A Chinese citizen and US permanent resident infected with COVID-19 who flew from Los Angeles to Beijing on March 12 is accused of concealing her coronavirus symptoms and could face prison time as a result. According to reports, the woman, who has only been identified by her surname Li, became sick with symptoms consistent with the novel coronavirus while living in Massachusetts. After being denied [...]

Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has dropped out of the 2020 presidential race to endorse her ideological opposite, establishment darling Joe Biden. It's political suicide – for her, and for the idea of a progressive Democrat. Gabbard's decision to bow out on Thursday may have made sense from an electoral perspective – with just two delegates from her native American Samoa, she wasn't exactl [...]

US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has promised immediate financial relief “within the next two weeks” to Americans hit hard by the coronavirus recession - plus a massive financial aid package for the airline industry. The Trump administration will be sending a check to Americans within the next two weeks for an undetermined amount, Mnuchin announced at a press conference on Tuesday. [...]

China is pulling the press credentials of US journalists from outlets including the New York Times and the Washington Post whose passes expire in 2020, in the latest move of an ongoing tit-for-tat with America over media access. [...]

The coronavirus containment measures the US has (belatedly, reluctantly) taken are revealing enormous fissures in its first-world facade, from legions of hungry schoolchildren to their broke parents left to fend for themselves. The US puts a lot of effort into maintaining its image as the world’s richest country, but while it may have the world’s highest GDP, near-record levels of income inequ [...]

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that she has struck a deal with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin over a coronavirus relief plan that President Donald Trump had previously opposed as overreach. “We are proud to have reached an agreement with the administration to resolve outstanding challenges, and now will soon pass the Families First Coronavirus Response Act,” Pelosi (D-Californi [...]

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma has in one fell swoop seemingly forgiven the US for its treatment of China in the dark days of its coronavirus epidemic and one-upped the capitalist system with a donation of much-needed supplies. [...]

The State Department’s special envoy for Syria has just admitted that the US aims to defend jihadist militants in Idlib against ‘Russian aggression,’ proving once again that the swamp in Foggy Bottom is alive and well. [...]

Global stock markets hit bear territory this week, with oil prices experiencing their biggest plunge since the 1991 Gulf War. Boom Bust is joined by Professor Richard Wolff of the Economic Update to discuss the ongoing oil crisis. He explains that the US, which wanted "energy independence," decided 10-20 years ago to go into the fracking business simply because it was profitable. [...]

The development comes weeks after a camera at the International Space Station spotted an unknown cone-like object that was flying upward. NASA’s STEREO observation mission has spotted what fans of conspiracy theories said is a gigantic UFO flying past the Sun. The incident itself occurred on 29 February, but the footage of it was posted just recently on the channel “Hidden Underbelly 2.0” de [...]

In the Soviet Union’s declining years, there was a half-deferential, half-derisive moniker for the feeble leaders in their 70s who preceded Gorbachev: the ‘Kremlin elders’. Thirty-something years later, the United States looks set to elect its own septuagenarian to run the White House. [...]

The “Russian collusion” trope didn’t just spring to life with US President Donald Trump in 2016 – accusations of taking help from the evil Russkies have dogged candidates who buck the establishment since the 1960s. Trump may be the best-known candidate to attract allegations of being ‘Putin’s puppet,’ but he is by no means the first. [...]

Russia more than doubled crude oil supplies to the United States and Britain in 2019, data from the Federal Customs Service (FCS) has revealed. A fall in prices for the Russian Urals oil, combined with US sanctions against Venezuela and Iran, were among the reasons for such an increase in purchases. [...]

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is “terminating” the Visiting Forces Agreement, which provides legal immunity to US military drills, in retaliation for the US canceling the visa of a political ally and fellow drug-warrior. “The president said he is terminating the VFA,” Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana told ABS-CBN News on Friday. “I asked for clarification and he said he is not [...]

The head of the Pentagon’s testing and evaluation department sharply criticized the F-35 program’s schedule for incremental software updates on the high-tech aircraft, calling it “high risk” as the program falls further and further behind schedule. Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II stealth aircraft is basically a giant, flying computer, and its greatest asset, according to Air Force st [...]

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hit back at threats from Washington over Moscow’s support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, insisting Caracas and its neighbors deserve the option not to be US vassal states. “I have heard the threats from Washington about punishing all those who work with Venezuela,” Lavrov confirmed during a press conference in Mexico City on Thursday. “But [...]

Oliver Stone’s films have won 12 Academy Awards including two for Best Director, as well as a bunch of Golden Globes and BAFTAs. His new focus is documentaries – on Venezuela, Ukraine, and Edward Snowden – all reflecting on the dubious activities of the US government both at home and abroad. Oliver Stone, the award-winning American director and a relentless critic of US administrations, has [...]

President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) Mahmoud Abbas announced on Saturday that all ties between the PNA and Israel, as well as the United States, would be cut following Donald Trump’s unveiling of his long-advertised peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which many saw as being strongly biased towards the Jewish state. [...]

The area where the alleged UFO was spotted nearly five decades ago was apparently used by the USSR to test experimental missiles and laser weapon systems. A recently declassified CIA report sheds light on an alleged UFO encounter that took place at the height of Cold War in Kazakhstan in 1973, back when it was part of the Soviet Union. [...]

The embattled USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), flagship of the new Ford class of carriers which the US Navy plans to eventually replace its Enterprise- and Nimitz-class warships with, is currently years behind schedule, and facing a slew of issues which US lawmakers have complained seem to have no “end in sight.” A new report by the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT& [...]

A spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has accused the US of covering up deaths at a base in Iraq after a ballistic missile attack. The US insists nobody was killed, and that its troops suffered brain injuries. [...]

The long list of problems plaguing the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter continues to grow, with a Pentagon review finding over 800 software flaws in the costly aircraft, as well as defects that prevent its guns from hitting targets. The annual assessment by the Pentagon’s director of operational testing and evaluation, Robert Behler, revealed that the program that has cost over $400 billion so far has [...]