The fallout continues from ‘Operation Gideon’, the brazen May 3-4 attempt by a US security contractor to invade Venezuela, kidnap its president and take him back to the United States. The White House remains in damage control mode, denying any responsibility for the plot while seeking to bring the captured US mercenaries involved back home. Diosdado Cabello, president of Venezuela’s [...]

China has faced numerous accusations over its handling of the initial COVID-19 outbreak from US officials, including President Donald Trump who claims that the virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory and that Beijing was hiding the true information about the state of the outbreak in its early stages. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has vehemently denied a report by the German magazine Der Spie [...]

VIENNA -Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on Friday delivered a speech timed with the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in which he recalled the responsibility of his own country for the events of 1939-1945. "The horrors of National Socialism were so indescribable that we should make sure to draw our lessons from that time. This is especially true for Austria, because not o [...]

Bill Gates told CNN's Fareed Zakaria on Sunday that China did a lot of things right at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak and now is not time to discuss their mistakes. Gates called it a "distraction" to blame them and focus on the "incorrect and unfair things" said about them. ZAKARIA: You've been making this case for international cooperation very powerfully and in my mind persuasively [...]

Austrians will soon be able to walk with no restrictions and gather in groups of 10, as coronavirus measures will be gradually lifted starting next month. The easing of the self-isolation measures was announced by Health Minister Rudolf Anschober, who said that the spread of the novel coronavirus remains quite slow and the forecast for the upcoming month looks “very good.” He also said that th [...]

Media outlets have omitted aspects about the US assassination of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani that don’t fit Washington’s narrative, comedian Lee Camp has argued. He’s debunked the Pentagon spin so you don’t have to. The host of Redacted Tonight has listed six things about the highly controversial killing that the media has either ignored completely or under-reported, including the n [...]

Chinese scientists have found that Europe and America’s East Coast have been infected by some of the most aggressive Covid-19 strains, as they discovered dozens of virus mutations. These destroy a host’s cells faster than others. The ability of the novel coronavirus to mutate has been previously vastly underestimated, a team from China’s Zhejiang University, led by Professor Li Lanjuan, says [...]

It’s believed that a US-Iran war would disrupt the flow of Middle Eastern oil and, as such, should be avoided at all costs. With US oil futures trading in the negative, has the risk of such a war suddenly become attractive? Last week, nearly a dozen Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) vessels harassed a formation of US Navy and Coast Guard ships operating in international wate [...]

With the world struggling to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic, Poland’s delegation to NATO has been eager to promote cross-border aid and international solidarity on its Twitter account – with one major exception. The Poland In Nato account has posted a slew of tweets in recent days and weeks, highlighting shipments of medical supplies around the world, making sure to include emoji flags in eac [...]

The European Union urgently requires financial injections to stay afloat and survive the coronavirus epidemic currently ravaging the continent, the European commissioner for economy, Paolo Gentiloni, has warned. A whopping €1.5 trillion ($ 1.63 trillion) could be needed to “deal with this crisis,” Gentiloni told Der Spiegel ahead of the EU leaders summit on the crisis sparked by the outbreak [...]

In January 2020 members of the Iraqi parliament said the country was mulling the purchase of advanced Russian S-400 missile systems amid concerns that Washington might stop supporting Iraq and providing it with modern air defence armaments. The Parliamentary Security and Defence Committee of Iraq submitted a detailed study requesting the purchase of Russian long-range, surface-to-air S-400 missile [...]

The novel coronavirus may have first passed to humans somewhere in southern China months before the outbreak in the city of Wuhan, a new study found, cutting against widely held theories about the origins of the pandemic. Mapping a “network” of coronavirus genomes and tracing mutations over time, a team of researchers led by a Cambridge University geneticist determined the first Covid-19 infec [...]

Donald Trump’s claim that he received a positive letter from Kim Jong Un is false, Pyongyang has said, urging the US president to refrain from using his relations with the North Korean leader for “selfish purposes.” During his briefing on Saturday, Trump boasted that he had “recently” received a written message from Kim. “It was a nice note. I think we’re doing fine,” he said, insi [...]

An earlier ABC News report stated that US intelligence officials had warned the military and White House about the spread of a coronavirus outbreak in China as far back as late November 2019, with the Pentagon denying the "product/assessment" existed. US intelligence agencies warned Israel of the threat of a coronavirus outbreak in China as far back as in November 2019, Israeli Channel 12 [...]

Russian Helicopters and their Mexican partner – the Craft Avia Center announced plans to form a partnership to market the Ansat multi-purpose helicopter in Mexico several years back, with the Mexican side opening a service center earlier this year. The global economic slowdown and coronavirus pandemic has not held Mexico back from taking delivery of its first Ansat helicopter, Jose de V [...]

Having bragged repeatedly of America’s energy independence, President Trump must confront the harsh realities of a global oil market no longer able to sustain inefficient US oil producers as he prepares to negotiate with the G20. The global economy struggles to adapt to the one-two punch of reduced oil demand brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and the Russian-Saudi Arabian price war, which h [...]

The initial human volunteers have been selected to test a Russian vaccine against the deadly new coronavirus in trials set to begin in late June. The project's chief developer is leading by example by taking his place among them. Work on the biological preparation began in February at the Vector Institute, Russia’s leading virology and biotechnology research center. It's based in Novosibirsk, th [...]

Since Saturday, 2,186 more people in Russia have tested positive for coronavirus, bringing the nationwide total to 15,770, according to the emergency team in charge of managing the country's response to the deadly infection. The fresh figure drastically ups the curve, as only 1,667 new cases were recorded across the country the day before. [...]

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allied oil exporters led by Russia are reportedly set to hold an urgent meeting on Sunday to clinch a last-minute agreement to save the oil market from further tumbling. The virtual meeting is scheduled for 4pm GMT, the Azerbaijan Energy Ministry confirmed to Russian media. The same time frame was reported earlier by Bloomberg. [...]

While the coronavirus pandemic is wreaking havoc on global trade, cargo volume between Russia and its biggest trading partner, China, is growing, according to the Russian consul general in Harbin, Vladimir Oschepkov. “According to our estimates, the volume of cargo transportation between our countries is gradually increasing,” the diplomat told RIA Novosti. [...]

Saudi Arabia, a major strategic ally of the US, has been at the centre of an oil output cut dispute with Russia that unleashed a price war and sent already-volatile crude prices to their 18-year lows. American senators from oil-producing states reproached the Saudi ambassador in a heated phone call and threatened to rethink diplomatic relations with the kingdom, according to their accounts of the [...]

BERGAMO, Italy - Russian military personnel and Italian military nuclear, biological and chemical experts have jointly disinfected nursing homes in three settlements in Italy's Lombardy region, the Russian Defence Ministry announced on Saturday. "Russian military experts, together with the military personnel of the radiation, chemical and biological protection unit of the Italian armed forces disi [...]