Oil giant BP (British Petroleum) has suffered a fall in profits from July to September amid lower oil prices and the decreasing value of the ruble.

Europe's third-largest company said it made $3bn (£1.86bn) in the third quarter, down from $3.7bn (£2.29bn) in the same period last year - a fall of 21 percent.

BP has invested heavily in Russia and owns a nearly 20 percent stake in Rosneft, the Russian state-run oil company. It is now feeling the impact of Western economic sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine crisis.

The company's net income from the Rosneft stake dropped considerably - down to $110m from $808m in the same period last year.

BP said the depreciation of the ruble against the dollar was the reason for the drop in profits. Lower Urals oil prices also hurt profits, the London-based company said in a statement.

Despite dire forecasts for its sanctions-struck economy, Russia has leaped up an unprecedented 30 positions in the World Bank's annual "Doing Business" survey for 2015, the bank said Wednesday.

Russia rose to 62nd place out of 189 ranked countries, ahead of China at 90, Brazil at 120 and India at 142, although still below many nations in the West.

The World Bank noted Russia's worsening businesses climate for the category of "trading across borders," where Russia dropped six ranks to 61st place, while most other categories registered a one to three-level drop in their rankings relative to Russia's 2014 ranking.

But the country went up 24 ranks to 34th place in the category of "starting a business," up 16 ranks to 156th place in "dealing with construction permits," and five ranks to 12th place in "registering property." In each case the World Bank cited simplified or reduced legislation for its decision.

The only category that saw no change was "enforcing contracts," where Russia stayed in 14th place.

The World Bank's methodology for each criteria varies but typically focuses on how legal procedures affect the time and cost of a particular goal. The "enforcing contracts" section, for instance, notes that the standard length of time for a trial and judgment is 160 days, and the average attorney fee is 10 percent of the claim. The report's results are based on studies made in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the country's two key metropolitan centers.

How does it feel to live under a government that is getting even more paranoid with each passing day? Yes, we live in a world that is becoming increasingly unstable, but that is no excuse for how ultra-paranoid the federal government has become. Today, every single one of us is viewed as a "potential threat" by the government. As a result, the government feels the need to intercept our emails, record our phone calls and track our expenditures. But they aren't just spying on individuals. The government keeps tabs on thousands of organizations all over the planet, it spies on our enemies and our allies, and it even spies on itself. The American people are told that the emerging Big Brother police state is for our safety, but the truth is that it isn't there to protect us. It is there to protect them. Our government has become kind of like a crazy rich uncle that is constantly spying on everyone else in the family because he believes that they are "out to get him". The following are 15 signs that we live during a time of rampant government paranoia...

#1 Former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson says that the federal government was so concerned about her reporting on Benghazi, Fast and Furious and other Obama scandals that they hacked her computer, monitored every keystroke and even planted classified material in an apparent attempt to potentially frame her.

#2 The United States has become the nation of the "permanent emergency". In fact, there has been at least one "state of emergency" in effect in this country since 1979.

#3 In America today, almost everyone is considered to be a criminal. At this point, nearly one out of every three Americans has a file in the FBI's master criminal database.

#4 Most people don't realize this, but the FBI also systematically records talk radio programs. The FBI says that it is looking for "potential evidence".

#5 In Wisconsin, 24 armed police officers are an armored military vehicle were recently sent to collect a civil judgment from a 75-year-old retiree. It is being reported that officials feared that he might be "argumentative".

We're now passing through a no-name election season of a particularly lusterless sort, but don't count on that for 2016. Here, in fact, is a surefire prediction for that moment, which (given the nature of modern presidential campaigns) will kick off with the usual round of media speculation and odds-making on November 5th. Whomever the presidential candidates may be, expect the political landscape to be littered with references to the United States as an "exceptional nation" and to "American exceptionalism" (as well as its more recent doppelgänger, "indispensable," as in "indispensable nation"). And the presidential candidates, baying for the exceptional privilege of entering the Oval Office in 2017, will join a jostling crowd of past presidential candidates, presidential wannabes, major politicians, minor figures, and pundits galore who have felt compelled in recent years to tell us and the world just how exceptional we really are.

Such references were once rare in our politics, but that was back in the days when Americans didn't doubt our exceptional nature, which meant that there was no need to talk about it ad infinitum. Like anything spoken of too insistently, recent rounds of exceptionalist comments surely reveal lurking feelings of doubt about this country, its state, its fate, and its direction (which, according to most polls, Americans believe to be downward, as in "wrong track" or "decline").

So, as an antidote to the creeping sense that the U.S. - that unipolar power, the last superpower etc., etc. - may not be quite all it's cracked up to be, here's the beginning of a little post-9/11 list that you can complete at your leisure: six incontestable areas where America is #1. Once filled out, it should help future candidates for office and leave the rest of us punching the air with a renewed sense of celebratory pride.

The unipolar world as we know it is moving to its end, Wolfgang Schüssel, Austria's Chancellor in 2000-2007, told RT at the Valdai forum. Russia is to play a major role in the new order, but at the moment the Ukraine crisis dominates the country's image.

What is your opinion about the European sanctions against Russia? Are they fair and useful or not?

First of all, there was a story before the sanctions. We were absolutely surprised with what happened in Ukraine. There are always possibilities for independence or secession, but according to the Helsinki Charter it must be negotiated peacefully and remain within the agreement of the respective country. This did not happen. The sanctions were the response. I think [the EU] tried to calculate and to balance it so that the response would not to be damaging the economies too sharply. Nevertheless, there are some consequences to be felt, in Russia and also in Europe.

The most important thing in my opinion is how to restore a positive, upwards-leading cycle of confidence-building measures. Sunday will see elections in Ukraine. Hopefully they will bring to power moderate politicians like President Poroshenko. On Wednesday an agreement on energy deliveries from Russia to Ukraine could be negotiated, under the moderation of the European Commission. And then we should strengthen the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine and guarantee local elections there to be held in accordance with the Minsk agreement and the Ukrainian legislation.

Last Friday, Vladimir Putin delivered the single most important speech on foreign policy since he became President of Russia in 2000. Mikhail Gorbachev said he thought it was the best, and most significant speech Putin has ever made.

In it he charted a clear course for Russia, defining its place in international affairs and setting out the principles and objectives of its foreign policy.

The response of the western political and media elite has been pitifully inadequate. The speech has attracted surprisingly little attention. The emphasis has been not on what Putin said about Russia or international relations in general but on what he specifically said about the US.

Western commentary wrongly but overwhelmingly treats the speech as simply a critique of US foreign policy (a "diatribe") with Putin hypocritically condemning a US foreign policy he feels is targeted against him. Behind this is the assumption that the speech is Putin's defiant response to the US sanctions policy imposed on Russia since the start of the Ukrainian crisis even though the actual speech barely touches on this question.

Putin did have a lot to say about US foreign policy and what he said was very critical. However to focus purely on that part of the speech is to fail to do it justice and to ignore its very coherent intellectual framework.

Swedish media accused Russia of invading its country's waters... only they can't seem to find the submarine. RT's Anissa Naouai hunts for 'the Black October':

Questions are being asked of the United States Postal Service after the release of an audit confirming that roughly 49,000 pieces of mail were monitored by the agency during the last fiscal year.

The New York Time's Ron Nixon reported on Monday this week that a 2014 audit of the USPS's little-known surveillance program showed that nearly 50,000 pieces of mail were scrutinized during a 12-month span upon the request of authorities using a tactic called a "mail cover."

But while the USPS green-lighted tens of thousands of these requests made by law enforcement agencies in the last year pursuant to criminal and national security investigations, the Times reported, the protocols in place for authorizing such scans are reportedly ripe with flaws.

"Insufficient controls," as identified in the audit, "could hinder the Postal Inspection Service's ability to conduct effective investigations, lead to public concerns over privacy of mail and harm the Postal Service's brand," Nixon quoted from the report.

Additionally, the audit found that "responsible personnel did not always handle and process" those requests on par with the agency's established rules.

The determinations made by the authors of the report run counter with what a spokesperson with the Postal Service told the Associated Press when reached for comment upon publication of the Times' report. According to USPS spox Toni DeLancey, the agency "authorized only under limited circumstances" the monitoring of letters and packages.

The United States is beefing up security at thousands of government buildings around the country due to "continued public calls" for terrorist attacks, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced on Tuesday.

Johnson said the new security measures will affect more than 9,500 federal buildings as well as the 1.4 million people who visit these facilities every day. The move was described by Johnson as a"precautionary step," intended to safeguard federal buildings and visitors.

"The reasons for this action are self-evident: the continued public calls by terrorist organizations for attacks on the homeland and elsewhere, including against law enforcement and other government officials, and the acts of violence targeted at government personnel and installations in Canada and elsewhere recently," Johnson said.

"Given world events, prudence dictates a heightened vigilance in the protection of U.S. government installations and our personnel."

However, Johnson declined to detail exactly what new policies will be implemented by the Federal Protective Service, which is responsible for ensuring the safety of government facilities. The measures will differ from location to location, and will be consistently reviewed, he added.

Reports of US diplomats in Moscow being systematically mistreated are "groundless," Russia's Foreign Ministry said. It also accused US special services of provocations and attempting to recruit Russian diplomats in Washington.

Responding to an ABC "exclusive," the ministry said that voiced "complaints" are "banal fantasies" that"do not reach the level of cheap spy detectives."

"What is outrageous is the peremptory and contrary to the facts statement by the US State Department press secretary that "in contrast to the behavior of the Russians," the American side treats diplomats from Russia with the utmost respect," the Russian Foreign Ministry statement reads.

In a report Monday, ABC News accused Russia of Cold War-style harassment of US embassy diplomats, which included slashing, hacking and breaking into diplomatic apartments.

Reporting on the issue at length, the ABC's Kirit Radia listed a number of cases when US officials - none of whom were named - were targeted by Russia's "aggressive, Soviet-era counterintelligence tactics" of intimidation and harassment "that is believed to be led by Russia's Federal Security Services (FSB), a successor to the Soviet KGB."