The king of currency, the dollar, is on shaky ground. In this past one year, there’s a growing trend of countries sidestepping the US dollar and choosing to use their own local currencies for bilateral trade.

The de-dollarisation process – moving away from trading in the dollar and instead choosing local currency – has received a boost after the Russia-Ukraine war and as Washington’s tensions with Beijing rise even further.

In South America, China’s yuan has made greater inroads. After Brazil agreed to trade with China in the local currency, Argentina, on Wednesday, too agreed to the same. The South American country announced that it would pay for Chinese imports in yuan rather than dollars, in a measure to save the country’s dwindling dollar reserves.

Amid clamouring call of de-dollarization, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov highlighted that the process has “begun”, adding that several other initiatives have been worked upon to stop settlement of trade in the US dollar.

“De-dollarization has begun, both in practice and in conceptual speeches,” Lavrov said at the 31st Assembly of the Council of Foreign and Defence Policy.

“De-dollarization has begun, both in practice and in conceptual speeches,” Lavrov said at the 31st Assembly of the Council of Foreign and Defence Policy.

Ukraine has asked Berlin to provide it with long-range air-launched missiles that could potentially reach Moscow, a spokesperson for Germany’s Defense Ministry confirmed on Saturday.

On Friday, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported, citing two unnamed “insiders” within the German military, that Ukraine “urgently wants” Swedish-German Taurus missiles. These munitions could be allegedly placed on US-made F-16 fighters, which are now being considered for delivery to Kiev by several Western countries.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is said to have asked for the missiles during his meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin earlier this month. For now, it is unclear whether Berlin, which earlier said it did not have any F-16s to send to Kiev, will grant this request.

Boris Johnson has held discussions with Donald Trump about Ukraine during his tour of the US, in an apparent attempt to make the Ukrainian case to the skeptical former US president.

Johnson met Trump “to discuss the situation in Ukraine and the vital importance of Ukrainian victory”, his spokesperson said. It is understood that they held the talks on Thursday.

The former prime minister – who faces continued questions at home over allegations about lockdown-breaking parties at Chequers and No 10 – has been in Dallas, where he met Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, and Las Vegas, and made the latest in his recent sequence of highly lucrative corporate speeches.

The discussions with Trump, the location of which has not been divulged, probably centered on Johnson, a vehement international cheerleader for the Ukrainian cause, trying to impress his ideas on the former president.

Before Johns Hopkins University graduates moved their tassels to the left on Thursday, they were sent off with a virtual livestream from a surprise commencement speaker: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“The United States has also not lost a single day in helping Ukraine repel the Russian aggression,” Zelenskyy said. “President [Joe] Biden, a strong bipartisan coalition in Congress and most of all the American people have … risen to this occasion and are leading the free world to secure freedom in Europe.”

In his speech, Zelenskyy focused on the importance of time, a resource he said is more valuable than oil, uranium or lithium.

“Non-binary” former Biden administration official Sam Brinton led the Washington, DC, chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a radical anti-Catholic drag queen group at the center of the Los Angeles Dodgers Pride Night controversy, Fox News reported.

The drag queen group made headlines this month after being uninvited, then re-invited to the Dodgers’ tenth annual Pride Night celebration on June 16.

After receiving backlash from religious groups, the Dodgers rescinded an invitation to the radical anti-Christian organization. However, the Dodgers walked back its decision and announced Monday that the drag queen group would be re-invited to the team’s Pride Night.

The Dodgers offered “sincerest apologies to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, members of the LGBTQ+ community and their friends and families,” in a statement issued after the announcement.

The joint military exercise conducted by the US and South Korean forces involved the deployment of hundreds of troops and dozens of tanks, artillery systems and aircraft.

Washington and Seoul have once again demonstrated exactly how much they care about peace on the Korean Peninsula by holding a massive live-fire military exercise on South Korean soil right next to the border with North Korea, a country well-known for regarding such moves as antagonistic and provocative.

During the exercise, the US and South Korea deployed some 2,500 soldiers and 610 items of military hardware such as tanks, artillery systems, attack helicopters, fighter aircraft and drones, according to a statement issued by the South Korean Defense Ministry and disseminated by media.

NATO plans to support Ukraine by creating a Ukraine-NATO Council during the July summit in Vilnius instead of giving it a concrete plan for becoming a full-fledged member, for which Kiev has repeatedly requested, the European news outlet reported on Friday, citing sources.

NATO diplomats told media that the alliance will have to find the right balance between maintaining the open-door policy and supporting Kiev's aspirations without directly admitting the country to the bloc.

The UK has sent its special forces to 19 countries since 2011, according to a report by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), a London-based charity that conducts research on global armed violence. The deployed British operatives trained foreign militants, carried out assassinations, and reportedly fought alongside child soldiers.

In a report published on Tuesday, AOAV stated that British operatives have been deployed to fight or surveil hostile forces in Algeria, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Iraq, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Somalia, the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and Oman, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen.

Some of these deployments were into locations in which British troops were already fighting, as was the case in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, UK Special Forces (UKSF) continued their operations in both countries long after regular forces withdrew. In Afghanistan, hundreds of civilian deaths were attributed to night raids by British and American special forces between 2009 and 2012.

Yulia Hicks, a child who was reportedly denied a kidney transplant by Duke Children’s Hospital last year, underwent a successful, life-saving kidney transplant at ECUHealth Medical Center on Thursday.

The Serbian armed forces have been put on high combat alert based on a decree issued by President and Supreme Commander-in-Chief Aleksandar Vucic, the Vecernje Novosti newspaper reported on Friday.

According to the newspaper, the Serbian president issued a decree ordering the armed forces to immediately move to the administrative border of Kosovo and Metohija as a response to [Prime Minister of the unrecognized Republic of Kosovo Albin] "Kurti’s special police <...> using violent tactics against the Serbian residents of Zvecan, Zubin Potok and Leposavic."

The head of state also called on NATO officials to take urgent measures to end the violence being perpetrated against the Serbian population of Kosovo, the report said.

President Joe Biden falsely stated he has four granddaughters on Friday, leaving off his fifth, 4-year-old Navy Joan Roberts, the illegitimate daughter of Hunter Biden.

Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently traveled to Texas in an effort to maintain support among prominent elected Republicans for the Ukraine War. Johnson notably traveled to Kiev during the early days of the war to tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that the NATO powers would not support a peace deal with Russia.

Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger talk to The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal about the reasoning behind the war machine and defense manufacturers sending the wildly unpopular Johnson to do their bidding in Texas.

Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis slammed former President Donald Trump during an interview Friday for his handling of the COVID pandemic, saying that Trump’s recent remarks suggest he would do everything the same if he was in the situation again.

Democrats are growing frustrated with the White House as President Joe Biden appears to be botching negotiation with House Republicans over the debt ceiling.

Congressmen Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Lance Gooden (R-TX) issued a joint letter calling attention to the potential use of federal funds to enable illegal immigration into the United States.

Colonel Douglas Macgregor shares devastating details about the Ukraine-Russia war, but also outlines the danger facing the United States financial system, government, corporate donor corruption and the military-industrial-congressional complex. The corruption within the US government has reached a dangerous and sickening level.

A Los Angeles County judge on Thursday said she will dismiss a lawsuit that the stars of 1968's Romeo and Juliet filed over the film's nude scene, finding that their depiction could not be considered child pornography and they filed their claim too late.

Superior Court Judge Alison Mackenzie ruled in favour of a motion from defendant Paramount Pictures to dismiss the lawsuit brought by Olivia Hussey, who played Juliet at age 15 and is now 72, and Leonard Whiting, who played Romeo at 16 and is also 72.

Mackenzie determined that the scene was protected by the First Amendment, finding that the actors "have not put forth any authority showing the film here can be deemed to be sufficiently sexually suggestive as a matter of law to be held to be conclusively illegal."

Children are to be vaccinated against polio in a bid to stop it spreading – as health bosses warned that “nobody wants this illness for their child”.

The renewed vaccine programme comes after polio was found in 30 sewage samples in north-east London last year, including in Hackney.

The NHS initially launched an urgent jab rollout that reached more than 375,000 children between August and the middle of March. Around half of those vaccines were given in the first two months.

But the city’s health chiefs said there are still children who are not fully up to date and could be at risk of catching polio.

The European Parliament's decision to consider a resolution to prevent Budapest's EU presidency in 2024 is a political action by left-wing lawmakers, but Hungary will still take over the presidency, the Hungarian government told Sputnik on Thursday.

On Wednesday, Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga said that the European Parliament intended to vote on a resolution to prevent Budapest's EU presidency, scheduled for the second half of 2024.

"This is just another political action by the European left. Hungary is a full member of the European Union. It has already held the presidency of the European Council, so the same will happen in 2024," the government said.

Russia has warned the United States and Britain are "tempting fate" by sending warships into the Black Sea amid the war with Ukraine.

"We call on the Pentagon and the British navy, which are sending their warships into the Black Sea, not to tempt fate in vain," Major General Igor Konashenkov, the Russian Defense Ministry's spokesperson said in a televised statement on Friday.

Russia will defend its borders using all possible means including military force, he warned, noting, British warships sailing off the Russian coast in Crimea are "not more than a target" for Russia's Black Sea fleet's defense forces.

Earlier this week I was invited to attend a lecture about the conflict in Ukraine by Prof. John Mearsheimer in Washington D.C. The introducer began with the question: what is the difference between American Republic and American Empire, and offered John Quincy Adams' answer: the Republic represents the march of the mind, while the Empire represents the march of the soldier. The Republic embraces neutrality while the Empire embraces manifest destiny. The Republic cultivates separation of powers while the Empire cultivates limitless power of the executive…

Professor Mearshimer took the stage to present a rather condensed view of the conflict in Ukraine and his own judgment that Russia will win and that Ukraine would lose: the outcome that's all but inevitable and hard to argue with. The conflict is a war of attrition with both sides trying to bleed the other white. In this type of war, the outcome depends on three key factors: 

The year was 1974, and in Washington DC Richard Nixon, crippled by scandal, was about to become the first U.S. president to resign. As the end approached, he called his vice president, Gerald Ford, to the Oval Office, to give him some last-minute advice.

At all costs, Nixon said, Ford must keep Henry Kissinger as his Secretary of State. 'Henry is a genius,' he said. 'He'll be very loyal, but you can't let him have a totally free hand.'

Later, Nixon was more forthright. 'Ford has just got to realise there are times when Henry has to be kicked in the nuts,' he told an aide. 'Because sometimes Henry starts to think he's president. But at other times you have to pet Henry and treat him as a child.'

Genius, spoiled child, world statesman, alleged war criminal — such are the labels pinned to Henry Kissinger, who turns 100 today, an astonishing milestone at the end of a truly extraordinary political career. As with any centenarian, the sweep of Kissinger's life is mind-boggling. Born only five years after the end of the Great War, he fled Hitler's Germany and shook hands with China's Mao Zedong and the Soviet Union's Leonid Brezhnev.

The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with an 94-year-old Minnesota grandmother who was wronged when her county forced the sale of her condominium over unpaid taxes, and kept the proceeds that far exceeded the taxes she owed - the latest "home equity theft" to make headlines.

The case followed a report late last year by the Pacific Legal Foundation which found that 12 states and DC allow local governments and private investors to seize far more than what is owed from homeowners who fall behind on property tax payments.

Writing this opinion was Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote in Tyler v. Hennepin County that "The taxpayer must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but no more."

Target executives, embracing "woke" capitalism, were completely oblivious, or maybe just ignorant, to the "Bud Light moment." After Bud Light pulled the plug on advertisements with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney because of damaging boycotts by conservative beer drinkers, the trans community launched a boycott of their own because the brewer abandoned Mulvaney. A similar situation is unfolding with Target as Democrats are furious with the retailer's move to remove LGBTQ products from storefronts. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a diehard progressive, tweeted this week, "CEO of Target Brian Cornell selling out the LGBTQ+ community to extremists is a real profile in courage." 

Newsom appears furious with Cornell's directive to a number of US stores to remove LGBT-themed products ahead of June Pride month. A Target insider told Fox News swimsuits for transgender people to gender-fluid coffee mugs, as well as many other LGBTQ+ products were either removed from the storefront or shifted to the back of stores to mitigate consumer boycotts. 

"This isn't just a couple of stores in the South. There is a systematic attack on the gay community happening across the country," the governor said.