Russia

The brother of murdered Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko has said that he believes British intelligence were responsible for Litvinenko’s death, and not Russia or President Putin as is being currently reported.  Litvinenko died of radiation poisoning in 2006 after ingesting polonium in a London hotel. The murder has sparked a public inquiry, announced by Theresa May earlier in the week. Dailymail.co.uk reports: But in an intervention which has outraged the Litvinenko family, the spy’s younger brother, Maxim, claims British agents were responsible.

The brother of Aleksandr Litvinenko has said that the British government had more motivation to kill him than Russia did, despite a British public inquiry which concluded that President Putin “probably” approved the murder. The Russian Foreign Ministry has also dismissed the British report, blaming London for politicizing the “purely criminal” case of Litvinenko’s death.

Submitted by Julianne Geiger via OilPrice.com,

With oil prices dipping below $30 and dire forecasts for the already-low Canadian dollar, the National Hockey League (NHL) is taking a hit that would normally lead to a mass exodus of players to Russia - if the ruble wasn’t tanking as well.

The NHL’s revenue depends on the Canadian dollar, which in turn is on the downward slide thanks to the plummeting oil prices. As NHL revenues decline, player salaries go down, and roster cuts go up.

Rubio recently said that the U.S. has “no choice” but to try to improve relations with Russia, but everything in his record tells us he isn’t serious:

Give me that!!

It belongs to the Chinese now!

h/t @FedPorn

As we previously detailed,  two topics we’ve deemed critically important to a thorough understanding of both global finance and the shifting geopolitical landscape are the death of the petrodollar and the idea of yuan hegemony. 

In November 2014, in “How The Petrodollar Quietly Died And No One Noticed,” we said the following about the slow motion demise of the system that has served to perpetuate decades of dollar dominance: