The Obama administration protects its “credibility” by refusing to budge on its claims about the 2013 Syria-sarin case or the 2014 plane shoot-down in eastern Ukraine even as the evidence shifts, writes Robert Parry. What surprised me most about the Iraq War wasn’t how wrong the expectation of happy Iraqis showering American troops with flowers was or even how badly the war would turn out [...]

A Russian rocket engine producer has offered a sneak peek of its latest creation, the RD-171MV, which is slated to be part of Russia’s next workhorse launch vehicle and, later, a super heavy-lift rocket. [...]

Panama was basically carved off from Colombia in order to have a canal. It was created very much like Liberia. It’s not really a country in the sense that a country has its own currency and its own tax system. Panama uses U.S. dollars. So does Liberia. [...]

The US Department of Defence recently opened an investigation about reports that acting Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan has been favouring Boeing, where he worked for more than three decades, at the expense of competitors. [...]

Confirming that the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) amounts to "a huge transfer of power from people to big business," Greenpeace Netherlands on Monday leaked 248 secret pages of the controversial trade deal between the U.S. and EU, exposing how environmental regulations, climate protections, and consumer rights are being "bartered away behind closed doors." [...]

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia opened on Friday a helicopter flight training centre in Venezuela to assist Venezuelan pilots in learning how to fly Russian-made Mi-family helicopters, Russia's state arms exporter Rosoboronexport said. [...]

Ankara will send migrants back to the EU if the European Parliament won’t grant visa-free travel to Turkish citizens, warned Burhan Kuzu, a high-ranking deputy for Turkey’s ruling AKP party and former adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.   [...]

The research vessel, which belongs to the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, is fitted with advanced scanning equipment and is carrying an unmanned submarine capable of operating hundreds of meters below the ocean surface. [...]

It is the first commercially operated high-speed magnetic levitation line in the world and only the third Maglev line to be operated. The train line was designed to connect Shanghai Pudong International Airport and the outskirts of central Pudong where passengers could interchange to the Shanghai Metro to continue their trip to the city center. Construction of the line began in 1 March 2001, an [...]

TUCKER CARLSON: There is much we don't know about the situation in Venezuela. What we do know is that Venezuela's current government has done a poor job of providing for its own people. Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves, yet it remains one of the most impoverished and the most dangerous places on the planet. That is beyond dispute. [...]

Washington has suspended the transfer of cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia. That’s according to Foreign Policy magazine citing unnamed US officials. Radio Sputnik discussed the reported decision with political analyst and the editor of Politics First magazine, Dr. Marcus Papadopoulos. [...]

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump reportedly told Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan that he is unwilling to see the US go to war with Iran as tensions between the two sides show no sign of cooling. Donald Trump may not need Congress’ go-ahead to launch a war against Iran, something that his advisers “have been quietly building” a case for amid mounting sanctions, NBC News’ Jon [...]

American neoconservatives and Brussels' eurocrats have completely misinterpreted the ideas of liberalism and multiculturalism, labeling those who are advocating protectionist and anti-immigration policies or calling into question the usefulness of NATO as "fascists." There is an abyss between "fascism" and the rise of nation-states reasserting themselves as "the primary vehicle of political lif [...]

Google risks falling under scrutiny again as the US Department of Justice (DOJ) gears up to investigate the IT giant after studying its ads and search policies, new reports say. [...]

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has spoken out against US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, calling her a “war hawk with bad judgment” who gets an “emotional rush out of killing people.” “A vote today for Hillary Clinton is a vote for endless, stupid war,” Assange wrote via the @wikileaks Twitter account on Tuesday. [...]

Baghdad will not allow Washington to use its military bases to launch an attack on Iran, the country's president stressed, thrashing Donald Trump's warmongering policies towards the Islamic Republic. [...]

Russia 'is poised to release emails from Hillary Clinton's private server', report claims Kremlin is ready to give green light on releasing the emails, report says Clinton has maintained no emails were intercepted by foreign sources But OilPrice.com cites US intelligence sources saying that they were Clinton would be at risk of violating Espionage Act if foreign governments or sources accessed cl [...]

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Syrian President Bashar Assad on Sunday on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries and pledged to defeat terrorism in Syria by joint efforts. [...]

Commenting on what he sees as a new attempt by US policymakers to use Europe as a battering ram against Russia, a prodigious Russian blogger and geopolitical analyst ponders the implications of the titanic efforts being made by Russia and China to detach the continent from Washington's embrace. [...]

Germany will refuse to take part in a US-led maritime mission in the Strait of Hormuz, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announced. Maas said that there “cannot be a military solution” to the current crisis in the Persian Gulf. [...]

The Dow Jones saw a steep drop of 700 points after a threat from Beijing to slap new tariffs on billions of dollars in American goods, and a harsh response from US President Donald Trump, but picked up before ending 621 down. [...]

The joint Syrian-Russian humanitarian operation to save civilians trapped in militant-held territories in Aleppo has struck a severe blow to US policy in the country, says former diplomat and Middle East expert Vyacheslav Matuzov.   [...]