Julia Galiullina

The FBI uses drones for domestic surveillance purposes, the head of the agency told Congress early Wednesday. Speaking in a hearing mainly about telephone data collection, the bureau's director, Robert Mueller, said it used drones to aid its investigations in a "very, very minimal way, very seldom".

The incident with the leakage of classified information continues to be a hot topic in China. The official mass media and bloggers express opinions on it.

US President Barack Obama on Wednesday called on Russia to agree strategic nuclear weapons cuts of up to a third and to also rein in strategic atomic arms, in a keynote speech in Berlin.

Moscow finds it necessary to implement the existing START treaty and find an acceptable form of resolving the problem of missile defense before discussing the proposal of US President Barack Obama on the reduction of the nuclear potentials of Russia and the United States, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has said.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai has suspended talks with the US on signing a security agreement. President Karzai made this move after the Taliban opened a mission in Doha, and Washington expressed readiness to go into talks with the movement’s representatives. Hamid Karzai described the US’ decision as ‘inconsistent with the policy of achieving a peace settlement on Afghanistan’.

Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin says US proposals to reduce nuclear arms cannot be taken seriously while the United States is building up missile defences.

Part of Hungary's parliament was evacuated after an unexploded World War II bomb was discovered during excavation work for a nearby underground garage.

Italy's constitutional court on Wednesday rejected a bid by Silvio Berlusconi to block a tax fraud conviction from October, clearing the way for a final verdict this year and deepening the uncertainty facing Prime Minister Enrico Letta.

Britain's Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and his wife Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, do not know the sex of their baby, which is expected in mid-July and should be born by natural delivery, palace sources said Wednesday.

President Putin spoke about this at a high-level government meeting held to review the progress of Russia’s rearmament programme for the period to 2020.

President Vladimir Putin finds it impossible "to permit a violation of the balance in the system of strategic deterrence or a decline in the efficiency of Russian nuclear forces."

Russia has been implementing the contracts signed with the legitimate Syrian government on perfectly legal grounds, Voice of Russia’s Margarita Bogatova has cited the Kremlin's top foreign-policy aide Yuri Ushakov as saying Thursday.

The decline in production and consumption, insufficient investments and currency risks top the agenda of the St.Petersburg International Economic Forum, which will take place in St.Petersburg between June 20th and 22nd . Given that these issues of global concern could lead to a new wave of economic crisis, the participants in the forum, which will be attended by President Vladimir Putin, say that it’s time to act and call for ‘decisive action’

The World Bank on Wednesday warned that severe hardships from global warming could be felt within a generation, with a new study detailing devastating impacts in Africa and Asia.

Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and the president of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Zhou Jiping, discussed yesterday evening matters involved in the concluding of a long-term contract for supplying China with Russian gas, a contract planned for signing before this year is out, Gazprom said.

The Fitch rating agency is concerned about the unregulated part of the Chinese banking sector. The so-called “shadow banks” pose systemic risks for the country’s economy.

The Iranian economy is experiencing severe stress caused by the international sanctions against Tehran. An unofficial estimate of the Iranian inflation rate is almost three times the official annual inflation figure.

The foreign exchange market is now in the crosshairs of the global financial regulators in the aftermath of the rate-rigging scandals in currency rates and interest rates markets.

Senior Russian lawmaker has called succesful the counry's participation in the G8 summit in Northern Ireland, where Russia managed to uphold its position on Syria. Alexei Pushkov praised Russia's offers during the summit to prevent Syria from being turned into the second Iraq or Libya. The humanitarian crisis in Syria worsens day by day. Millions have fled the country since the conflict errupted. The UN has said in the report that there are 45.2 millions people forcibly displaced world wide. It's the highest number of its kind since 1994.

The Global Media Forum in Bonn today tackled information freedom in developing countries.

North Korean authorities have taken interest in the experience of Germany’s National Socialist Party, according to a report by New Focus International, a news organization based outside North Korea, but declaring that it has access to high-level North Korean sources. It is reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, deeply impressed by Germany’s soon revival after the defeat in the First World War, handed out copies of Adolf Hitler's memoir to senior officials.