Author: Steven Sahiounie

John Healey, who was appointed Britain’s Shadow Defence Secretary in early April, said on Thursday that resource-sharing needs should be stepped up between NATO allies which could help tackle potential shortages of personal protective equipment to combat the coronavirus pandemic. The Daily Mail has quoted UK Shadow Defence Secretary John Healey as saying on Thursday that NATO should play a bigger role in fighting the COVID-19 outbreak, efforts that the Labour frontbencher claimed could prove vital in the coming months. “Coronavirus doesn’t respect national borders. Our response to coronavirus must be international too”, Healey said, adding that Britain’s NATO allies are “facing the same…

Two inactivated coronavirus vaccine candidates have recently received approval from the Chinese authorities to begin phase I and II clinical trials simultaneously. The experimental vaccines are being developed by the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products under the China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), and Sinovac Research and Development Co., Ltd, a company based in Beijing. This latest progress comes after the recombinant novel coronavirus vaccine from a Chinese team led by China’s military medical expert Chen Wei was greenlighted for clinical trials on March 17. Vaccines are commonly regarded as the most powerful scientific tool in fighting the novel coronavirus pandemic. “China…

As quite a few US states along with countries like Italy and Germany are gradually easing anti-coronavirus measures, financiers and analysts are increasingly speculating about the fate of gold, which has of late been on a steady rise. The easing of lockdown restrictions in a number of locations worldwide – like in Germany, for instance – could spur optimism with regard to conventional currencies and thereby reduce the appeal of gold as a safe haven, FX Empire reported, adding that news about the German high court challenging the European Central Bank’s bond-buying authority has already made the euro weaker against the US dollar. The…

The active accumulation of debt started before the COVID-19 outbreak, despite US President Donald Trump promising to reduce it during his presidency. The US national debt is close to exceeding $25 trillion after the White House introduced a massive $3 trillion relief package aimed at helping businesses and citizens affected by the coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, the debt threatens to exceed the country’s GDP this year amid a drastic slowdown of the economy. The current debt-to-GDP ratio amounts to 117%, according to the website usdebtclock.org, while the US Congressional Budget Office predicts a budget deficit of $3.7 trillion in 2020.…

President Donald Trump sent a letter to Congress on Thursday announcing that he is renewing US sanctions against Syria due to the ongoing conflict in the country. “I have determined that it is necessary to continue in effect the national emergency declared with respect to this threat and to maintain in force the sanctions to address this national emergency”, Trump said in the letter to House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Trump called on the Syrian government to end the war in the country and condemned Russia and Iran for supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad. The US president also called on…

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) moved several units to the Idlib Governorate on Wednesday, as they resume their troop buildup along the front-lines in Jabal Al-Zawiya and Saraqib. According to a field source near the front-lines, the Syrian Arab Army, along with the National Defense Forces (NDF), sent reinforcements to Saraqib and Kafr Nabl on Wednesday. The reinforcements reportedly traveled to Idlib from neighboring governorates, bringing with them armored vehicles and heavy weapons to fight the jihadist rebels and Turkish-backed forces. The source said the Syrian Army’s offensive in Idlib is back on after the jihadist rebels and Turkish-backed forces…

The US economy shed 20.2 million private sector jobs in April, according to ADP, the worst monthly reading in the company’s history of reporting job loss. “Job losses of this scale are unprecedented,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, co-head of the ADP Research Institute. “The total number of job losses for the month of April alone was more than double the total jobs lost during the Great Recession,” he added. The greatest area of job loss by far was in the service sector, which shed 16 million jobs, over half of which were in the leisure and hospitality sector. Another 3.4 million…

Iran will take decisive action if the United States chooses to unilaterally extend a UN arms embargo which is set to expire, President Hassan Rouhani has vowed, saying his country’s position is non-negotiable. The United Nations will lift a ban on Iranian trade of conventional weapons in October, but the US has signaled that it wants to extend the provision. Dropping the embargo was a condition set out in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal. Rouhani said on Wednesday that Iran will not accept a violation of the agreement “under any…

North Korea has boosted its ballistic missile program with a new secret facility, according to a Washington-based think tank being cited by the media. The scary story follows now-debunked rumors that Kim Jong-un had died. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has claimed that commercial satellite imagery shows a building near Pyongyang International Airport has “the capacity” to store North Korea’s largest intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which experts believe are capable of reaching the United States. Construction on the facility purportedly began in 2016, and includes an “unusually large covered rail terminal building,” according to the think tank. The facility is also…

On Wednesday, the foreign jihadists in northwestern Syria dismantled and looted the Zayzoun Thermal Station. According to a field source, the jihadists of the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) had brought engineering machinery and equipment this morning to the town of Zayzoun in the northwestern countryside of Hama, and began to dismantle the rest of the thermal power station to generate electricity. The source added that the dismantling process comes after the decline in the funding of the TIP militants in the region who sought to steal electrical transformers and agricultural crops for civilians, and sold them to traders who left…