The Australian taxpayer will foot the bill for a $85 million (AUS$125 mn) Growler fighter jet that burst into flames on the runway due to an engine fault. The US Navy will not reimburse Australia for the “dud” warplane. [...]

The liberation of Aleppo by the Syrian Army delivers a "heavy blow" to all terrorist groups which have been fighting in the country for over four years, according to Argentine journalist Leandro Albani. Leandro has worked as a reporter in the Middle East for the magazine Sudestada and websites such as Resumen Latinoamericano and Marcha.org. [...]

On Friday, US President Donald Trump signed the FY2020 National Defence Authorisation Act into law, with its provisions including sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. A day later, the Treasury confirmed that the restrictions had snapped into place. [...]

The European Union should maintain a “strong” and “independent” approach in foreign and domestic policy, regardless of who the current US President is, Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz told RT. The official spoke following a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in which they discussed ties between the EU and Moscow. [...]

As part of its strategic goal of building a nationwide high-speed rail network, Beijing plans to invest about 800 billion yuan (US$114.36 billion) on the expansion of the country's railways in 2020. According to China’s Ministry of Transport (MOT), 1.8 trillion yuan might be spent on roads and waterways, and about 90 billion yuan on civil aviation. The country will strive to cover 98 percent of [...]

It seems so strange, twenty-seven years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, to be living through a new Cold War with (as it happens, capitalist) Russia. The Russian president is attacked by the U.S. political class and media as they never attacked Soviet leaders; he is personally vilified as a corrupt, venal dictator, who arrests or assassinates political opponents and dissident journalists, and [...]

Donald Trump’s threat to cut off Iraq’s access to its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York if Baghdad insists on a withdrawal of US troops from its soil is bare-faced, modern-day colonialism. Let’s set the scene. On January 5, the Iraqi parliament voted to approve a resolution calling for the removal of US troops. A day later, Donald Trump threatened to hit Iraqis with deadly ec [...]

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin’s first telephone conversation indicates a new chapter will be opened in US-Russia relations, as, by reaching out to Moscow, the US leader has shown he’s capable of overriding internal opposition, Daniel McAdams told RT. [...]

This week, in defiance of the Trump administration, London formally granted Chinese tech giant Huawei the right to build part of the UK’s 5G mobile internet network, albeit capping its UK market share at 35 percent and restricting involvement to “non-core” infrastructure. The US, which lobbied intensely to block Huawei, expressed disappointment. [...]

President Trump is getting a crash course on the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers as federal courts knock down his temporary immigration ban aimed at seven mostly Muslim countries, reports Marjorie Cohn. On Jan. 27, President Trump made good on his campaign promise to institute a ban on Muslims entering the U.S. Trump’s executive order (“EO”) is titled “Protecting the Nation F [...]

Vladimir Putin has confided that US President Donald Trump privately lamented the "insane" US military budget. He also says Russia protects itself by making the costs of attacking the country too high for anyone to contemplate. The US has outstripped us” in terms of annual defense expenditure, the Russian president said in a new episode of news agency TASS's ‘20 Questions to Vladimir Putin� [...]

The government in Vienna is working on amendments to Austrian laws that would allow troops to be sent to other European countries to help them "protect their borders" from illegal migrants and refugees, the Austrian defense minister has said. [...]

An emergency response from the US Federal Reserve failed to calm investors amid the coronavirus panic and led to another market bloodbath. However, it didn’t have any other options, a former Fed insider believes. If the Fed had been silent then we might have even seen more disruption,” Danielle DiMartino Booth said in an interview with RT’s Boom Bust. “Sadly, they’ve backed themselves in [...]

German Minister for Foreign Affairs Sigmar Gabriel, who is in Moscow for talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, says that Germany fears a new arms race in Europe. “We are concerned that a new spiral of the arms race may emerge in Europe,” he said, as cited by TASS. “It’s too early to say how and in what direction we could advance to prevent this.” [...]

Russia's approach to the spread of Covid-19 has been quite effective, partially because it began taking preventive measures long before the World Health Organization labeled it a pandemic, the WHO’s chief in Moscow has told RT. “Russia started with the measures very early, before the famous ‘pandemic’ word was spelled out by [WHO] Director General Tedros Ghebreyesus on March 11," said Dr [...]

The number of Americans seeking citizenship in New Zealand jumped by 70 percent in the three months following the election of President Donald Trump from the same time period last year, according to immigration records. Since Trump’s election, 170 Americans without a family connection to New Zealand have put in applications for a grant of citizenship to the island nation, versus 100 dur [...]

In less than a month 17 million Americans have applied for unemployment, while the Federal Reserve has focused on bailing out board rooms, billionaires, bankers and builders. Let them all fail. Last week I wrote about Wall Street corruption and fraud in the $6 trillion “rescue package”. CEOs depleted assets, took home record pay and bonuses and then, months later, came hat in hand begging for [...]

Ahead of the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Economic Community, calls within the EU for a so-called "two-speed Europe" are becoming more vocal. Sputnik Italy spoke with Italian economist Pasquale Lucio Scandizzo about who stands to benefit from such a model. [...]

President Donald Trump could end up starting a war – either a civil war at home or an international one with China. Such is this president’s demagogic knack for wriggling out of responsibility for problems. Blame others and to hell with consequences. Let’s start from the premise that America’s grim experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has Trump’s ownership written all over it. Trum [...]

The complex Obamacare system struggled to gain popularity, but now that Republicans are moving to replace it with a less generous program, many medical professionals are irate, reports Dennis J Bernstein. By Dennis J Bernstein President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan are twisting congressional arms to get enough votes to push through repeal of the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a [...]

The comedian’s landmark shift away from the Google-owned streaming service could signal the start of a wave of creators moving away from the site – as it bafflingly attempts to pander to legacy media. If you know podcasts, you know Joe Rogan. The American comedian has been producing his Joe Rogan Experience for more than a decade. He began just recording himself and his fellow comics shoo [...]

In a serious setback to the promise of an impending peace process in Syria the United States have hit a Syrian airbase alleged to have carried out a chemical attack on a rebel held town, without any proper investigation of the incident. Only a day before the US strike, international donors in Brussels, as well as Syrian and Western politicians and experts in London were discussing ways of� [...]