By limiting access to China’s AI and rare earth metals, Beijing is responding to President Trump’s endless stream of sanctions. But this latest move is set to cause big problems for the companies that work with the US military. China’s announcement of new laws controlling the exports of ‘sensitive items’ in a way that mirrors the US Commerce Department’s ‘entity list’ is the [...]

Edward Snowden took to Twitter on Thursday to urge President Donald Trump to grant clemency to Julian Assange, prioritizing the WikiLeaks co-founder's case over even his own quest for a pardon on espionage charges. "Mr. President, if you grant only one act of clemency during your time in office, please: Free Julian Assange," Snowden tweeted. "You alone can save his life." [...]

Just how smart do you have to be to win an American presidential election? Well, it helps if you have some brains to work with, as all of these 43 presidents have exceptionally high IQs – well over the U.S. average of 98. We know this because professor Dean Simonton, a psychologist from the University of California, Davis, totted up the evidence and used biographical information to make his info [...]

Debates in Congress over a new COVID-19 relief bill have dragged on for months, even as new coronavirus cases have hit record highs. A slew of federal programs designed to alleviate the economic impacts of pandemic shutdowns will expire in weeks, setting the stage for a series of crises that could leave millions more in the US hungry and homeless. As the COVID-19 pandemic and its associat [...]

Stephen Vizinczey says all a great power has to do to destroy itself is persist in doing the impossible... Like bankruptcy, societies and complex systems collapse slowly then all at once. The cycles that civilisations go through are well documented and whilst in hindsight it’s glaringly obvious to understand what drove the breakdown, in real time we are often too close and too invested trying t [...]

In a freshly-published book, Maria Butina has documented her time inside the American prison system, where she spent more than a year after being dubbed a foreign agent acting on behalf of Moscow’s ‘influence campaign.’ The book ‘#Prison diary’ is based on the journal Butina kept chronicling her experiences behind bars, including the time she spent in solitary confinement. [...]

The sale comes amid tighter restrictions from the United States in May, which blocked the Chinese tech giant's access to software and semiconductors made with US technologies. Ren Zhengfei, founder of Huawei Technologies, said he hoped Honor would become a strong competitor in the smartphone market and even surpass his company in the future, the South China Morning Post reported on Friday [...]

The continuing surge of coronavirus cases across the US along with the inevitable restrictions that are employed to stave off the spread of the pandemic are forecast to weigh heavily on economic recovery. The US economy is predicted as heading towards a potential contraction in economic growth early next year, marking the first "double dip" recession in the country’s history since the e [...]

The United States and Eritrea are the only countries in the world to tax based on citizenship. If you’re a US citizen living outside the United States, you still have yearly IRS tax filing obligations. These tax filing obligations can be an expensive annual hassle (even if you owe no tax). They may even result in double taxation. Fortunately, properly renouncing your US citizenship can provide [...]

President Trump spent $3 million for recounts in two Wisconsin counties after the election — but so far the end result is 132 more votes for Joe Biden. Those new votes, all from Milwaukee County, now add to Biden’s lead of nearly 20,600 votes in the state. A recount in Wisconsin’s largest county demanded by President Donald Trump’s election campaign ended on Friday with the pres [...]

The original name of the small village has no special meaning or any connotations in German, while the new toponym will better reflect its pronunciation in the local accent. The Austrian village of Fucking (pronounced fooking in Standard German) will change its name to Fugging on 1 January 2021, Mayor Andrea Holzner told the broadcaster Oe24 Thursday. The move to rebrand the village comes [...]

The current administration actively supported the Venezuelan opposition figure, who orchestrated an unsuccessful coup attempt in 2018 and reportedly organised another one in 2019. Washington recognises Guaido as Venezuela's interim president and is pressuring the country with sanctions to force elected president, Nicolas Maduro to resign. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has stated tha [...]

The US Department of Justice has expanded rules governing executions to permit a wider rage of methods, including firing squads and electrocution, as five federal inmates are set to face the death penalty before Inauguration Day. The amended rule was entered into the Federal Register on Friday, permitting the government “greater flexibility” to carry out capital punishment using any metho [...]

A representative of the European Commission said the day before that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is in talks with the manufacturer of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus. The European Medicines Agency on Thursday confirmed to Sputnik that it's holding talks with the producer of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine. "We have indeed been contacted by the developer and are discu [...]

Donald Trump has been a US president who has revelled in lies and obscenity. As we consider his legacy, his continued crass behaviour should make us ask how such a worthless person got the job in the first place. On November 23, Donald Trump finally agreed to begin the transition of power, but the way it was announced tells us a lot about him. Head of the General Services Administration Emil [...]

Washington’s desperate attempts to stop the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany resemble mafia methods, senior German parliament member, Klaus Ernst, told RT, calling on the EU to fight back. “Their actions resemble those of a mafia,” Ernst told RT Deutsch on Wednesday, speaking about the renewed threats of US sanctions against the European companies [...]

After years of denial, Berlin has acknowledged that the US Air Force is using Ramstein Air Base in Germany to carry out drone attacks in anti-terrorist operations, Die Linke (the Left) MP Andrej Hunko told RT. They crucial role played by the Ramstein base – the largest American military facility on foreign soil – in controversial US drone killings in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Yem [...]

While Pennsylvania officials announced Democrat Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential race in the state on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump has sought to overturn the results, accusing Democrats of election fraud and irregularities. Pennsylvania Judge Patricia McCullough has ruled that the state must halt "further action" on certification of the 2020 election results and set a he [...]

Washington already imposed sanctions on the Russian-German energy project late last year, tacking them on to the US National Defence Authorization Act. Now, a bipartisan group of lawmakers from both the House and Senate is reportedly looking to introduce additional restrictions against it before the end of the year. An influential group of German businesses has written a letter to Democra [...]

The ongoing US trade war with China has raised concerns about the United States deploying the ‘nuclear option’ of freezing China’s banking sector out of the global US dollar payments system, prompting the use of alternative currencies such as the euro and the yuan to settle financial transactions. The European Union’s single currency was the most used currency for global payments [...]

Any mention of the prosecution of Julian Assange has been removed from the EU's latest report on fundamental rights, despite the best efforts of MEPs such as Ireland's Clare Daly. The European Parliament passed the final version of the fundamental rights report for 2018 - 2019 on 25 November, excluding any mention of imprisoned publisher and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. An amendment [...]

After pandemic-related delays, Russia’s first electric car, called the Zetta, is set to enter serial production in late 2020, the country’s Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov has revealed. The Zetta will roll off the production line in the city of Tolyatti, one of the major centers of Russia's automotive industry. The cars will first be sold on the domestic market, but the initial [...]