CARACAS: Venezuela’s alliance with Russia is ‘perfect’, the president of state oil company PDVSA said on Friday, blasting what he said was a US-led attempt to sully the growing ties between the two nations, reported Reuters. Reuters last week published a Special Report revealing that Venezuela’s socialist government is increasingly turning to Russia for the…

SURGUT: From seven to eight people were wounded in a knife attack in the Russian Siberian city of Surgut, local criminal investigators said on Saturday, adding that the attacker had been shot dead by police. The militant Islamic State group, monitored in Cairo, said one of its fighters had carried out the attack, though a…

BARCELONA: Spanish and world leaders on Thursday condemned the Barcelona van attack, expressing outrage and solidarity with the victims.

BEDMINSTER: President Donald Trump issued a new threat to North Korea on Friday, saying the U.S. military was “locked and loaded” as Pyongyang accused him of driving the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war and world powers expressed alarm.

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump claimed relations with Russia had hit an all-time and “very dangerous” low Thursday, putting the blame on Congress after he reluctantly approved sanctions against Moscow.

MOSCOW: Russia’s foreign ministry said Wednesday that new US sanctions, signed into law by President Donald Trump, are a “dangerous” and “short-sighted” policy.

After signing a bill that Congress had approved overwhelmingly last week and which runs counter to his desire to improve relations with Moscow, the Republican president laid out a lengthy list of concerns. His criticism of the sanctions, which also affect Iran and North Korea, raised the question of how much Trump is prepared to…

Moscow: President Vladimir Putin on Sunday said the United States would have to cut 755 diplomatic staff in Russia and warned of a prolonged gridlock in its ties after the US Congress backed new sanctions against the Kremlin. Putin added bluntly that Russia was able to raise the stakes with America even further, although he…

MOSCOW: Russian intelligence agents attempted to spy on President Emmanuel Macron’s election campaign earlier this year by creating phony Facebook personas, according to a U.S. congressman and two other people briefed on the effort. About two dozen Facebook accounts were created to conduct surveillance on Macron campaign officials and others close to the centrist former…

SAN FRANCISCO: Russian intelligence agents attempted to spy on President Emmanuel Macron’s election campaign earlier this year by creating phony Facebook personas, according to a US congressman and two other people briefed on the effort, reported Reuters. About two dozen Facebook accounts were created to conduct surveillance on Macron campaign officials and others close to…

The European Union on Wednesday said it held deep reservations over a vote by the US House of Representatives to impose tough new sanctions on Russia that may affect energy flows to Europe. European commissioners, the EU executive’s top officials, “expressed their concerns notably because of the draft bill’s possible impact on EU energy independence,”…

MOSCOW: Russian Helicopters, a Russian helicopter manufacturing company, delivered a Mi-171E civil helicopter in a convertible version to the representatives of Pakistani southern province of Balochistan, the company said Friday. According to Russian news agency Sputnik, Mi-171E helicopters belong to the Mi-8/17 series, which was developed and introduced in the 1970s, with dozens of variant…

WASHINGTON: The head of the US military’s special operations confirmed Friday that the Central Intelligence Agency is shutting down its program to support rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

WASHINGTON: The Russian lawyer who met Donald Trump Jr. after his father won the Republican nomination for the 2016 U.S. presidential election counted Russia’s FSB security service among her clients for years, Russian court documents seen by Reuters show. The documents show that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, successfully represented the FSB’s interests in a legal…

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump hit the six-month point of his turbulent presidency Thursday in combative style — lashing out at his own attorney general over the probe into Russia’s alleged election meddling that has dogged him from day one.

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would not have appointed Jeff Sessions as attorney general if he had known Sessions would recuse himself from the Russia investigation, according to a New York Times interview. “Sessions should have never recused himself and if he was going to recuse himself he should have told…

MOSCOW: Russian MPs on Wednesday passed a law to strip naturalised citizens of passports for offences classed as “terrorism” following a deadly April suicide bombing in the Saint Petersburg metro. The lower house of parliament passed the bill in its final third reading. It now goes through the senate and to President Vladimir Putin for…

An imaging satellite and 72 micro-satellites were launched into orbit Friday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the Russian space agency Roscosmos and research centre Glavcosmos announced. The Soyuz 2-1A rocket successfully lifted off at 0643 GMT with the satellite payload, Roscosmos said in a statement. According to Russian news agencies, Glavcosmos, charged with putting the…

PARIS: US President Donald Trump is willing to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to the White House, but not yet, according to official remarks released on Thursday.

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump, battling allegations that Russia helped him win the White House, claimed Wednesday that Vladimir Putin actually would have preferred a Hillary Clinton victory.

WASHINGTON: U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday defended his eldest son as “innocent” following emails that showed Donald Trump Jr. welcomed Russian help against his father’s rival in the 2016 presidential election, deepening the controversy over purported Russian meddling.  Trump Jr. released a series of emails on Tuesday that revealed he had eagerly agreed to…