The currency markets are currently facing “multiple cross-currents” on rising global concerns over a potential second wave of Covid-19, said Deutsche Bank’s chief Asia macro strategist Sameer Goel. According to him, the “big question” for investors right now is whether the US dollar should be trading at a safe-haven risk premium. [...]

How Much Is Really a ‘Living Wage’ in Every State? Can you afford to live where you are? The answer depends on two factors — your earnings and the cost of living in your area. The federal minimum wage in the United States is $7.25 per hour. Some states and a few cities set their minimum wages higher. The cost of living varies a great deal across the country. Even in lower-cost areas, a minim [...]

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 [...]

It's hard to view the US at this point as anything other than a cautionary tale. It is remarkable how the effects of Covid on the international system mirrors its impact on individuals. Its lethality, in the acute phase, may be lower than we feared, yet there is a risk of sudden catastrophic relapse after a seeming period of recovery, and the long-term effects are of a gravity we can only dread. [...]

The National Endowment for Democracy, a soft-power group mostly known for splashing government dollars on pro-US influence campaigns overseas to enforce regime change, has endorsed protests against police brutality at home. In a statement on Friday, the NED came out in support of the protests against the police killing of unarmed black man George Floyd, which, while originally peaceful, spiralled [...]

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 [...]

Facebook's decision to "warn" users about state-controlled media is an outdated propaganda trick, say international observers, asking whether US news outlets are independent and from whom. Facebook has announced that it will start labeling Russia Today, Sputnik, Iran's Press TV, China's Xinhua News and other government-funded news outlets as "state media" and will block any ads from them [...]

The murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police has forced the American people to take a long, hard look at their country and what it stands for. The rest of the world is looking too. It is not a pretty picture. The image of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, prompting a plaintive cry for help (“I can’t breathe”) before dyi [...]

The Australian embassy in Washington, DC will investigate an apparent assault by the US police against two Aussie journalists. The pair were roughed up live on air while covering a protest outside the White House. A crew working for the outlet 7News was targeted on Tuesday while reporting from a demonstration in the US capital against police brutality. Correspondent Amelia Brace and cameraman Tim [...]

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 [...]

American LNG exports are estimated to have dropped by around a half since January due to a collapse in demand which led to lack of storage space in overseas facilities. Buyers of US-extracted liquefied natural gas (LNG) may cancel up to 60 percent of July orders, as the energy industry is reeling from a global glut caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Bloomberg reports, citing a survey of [...]

The staggering increase in wealth inequality comes despite, or perhaps in part because of, several rounds of cash injections by the federal government to corporations, big banks and to a lesser extent, ordinary Americans which have added trillions of dollars to the US national debt. The wealthiest 600+ Americans saw their total wealth increase by $434 billion between March 18, when the go [...]

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 [...]

Shortly after asking “why the coronavirus did not kill more Russians,” Bloomberg illustrated a stinging op-ed with a graph suggesting Russia is far behind OECD states in hospital beds... though the exact opposite is true. Everything’s fine if it fits the narrative, Bloomberg Opinion editors might have thought when they misquoted World Bank statistics on the number of hospital beds per 1,000 [...]

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 [...]

Earlier this week, the US Navy's Pacific Fleet announced that all of its submarines in the area were at sea to conduct operations in support of "a free and open" region "amidst the pandemic caused by the coronavirus". The Times has quoted unnamed US defence sources as saying that the Pentagon may lose a sea war with China if one breaks out in the Indo-Pacific region amid the increasing tensions be [...]

US-backed Maduro opponent Juan Guaido met with the head of the notorious Silvercorp, the American company believed to have been involved in the failed attempt to kill the Venezuelan president, a captured plotter has alleged. Jordan Goudreau of Silvercorp had met with Guaido, the self-proclaimed interim leader of Venezuela, in Washington DC in March. [...]

NASA has inked a deal with Russia’s space agency Roscosmos to allow a US astronaut to travel into space aboard a Soyuz rocket in the fall, even as SpaceX gears up for its first manned launch later this month. “A contract was signed today on providing a seat for a US astronaut onboard a Soyuz MS manned spaceship to be launched to the ISS in the autumn of 2020,” Roscosmos told Tass on Tuesday. [...]

The United States has the highest number of coronavirus cases globally, the only country reporting seven-digit numbers of infections. Brazil is also one of the 10 most infected nations according to the WHO. Its President Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly dismissed the virus as just a "flu". The United States and Brazil failed to take warnings issued by the World Health Organisation seriousl [...]

Newly surfaced cellphone video of the February murder of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery has prompted Georgia prosecutors to release evidence to a grand jury in an attempt to bring charges against the two men involved in the fatal encounter. Footage of the incident, released Sunday by activist Shaun King on social media, shows Arbery running in the neighborhood of Satilla Shores in the coastal [...]