are "provoking chaos, inciting old and new conflicts," and attempting "to preserve the hegemony and power that is slipping out of their hands." He added that the situation in Ukraine shows the U.S. is "trying to prolong the conflict."

Sean Spoonts, a U.S. Navy veteran and editor-in-chief of Special Operations Forces Report (SOFREP), told Newsweek that President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seem to have separate policy goals in mind.

"It seems like while Ukraine would like to end the war quickly and decisively defeat Russian forces and drive them out of their country, U.S. policy almost seems designed to prolong the conflict hoping to bring about the collapse of Russia itself, both militarily and economically," Spoonts said.

The Saudi-led coalition forces and their allied militant groups have over the past 24 hours breached more than 200 times a UN-brokered nationwide truce that took effect in war-ravaged Yemen in April.

Yemen's Arabic-language al-Masirah television network cited an unnamed Yemeni military official as making the announcement on Sunday, saying the violations included reconnaissance missions over the provinces of Ma'rib, Ta'izz, Jawf, Sa'ada, al-Hadidah, Sana'a, Ad Dali', al-Bayda, Hajjah and border areas.

The source said the Saudi-led coalition forces committed truce violations initially with air strikes on citizens' homes, the positions of the Yemeni army and Popular Committees in the district of Maris in Ad Dali' and in the northwest and northeast of Hais in al-Hadidah.