Author: RT

‘Illegitimate presence’: Iran says Persian Gulf confrontation was sparked by US Navy encroaching on planned drills A US-Iran confrontation in the Persian Gulf earlier this month kicked off due to the US Navy’s unauthorised presence during Iran's planned military drills, a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) official has said. IRGC naval commander Alireza Tangsiri told local media that the US forces were an “illegitimate presence” at the planned military maneuvers, “so they were ordered to leave.” Also on rt.com ‘Dangerous & harassing’? WATCH Iranian boats buzz US Navy vessels ‘patrolling’ Persian Gulf Responding to US accusations that the IRGC fleet provoked the confrontation by acting in a “...

‘Trying every trick in the book’: UK government changes rules to hit 100k coronavirus tests target – report In its scramble to hit the target of 100,000 Covid-19 tests a day by the end of April, the UK government has revised the way it counts them, the Health Service Journal (HSJ) reports. UK health officials deny the claim. A test would previously only have been counted in its tally once the sample had been processed in a laboratory, but that’s changed in the past few days, a senior source told the HSJ. Also on rt.com ‘Thanking the Daily Mail for doing his job?’ UK health minister roasted after congratulating paper for £1m Chinese PPE haul It’s alleged that the Department of Health and Social Care is now als...

Macron warns life ‘won’t be back to normal’ as Covid-19 forces French to find new way of ‘social distance’ protest France’s president has said that the national recovery would need to be ‘organized,’ in a speech at the Elysee Palace as the country celebrated a subdued Labor Day, while movement in the country remains tightly restricted. Emmanuel Macron said that the end of the nationwide lockdown in 10 days would just be a tentative first step on the road to recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. The president said life “wouldn’t be back to normal” and there will be “several phases” in lifting the restrictions, with May 11 just being “one of them.” He added that a “recovery [period] has to be organized”; his comments followed a meeting with French horticul...

Mayor of Nice calls for Covid-19 ‘health passports’ to enter or leave France The mayor of Nice has urged French PM Edouard Philippe to introduce new travel controls during the Covid-19 pandemic through “health passports” in the parts of France which border other countries. Christian Estrosi posted the details of his letter on Facebook a day after PM Philippe unveiled plans to ease France’s lockdown in May, including finally increasing the strict one-kilometer movement limit to 100km of a person’s home. Philippe warned that people would need to “learn to live with the virus” while also starting to increase their movement and return to work if the country is to avert economic disaster. Also on rt.com ‘We must learn to...

Staring down the barrel: NFL star Bashaud Breeland comes within seconds of getting SHOT during dramatic arrest (VIDEO) Harrowing video has emerged showing the moment Kansas City Chiefs cornerback Bashaud Breeland resisted arrest before a police officer drew his gun and held it inches from the Super Bowl winner's face. Twenty-eight-year-old Breeland was one of three people witnesses saw smoking marijuana before police swooped to arrest him at a gas station in South Carolina on Thursday. Also on rt.com Super Bowl winner Breeland facing weed & alcohol charges after South Carolina arrest Newly-released video captured by an onlooker shows that initially, the arrest seemed to be fairly peaceful. But when the ar...

Caring Conor: UFC superstar Conor McGregor shows his kind side as he delivers PPE to kids' hospital Former UFC champion's gesture follows his huge $1.1 million donation to medical workers in Ireland to enable them to buy essential supplies while fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. He may usually be "Notorious," but UFC superstar Conor McGregor has really stepped up and put his money where his mouth is to get help to those who need it most during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Also on rt.com Political heavyweight? Conor McGregor’s coronavirus proclamations could betray much bigger ambitions The 31-year-old Dubliner retweeted a photo of his visit to Crumlin Children’s Hospital in his hometown, where he arrived armed with ...

US coronavirus deaths pass 60,000, eclipsing Fauci’s lowered prediction – JHU count The Covid-19 death toll in the US has passed 60,000, according to Johns Hopkins University. The deaths are now above the figure predicted by the latest model used by Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Donald Trump’s disease specialist. The United States saw its coronavirus deaths tick past 60,000 on Wednesday, after another 1,743 fatalities were recorded in the preceding 24 hours. At just over a million cases, the US has more coronavirus infections than the next five countries combined. More than a third of all American Covid-19 deaths have been recorded in New York. Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicted last mont...

Covid-19 was already 'silently circulating' in France before virus arrived from China & Italy – study The outbreak of the coronavirus in France has little to do with cases imported from China or Italy, as another strain of the disease of unknown origin had already been infecting people in the country, research claims. The virologists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris have sequenced the genomes from samples taken from 97 French and three Algerian coronavirus patients between January 24 and March 24. What they found is that the dominant types of Covid-19 viral strains in France differed from those that arrived from China or Italy, and belonged to another group, or 'clade.'  The earliest sample in the French clade dated from February 19 and came from...

‘We never said it didn’t happen’: New York Times says its probe didn’t absolve Biden of sexual assault claims Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s campaign says the sexual assault claim against him was disproven by a New York Times probe. Originally criticized for going too soft on Biden, the Times now says it never wrote off the allegation. Tara Reade, who worked for Biden’s Senate office in 1993, claims that Biden cornered her in the basement of a Capitol Hill office building and forced himself on her, penetrating her with his fingers against her will. Biden’s campaign has dismissed the allegations, and has circulated the talking points it’s using to counter them. Also on rt.com ‘I’m with her’: Biden fuels VP rumors a...