In August, China has marked the 10th anniversary of its high-speed railway endeavors. Speaking to Sputnik, Tom McGregor, a Beijing-based CCTV commentator and editor, explained how the country's bullet trains are bringing the nation together and facilitating China's economic growth regardless of the US tariff spree. [...]

The new bridge link connecting mainland Russia and the Crimean Peninsula is proving to be a huge hit with Russian drivers. The Crimean Bridge has broken another single-day record for car traffic, with 32,000 vehicles crossing the span on Sunday. About 1.6 million cars have crossed the bridge since it opened in May. [...]

Turkey is the latest target for US trade barriers, faces sanctions against top ministers and is even having its purchasing of advanced US weapons reconsidered. The Anatolian country’s leaders have indicated they are beginning to look elsewhere, feeling like the US is trying “to make Turkey surrender in all areas, from finance to politics.” On Friday, US President Donald Trump doubled tariffs [...]

The White Helmets, officially known as Syrian Civil Defense is a non-governmental organization, formed in 2014. Both Moscow and Damascus have accused the group of helping to stage a chemical attack in the Eastern Ghouta town of Douma on April 7. According to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, participation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the evacu [...]

US payment systems Visa and MasterCard are no longer present on Russia's Crimean Peninsula. The republic’s largest bank has finished the procedure of switching all plastic cards to Russia’s Mir payment system. “On August 14, the process of replacing Visa and MasterCard plastic cards in favour of the Mir payment system has ended. [...]

Russian President Vladimir Putin is planning to attend the wedding of Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl during his visit to the country on August 18, the Kremlin has confirmed. “Yes, he’s going to make a stop there on his way to Berlin,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists when asked if Putin would attend the wedding. [...]

Ankara has given a green light to Moscow’s proposal to switch to ruble-lira trade between the countries. Turkey also has similar plans for trade with China and other countries. “We are discussing the transition to national currencies not only with Russia and China, but also with other countries. It is not just Turkey's request. [...]

Italy’s ruling Northern League party predicts the dismantling of the euro unless the European Central Bank (ECB) offers a guarantee to reduce yield spreads in the eurozone. "The situation can’t be resolved and it is going to explode,” the economics spokesman of Italy’s ruling Northern League party, Claudio Borghi, told Reuters. [...]

A Raytheon Mark 82 general-purpose free-fall bomb was likely used by the Saudi-led coalition to strike a bus full of children in Yemen on Thursday, a local journalist claims, after bomb fragments from the scene were recovered. A Raytheon Mark 82 general-purpose free-fall bomb was likely used by the Saudi-led coalition to strike a bus full of children in Yemen on Thursday, a local journalist claims [...]

American elites have long had it in for the Islamic Republic. They have many reasons, but high on the list is a point of honor: years after it happened, they still want payback for “the hostage crisis,” the government supported humiliation that revolutionary Iranian students inflicted upon the American Empire in the final 444 days of the Carter administration. Nearly everything disappears down [...]

Defending their illegal blockade of Gaza against what they see as infiltrators rather than activists bringing aid and making a point, Israeli soldiers physically assaulted a number of delegates and arrested them, including a USS Liberty survivor. U.S. Navy Signalman Joe Meadors was standing watch on deck of the USS Liberty off the coast of Gaza on June 8, 1967 when a 90-minute aerial and sea atta [...]

The flow of migrants coming to Europe from Africa is likely to grow in the coming years, writes Sputnik Germany contributor Bernhard Schwarz. For decades Libya served as a firewall halting the tide of refugees heading to the EU. Now when Libya lies in ruins European leaders see that late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was right, Schwarz stressed. [...]

Chinese yuan-backed oil futures contracts hit their daily limit with a 5-percent spike on Tuesday as the US kicked off the first round of sanctions against Iran. Washington’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and target the country's oil sector with sanctions is expected to significantly boost China's leverage to demand crude imports be priced in yuan. [...]

RT’s special reports about the humanitarian crisis in the Iraqi city of Mosul has netted the network its sixth International Emmy Awards nomination, earning recognition for a story that went largely ignored in western media. The finalists for the Emmy in the News category, announced on Monday, included RT’s #MosulSOS, a series of reports and a social media campaign aimed at highlighting the pl [...]

Benjamin Netanyahu has lashed out at Israel's arch-foe Iran, vowing that any attempt by Tehran to block the key waterway off Yemen’s coast would be met by force from the “international coalition” and Israel in particular. The harsh statements by the Israeli PM, who was speaking at a graduation ceremony for naval officers on Wednesday, were referring to the recent Houthi attack on a Saudi oil [...]

Russia will continue supplying RD-180 rocket engines, which are used by NASA and the Pentagon, to the United States until at least 2020. “We signed the contract until 2020, and we will supply our partners with six more RD-180 engines,” said Igor Arbuzov, CEO of Russia’s Energomash. The RD-180 engines operate at the first stage of the US Atlas V rockets. [...]

A scientist at Russia’s space organization Roscosmos, 74-year-old Viktor Kudryavtsev, has been imprisoned in a Moscow jail run by the Federal Security Service (FSB), which has been been investigating a “treasonous” leak of hypersonic missile secrets to Western intelligence agencies. [...]

A volunteer with the Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, was caught on video dumping the mutilated bodies of Syrian Army troops. The volunteer was summarily fired by the group after he was filmed participating in the dumping of dead pro-Syrian government fighters. [...]

The United States has been ramping up pressure on countries around the world in an effort to bring Iran’s oil revenue “down to zero.” Turkey will have no part in possible US sanctions on Iran, the newspaper Dunya reported, citing the country’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. “We had a US delegation here and we […] explained to them that we believe that [such moves] are a mistak [...]

Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) does not have specific data on possible attempts by Russia to affect the 2017 Bundestag elections, according to a report. "After Russia took measures to intervene in the presidential elections in the US and France, as well as launching numerous cyber attacks against the German Bundestag, politicians, parties and political [...]

A Czech politician has referred to Syria as an example of how dangerous it can be to ignore the rules laid down by the international community for the sake of defending "values" that are unable be clearly defined. Former Czech Foreign Minister Karl Schwarzenberg has slammed the current approach in modern world politics in an interview with the newspaper Basler Zeitung, suggesting that the pre- [...]

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Hungarian government is unlikely to reverse its tough stance on migration and asylum policies, despite pressure from the European Union, though it may resort to minor concessions, Tibor Bana, the deputy chairman of Hungary’s parliamentary committee on European affairs, told Sputnik. [...]