Former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said Tuesday that there was “no conflict or confrontation” among Kazakhstan's elite in his first appearance since deadly protests rocked the former Soviet country earlier this month.

Nazarbayev, 81, has not been seen in public since the worst unrest since Kazakhstan’s independence broke out earlier this month, leading to widespread speculation over his whereabouts and his relationship with current President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.

BRUSSELS , Jan.18, (ST)- Roberta Metsola, a Democrat from Malta, was elected president of the European Union’s parliament Tuesday, putting women in three of the four biggest jobs in the 27-nation bloc.

Metsola succeeds Italian Socialist David Sassoli, who died last week. She is only the third woman elected to the post. Her birthday was Tuesday, and at age 43, she is the European Parliament’s youngest president.

The mass unrest in Kazakhstan was prepared in advance in order to destabilize the situation in the country, and its organizers had foreign backing, according to Executive Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Sergei Lebedev, according to Sputnik international.

"It is obvious today that the destructive elements, the bandits were preparing for mass rallies in advance to destabilize the country and had foreign support," Lebedev said. "These provocateurs, guides, and sponsors of the so-called "colour revolutions" and riots in the CIS these days declare with feigned pride their leading role in criminal acts in the cities of Kazakhstan".

The global pandemic is a catastrophe of historic dimensions. It is also a crime, because the disastrous impact of the pandemic is the result of decisions made by capitalist governments—first and foremost, in the United States and Western Europe—to deliberately prioritize profits over lives, to reject the implementation of public health measures required to eliminate SARS-CoV-2 and, instead, to adopt policies that allow the virus to spread widely throughout the global population

The American World Socialist website confirmed that Wall Street money companies are making huge profits due to the Corona pandemic and the deaths resulting from it, noting that subjecting public health to the orders and interests of these companies has been the constant element in Washington’s policy since the beginning of the pandemic.

The former British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon has unmasked that Tony Blair had ordered him to burn a secret memo that said the 2003 invasion of Iraq is illegal.

According to the memoirs of Mr. Hoon that were published by the Daily Mail on Wednesday, Mr. Hoon attacked Sir Tony for sacking him in 2005 over the phone: 'He was unable to give out bad news – even bad news of his own making. I always had doubts about his handling and treatment of people. I was hung out to dry. Tony never seemed bothered about who got which ministerial jobs.'