President Vladimir Putin has introduced changes which could dramatically affect Russia's international image and respond to decades-long criticism of the country's political path from the global mainstream media, say international observers discussing the president's historic decision. Addressing lawmakers, ministers and other high-ranking officials on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin o [...]

Bernie Sanders’ campaign team has slammed reports of voting irregularities at the New York state primary as “absurd” after more than 125,000 Democrats were unable to cast their ballots due to a mixture of broken voting machines, missing ballots and purged voter rolls. [...]

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 [...]

It’s late in the afternoon and we are stuck behind a school bus in Northern Croatia as we drive through the what the GPS says is the miserable little town of Apatija, which my Croatian friend Juraj says literally translates to “apathy” in Croatian.   [...]

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. [...]

While the U.S. expands spending on wars and “regime changes” – and slashes its budget for science and infrastructure – China is making different choices, now rapidly closing the gap on scientific innovation, writes John V. Walsh. The headline reads, “The Rapid Rise of a Research Nation: China’s economic boom is mirrored by its similarly meteoric rise in high quality science.” [...]

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. [...]

As the West is sucked deeper into the Syrian conflict and starts a new Cold War with Russia, the mainstream news media has collapsed as a vehicle for reliable information, creating a danger for the world, writes Robert Parry. Does any intelligent person look at a New York Times article about Russia or Vladimir Putin these days and expect to read an objective, balanced account? [...]

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. [...]

Mikhail Gorbachev was one of the 20th century’s iconic figures. While Ukraine’s decision to blacklist him for supporting Russia’s re absorption of Crimea is ludicrous, Western media's silence is odious, if depressingly predictable.   [...]

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 [...]

Progressive groups welcomed President Barack Obama's call to expand Social Security by increasing taxes on the wealthy, praising the effort and crediting it in part to "relentless grassroots activism" and Bernie Sanders' political efforts. [...]

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 [...]

The Head of the Crimean regional German national-cultural autonomy of Crimea, Yury Hempel, criticized the new defense doctrine of the German authorities in which Russia is viewed as a global threat. Earlier, German newspaper Die Welt, citing governmental sources, reported that Germany's new defense doctrine, which is currently in the final stage of its preparation, will view Russia as one of th [...]

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 [...]

Unless you follow politics closely, you could be forgiven for thinking that Hillary Clinton has locked up the Democratic presidential nomination. This is not true. She still doesn’t have the requisite number of delegates. That could, and probably will, happen next month when her lead in superdelegates puts her over the top at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia – when the sup [...]

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 [...]

What are the social, political, and economic ingredients for a revolution? Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges has a few ideas. He’ll examine the looming collapse of our civil society, the frightening rise of demagogues, the transformation of political discourse into hate speech, and the political awakening of the Christian Right, the neo-Confederates, the Tea Party, right-to-life groups, nativi [...]

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 [...]

The revelation that the Democratic National Committee’s server may not have been hacked by Russia but by a disgruntled member of the U.S. intelligence community is a sign of how much anxiety about Hillary Clinton there is in that community, Judge Andrew Napolitano said on "Fox and Friends" this morning. Judge Napolitano said that intelligence officials are particularly upset that the class [...]

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 [...]

Upcoming talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan are of particular importance to the Middle East since bilateral cooperation could lead to a resolution of the Syrian crisis and prevent the US from meddling in the region, Turkish Air Force Lt. Gen. (ret.) Erdogan Karakus told Sputnik. [...]