Новости за 22.06.2017

The Russian co-chairs in the International Syria Support Group's (ISSG) task forces on humanitarian access and ceasefire in Syria have participated in a humanitarian mission in Homs, assessing the needs of the civilians living there for improving the work within the platform, Russian diplomatic source told Sputnik Thursday.

The final decision on the extension of the EU's economic restrictive measures against Russia can be made by the end of June, a source in the EU familiar with the matter told Sputnik on Thursday.

The United States was disappointed that the Organization of American States (OAS) did not take immediate action to address the political deterioration in Venezuela caused by President Nicolas Maduro’s regime, US Vice President Mike Pence said during a speech at the Wilson Center on Thursday.

A road rage incident caught on camera between a motorist and a motorcyclist ended in a fiery chain-reaction crash that resulted in multiple injuries.

The US Department of State has called on Russia to pressurize the Donbass militias to allow access to civilian monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

The Department of Justice (DoJ) has issued a report that a 60-year-old resident of Leesburg, Virginia, has been arrested and charged with espionage. Kevin Mallory, a consultant with a former Top Secret security clearance, has been formally charged in federal court with passing classified information to a Chinese agent in March and April of 2017.

"South Korea must realize that following psychopath [US President Donald] Trump … will only lead to disaster," a recent article in North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper warned.

New US sanctions were not among the issues on the table for a canceled meeting between US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, US State Department Spokesman Heather Nauert said on Thursday.

North Korea has carried out a new test of a rocket engine, US media reported on Thursday. The tested engine can be potentially used on intercontinental ballistic missiles, Fox News reported citing US officials.

As part of an ever-intensifying effort to lean on North Korea’s nuclear program, China and the United States have agreed to further tighten sanctions on the Hermit Kingdom. Specifically, they are banning American and Chinese companies from doing business with North Korean industries.

Additional police were deployed in the streets of Yulin, South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, in a bid to prevent vendors from selling and slaughtering dogs on the street during the dog meat festival, which fell on Wednesday. The scale of this year's festival is much smaller compared with previous years.

DARPA has announced the development of a “finishing” school to teach robots manners and human social norms.

A US military drone crashed Wednesday afternoon during a routine flight, coming down in a remote area of southern California near Mt. Whitney, in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Excuse us! Coming through, folks!

This week, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko paid a visit to the United States, meeting with senior US officials including President Donald Trump. According to Russia's Kommersant newspaper, Poroshenko tried to get Trump "materially interested" in the future of the frozen conflict in Ukraine's southeast.

The recently-formed Syrian Patriotic Democratic Opposition Committee spokesman Monzer Akbik said that he was hopeful the draft of the new Syrian Constitution made by committee would be "approved by everyone" and that the result would be useful for the upcoming peace talks in Astana, Geneva, as well as other platforms.

On today's show among other things we talk about the GOP endorsed healthcare bill, which is set to replace the Affordable Care Act.

On today's BradCast, Republicans in the US Senate finally released a draft of their secret plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, or 'ObamaCare', and the Dept. of Defense finally releases a redacted version of a damage assessment from 2011, examining the fallout to national security from the Bradley/Chelsea Manning leaks of 2010.

The promotion of Prince Mohammed bin Salman to heir apparent of Saudi Arabia is the result of a power struggle in Riyadh involving the US, Saudi analyst Muhammed al Masari told Sputnik.

According to the interior minister, around 90-95 percent of combatants develop various social and medical problems.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has published a unique collection of archival documents on its website detailing top Soviet military commanders' actions during in the first days of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi Germany invasion of the Soviet Union which began on June 22, 1941.

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany declared war on the USSR. The 1941-1945 clash between these countries, which is known as the Great Patriotic War in most of the former Soviet Union, caught people unaware. Three Soviet veterans from Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) and Moscow told Sputnik their blood-chilling stories about the war.

Abu Khattab al Awlaqi, the emir for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)’s terrorist stronghold in Shabwah Governorate, was killed in the strike of the US military along with two of his AQAP associates, according to the statement of Central Command.

On Thursday Senate Republicans unveiled their healthcare bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced the appointment of Ghassan Salame of Lebanon as his Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), according to official statement.