The US Supreme Court has declined to hear a case that Republicans hoped would disqualify late-arriving mail ballots in Pennsylvania. The Trump campaign still plans on taking another case to the court, claiming widespread fraud. More than 2.6 million mail ballots were cast in Pennsylvania this election. Voters mailing in their ballots broke heavily for Democratic candidate Joe Biden, with near [...]

President Donald Trump’s US government has on Sunday withdrawn from an international treaty that allows countries to monitor military hardware build-ups from afar, accusing Moscow – without evidence – of breaking its terms. The Open Skies Treaty was first considered by the US and the Soviet Union in the 1950s as a possible way to increase transparency around troop movements and the depl [...]

As long as health insurance firms and drug companies continue to “gouge people,” the US will not be equipped to handle a pandemic, physician Dr. Margaret Flowers has told RT’s ‘On Contact.’ With 12 million people infected and 255,000 dead in the US, Dr. Flowers told ‘On Contact’ host Chris Hedges on Saturday that “it’s fair to say that we have lost control of the virus, and [...]

After trials on two groups of volunteers, Russia’s Gamaleya Research Centre announced it has created the first vaccine against COVID-19. According to Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko, the first batch of the drug, known as "Sputnik-V", will be produced in 2 weeks and delivered for voluntary vaccination in Russian hospitals. The vaccine is a two-component treatment based on the human ad [...]

Switzerland has adopted sanctions against Russian individuals and companies involved in the construction of the bridge over the Kerch Strait that connected the Crimean Peninsula with continental Russia, the Swiss Federal Department of Economic Affairs said on Friday. "The Federal Department of Economic Affairs has made amendments to the list of individuals attached to the directive on the preventi [...]

The Pentagon has released “the most comprehensive” data on civilian casualties of the US-led coalition operations against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, Airwars has said. Only officially conceded deaths are in it, though. The UK-based conflict monitoring group Airwars said “more than three years of extensive engagement” with the US military allowed it to obtain the “most accurate [...]

The repercussions of the new RCEP free-trade agreement between China and 14 other countries are huge. It creates a massive trading bloc in Asia that America, though its insular policies, will play no part in. This weekend, 15 Asia-Pacific nations came together to sign the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a mammoth free-trade agreement that has been described as one of the  [...]

Even if Trump loses, the truth is that to many Americans Trumpism isn’t a pathology but a new normal which is a product of a massive social divide caused by dissatisfaction with the political system and life in general. The world watches with bated breath as the US Presidential election sits at a dead heat. It’s going down to the wire and nobody knows who is going to emerge victor yet. De [...]

Turkey is facing mounting pressure from its NATO allies in the Eastern Mediterranean region which makes its decision to deploy and operate the Russian-made S-400 Triumf anti-aircraft weapon system fully justified, says Ret. Major General Nejat Eslen commenting on Athens' alleged plan to acquire fifth-generation F-35 stealth jets in 2021. On 16 November, Greek weekly newspaper Proto Thema [...]

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 [...]

A cancer charity created by presumed president-elect Joe Biden failed to allocate a single dollar for medical research, according to media reports, with most of the group’s cash going towards generous salaries. Federal tax filings reveal that the Biden Cancer Initiative, founded in 2017 by the former vice president and his wife Jill, did not distribute grants during its first two years of operat [...]

The Covid-19 virus had been active in Italy months before it was first officially detected, new research has found, raising further questions about the true origins, extent and actual duration of the ongoing pandemic. The new groundbreaking study, conducted by scientists with Milan Institute of Cancer and the University of Siena, was published this week by the Tumori Journal. The research is based [...]

Russia was widely criticized when it became the first country in the world to register a coronavirus vaccine in August. It was accused of rushing through the approval of the ‘Sputnik V’ formula for political or propaganda gain. Since then the whole development of the vaccine has been dogged by Schadenfreude as the press leapt on signs of impropriety in the data, and Russia has even been acc [...]

Given the continued disruptions caused by the pandemic and uncertainty about a vaccine, it would behoove the countries of the world to dial down tensions and expand collaborations, writes Vijay Prashad. In mid-October, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its World Economic Outlook report, which offered some dizzying data. For 2020, the IMF estimates that the global Gross Domestic P [...]

Given the uncertainties of Donald Trump's actions as he faces a White House exit, the possible declassification of certain documents has the former CIA director sweating. Former CIA Director John Brennan is apparently so worried that Donald Trump might release certain classified intelligence that he suggested this week that Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet remove Trump via the 25th ame [...]

You didn’t hear this in the cable TV chatter: In the two years leading up to this election, Georgia’s GOP secretary of state quietly wiped away the voter registrations of 198,351 voters — based on false information. Call it “The Great Purge” — overwhelmingly wiping away the voting rights of young voters and voters of color. In other words, voters who might be more likely to vote blue. [...]

Ten members the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and five other Asia-Pacific countries, including regional leader China, have inked the world’s largest free-trade pact that covers nearly a third of global economy. The long-discussed agreement, officially known as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), was signed on the sidelines of the annual ASEAN summit on S [...]

The announcement on Monday that the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine was 90% effective injected rocket fuel into the stock market and hope into hearts everywhere. But the vaccine’s cold-storage requirements present huge problems. Immediately after the announcement, politicians began falling over themselves to hand fat checks over to the Big Pharma giants, hoping that the news would inspire hop [...]

Fifteen Asia-Pacific nations including China and Japan plan to sign the world’s biggest free trade deal this weekend. The FTA will cut tariffs, strengthen supply chains with common rules of origin, and codify new e-commerce rules. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is expected to be announced at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit, which Vietnam is [...]

The research team of Credit Suisse, one of Switzerland’s leading banks, has commended the frank discussion that the developers of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine recently had on its efficacy. "We were encouraged by the frank discussion of the human viral vector technology used and we view the 92 percent efficacy as a positive incremental readacross for the AstraZeneca data expected soon ( [...]

Joe Biden understands it is necessary to extend the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said in an interview with Sputnik. The possible change of the US administration, however, does not mean that the issues Moscow and Washington have in the disarmament area will be completely resolved, the diplomat said. [...]

Israel occupied and annexed about 1,200 square km of Syria’s strategic Golan Heights in the aftermath of the Six Day War of June 1967. The United Nations condemned the move as “null and void and without international legal effect”. Damascus has vowed to get its territory back one day "by any means necessary". China and the Group of 77 bloc of developing nations has called on Israel [...]