Globally-renown physicist Stephen Hawking passed away, leaving a breakthrough legacy behind. One of the greatest minds of our time, he taught people a lot about both space and humanity. Sputnik has collected pearls of his wisdom. [...]

On Oct. 24, 2019—45 days before the world’s first suspected case of COVID-19 was announced—a new “scorecard” was published called the Global Health Security Index. The scorecard ranked countries on how prepared they were to tackle a serious outbreak, based on a range of measures, including how quickly a country was likely to respond and how well its health care system would “treat the [...]

KASSEL (Germany) (Sputnik) - Moscow was Berlin's only foreign partner that provided Germany with additional natural gas during the cold period in early March, Mario Mehren, the CEO of the Wintershall energy company, said. [...]

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis has rejected US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s push to limit his country’s contacts with Russian and Chinese firms and grant a nuclear power plant construction contract to an American firm. Russia and China pose a threat to Czech energy independence, Pompeo said during his visit to Prague on Wednesday. The top US diplomat warned of what he described as [...]

The new trade war announced by US President Donald Trump is seeing some immediate and effective blowback in the form of a refusal by Beijing to lift its ban on the import of foreign garbage. Amid fears of a potentially devastating trade war between the US and China, Washington has urged Beijing not to implement the ban on US garbage and recyclable materials that Asia’s giant threatened to impose [...]

Trump supporters may make the following claims in voting for him, as bolstering for their reasoning to make such a vote. Here is how that reasoning is flawed. Voting for Trump because you think he “cares about America” and Americans. Just one recent example of how he doesn’t: President Donald Trump demanded that a reporter remove his face mask in the middle of a question at a White House [...]

The historic launch of the long-awaited trading of Chinese crude futures this week has stirred up a heated debate among analysts as to whether the new commodity product will prosper or flop. Some market analysts expressed doubts over the success of the petro-yuan, citing Beijing’s yearning for total control over trading as one of the key reasons for a potential bust. [...]

Russia has delivered the first batch of its Covid-19 vaccine to Venezuela, making it the first Latin American nation to participate in Sputnik V’s clinical trial. “We are the first country from the Western Hemisphere which will start the Phase III trial of this vaccine against Covid-19,” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro tweeted, expressing his gratitude to Russia. [...]

The current state of anti-Russia hysteria is reminiscent of earlier dark chapters of American history, including the rush to war in Iraq of the early 2000s and McCarthyism of the 1950s, Patrick Henningsen observes. If there’s one thing to be gleaned from the current atmosphere of anti-Russian hysteria in the West, it’s that the US-led sustained propaganda campaign is starting to pay dividends [...]

Noam Chomsky warns that the Trump administration poses a unique threat to humanity, and its most reckless policies are receiving far too little attention. Noam Chomsky discusses the White House’s threats to the New START treaty, the last remaining accord limiting the US and Russia’s nuclear weapons arsenals; its latest round of crippling sanctions and threats against Iran; the bipartisan US re [...]

The EU won't support the Nord Stream 2 project as it attaches great significance to the gas pipelines going through Ukraine in context of diversification of supply routes, that's the message from the head of the European Energy Commission Dominik Ristori. Sputnik discussed this with Justin Dargin, global energy scholar at the University of Oxford. [...]

Donald Trump’s lack of input at the G20 summit made it easy to ignore him. While Joe Biden will play more of a role globally, the rest of the world should not look to him for leadership given the turmoil America is in at present. The 2020 G20 Riyadh summit took place over the weekend with participating nations discussing greater cooperation in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic, the global econ [...]

As Russiagate comes to totally dominate the US political landscape, the question of America’s long history of foreign meddling has surfaced like a frog’s wart. In yet another variation on the theme of ‘Russia hacking America’s brain,’ a gaggle of American pundits appeared on Tuesday on the MSNBC news program ‘Deadline White House’ to elucidate upon a tweet by Michael McFaul, former U [...]

The Microsoft cofounder has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into coronavirus vaccine research using the Gates Foundation, including the vaccine by AstraZeneca, and has urged governments and corporations around the world to create enough vaccines for every person on the planet. Bill Gates doesn’t expect the US to receive a government-approved coronavirus vaccine until at least the [...]

Following the US-led bombardment of Syria last week over an alleged chemical attack by Damascus, Russia says it has no reason to not supply its S-300 missile system to Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.  Moscow agreed with its international partners about 10 years ago to not deliver the S-300 to Damascus. [...]

The Russian vaccine created at the Gamaleya Research Centre in Moscow is being rolled out internationally in the race to control the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the chief executive of Russia's sovereign wealth fund said on Thursday. The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) plans to expand its operations and increase the rollout of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine across the globe amid the ong [...]

Want to live 10 years longer? You may have to revamp your lifestyle. There are five habits that, when done together, could add more than a decade to your life expectancy, according to a study released Monday by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The good news: 10 years is a lot of extra time. The bad news: You’ll have to cut out junk food and being a couch potato. [...]

A hard-hitting report by a Chinese group has slammed the US for its history of “humanitarian disasters” under the guise of human rights. The accusation fuels an escalating war of words between Beijing and Washington. A Chinese organization has published a report slamming the United States as responsible for a “History of Humanitarian Disasters” citing what it described as “America [...]

Donald Trump’s trashing of the Iran nuclear deal this week was not just an attack on Iranian sovereign interests. The US president was also poking European allies in the eye. In abruptly withdrawing the US from the international nuclear treaty, Trump warned that his administration was preparing to re-impose harsh sanctions on Tehran, and that those sanctions would also hit European commercial in [...]

Sleep researchers have, for the first time, observed the human mind consolidating and storing memories in incredible detail, in real time, reinforcing existing ideas about the function and importance of sleep to human cognition. For decades, there has been a strong but poorly understood connection between sleep and the formation and solidification of memory in the human brain. In a recent s [...]

'Jared Kushner’s speech at the US Embassy opening ceremony in Jerusalem claims both sides of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal could gain more than they give, as Israeli forces shot dead 41 protesters on Monday. Kushner, whom President Donald Trump tasked with bringing peace to the Middle East, said the US administration had almost completed a peace plan, but is undecided about when to reveal [...]

US corporate media are having a field day over public protests in Cuba that are being hailed as a revolt against the island’s communist government. The protests are said to have been prompted by economic hardship which has been aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Scarcely mentioned by the Western media is the proverbial elephant in the room. That is, Cuba has endured nearly 60 years of [...]