Videos obtained by RT show areas around Beirut’s port reduced to rubble and ruins after explosions near the city’s docks destroyed nearby buildings and blew out windows more than 10 kilometers away. Free-lance journalist Owen Holdaway sent videos from Beirut Thursday evening showing the aftermath of the blasts. "A large part of the area has been completely devastated," Holdaway said in a video [...]

New Delhi (Sputnik): Ahead of US President Donald Trump’s visit to India in February, the US State Department approved the sale of integrated air defence weapon systems to India at a cost of $1.867 billion. Experts have said India wants to fortify its airspace with American systems along with the soon-to-be inducted S-400 missile defence system. In a major setback for the Trump administ [...]

European prices for natural gas would drop by about one quarter if the Nord Stream 2 pipeline connecting Russia to Germany were completed, the consulting firm Wood Mackenzie said in a report on Friday. “If Nord Stream 2 remains unfinished, European benchmark TTF gas is expected to average about $4 per million British Thermal Units next year. But if the project can be completed as its backers hop [...]

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is calling for “an alliance of democracies” to confront China. It amounts to a new Cold War in which nations are being forced to side either with Washington or Beijing. It’s a classic tyrannical power-play by Washington, yet ironically it is the Americans who are accusing Beijing of being the “new tyranny” in the world. [...]

The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and the pharmaceutical group ChemRar have started exporting the drug Avifavir against COVID-19, Belarus has already received it, and deliveries to Kazakhstan are expected to start soon, RDIF said on Thursday. "In June, the medication was delivered to 35 regions across Russia and to the Republic of Belarus. Avifavir will soon be delivered to the Re [...]

The main takeaway from Russia’s ‘national vote’ on a series of amendments to the constitution is one a lot of people won't want to hear: Most Russians want the country to plow its own furrow, regardless of what outsiders think. In the end, the margin was huge. Exit polls suggested around 70 percent of voters had said ‘yes’ to 206 amendments to their constitution, with close to 30 percent [...]

Huawei’s addition of the HERE WeGo map app to its app gallery shows that Donald Trump’s crackdown on the Chinese tech giant may be not that effective and could in fact inflict greater harm on American companies. When Donald Trump took aim at Huawei last year, his plan was to fire a ‘kill shot’ at the Chinese communications firm. [...]

Vile historical revisionism and the destruction of monuments and memory are threatening to unravel the entire international order set up by the victorious allies in World War Two, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned. Published by the National Interest on Thursday, Putin’s text revisits some of the lesser-known historical facts to address narratives increasingly popular in the West – in [...]

In broader European terms, it may be a niche, but overland travel to Russia and Belarus has long frustrated Western tourists. It has also kept both countries off the continent’s “inter-railing” circuit. The problem was that visitors needed two separate visas to enter both states. Even then, it wasn’t legally possible, for a third-country national, to cross from Belarus into Russia by train [...]

US authorities have informed the Netherlands of being unable to provide additional information about a missile fired at the Malaysian Airlines Boeing, МН17, apart from a document sent in 2014, presiding judge Hendrik Steenhuis has stated at the resumed hearings in the MH17 case. "The court asked whether classified satellite images of the missile launch, presented to Dutch special servic [...]

A Florida Senator spectacularly claimed he’s got intelligence proving China is obstructing the West’s search for a Covid-19 cure – He shouldn’t be shy to let the world see the “evidence,” Beijing’s diplomats swiftly quipped. Rick Scott, who sits on the Senate’s Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, pulled no punches when talking China on the BBC on Sunday. Apart from bei [...]

While some in the German establishment fumed over the US presumably keeping Berlin uninformed about plans to withdraw thousands of troops, others envisioned it as a chance to loosen ties with their turbulent NATO ally. Washington didn’t bother to inform Berlin of its intent to redeploy thousands of troops from Germany to other locations, with the news coming out of the blue for the governme [...]

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned the US’ European allies against using Huawei tech, insisting privacy-loving Germans shouldn’t stand for such (alleged) spying. Never mind that time the NSA wiretapped Merkel. Pompeo pleaded with European governments on Fox News on Sunday that “the right thing to do for their people” was to kick Huawei’s cheaper and arguably more advanced techn [...]

Over the past three years, authorities in Syria have seized enough terrorist weapons, ammunition, communications equipment and medical supplies to field a small army. Many of the arms were covertly delivered to the country from abroad, and paid for by powers seeking the illegal armed overthrow of Syria’s government. Local authorities found another major stock of arms and ammunition, inc [...]

The world's fourth-largest processor company may potentially strike fresh deals with a leading Chinese smartphone company as a trusted supplier amid the ongoing US trade war on China, it was revealed in reports this week. Huawei subsidiary smartphone maker Honor confirmed it would seek to acquire MediaTek 5G processors for upcoming mobile product lines, reports revealed on Thursday. [...]

The longest river in Europe, the Volga begins in the Valdai Hills northwest of Moscow, Russia and carries its waters south until it drains into the Caspian Sea, covering a distance of 3,530 kilometres. The Volga River is widely regarded as the national river of Russia as it flows past cities like Tver, Dubna, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, and Kazan, as well as Tolyatti, Samara, and Volgograd, [...]

The head of Wuhan’s virology institute has debunked the evolving US ‘Wuhan virus’ theory, saying Covid-19 couldn’t have artificially leaked. She said her lab didn’t have the first virus samples until as late as the end of 2019. Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) director Wang Yanyi described the theory – that Covid-19 was a creature of her laboratory – as “pure fabrication.” She e [...]

With the US economy reeling from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee agreed to give Israel a minimum of $3.8 billion in military aid per year. A full vote on the gift is expected soon. The US unemployment rate now stands at 14.7 percent, the worst figure since records began. Nearly 39 million Americans have lost their jobs since the coronavirus reached U [...]

Scientists in Russia have carried out the first unofficial trial of a Covid-19 vaccine – and they say it’s effective. Epidemiologists in Moscow took the unorthodox step of injecting themselves and examining their own results. The test, conducted by employees at the National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, reportedly saw the participants gaining immunity to the virus with no [...]

The US has repeatedly blamed China for failing to contain the spread of the virus from Wuhan and for reporting the disease to the World Health Organisation too late. US President Donald Trump took to Twitter to reiterate his position concerning China's role in the coronavirus outbreak. Earlier this week, Chinese Ambassador to the United Nations Zhang Jun said that the US should stop using scapegoa [...]

Detained US ex-soldiers said they were tasked with securing an airfield in Venezuela in order to put President Nicolas Maduro on a plane after toppling him. The men were charged with plotting a coup against the government. Venezuelan state TV has aired new interrogation tapes of the two former US Green Berets charged with participating in failed plot to oust Maduro. [...]

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido has accepted the resignation of two of his aides who are currently wanted by Caracas on charges of a botched armed incursion into the country to topple President Nicolas Maduro, Spain's EFE news agency reported on Monday, citing Guaido's office. It comes after Venezuelan Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez unveiled last week a 41-page contract [...]