Author: Steven Sahiounie

Russian health officials have recorded 7,933 new Covid-19 cases since Thursday, according to the daily update. It brings the total number of coronavirus infections in the country to 114,431. Moscow remains the biggest hotbed for the outbreak, with roughly half of the identified cases localized in the capital. The death toll in Russia stands at 1,169, after 96 more people succumbed to the disease, while 13,220 have successfully recovered from the disease. On Thursday, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin tested positive for coronavirus. He revealed his diagnosis during a video link with President Vladimir Putin. First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov is acting…

by Rishikesh Kumar Despite implementing the world’s most extensive lockdown for around two months, the approval rating of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is up; making him more popular than other world leaders. However, some have criticised India’s government for using military assets to express solidarity with those fighting COVID-19. People from different strata of Indian society have criticised the government and service chiefs for deploying military assets across the country, including at sea, to express gratitude towards civilian frontline workers on Sunday. “Given the deep resources of transport, logistics, medical facilities and manpower, our military could have served citizens in…

Earlier, the US national intelligence director’s office said that they agreed with “the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified”. There is “enormous evidence” that the coronavirus came from a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview with ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. Despite his criticism of China’s response to the outbreak, Pompeo did not say directly if he thought that the virus had been released on purpose, AFP reported. This comes after the US national intelligence director’s office said earlier this week that they agreed…

by Ilya Tsukanov After weeks of speculation fueled by a lengthy absence, the North Korean leader suddenly reappeared in public on May 1 at the opening of a new fertilizer plant, dispelling rumours that he was dead or ‘gravely ill’. Kim Jong-un’s surprise reemergence in public after weeks of speculation regarding his health raise a couple of important questions, specifically: how did the rumours get started, and who was behind them? Queries regarding the North Korean leader’s whereabouts began swirling in mid-April, after he missed the public celebration of the Day of the Sun, the all-important April 15 anniversary of the birth…

US stocks are facing a second straight day of losses, after President Donald Trump threatened to unleash a new barrage of retaliatory tariffs on China over the coronavirus crisis. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell over 400 points while both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite lost around two percent.Thus all three indexes extended Thursday losses that came on gloomy jobless data. Most European and Asian markets were closed for holidays on Friday. The London Stock Exchange was one of the few working, with the FTSE 100 index dropping almost two percent. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed down nearly three percent The…

The US is working on ways to expand storage space to add several hundred million more barrels to it, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said at a White House briefing, as quoted by Reuters. “We’re also exploring potentially having the ability to store another several hundred million barrels, so we’re looking at lots of different options,” Mnuchin said after announcing that the federal government was drafting a plan to prop up troubled local oil producers. The federal government already leased out 23 million barrels worth of storage space in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to nine energy companies, and oil is already flowing…

An Iranian official said this weekend that it was the blood and sacrifices of Hezbollah that prevented Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS/Daesh) terrorists from reaching European capitals. “The German government’s actions against the Lebanese people by designating Hezbollah as a terrorist organization violates international laws and violates the right to self-determination, which is a legal basis in human rights law,” the constitution spokesman for the Guardian Council, Abbas Ali Kadkhadai, said, as reported by Lebanon’s Al-Ahed News. The Iranian official criticized the German government for claiming to defend human rights, while supporting the designation of Hezbollah as a terrorist entity. “The German government,…

The mastermind behind the recent assassinations in Deir Ezzor was captured by the U.S.-led coalition and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the North Press Agency (NPA) reported on April 29, citing security sources in the SDF. The terrorist, Moeen Taha al-Hamad, was apprehended by the SDF in the town of al-Busayrah in the southeastern Deir Ezzor countryside. “Moeen Taha al-Hamad was the mastermind of the assassinations carried out by ISIS in Deir Ezzor … He is responsible for the murder of many innocents, he also planned dozens of operations,” a security source of the SDF told the NPA. A second…

At least 26 Turkish-backed Syrian militants were killed while fighting for the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Libya in the past few days, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on May 2. According to the UK-based monitoring group, the militants were killed in the course of clashes with the Libyan National Army (LNA) on different frontlines. “According to the observatory’s sources, the dead [militants] were killed during clashes on the axes of Salah Al-Din neighborhood south of Tripoli, the Ramla axes near Tripoli airport and the axes of the al-Hadba project, also in the battles of Misrata…

The choice in the November US presidential election could be which rapist to elect, Donald Trump or Joe Biden, American political analyst and activist Myles Hoenig has said. Hoenig, a former Green Party candidate for Congress, said in an interview with Press TV on Saturday that it is Biden who should be advising Trump on sexual predatory behavior. He made the remarks after the Republican president took the side of Biden over sexual allegations against the former Democratic vice president. Biden is currently embroiled in sex scandal after his former Senate staffer Tara Reade accused him of assaulting her in the…