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. [...]

US President Donald Trump has accused Germany of not contributing enough to the NATO budget – but will German Chancellor Angela Merkel dance to Washington’s tune? Politicians on both sides of Germany’s political spectrum shared their views with RT. [...]

“This was the Apocalypse.” These are the words of Pierre Janaszak, a TV and radio presenter, who spoke to RT after experiencing the massacre at France’s Bataclan theater. He says the ordeal has changed his view of the world forever. Pierre Janaszak, a TV and radio presenter, went to the Bataclan with his sister on that fateful Friday evening. [...]

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 [...]

Turkey's downing of a Russian Su-24 over Syria has prompted geopolitics experts to explore Russia's options for how to respond, and to make predictions on how the incident will affect the political career of President Recep Erdogan. According to Expert.ru analyst Gevorg Mirzayan, things don't look so good [...]

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. [...]

Despite facing years of sanctions from the US and EU, the Russian economy is growing again thanks to a winning formula of low debt and high reserves. The sovereign debt of Russia is a fraction of that in developed countries like the UK or US. Russia’s foreign debt now stands at $525 billion, compared to $7.5 trillion in Britain, $5 trillion in France, $4.8 trillion in Germany, and an eye-waterin [...]

It was almost time for Robert Hinton to collect a $450,000 check from the City of New York as compensation for a cruel beating at Rikers Island prison, but before he could get his hands on it, he was murdered – and the NYPD has no lead in the case.   [...]

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. [...]

It is an epic paradox that President Donald Trump, like previous US presidents, boasts of America’s military supremacy and its vital role as defender of the nation. The Trump administration in its first year in office boosted the annual military budget to $700 billion, up from an already gargantuan average figure of some $600 billion a year. [...]

America’s much-touted fifth generation F-35 fighter jet is so bad it would be a sitting duck even for Russia’s MiG-21, designed back in the 1950s, famed US aerospace engineer Pierre Sprey told Russian media on Friday. “The F-35 is so bad it is absolutely hopeless when pitted against modern aircraft. [...]

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. [...]

The first 50 families of Boers, descendants of Dutch settlers in South Africa, could soon be moving to Russia to escape rising violence against farmers. Some 15,000 Boers want to leave South Africa and become farmers in Russia. The Schlebusch family from South Africa’s Bloemfontein is going to be among first 50 Boer families to settle in Russia’s southwest. Like many other Boers, they are seek [...]

The Turkish lira is facing its biggest annual fall since 2008 and is nearing new record-lows, as foreign investment continues to leave the country. Investors from abroad have withdrawn $7.6 billion in assets this year, according to Bloomberg. This includes $1.4 billion in November, the month President Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (JDP) managed to win back the majority. [...]

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. [...]

Senior US government representatives on Wednesday and Thursday finally addressed the terrorist organization's smuggling of oil via Turkish territory. Two senior US officials have conceded to Turkey's role in the Daesh oil trade, having previously supported Ankara's denials that it enables the terrorist group to profit by selling stolen Syrian oil. [...]

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. [...]

Sweden reached a deal Sunday that will allow authorities to interview WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been living under asylum for the past three years. Assange's legal team said the deal will allow the case to move forward while ensuring his safety. [...]

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the leading role of the West is coming to an end, and no serious international group makes much sense anymore without economic juggernauts like China and India. [...]

The Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff has been indirectly providing Syrian military with intelligence on Islamic extremists fearing the Obama administration’s agenda to oust Bashar Assad will engender total chaos in Syria.   [...]

Testing started earlier this year, the 20+ tonne flying wing design, thought to be capable of carrying up to 2.8 tonnes of precision armament, has been dubbed the Hunter (‘Okhotnik’). The Russian Ministry of Defence has released footage of the first flight of the Sukhoi S-70 Okhotnik drone, showing the unmanned aerial vehicle taking off from a test airfield and conducting a 20 minute flight at [...]

On Christmas Eve thirty-six years ago, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. This was the first direct use of Soviet troops outside the Eastern Bloc since World War II, “a watershed event of the Cold War.” The Carter administration was already reeling from a series of foreign policy failures. As historian John Lewis Gaddis wrote, the invasion was “only the most dramatic of a series of hum [...]