The longest river in Europe, the Volga begins in the Valdai Hills northwest of Moscow, Russia and carries its waters south until it drains into the Caspian Sea, covering a distance of 3,530 kilometres. The Volga River is widely regarded as the national river of Russia as it flows past cities like Tver, Dubna, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, and Kazan, as well as Tolyatti, Samara, and Volgograd, [...]

The head of Wuhan’s virology institute has debunked the evolving US ‘Wuhan virus’ theory, saying Covid-19 couldn’t have artificially leaked. She said her lab didn’t have the first virus samples until as late as the end of 2019. Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) director Wang Yanyi described the theory – that Covid-19 was a creature of her laboratory – as “pure fabrication.” She e [...]

With the US economy reeling from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee agreed to give Israel a minimum of $3.8 billion in military aid per year. A full vote on the gift is expected soon. The US unemployment rate now stands at 14.7 percent, the worst figure since records began. Nearly 39 million Americans have lost their jobs since the coronavirus reached U [...]

Scientists in Russia have carried out the first unofficial trial of a Covid-19 vaccine – and they say it’s effective. Epidemiologists in Moscow took the unorthodox step of injecting themselves and examining their own results. The test, conducted by employees at the National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, reportedly saw the participants gaining immunity to the virus with no [...]

By announcing its intent to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, the Trump administration continues its war on legacy arms control agreements, endangering international security. The Trump administration has formally announced its intention to withdraw from the 2002 Open Skies Treaty (OST), a critical multilateral agreement involving 35 states which allows specially equipped reconnaissance aircraf [...]

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 [...]

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo proclaimed that "enormous evidence" shows the COVID-19 outbreak began in a laboratory in Wuhan, raising doubts immediately with his claim as it breaks with a common recognition of global scientists. The World Health Organisation said there were some 15,000 full genome sequences of the novel coronavirus available, and "from all of the evidence that... this virus is [...]

The US has repeatedly blamed China for failing to contain the spread of the virus from Wuhan and for reporting the disease to the World Health Organisation too late. US President Donald Trump took to Twitter to reiterate his position concerning China's role in the coronavirus outbreak. Earlier this week, Chinese Ambassador to the United Nations Zhang Jun said that the US should stop using scapegoa [...]

Shortly after asking “why the coronavirus did not kill more Russians,” Bloomberg illustrated a stinging op-ed with a graph suggesting Russia is far behind OECD states in hospital beds... though the exact opposite is true. Everything’s fine if it fits the narrative, Bloomberg Opinion editors might have thought when they misquoted World Bank statistics on the number of hospital beds per 1,000 [...]

Detained US ex-soldiers said they were tasked with securing an airfield in Venezuela in order to put President Nicolas Maduro on a plane after toppling him. The men were charged with plotting a coup against the government. Venezuelan state TV has aired new interrogation tapes of the two former US Green Berets charged with participating in failed plot to oust Maduro. [...]

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido has accepted the resignation of two of his aides who are currently wanted by Caracas on charges of a botched armed incursion into the country to topple President Nicolas Maduro, Spain's EFE news agency reported on Monday, citing Guaido's office. It comes after Venezuelan Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez unveiled last week a 41-page contract [...]

Earlier this week, the US Navy's Pacific Fleet announced that all of its submarines in the area were at sea to conduct operations in support of "a free and open" region "amidst the pandemic caused by the coronavirus". The Times has quoted unnamed US defence sources as saying that the Pentagon may lose a sea war with China if one breaks out in the Indo-Pacific region amid the increasing tensions be [...]

US-backed Maduro opponent Juan Guaido met with the head of the notorious Silvercorp, the American company believed to have been involved in the failed attempt to kill the Venezuelan president, a captured plotter has alleged. Jordan Goudreau of Silvercorp had met with Guaido, the self-proclaimed interim leader of Venezuela, in Washington DC in March. [...]

NASA has inked a deal with Russia’s space agency Roscosmos to allow a US astronaut to travel into space aboard a Soyuz rocket in the fall, even as SpaceX gears up for its first manned launch later this month. “A contract was signed today on providing a seat for a US astronaut onboard a Soyuz MS manned spaceship to be launched to the ISS in the autumn of 2020,” Roscosmos told Tass on Tuesday. [...]

The United States has the highest number of coronavirus cases globally, the only country reporting seven-digit numbers of infections. Brazil is also one of the 10 most infected nations according to the WHO. Its President Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly dismissed the virus as just a "flu". The United States and Brazil failed to take warnings issued by the World Health Organisation seriousl [...]

Newly surfaced cellphone video of the February murder of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery has prompted Georgia prosecutors to release evidence to a grand jury in an attempt to bring charges against the two men involved in the fatal encounter. Footage of the incident, released Sunday by activist Shaun King on social media, shows Arbery running in the neighborhood of Satilla Shores in the coastal [...]

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has already committed hundreds of millions of dollars to the global fight against the coronavirus pandemic, while its co-founder, and one of the world’s wealthiest people, Bill Gates was cautioning the public about the dangers of infectious diseases as early as 2015. [...]

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 [...]

China has faced numerous accusations over its handling of the initial COVID-19 outbreak from US officials, including President Donald Trump who claims that the virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory and that Beijing was hiding the true information about the state of the outbreak in its early stages. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has vehemently denied a report by the German magazine Der Spie [...]

VIENNA -Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on Friday delivered a speech timed with the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in which he recalled the responsibility of his own country for the events of 1939-1945. "The horrors of National Socialism were so indescribable that we should make sure to draw our lessons from that time. This is especially true for Austria, because not o [...]

The global death toll from the pandemic is nearing 280,000, with the United States and Great Britain topping the list of the worst-hit countries. At the same time, China has reported a plunge in new cases of the infection and no fatalities from the virus over the last several weeks. There are over 4,000,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus globally, according to Johns Hopkins Universit [...]

First known US coronavirus deaths occurred far earlier than previously thought. Up until recently, the first COVID-19 death in the US was thought to have occurred in Washington state on Feb. 29. But autopsies have revealed two earlier coronavirus deaths in California, one on Feb. 6 and the other on Feb. 17, the AP reports. The San Francisco Chronicle calls it "a stunning discovery" that radically [...]