Trump-bashing is nothing unusual at CNN, but when a guest told Brian Stelter that the president “may be responsible for many more million deaths” than the worst dictators of the 20th Century, even the host was left red-faced. [...]

A new analysis conducted by a Chinese research paper published on Friday in a peer-reviewed journal entitled ‘2017 Was the Warmest Year on Record for the Global Ocean' detailed the last year to be the hottest year for ocean temperatures since records began being kept. [...]

The devastating blitz on Saudi Arabia’s oil industry has led to a flurry of accusations from US officials blaming Iran. The reason for the finger-pointing is simple: Washington’s spectacular failure to protect its Saudi ally. [...]

A full-blown war with North Korea wouldn’t be as bad as you think. It would be much, much worse. Late last September, I moderated a discussion about North Korea with retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, whose 37-year military career included a stint running NATO, and Michèle Flournoy, the No. 3 official at the Pentagon during the Obama administration, who has helped shape US policy toward North K [...]

Under development since 2012, the 20+ tonne stealthy flying wing design began rigorous military testing earlier this year. The Sukhoi S-70 Okhotnik heavy unmanned combat aerial vehicle may one day become a full-fledged replacement for all sorts of combat aircraft, including the latest generation of Russian fighter jets, Izvestia has reported, citing the military and a military aircraft specialist [...]

Indonesia finalizes a billion-dollar deal pertaining to the purchase of 11 Sukhoi Su-35 jets from Russia. According to Indonesian Defense Ministry spokesman Totok Sugiharto on Saturday, the contract, worth a total of $1.14 billion, was finalized by representatives from both countries in Jakarta. [...]

A new survey from consultancy McKinsey & Co has found that a majority of banks globally may not be economically viable because their returns on equity aren’t keeping pace with costs. The study looked at 1,000 banks in developed and emerging countries and found that just over a third had made a return on capital of just 1.6 percent over the past three years. This compares to returns of j [...]

Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied accusations he revived an arms race by unveiling Russia’s new nuclear deterrent. That was done by US President George W. Bush killing a 30-year-old missile treaty in 2002, he told NBC.  In an interview with NBC’s “Megyn Kelly Today” on Thursday, the Russian leader brushed off claims in the Western media that by introducing new nuclear-powered mi [...]

WhatsApp is a “Trojan horse” exploited to snoop on millions of users naive enough to believe that the Facebook-owned messenger differs from its parent company, long beset by privacy scandals, Telegram founder Pavel Durov said. [...]

Polish President Andrzej Duda has apologized to Jews who were kicked out of the country in the anti-Semitic campaign of 1968. At the same though, Duda asserted that Warsaw bears no responsibility for the country’s past. [...]

Allseas, a Swiss-Dutch company laying the Nord Stream 2 pipeline off the Danish coast, has announced it is suspending its work and will pull out of the project after being faced with an avalanche of sanctions by the US. The company, which operates two vessels installing deep-sea pipes for Nord Stream 2 on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, released its statement just before US President Donald Trump si [...]

Mike Pompeo will probably be a more effective diplomat than Tillerson. He’ll also be more hawkish. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held on to his job for 13 tense months despite repeatedly breaking with President Trump — and once reportedly calling him “a fucking moron.” [...]

Earlier, Gen. (ret.) Ben Hodges, former commander of US Army Europe, suggested that Russia’s historical claims to Crimea were “false and unacceptable” because the peninsula became part of Russia only during the reign of Catherine the Great. Alexei Pushkov, an outspoken Russian senator known for his commentaries on foreign affairs, has responded to Gen. Hodges remarks about the status of the [...]

UK-based media outlets are adamant in their support of the British government's baseless stance in Skripal's case. The UK has been blaming Moscow since the first reports appeared about the incident involving the Russian ex-spy. Sputnik spoke with Matthew Gordon Banks, former Conservative MP, about the case. [...]

Commenting on US Defence Secretary Mark T. Esper's statement that a group of US troops will remain in eastern Syria, allegedly to prevent Daesh from accessing the oil fields, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said the statement should not be a surprise. In a statement, the chief spokesman for the Russian Defence Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, noted that the US' stated goal of protecting Syrian oi [...]

Lt. Gen. Karl Müller, head of the Luftwaffe, is on his way out the door primarily as a result of his vocal stance that Germany should buy the F-35 Lightning II. Sputnik previously reported that Müller was on thin ice with German political leaders who apparently preferred that Germany's air force replace its Panavia Tornado fleet with more European-built fighter jets. [...]

During self-congratulatory remarks about his “deal of the century” to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict, Donald Trump threw in another boast; he claimed US forces defeated “100 percent” of the Islamic State caliphate. Have they? “Thanks to the courage of US forces, the ISIS territorial caliphate — 100 percent — not 95 percent, not 99 or any other percent — 100 percent of their ca [...]

This week, in an article published on the UK government's official website addressed to European media, Johnson wrote about the upcoming fourth anniversary of what he referred to as "the events which led to the illegal annexation of Crimea." Responding to British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson's recent article about Moscow's "seizure" of Crimea from Ukraine, the Russian Embassy in London h [...]

Under the 2018 Sochi agreement, Turkey was supposed to disarm and disassociate itself from the terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Its failure to do so has sown the seeds of Turkey’s inevitable defeat in Syria. When Turkey threw its weight behind the anti-Assad rebellion in 2011, it did so believing that it would be able to dictate the outcome on the ground by controlling the main organ [...]

With the largest joint U.S.-Israeli air defense exercise ever conducted having recently concluded, which involved over 2,500 American service personnel, and in the midst of heightened Israeli involvement in the Syrian war, we find ourselves asking... Are US troops ready to fight and to die for America’s Israel's defense? [...]

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. [...]

Donald Trump warned Russia to "get ready" after Moscow vowed to shoot any missiles fired at Syria down. "They will be coming, nice and new and smart," Trump tweeted. The tweet appears to be an unofficial announcement of the "major decisions" which Trump said Washington would soon be making regarding the alleged chemical attack in Syria. [...]