Submitted by Emad Mostaque via GovernmentsAndMarkets.com,
Oil prices have risen over 20% since the OPEC production cut agreement at the end of November. While concerns abound on quota cheating and increased production from Libya, Nigeria and US shale, the incoming US administration could change the market completely through strategic oil sales and new import taxes.
A bipartisan group of US senators have introduced legislation to impose sweeping new sanctions against Russia over its alleged attempts to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election. Among the bill’s co-sponsors are warmongering Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, both critics of the President-elect Donald Trump. Five Democrats and five Republicans unveiled the new sanctions this week just days after the intelligence community released a declassified version of a report accusing Russia of meddling in the election.
Submitted by Glenn Greenwald via The Intercept,
Submitted by Nick Bernabe via TheAntiMedia.org,
Long-simmering social tensions in Mexico are threatening to boil over as failing neoliberal reforms to the country’s formerly nationalized gas sector are compounded by open corruption, stagnant standards of living, and rampant inflation.
Responding to the latest report accusing Trump of being a Russian pawn (which may at least partially have been the spawn of a 4Chan hoax), the Kremlin said on Wednesday it was "total nonsense" that Russian officials had assembled a file of compromising information on Donald Trump. Speaking to reporters on a conference call today, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the dossier containing the claims was a hoax which had been dreamt up to further harm U.S.-Russia relations, which are already at their lowest level since the Cold War.