LONDON – The UK judge presiding over the case of the Venezuelan gold in the Bank of England urged the legal team representing Venezuela's self-proclaimed president Juan Guaido to find “better excuses” for its failure to comply with a UK court order to pay for the legal costs of the appeal it lost in October. This is according to a statement by Venezuela Central Bank (BCV) lawyers, w [...]

There is a battle in the halls of the European parliament to ensure that the latest report on fundamental rights references the US prosecution and attempted extradition of WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange. The EU's parliament will be voting on its latest report on fundamental rights, which also encompasses media freedom. The report on fundamental freedoms for 2018 - 2019 ori [...]

The N.F. Gamaleya National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology and the Russian Direct Investment Fund have announced the efficacy of their newly developed inoculation, the world's first registered COVID-19 vaccine, has topped 95%, with the latter uplifting results shown 42 days after the first shot. The evaluation was carried out among 18,794 volunteers 28 days after receiving the [...]

A notorious US naval destroyer sparked a diplomatic incident on Tuesday morning after Russia claimed that it had launched an incursion into its territorial waters. The USS John S McCain, a specialist combat ship designed to hunt submarines, was operating in the Sea of Japan (also called the East Sea), off the coast of the Russian Far Eastern capital, Vladivostok. Authorities say it was more than t [...]

An American man with a rare muscle disorder took a chance on Russia after doctors back home gave him little hope of walking again. In the US, Alan Spencer's prognosis varied between being bedridden for life or wheelchair-bound. Now, after a month of treatment, under the guidance of Russian specialists, he’s able to walk on his own. Spencer first felt something was wrong with his health a [...]

China is slowly reorienting its economy "away from North America" and "towards the rest of Asia" as evidenced by the newly finalised Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that it has signed with 15 fellow Asian countries, covering 2.3 billion people, an economic analyst tells Sputnik. The world's largest trading block, led by China, finalised a new trade agreement on 15 November 202 [...]

Donald Trump’s lack of input at the G20 summit made it easy to ignore him. While Joe Biden will play more of a role globally, the rest of the world should not look to him for leadership given the turmoil America is in at present. The 2020 G20 Riyadh summit took place over the weekend with participating nations discussing greater cooperation in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic, the global econ [...]

The US Supreme Court has declined to hear a case that Republicans hoped would disqualify late-arriving mail ballots in Pennsylvania. The Trump campaign still plans on taking another case to the court, claiming widespread fraud. More than 2.6 million mail ballots were cast in Pennsylvania this election. Voters mailing in their ballots broke heavily for Democratic candidate Joe Biden, with near [...]

President Donald Trump’s US government has on Sunday withdrawn from an international treaty that allows countries to monitor military hardware build-ups from afar, accusing Moscow – without evidence – of breaking its terms. The Open Skies Treaty was first considered by the US and the Soviet Union in the 1950s as a possible way to increase transparency around troop movements and the depl [...]

As long as health insurance firms and drug companies continue to “gouge people,” the US will not be equipped to handle a pandemic, physician Dr. Margaret Flowers has told RT’s ‘On Contact.’ With 12 million people infected and 255,000 dead in the US, Dr. Flowers told ‘On Contact’ host Chris Hedges on Saturday that “it’s fair to say that we have lost control of the virus, and [...]

After trials on two groups of volunteers, Russia’s Gamaleya Research Centre announced it has created the first vaccine against COVID-19. According to Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko, the first batch of the drug, known as "Sputnik-V", will be produced in 2 weeks and delivered for voluntary vaccination in Russian hospitals. The vaccine is a two-component treatment based on the human ad [...]

Switzerland has adopted sanctions against Russian individuals and companies involved in the construction of the bridge over the Kerch Strait that connected the Crimean Peninsula with continental Russia, the Swiss Federal Department of Economic Affairs said on Friday. "The Federal Department of Economic Affairs has made amendments to the list of individuals attached to the directive on the preventi [...]

The Pentagon has released “the most comprehensive” data on civilian casualties of the US-led coalition operations against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, Airwars has said. Only officially conceded deaths are in it, though. The UK-based conflict monitoring group Airwars said “more than three years of extensive engagement” with the US military allowed it to obtain the “most accurate [...]

The repercussions of the new RCEP free-trade agreement between China and 14 other countries are huge. It creates a massive trading bloc in Asia that America, though its insular policies, will play no part in. This weekend, 15 Asia-Pacific nations came together to sign the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a mammoth free-trade agreement that has been described as one of the  [...]

Even if Trump loses, the truth is that to many Americans Trumpism isn’t a pathology but a new normal which is a product of a massive social divide caused by dissatisfaction with the political system and life in general. The world watches with bated breath as the US Presidential election sits at a dead heat. It’s going down to the wire and nobody knows who is going to emerge victor yet. De [...]

Turkey is facing mounting pressure from its NATO allies in the Eastern Mediterranean region which makes its decision to deploy and operate the Russian-made S-400 Triumf anti-aircraft weapon system fully justified, says Ret. Major General Nejat Eslen commenting on Athens' alleged plan to acquire fifth-generation F-35 stealth jets in 2021. On 16 November, Greek weekly newspaper Proto Thema [...]

The US State Department has outlined a ‘Kennan-style’ China containment policy, which it hopes will help undercut its economic strength and maintain a Washington-led world order, a leaked paper has revealed. The 70-page document called “The Elements of the China Challenge” was prepared by the State Department's Office of Policy Planning and published by Axios on Tuesday. The plan goes [...]

A cancer charity created by presumed president-elect Joe Biden failed to allocate a single dollar for medical research, according to media reports, with most of the group’s cash going towards generous salaries. Federal tax filings reveal that the Biden Cancer Initiative, founded in 2017 by the former vice president and his wife Jill, did not distribute grants during its first two years of operat [...]

The Covid-19 virus had been active in Italy months before it was first officially detected, new research has found, raising further questions about the true origins, extent and actual duration of the ongoing pandemic. The new groundbreaking study, conducted by scientists with Milan Institute of Cancer and the University of Siena, was published this week by the Tumori Journal. The research is based [...]

Russia was widely criticized when it became the first country in the world to register a coronavirus vaccine in August. It was accused of rushing through the approval of the ‘Sputnik V’ formula for political or propaganda gain. Since then the whole development of the vaccine has been dogged by Schadenfreude as the press leapt on signs of impropriety in the data, and Russia has even been acc [...]

Given the uncertainties of Donald Trump's actions as he faces a White House exit, the possible declassification of certain documents has the former CIA director sweating. Former CIA Director John Brennan is apparently so worried that Donald Trump might release certain classified intelligence that he suggested this week that Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet remove Trump via the 25th ame [...]

You didn’t hear this in the cable TV chatter: In the two years leading up to this election, Georgia’s GOP secretary of state quietly wiped away the voter registrations of 198,351 voters — based on false information. Call it “The Great Purge” — overwhelmingly wiping away the voting rights of young voters and voters of color. In other words, voters who might be more likely to vote blue. [...]