The December 27 rocket attack on the K-1 Air Base in Kirkuk, northern Iraq, which killed a US civilian contractor and injured four US servicemen and two Iraqi security officers, led to a dangerous escalation of tensions between the US and Iran. Iraq’s military and intelligence community believe Daesh (ISIS),* not Iran-affiliated Iraqi Shia Muslim militia group Khaitab Hezbollah, was responsible [...]

The politician is notorious for her controversial statements on the migration crisis and her critical stance toward the EU. The Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs may be run by Middle East expert Karin Kneissl, who repeatedly criticized German Chancellor Angela Merkel's policies, made tough statements regarding migration and called Jean-Claude Juncker "cynical" and "arrogant," according to the A [...]

The Chinese government has rolled out new technology to curb the COVID-19 outbreak and is lending a hand to other struggling countries, while the US continues to take an “America first,” “profit-only” approach, web developer and technologist Chris Garaffa and software engineer Patricia Gorky told Sputnik Monday. [...]

The website, Factbase, conducted a thorough analysis of the US President’s interviews and speeches, ranking his speaking skills on the Flesch-Kincaid grade level scale, and here’s their conclusion. Donald Trump has repeatedly boasted of being “like, really smart,” which was dispelled by numerous lexicological tests, studying for vocabulary, comprehension levels, and English language comple [...]

China is shipping one million surgical masks and gloves to France as it struggles to contain the coronavirus, with Europe becoming the new focal point of the global pandemic. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian confirmed the shipments on Wednesday in an interview with France's BFM TV. The first of two planes has already arrived via Belgium and a second will arrive on Thursday, he said. [...]

America's global approval rating has plunged to its lowest point in a decade, according to a new Gallup poll, with Germany and China ahead on the world stage. A thousand adults, aged 15 years or older across more than 130 countries, were questioned between March and November 2017. [...]

A military cargo plane carrying medical supplies to help the US combat the coronavirus outbreak has taken off from an airbase in Russia, after President Trump accepted an offer of assistance from Vladimir Putin. “The plane with masks and medical equipment on board left for the United States,” the Russian Defense Ministry announced in a brief statement early on Wednesday. [...]

A group of some of the largest hospital chains in the US has had it with Big Pharma price gouging, announcing their intention to form their own nonprofit drug manufacturing company.  A coalition of several of America's largest hospital systems have announced that they will collaborate on the creation of a not-for-profit organization to manufacture and distribute an as-yet-unnamed list of generic [...]

As organizations like the IMF and the UN warn that this is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the US central bank has once again decided to pump trillions of dollars into the economy. RT’s Boom Bust talks to the CEO of Transformity Research, Tobin Smith, who has been sounding the alarm lately, saying that the economic downturn in the United States is not due to the corona [...]

Despite Donald Trump’s speech to the World Economic Forum in which he attempted to reassure global leaders on his “America First” ideology, the damage to U.S. credibility may already be done, as Alon Ben-Meir explains. Just one year after Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States, the U.S. has already experienced alarming setbacks to its global leadership ro [...]

The fallout continues from ‘Operation Gideon’, the brazen May 3-4 attempt by a US security contractor to invade Venezuela, kidnap its president and take him back to the United States. The White House remains in damage control mode, denying any responsibility for the plot while seeking to bring the captured US mercenaries involved back home. Diosdado Cabello, president of Venezuela’s [...]

At a time of unprecedented goodwill between Seoul and Pyongyang over the Winter Olympics, the US has decided to double down on its inflammatory rhetoric, undermining a fragile thaw on the Korean Peninsula. On the eve of the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, one would be forgiven for temporarily forgetting history’s bitter divisions on the Korean Peninsula. [...]

In broader European terms, it may be a niche, but overland travel to Russia and Belarus has long frustrated Western tourists. It has also kept both countries off the continent’s “inter-railing” circuit. The problem was that visitors needed two separate visas to enter both states. Even then, it wasn’t legally possible, for a third-country national, to cross from Belarus into Russia by train [...]

Pro-government Syrian forces are expected to enter Afrin enclave “within hours,” local media report. Earlier, an adviser to the Kurdish administration said a deal has been reached to allow Syrian forces into the embattled area. [...]

The Democratic convention featured senior never-Trump figures from the Republican Party, but Tulsi Gabbard, a primary contestant who won delegates, wasn’t invited. Was that due to her anti-war rhetoric or Hillary Clinton’s grudge? This week’s Democratic virtual gathering to nominate the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris ticket for the November election was a triumph of party centrism over the progress [...]

As the "Beast from the East" brings snow and severe cold to Europe, EU member states turn to their longstanding partner Gazprom to tackle the challenge, Andrzej Szczesniak, an energy security analyst, told Sputnik, explaining why Poland would rather freeze than embrace the Russia-led Nord Stream 2 project. [...]

The world's first anti-COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik V was registered in Russia on 11 August, following several rounds of clinical trials and has now been made available to the public across the country. More than a dozen countries have now expressed interest in obtaining the vaccine. The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which funded the development of Sputnik V, announced on Wednesday [...]

President Donald Trump denied a New York Times report suggesting he paid almost no federal income taxes over the past two decades, saying the truth will be revealed when an Internal Revenue Service audit of his returns is over. "It's totally fake news – made-up, fake," Trump told reporters Sunday in a White House briefing, noting that he had to deal with similar questions when the Times publish [...]

On March 12, UK Prime Minister Theresa May stated before the British Parliament that Russia was "highly likely" responsible for the suspected poisoning in the UK of former officer of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) Sergei Skripal. She added that the substance used in the poisoning had been identified as a military-grade nerve agent of the so-called Novichok group developed in Russia [...]

In mid-September, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned against politicising the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, which he said is profitable for both Russia and the EU. The statement came amid Berlin's threats to freeze the project due to Moscow's alleged role in the purported poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny.German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has told the media group Red [...]

CRIMEAN BRIDGE - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday he would like people to start using the Crimean Bridge linking the peninsula with the Krasnodar Territory, as early as this summer. "Of course, I would like people to start using the bridge this summer," Putin said at a meeting with construction workers during his trip to several regions in the south of Russia, including Crimea. [...]

The US State Department has outlined a ‘Kennan-style’ China containment policy, which it hopes will help undercut its economic strength and maintain a Washington-led world order, a leaked paper has revealed. The 70-page document called “The Elements of the China Challenge” was prepared by the State Department's Office of Policy Planning and published by Axios on Tuesday. The plan goes [...]