The Obama administration is set to overhaul the Defense Department's $500 million program to train and equip Syrian rebels, according to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. The US president is expected to speak on the matter later on Friday. Carter said during a Friday news conference in London that Washington has been "looking for several weeks at ways to improve" the program. [...]

The defense funding bill for 2016 includes some lavish support to rebels in Syria and lethal aid to the current Ukrainian government. Although President Barack Obama is at loggerheads with lawmakers over some of the provisions, they are likely to remain. Obama has threatened to veto the $612 billion National Defense Authorization Act – also known as House Resolution 1735, or the NDAA – [...]

Three Dutch media companies have filed a joint lawsuit against the country’s Security and Justice Ministry, demanding that it disclose more documents relating to the MH17 catastrophe investigation after the ministry’s refusal to release the information. The Netherlands Broadcasting Foundation (NOS); the Dutch subsidiary of the European TV, radio and production company RTL Group; and the Dut [...]

In between Russia's military intervention in Syria and Iran's challenging of Saudi Arabia's hegemonic power in the Middle East, the region is witnessing unprecedented political frictions. Those growing pains will ultimately see manifest a new order - which one remains to be determined.   [...]

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) is calling for an independent investigation into the deadly US airstrike on a hospital in the Afghan city of Kunduz to determine whether the attack can be regarded as a war crime. According to Doctors without Borders, such an investigation should gather evidence from the US, NATO and Afghanistan, as well as testimonies of the Kunduz hospital staff and patients. [...]

The whole point of Islamic State’s tactic of hiding in mosques and using human shields is to try to make Russia look bad hoping the military would make an error, says Doctor Max Abrahms of Northeastern University in Boston. John Wight, a writer and political analyst, shared his opinion on what the Western media hopes to achieve by further speculation on the campaign. [...]

Anti-TTIP activists have submitted a 3 million-signature petition to the European Commission in London and Brussels in a bid to halt secret trade negotiations between the EU, US and Canada. The petition, believed to be one of the largest ever compiled, calls for an immediate end to Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations. [...]

Four Russian Navy warships have fired a total of 26 missiles at the position of the terrorist group Islamic State in Syria, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced. The missiles were fired from the Caspian Sea. The missiles flew some 1,500 km before reaching their targets, probing their efficiency. [...]

An estimated 3,000 Islamic State fighters as well as militants from other extremist groups have fled Syria for Jordan fearing a renewed offensive by the Syrian army in addition to Russian airstrikes, a military official has told RIA news agency. “At least 3,000 militants from Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), al-Nusra and Jaish al-Yarmouk have fled to Jordan. [...]

Russia is ready for contact with the Free Syrian Army, but it is now a 'phantom,' Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said at a news conference following talks with his Laos counterpart in Moscow. "They tell us about the Free Syrian Army, but where is it?  It remains a phantom group, nothing is known about it," Lavrov said, adding that Russia has sent a request about the group to the Un [...]

As if to underscore Russia’s decision to initiate airstrikes against Islamic State on the territory of Syria as Western forces don’t appear up to the task, NATO jets unleashed a deadly barrage on a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan. No sooner had Vladimir Putin wrapped up his speech at the United Nations, where he roundly criticized the manner in which US-led forces hav [...]

Seeing their colleagues and patients die was a horrifying shock, according to survivors of the deadly air raid on a hospital in Afghanistan. The tragedy, medical staff said, simply cannot be dismissed as “collateral damage” from a botched airstrike. Recalling the tense minutes of continuous airstrikes which hit the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, NGO staff said that the d [...]

The head of the Chechen Republic has asked the Russian president to send Chechen units to fight Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Syria, adding that his fighters have sworn to fight terrorists till the end. “This is not idle talk, I am asking for permission to go there and participate in special operations,” Ramzan Kadyrov said in the Friday interview with the RSN radio. [...]

The Russian Air Force has conducted more than 60 flights and bombed over 50 Islamic State targets in three days, according to Russia’s top armed forces official. He added the strikes have significantly reduced the terrorists’ combat capabilities. “The airstrikes were being conducted night and day from the Khmeimim airbase and throughout the whole of Syria. [...]

What happens when those allies you held closest to you turn out to be working towards your demise? Worse still, what if those truths you held as certainties were no more than a web of lies weaved by politicians to sell you on their wars? We are living in strange times indeed when politicians and governments can argue supporting radicals in the name of national security and democracy. [...]

Nearly one fifth of Prime Minister David Cameron’s MPs are likely to vote against Britain remaining a member of the European Union in the upcoming referendum, new research has revealed. The results show the growing divide over the European question between the prime minister and his party. [...]

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev has called for Russians and Germans to unite and called good relations between the two nations “priceless capital” in a newspaper interview. “History teaches us that when Germans and Russians walk hand in hand both nations and all Europeans benefit. [...]

Conservative-minded Britons are more likely to think they are morally superior to everybody else than left-wing people, according to a new study. While lefties are often accused of brandishing their moral superiority, the new study by polling firm YouGov appears to flip that claim on its head. [...]

Talk about quick on the draw. No sooner had Russian planes taken off to bomb ISIS terrorists and their associates in Syria, claims made by the West’s anti-Russia lobby started to flood in – only to be repeated in much of the western mainstream media. Russia wasn‘t really targeting ISIS but “moderate rebels” and its strikes killed scores of innocent civilians (unlike US strikes during [...]