Plummeting oil prices have sparked another round of predictions about the economic collapse of Russia – this time from US President Donald Trump, who sounded a lot like his predecessor Barack Obama on the subject. The price of crude oil has crashed to $20 this week, due to a one-two punch of Saudi Arabia flooding the market with record output and a sharp drop in global demand owing to the corona [...]

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 [...]

US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has promised immediate financial relief “within the next two weeks” to Americans hit hard by the coronavirus recession - plus a massive financial aid package for the airline industry. The Trump administration will be sending a check to Americans within the next two weeks for an undetermined amount, Mnuchin announced at a press conference on Tuesday. [...]

The global markets’ current implosion was 100 percent guaranteed, former Wall Street stockbroker Max Keiser told RT. According to him, the financial markets are best described as a “quadrillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.” “Central banks’ policy of allowing governments and corporations to borrow, at virtually no cost, against decades of future consumption to consume now, hollowed out the global [...]

After suffering the worst stock market crash since 1987, the US Federal Reserve has announced a $1.5 trillion injection to ease strained capital markets. It is the biggest action by the Fed since the 2008 financial crisis. RT’s Boom Bust is joined by the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital Peter Schiff to find out if the Fed’s actions are enough to stop the stock market bloodbath. [...]

The incompetence and hypocrisy of the European Union in dealing with the Covid-19 outbreak seems to have sobered up Serbia, a country that has previously slavishly committed itself to following orders from Brussels. For the past 20 years, every flavor of politician that ruled Serbia has signed on to the dogma that “the EU has no alternative” and that membership in that trans-national bloc was [...]

A senior German disease control expert has warned that the coronavirus pandemic could continue for two years, depending on how long it takes for an effective vaccine to be developed and if people develop immunity after illness. Speaking on Tuesday, the Robert Kock Institut's (RKI) president, Prof. Lothar Wieler, said pandemics tend to run their course in waves, and factors influencing how it unfol [...]

China is pulling the press credentials of US journalists from outlets including the New York Times and the Washington Post whose passes expire in 2020, in the latest move of an ongoing tit-for-tat with America over media access. [...]

US stocks fell sharply on Monday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average index tumbled nearly 3,000 points despite the Federal Reserve’s latest attempt to ward off concerns of a possible COVID-19-induced economic downturn. The Dow slid by 2,997.10 points, while the S&P 500 dropped by 324.89 points, declines which placed the indices more than 20% below record highs set in February. The Nasdaq Com [...]

The president is pushing to get a Covid-19 vaccine before the election. It doesn’t work like that. It’s understandable that during a White House meeting on Monday with pharmaceutical executives and public health officials, President Donald Trump pressed them to develop and deploy a vaccine to Covid-19 (the disease caused by the novel coronavirus) as quickly as possible. Beyond the obvious publ [...]

The coronavirus containment measures the US has (belatedly, reluctantly) taken are revealing enormous fissures in its first-world facade, from legions of hungry schoolchildren to their broke parents left to fend for themselves. The US puts a lot of effort into maintaining its image as the world’s richest country, but while it may have the world’s highest GDP, near-record levels of income inequ [...]

ATHENS - Ex-Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has published recordings from 2015 closed-door talks with the Eurogroup on his country’s bailout program to expose the "awful" decision-making of the troika creditors. A trove of audio files recorded between February and July 2015 is available on the website of Varoufakis’ self-styled pan-European DiEM25 party. In a video message, he said he [...]

According to Sweden’s Data Protection Authority (the Datainspektionen), the fine is punishment for the search engine giant’s failure to remove search results ordered to be blocked three years ago. Sweden’s Datainspektionen has fined google 75 million Swedish kronor (equivalent to about €7 million or $7.74 million) for failure to comply with the data protection watchdog’s instructions, th [...]

The Chinese government has rolled out new technology to curb the COVID-19 outbreak and is lending a hand to other struggling countries, while the US continues to take an “America first,” “profit-only” approach, web developer and technologist Chris Garaffa and software engineer Patricia Gorky told Sputnik Monday. [...]

Caught off guard by the EU’s ban on medical exports, Serbia found help in China as it struggled to prepare for the Covid-19 outbreak, the Serbian president said, adding that it has become clear that European solidarity is a myth. Serbia is the latest country to impose severe restrictions on travel and public gatherings in response to the global epidemic. [...]

A rendezvous on a yacht sailing the open sea is a perfect recipe for romance for any couple, even if it weighs almost as much as the boat itself! Two highly-relaxed seals have been filmed lazily chilling on a yacht that apparently served the pinnipeds as a halting post in their journey. The yacht, which appears to be too small for the couple, is almost half-sunk in the water under the seals' weigh [...]

Despite its apparent limitations, the new radar system can potentially be used in conjunction with other radar systems to strip enemy stealth aircraft of the very capabilities that give the latter their edge. It appears that stealth aircraft, one of the most potent tools in the NATO countries’ arsenal, may become not-so-potent in the near future as a new radar system developed by Russia’s Alma [...]

The situation in northern Syria has grown more volatile since Ankara accused Russia of killing 33 Turkish troops in a Thursday airstrike outside Idlib as Turkey’s NATO allies weigh the option of intervention. An expert told Sputnik NATO involvement is unlikely, but so is Damascus letting up the assault as they try to rebuild their country. [...]

The news comes as the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) spreads to over 130 countries and territories, currently infecting more than 156,000 people and with over 5,800 dead worldwide, prompting the World Health Organization to declare it a global pandemic. US President Donald Trump is said to be trying to track down German scientists working on developing a pilot vaccine against the COVID-19 coronaviru [...]

VIENNA (Sputnik) - Austria will introduce an entry ban for citizens of Russia, Ukraine, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Sunday. The chancellor added that all restaurants across the country would be closed starting 17 March, while supermarkets and food delivery companies will continue to operate. [...]

The former finance minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, has released a cache of audio files, secretly recorded in 2015 during the bailout talks with the Eurogroup – a powerful group of eurozone’s finance chiefs. The recordings and their transcripts were released by Varoufakis on the website of his ‘pan-European’ DiEM25 party on Saturday. [...]

The eating habits of world leaders have long been a matter of public interest, with observers questioning whether KFC and diet Coke, or perhaps something more balanced, could have an impact on politicians’ ability to deal with the physical and psychological stresses of their office. [...]