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 [...]

The banning of the former TV presenter from Facebook and YouTube is an assault on free speech and free expression which needs to be forcefully resisted, whatever your views are on Icke’s theories on world governance. I’m old enough to remember when David Icke was a television sports presenter. For the past thirty-five years or so he’s been putting his ideas out on how he thinks the world ope [...]

There is no evidence to substantiate the Trump administration’s claims that Covid-19 came from a Chinese laboratory, according to intelligence sources, raising questions about a leaked dossier blaming Beijing for the pandemic.  Sources that spoke to the Guardian said that a 15-page dossier which accused China of carrying out a cover-up to hide its role in the global health crisis was not based [...]

The Covid-19 pandemic should be a rallying call to change an economic system that spends billions each year on the tools of war but can't produce a decent healthcare system, bestselling author John Perkins told RT. Perkins is best known for his book 'Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,' in which he describes how American corporate elites plunder other nations to enrich themselves. [...]

Bill Gates told CNN's Fareed Zakaria on Sunday that China did a lot of things right at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak and now is not time to discuss their mistakes. Gates called it a "distraction" to blame them and focus on the "incorrect and unfair things" said about them. ZAKARIA: You've been making this case for international cooperation very powerfully and in my mind persuasively [...]

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) argued the coronavirus that hit New York state did not come from China but Europe, probably Italy he said. At his Friday coronavirus press briefing, Cuomo said President Trump's China travel ban was too late and the horse had long left the barn. "Researchers now find and they report in some newspapers, the virus was spreading wildly in Italy in February and there was an [...]

Beijing has called on Washington to address the concerns of its own citizens about the US response to the Covid-19 pandemic, while condemning American politicians for shifting blame for the crisis squarely onto China’s shoulders. Asked to comment on a series of American media reports on the US government’s slow and often inept response to the health crisis on Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman [...]

The coronavirus crisis is demonstrating why it’s time we replaced a system that exists purely for profits with one that puts public health first. When it comes to the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths, the United States is off the charts compared to other countries. Although the USA comprises five percent of the global population, 32 percent of Covid-19 cases and 25 percent of deaths worldwide [...]

Havana has punched above its weight for decades when it comes to health. But never have the differences between its socialist system and the market-based system of its strongest detractor, America, been so apparent. Even before it reported novel coronavirus cases of its own in March, Cuba’s fingerprints were all over the efforts to stem the global pandemic, from China’s use of antivirals de [...]

Austrians will soon be able to walk with no restrictions and gather in groups of 10, as coronavirus measures will be gradually lifted starting next month. The easing of the self-isolation measures was announced by Health Minister Rudolf Anschober, who said that the spread of the novel coronavirus remains quite slow and the forecast for the upcoming month looks “very good.” He also said that th [...]

Media outlets have omitted aspects about the US assassination of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani that don’t fit Washington’s narrative, comedian Lee Camp has argued. He’s debunked the Pentagon spin so you don’t have to. The host of Redacted Tonight has listed six things about the highly controversial killing that the media has either ignored completely or under-reported, including the n [...]

Award-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald has criticized the US media for its deafening silence on the ongoing persecution of Julian Assange, despite the years it has spent railing against the Trump administration. Founder of The Intercept and a long-time Assange supporter, Greenwald despaired at the apparent double standards and performative hyperbole of the US media establishment, which has long [...]

Chinese scientists have found that Europe and America’s East Coast have been infected by some of the most aggressive Covid-19 strains, as they discovered dozens of virus mutations. These destroy a host’s cells faster than others. The ability of the novel coronavirus to mutate has been previously vastly underestimated, a team from China’s Zhejiang University, led by Professor Li Lanjuan, says [...]

It’s believed that a US-Iran war would disrupt the flow of Middle Eastern oil and, as such, should be avoided at all costs. With US oil futures trading in the negative, has the risk of such a war suddenly become attractive? Last week, nearly a dozen Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) vessels harassed a formation of US Navy and Coast Guard ships operating in international wate [...]