Armenia is prepared to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as part of neighboring Azerbaijan if the authorities in Baku guarantee the safety and rights of the local population, which predominantly consists of ethnic Armenians, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Monday.

Speaking at a press conference, Pashinyan noted that the entire territory of Azerbaijan is 86,600 sq km, including the area in question – “at the same time, we say that the issue of the rights and safety of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh should be discussed” in future negotiations.

“If we and Azerbaijan understand each other correctly, Armenia will recognize the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan within the named limits, while Baku will recognize the territorial integrity of Armenia within the area of 29,800 sq km,” he added.

Flown by remote control from a ground station, the F-16 can perform all the maneuvers it could if a pilot were in the cockpit. It's a faster, more agile target for pilots to train against, and Navy pilots will start going up against the jet in dog fights. David Martin reports.

In an interview with Fox News, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) hinted that Republicans may re-open probes into Hillary Clinton that were dropped by the FBI in 2016. The interview comes after special counsel John Durham’s report confirmed that her campaign was responsible for the launching of the bogus “Russian collusion” probe.

The Florida lawmaker told Fox that the bogus investigation into Trump’s campaign would never have gained necessary momentum without a partisan mainstream press. “The media was in on this from the beginning, in my view. They’re the ones who were willing to launder out Hillary Clinton’s phony, made-up information about Donald Trump,” Donalds said.

“So her media friends are not gonna come out now and say, ‘Oh yeah, you know what? We were wrong, and this is damning,’” he continued. “They’re just gonna laugh it off, cover it for one or two days, and then ignore it. This is really dangerous for our country.”

Later in the interview, he agreed with U.S. Reps Matt Gaetz (R-FL) on reopening the shuttered investigations into the Clinton Foundation, which were shut down shortly before the 2016 election. “I totally agree, we should definitely be looking into this,” Donalds said. “Because you have a situation here where they had some basis of information there to start those inquiries. And the report clearly shows, you have I believe it was Peter Strzok and other people high up in the FBI who came in, and in one meeting, shut it all down,” Donalds said.

 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a series of bills this week that he refers to as the “Let Kids Be Kids” package. Among other things, it seeks to protect children from being targeted by those who want to push risky sex change operations on them.

 Media outlets and others scrambled this week after a white pregnant woman was widely vilified on social media as a racist after a video went viral of a confrontation over a bike, and the woman’s lawyer has said they plan to file defamation lawsuits. 

 Six protesters were arrested in Nebraska on Friday as Republicans in the state voted to approve an abortion ban and ban on transgender surgeries for minors, according to police. 

 President Joe Biden said he would discuss the debt limit with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) via telephone from Air Force One as he returns home from Japan after the top Republican accused him of being beholden to “radical socialists” as a potential default looms.

 Nebraska state Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh (D) exploded during a session late this week after the state banned controversial transgender medical procedures for minors, shouting, “We need trans people!”

 Republican and independent voters in Nassau County, New York, this week were shocked to find out that they had changed parties after all the voter information cards mailed out before an upcoming primary mistakenly identified every voter as a Democrat.

 The mother of an 8-year-old girl who died in Biden administration custody this week says that officials repeatedly ignored pleas to get her medical attention.

 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis traveled to New Hampshire late this week where he met with voters, state lawmakers, and the state’s governor just days ahead of his anticipated announcement that he will be running for president in 2024.

 Have you noticed that Democrats and the Left at large are increasingly brazen in their attempt to trample on all parental rights and authority? This past week alone, we saw three examples of this encroachment from the executive branch all the way down to a Florida teacher.

 North Carolina Republican Dan Bishop said this week that the Bank of America provided the FBI with private financial information about anyone who was in Washington, D.C., from January 5-7, 2021. 

 New York City is having a bit of trouble with repeat retail crime offenders, but Mayor Eric Adams’ latest soft-on-crime approach to solving the problem is downright laughable.

Kari Lake attorney Kurt Olsen argued in his closing argument in her election challenge case Friday that at least 70,000 mail-in ballots were not properly verified in accordance with Arizona law, and therefore the election must be set aside.

The November race between Republican Kari Lake and Democratic Gov Katie Hobbs “was decided by 17,117 votes. That, however, is out of 2.59 million votes, a difference between the two candidates of 0.67 percent,” he said.

“The number of ballots at issue whether the court were to set aside for illegality, the 70,000, the 274,000 in a proportional manner … this election should be set aside,” Olsen added.

“Your Honor, the election was unlawful,” Olsen told the judge. “[Arizona statute] 16-550 was not complied with. Defendants don’t dispute our expert. They don’t dispute the evidence,” the attorney said.

A GOP lawmaker on Friday suggested that the Republican-led House jump-start new investigations into failed 2016 Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton after special counsel John Durham’s report cited her campaign as being responsible for the phony ‘Russian collusion’ allegations against her rival, Donald Trump.

In an interview with Fox News, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) responded after co-anchor Sandra Smith noted that much of the mainstream media came out in defense of the FBI even after Durham’s report also pointed out that the bureau launched an investigation into Trump’s campaign over the collusion charges despite having no evidence to indicate they were valid.

“The media was in on this from the beginning, in my view. They’re the ones who were willing to launder out Hillary Clinton’s phony, made-up information about Donald Trump,” he said, adding it was “the same information that she used with her friends at the upper echelon of the FBI to start the ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ investigation.”

On Saturday, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian mercenary who heads the Wagner Group, claimed that his forces seized control over Bakhmut. The city in the eastern Donetsk region has been the site of fierce fighting for months.

"We have completely taken the whole city, from house to house. I want to say thank you, to the Russian people who supported us and to those who died in this war," he said, noting that he would give over the city to Putin's forces by May 25, according to Newsweek.

The US and Israeli anti-Semitism envoys have taken opposing positions on whether supporters or critics of Jewish financier George Soros is anti-Semitic. The argument kicked off when Twitter CEO Elon Musk compared Soros to a cartoon supervillain.

In a tweet on Monday, Musk said that Soros reminds him of “Magneto,” a mutant-supremacist scientist from Marvel’s ‘X-Men’ universe. When a commenter pointed out that Magneto was depicted – like Soros – as a Holocaust survivor and that both have “good intentions,” Musk doubled down.

“You assume they are good intentions,” he wrote. “They are not. He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity.”

The authorities in the French city of Avignon have opened an investigation after posters appeared on the streets comparing President Emmanuel Macron to Adolf Hitler, AFP reports, citing the office of the city’s public prosecutor, Florence Galtier.

According to officials, the offenders will face two months in prison and a fine of €7,500 ($8,110) for “provocation to rebellion,” as well as a fine of €12,000 for insulting the president. 

Around 30 anti-Macron posters glued to advertising boards were discovered on Thursday. They showed the French president with graying hair and the number 49.3 on his face, which looked like a small black mustache. It is a reference to Article 49.3 of the French Constitution, which the government invoked in March to ram through its controversial pension reform without securing the support of the parliament (the National Assembly).

May 20 marks the fourth anniversary of Volodymyr Zelensky’s inauguration as Ukraine’s president. Speaking to Sputnik, Nikolay Azarov, a veteran politician with over 20 years of experience in Ukrainian politics under his belt, opened up on Zelensky’s political origins, his disastrous tenure in office, and his unenviable future.

Nikolay Azarov knows a thing or two about the inner workings of Ukraine’s politics. First elected to parliament in 1994, the politician quickly proved his mettle as an administrator, becoming an advisor to the cabinet of ministers in 1995, tapped to serve as chairman of Ukraine’s tax administration between 1996 and 2002, laboring as finance and deputy prime minister (2002-2005 and 2006-2007, respectively), and working as prime minister from March 2010 until January 2014.

Azarov presided over the most successful period of economic expansion in post-Soviet Ukraine’s history, with the nation’s GDP growing consecutively during each of his four years in office, reaching a high of $190.5 billion in 2013 (a record which was not surpassed, even in nominal terms, until 2021). His technocratic government’s strategy focused on trying to expand economic cooperation with both Russia and the European Union, while striving to expand Ukraine’s use of its domestic energy base.

Demonstrations and protests are taking place in the Japanese city of Hiroshima where the G7 summit opened early Friday, a Sputnik correspondent reported.

People holding banners such as "Never allow US-Japanese aggressive war on China!" and "No G7! No imperialist summit! No nuclear war!" marched through the streets of Hiroshima in a tight police ring. The number of police officers on the streets seemed to outnumber the demonstrators, the correspondent said.

Police officers were exercising restraint, but there were cases when demonstrators were pushed in the back to speed up or were snatched from the crowd. The protesters, in turn, chained themselves together and continued their way down the streets in rows.

"About 350 people gathered today. About one-third are students. We launched the action yesterday and will continue every day. Today, there will be one more rally, after which the demonstration will head toward the Atomic Bomb Dome [an exhibition facility in Hiroshima Prefecture until 1945, the only building that survived the atomic bombing]," Hiroshima citizen Ryo Miyahara, the head of the executive committee of the "Hiroshima against Atomic War" rally and the organizer of the protests, told Sputnik.

On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived on a French government plane at Hiroshima Airport in Japan, where the G7 leaders' summit is taking place.

Hiroshima bombing survivor Kunihiko Sakuma, who heads the Association of Hiroshima Atomic-bomb Survivors, told at a press conference that he could not accept Volodymyr Zelensky's visit in the present political climate.

"In the future he could come, see Hiroshima, learn about the bombing. But in the present political conditions, the motive of political bargaining is very strong in coming to Hiroshima, and in these conditions with visiting Hiroshima, I don't know as for you, but I can't agree," Sakuma said.

The Russian air defense units have intercepted 12 US-made HIMARS rockets and UK-made Storm Shadow missiles over the past 24 hours, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

"Air defense forces intercepted 12 rockets of HIMARS multiple rocket launchers and Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles, as well as one US-made GBU-32 guided aerial bomb over the past day," the ministry said.

A total of 18 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles have been destroyed in the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR).

The Ukrainian armed forces lost up to 210 troops in the Donetsk direction over the past day, as well as eight units of military equipment, including one tank, five vehicles, a Polish-made Krab self-propelled tracked howitzer and a D-20 howitzer. This is in addition to over 300 Ukrainian troops destroyed in other combat areas, according to the Russia ministry's statement.

Wired.com’s now-infamous profile of Buttigieg sought to reassure the public that “infrastructure occupies just a sliver of his voluminous mind … his cabinet job requires only a modest portion of his cognitive powers.”

Reporter Virginia Heffernan gushed over the fact that Buttigieg keeps a copy of Homer’s Iliad in his office — a classic, no doubt, but also a book that I read to my five-year-old son to pass the time during the pandemic.

It is a suitable story for Buttigieg to have on hand, because the hero, Achilles, can barely be bothered to do anything; and because it takes the other main character, Odysseus, ten years to get back home from the Trojan War.

If you’ve tried to travel recently, you can relate.

Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev sees no point in conducting negotiations on the situation in Ukraine and around it at the moment, because talks should be conducted only with the Kiev government’s ‘masters’ in Washington and only about post-conflict world order.

Commenting on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s latest remarks against equal negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel on Friday that he would "find it difficult to disagree" with her in this regard.

"This is certainly so. How can you engage in equal talks with a half-decayed neo-Nazi country, which is under external governance? Talks are possible only with its masters, namely with Washington. There is no one else to talk to," Medvedev wrote.