The Russian stock market has delivered the biggest returns to investors around the world this year. Global rate cuts and increased dividend payouts have been driving investor interest in Russia. The MSCI Russia Index which tracks the 23 largest Russian publicly-listed companies has surged 44 percent since the start of the year, according to Sberbank analyst Cole Akeson. [...]

Tarzan would feel right at home in these conceptual houses that blend into the forest. If you live or work in a city, chances are your view doesn’t contain much green. There may be a few trees lining the streets, but it’s nothing like architect Raimond de Hullu’s vision for urban development. In his mind, buildings and streets should look like something out of Life After People — only w [...]

Europe’s total dependence on Washington would lead it nowhere other than to its own demise, a senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has alleged, calling on Europeans to break free from America’s grip. Europe is a major political force on the international arena, yet it prefers to “quietly follow the policy imposed” by Washington, Ali Akbar Velayati told RT Arabic. [...]

Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, well-known Gaullist and leader of the France Arise party, believes that his country's leaders are losing the war against radical Islamic terrorism. Worse yet, he says, France is losing because it is being led on a string like a puppet to the interests of Brussels, Berlin and Washington. In a cutting op-ed, published by Le Figaro, Dupont-Aignan warned that unfortunately, t [...]

The assassination of Qassem Soleimani has opened a new phase for the whole region, the leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, has said, calling for attacks on US soldiers and military assets. Iraqi resistance will not let a single US soldier stay in Iraq after the killing of the Iranian Quds force commander, Nasrallah said in a televised speech on Sunday. [...]

US President Barack Obama should use his remaining time in office wisely and “restore people's rights” by returning $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote in a letter to the White House.   [...]

Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal quoted Karim Elaiwi, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s Security and Defence Committee, as saying that Baghdad was considering purchasing Russian S-400 systems amid concerns that the US may stop supporting the country. According to Joey Hood, the principal deputy assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, Iraq’s possible acquisition of S-4 [...]

Part of the way the U.S. Empire's elections are rigged is the corporate media's censorship of third-party candidates, despite their nationwide campaign efforts. The Green Party, running Dr. Jill Stein for President—on a platform more progressive than Bernie Sanders—has been totally ignored by the establishment. Abby Martin sits down with Dr. Stein to look at how her career in medicine he [...]

The famed Rothschild family’s descendants have lashed out at the Austrian capital and local authorities over what they say amounts to expropriation of severely undervalued assets, as well as public trust in the private fund which was initially set up over 100 years ago to serve people by financing medical care projects. The great-grandson of the Rothschild family’s Austrian branch has launched [...]

Germany is on high terror alert following another round of attacks that have shocked the country leading Germany to urge citizens to stockpile resources for the first time since the Cold War. The German government plans to tell citizens to stockpile food and water in case of a catastrophic terror attack the Frankfurther Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper reported on Sunday as the country find [...]

The Russian capital’s air and missile defence system is one of the most sophisticated in the world, and includes a dense layer of anti-aircraft missile launchers, interceptor systems, and a unique tetrahedral truncated pyramid radio-radar station so powerful it can detect space debris. In the event of an enemy attack, Moscow’s air defences would intercept and destroy enemy missile tar [...]

Jeremy Scahill, Investigative Reporter; Co-founder, The Intercept; Author, The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program. Bestselling author Jeremy Scahill and his colleagues at the investigative website The Intercept reveal what they call stunning new details about America’s secret assassination policy. When the U.S. government discusses drone strikes pub [...]

Scientists in countries around the world have rushed to learn everything they can about COVID-19 in recent months in a bid to create an effective vaccine. Russian scientists have sequenced the whole genome of the new coronavirus, the Ministry of Health has announced. In a statement on Thursday, the Ministry explained that the genome, sourced from a patient infected with the virus, will help in the [...]

Thursday night, Hillary Clinton told a roomful of top campaign donors that she lost the Presidential election because of Vladimir Putin and James Comey — but the donors don’t appear to be buying her story of woe. [...]

Many think Covid-19 is some kind of alien invasion that spells the end of the world. But the real threat to us is a much deadlier virus: a hatred of all the values that have underpinned our civilization for centuries. For years, I was puzzled as to why the Roman Empire ceased to exist and was replaced by communities that were uncivilized by comparison. How and why could mankind’s progress revers [...]

Greece's national rail company TrainOSE has been sold to Italy's state railway group Ferrovie dello Stato (FS) for €45 million ($48.1 million). The sale is part of Greece’s €86 billion bailout agreed with international creditors two years ago. [...]

The coronavirus pandemic is likely to spark an unprecedented fall in global trade as well as an economic crisis rivaling the Great Depression, the head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has warned. “We confront what may well be the deepest economic downturn of our lifetimes,” the organization’s Director General Roberto Azevedo said in a grim forecast. [...]

Women in several cities have reported sex attacks committed during New Year's Eve celebrations, the Austrian press reports. The number female victims of sex attacks in the Austrian city of Innsbruck has risen to 19 after the parents of several teeenage girls reported the crimes to police, Austrian media reported on Tuesday. [...]

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 [...]

A civilian transport vehicle capable of hauling up to 500 tons of cargo across oceans is in the early stages of development in Russia. The vehicle would fly just meters over the surface to utilize so-called ground effect for better fuel efficiency. A ground-effect vehicle is a combination of a maritime vessel and an aircraft. [...]

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 [...]

President Trump’s calls for reorienting American foreign policy look to be disintegrating in his first two weeks in office as he embraces the neoconservative hostilities toward Iran and Russia, as Andrew The Trump Administration’s goal of de-escalating tensions with Russia is meeting stiff resistance in Eastern Europe where many reject the notion that a diplomatic solution can be reached ov [...]