The US serviceman killed in an insider attack in Kabul is identified as Brent Taylor, a mayor from Utah. While shocking to some back at home, this is only the latest such incident in a war that even top brass now call unwinnable. [...]

Central banks around the world are increasing their gold reserves at an incredible pace. Over the last three months alone, they have purchased gold worth 5.82 billion dollars, which is roughly a quarter more than the year earlier. It is noteworthy that the Bank of Russia and the Turkish Central Bank have broken a record in terms of gold purchases. [...]

Walking back his previous comments, US President Donald Trump said that illegal migrants who attack the US military with rocks will not be fired upon, but will be detained. Trump told reporters on Friday that all of his border enforcement actions are in compliance with existing US laws. He has vowed not to allow the caravans of migrants from El Salvador and Honduras, currently making their way nor [...]

Allegations that Russia is still “attacking” US elections, now again in November, could delegitimize our democratic institutions. Summarizing one of the themes in his new book, ‘War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine To Trump and Russiagate,’ Stephen F. Cohen argues that Russiagate allegations of Kremlin attempts to “undermine American democracy” may themselves erode confidence in tho [...]

The departing German chancellor leaves her country with a fractured domestic political scene and myriad intractable social challenges, the EU as weak as it has ever been, and grave international crises no closer to resolution. [...]

Austria has announced that it would back out of a UN pact on international cooperation on migration, arguing that the document is inadequate for managing global migration flows and could undermine Austria's sovereignty. [...]

European countries have vowed to maintain “effective financial channels” and to keep trading with Tehran after the US announced that the EU is not among those spared from its sweeping sanctions against Iran. [...]

ST PETERSBURG (Sputnik) - The Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) supports the government’s decision not to sign the UN global migration pact dealing with the rights of refugees and migrants and expects other countries to follow, Roman Haider, the FPO’s foreign policy spokesman, told Sputnik. [...]

Earlier, Hungary introduced psychological tests for migrants demanding asylum on the basis of persecution for having non-standard sexual orientations. Such tests were later ruled out by the European Court of Justice. [...]

The US is slapping far-reaching sanctions on Venezuela in its bid to re-assert hemispheric dominance over what National Security Advisor Bolton dubbed a “Troika of tyranny” in a groan-worthy throwback to Bush’s “axis of evil.” [...]

Cuba's new president Miguel Diaz-Canel is starting his official three-day visit to Russia on November 1. Moscow and Havana have been re-establishing trade ties, a tradition going back to Soviet times. [...]

The US Missile Defense Agency has been practicing shooting down a land-based medium-range ballistic missile, just as Washington prepares for its withdrawal from the cornerstone INF nuclear non-proliferation agreement. [...]

The Afghanistan war cannot be won militarily and peace will only be achieved through a political resolution with the Taliban, the newly-appointed American general in charge of US and NATO operations has conceded. [...]

Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro tweeted that he intends to transfer the Brazilian Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as a part of fulfilling his election campaign promises. Brazil will become the third country after the United States and Guatemala to move its embassy to Jerusalem, Associated Press reported. In a tweet published on Thursday, Bolsonaro said: “Israel is a sovereign state, [...]

Washington has been putting external pressure on EU states over the Russian-European Nord Stream 2 project and repeatedly threatened to impose sanctions on the involved entities. The US cites security and energy independence reasons, while promoting more expensive US LNG. [...]

Portugal’s foreign minister also accused the European Union of leaving them in a state of “limbo” and exposed to the economic shocks of a no-deal Brexit. Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva has hit out at the EU for not allowing member states to secure their own bespoke, bilateral trade deals with Britain while Brexit negotiations have been faltering. [...]

About 20 politicians, businesspeople and public figures from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are planning to attend the Fifth Yalta International Economic Forum next spring, notwithstanding the countries' poor relations with Moscow and their governments' stubborn refusal to recognize the peninsula's status as part of Russia. [...]

The Open Skies Treaty covers most NATO member states as well as Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sweden and Finland. As a rule, flights of Russia and NATO member states are conducted on a reciprocal basis. The 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has revealed in August that the US would not obligate any funds to implement the Open Skies Treaty until penalties ar [...]

Political correctness takes down top interviewer Megyn Kelly, and she didn't even see it coming... because she did nothing wrong. The Kremlin went on record reporting its interest in offering NBC host Megyn Kelly a job working for the Russian media. Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov mused about this situation, praising Mrs. Kelly for her interviewing skills but suggesting she might [...]

Europe is now facing the disastrous prospect of American missiles being reinstalled across its territory as they were in the 1980s. The Trump administration’s declared scrapping of a crucial arms control treaty is putting the world on notice of a nuclear war, sooner or later. [...]

The US will adopt harsh, Israeli-style tactics and will treat migrants at the Mexican border as armed and dangerous invaders if they throw rocks at US law enforcement, Donald Trump has stressed amid a mass military deployment. [...]

A new report reveals that Finland is the happiest country in the world based on a range of measures including GDP per capita, freedom to make life choices, and corruption levels.  Nordic countries take four out of the five top spots, and are well known to be stable, safe and socially progressive. [...]