The head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has travelled to Moscow for unannounced talks, the BBC's US news partner CBS has reported.

John Ratcliffe reportedly arrived in the Russian capital earlier on Tuesday. Neither Washington or Moscow have confirmed the nature of the visit or who he was due to meet.

In-person talks between high-level American and Russian officials are rare.

Flight tracking data confirmed a large US military aircraft travelled to Russia from the US via Latvia on Tuesday. It departed later on Tuesday.

Behind a glass display case at a resort in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, is a locked box.

Inside it sits a recording of an unreleased Dolly Parton song.

The tune has been kept secret since 2015, when Parton opened the resort as part of her eponymous theme park, Dollywood.

The idea was that nobody would hear it until the country music legend's 100th birthday, more than 30 years later.

"I don't know if I want to live to be 100 or not. But you never know. I might," she joked.

"And if I do, I'm going to be at that opening."

Moscow has mocked a German journalist’s claim that a Russian missile strike near Kiev the day before German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul visited the Ukrainian capital amounted to a “clear affront” to Berlin.

The strike reportedly near Borispol airport – some 40 km to the east of central Kiev – destroyed dozens of trucks that had been converted into concealed launch platforms for long-range drones, as revealed by images of the aftermath released by the Ukrainian authorities, which were later scrubbed from official accounts.

When asked about Welt correspondent Christoph Wanner’s claim that the strike had crossed a certain diplomatic threshold, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Izvestia on Tuesday that Germany “gets insulted on a regular basis.”

Much of Australia’s lobbying industry remains hidden from public view, with new research exposing major gaps in the federal register and calls for stronger transparency.

Lobbyists may not all be “nocturnal creatures”, as former Coalition minister turned lobbyist Christopher Pyne says, but ABC Four Corners this week exposed their privileged access and new research reveals how much of Australia’s lobbying remains hidden from public view.

Christian Slattery

The head of the Vatican’s diplomatic service, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, is visiting Moscow from August 24-28. 

This visit is part of the Holy See’s diplomatic efforts on humanitarian issues and the discussion of ways to resolve the Ukraine conflict. This is reflected in the fact that the Vatican, together with the authorities of several states, including Bulgaria, Hungary, and Italy recently contributed to keeping Patriarch Kirill off the latest EU sanctions list.

Vatican envoy in Moscow: Why does the Holy See want a seat at the Ukraine talks table?

The Pope is expanding Vatican diplomacy over Ukraine as the Holy See seeks a place in peace talks while protecting its finances and reaching out to Moscow

BY Ksenia Smertina

Ted Cruz Has A LOT Of Explaining To Do!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAgWaJ2EL8Q

PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier is generally regarded as the first scientist to notice what we today call the greenhouse effect. 

His interest was piqued when he observed that a planet as far away from the sun as Earth should be considerably cooler. He hypothesized that something about the Earth — in particular, its atmosphere — must enable it to trap solar radiation that would otherwise simply radiate back out into space.

U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND maintains a secret directory of journalists who have been blacklisted by the press office, according to an official with CENTCOM public affairs. The disclosure comes amid a failed war in Iran, a “cover-up” of U.S. casualties from that conflict, and repeated refusals by CENTCOM to address questions about civilian deaths in Iran, including the killing of a family recently disclosed by The Intercept.

A powerful coalition of British and French former diplomats is demanding a ban on arms transfers and a freeze on EU-Israel and UK-Israel trade agreements.

A coalition of 102 former French and British diplomats is calling on their countries to jointly sanction Israel, warning in an open letter that Israeli policy in occupied Palestinian territory threatens to permanently erase the possibility of a Palestinian state.

An open letter demands a ban on arms transfers and a freeze on EU-Israel and UK-Israel trade agreements.

There is one feeling I often recall from having lived and worked in Ukraine — to be precise, in its most nationalist, full-of-itself city, Lviv — for a total of five years in the 2000s: Thank God, at least there’s no violence!

That is what I, some other foreigners, and quite a few Ukrainians, too, were thinking and even saying then. The country was politically and even culturally polarized, extremely corrupt, and a sham ‘democracy’ even more fake than most of the rest.

Dependence Day: A generation after the Soviet Union fell, Ukraine is a ruined proxy of the West

Ukraine could have bridged East and West. Instead, corruption, nationalism, and Western meddling left it broken

BY Tarik Cyril Amar

Hop on a new adventure: let’s look at RIC (Russia-Iran-China), the new Primakov triangle, as I have defined them, in a more playful way.

These three civilization-states that are coordinating the new phase of Eurasia integration, and also established as full BRICS and SCO members, as in fact The Three Musketeers.

What the Three RIC Musketeers Are Really Up To

By Pepe Escobar

Strategic Culture

As highlighted by delightfully insightful West Asia analyst AHHfrican, the Three RIC Musketeers are already applying in full force timely shortcuts towards a new international order via three velvet-wrapped titanium nutcrackers.

The titanium nutcrackers are being applied respectively by Iran, Russia and China on the Strait of Hormuz, SWIFT and the U.S. Treasury.

The United Kingdom's new prime minister, Andy Burnham, is visiting Ukraine on Monday, on his first international trip since taking office.

Burnham, who will co-chair a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing, a group of Ukraine's foreign backers, is also set to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv.

HELLO! can confirm King Charles was first made aware of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's plans to relocate to the UK last Sunday. The monarch welcomes the opportunity to see more of Harry and his family in a private and personal capacity. 

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster’s July 2026 appointment of Darline Graham to fill the remainder of her late brother Lindsey Graham’s Senate term – and her subsequent decision to run for the seat – may seem unusual. After all, Darline Graham has no experience in elected office and was virtually unknown outside of the small circle of people who knew her from her time heading the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, or the slightly larger group of people who knew her as Lindsey Graham’s sister. 

Darline Graham’s inherited Senate seat revives the ‘widow’s mandate’ with a sibling twist

Gibbs Knotts AND Christopher A. Cooper