MEPs have defeated a European Commission proposal to prevent member states from banning genetically modified crops on health and/or environmental grounds. [...]

25 years ago, Hungary was being toasted in the West for opening its border with Austria to East Germans, in a move which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now the Western elites are not happy with Budapest which they consider far too independent. The refusal of Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his ruling Fidesz party to join the new US and EU Cold War against Russia, which has seen the Hungari [...]

The EU won't provide any new funds for Ukraine to pay off its gas debt to Russia, and Moscow has no guarantees should Kiev use agreed funding elsewhere, said the EU Energy Commissioner's spokeswoman Marlene Holzner. The European Commission is allocating €760 million ($954 million) of financial aid to Ukraine earlier than scheduled to help it pay for gas deliveries, said Mrs. Holzner on Friday [...]

Senior EU officials insist that Britain must pay a €2.1 billion surcharge by December, and have the backing of France and Germany, despite Prime Minister David Cameron’s insistence that he won’t pay. Cameron stated flatly on Friday that Brussels “had another thing coming” if they thought they were going to get the €2.1 billion (US$2.7 billion) demand by the deadline. [...]

Activists will rally in Westminster on Saturday as part of a Europe-wide protest against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which critics say will eradicate public services including the NHS and the BBC. More than 1,000 people are expected to march against the treaty in London over the weekend, with many more holding demonstrations in UK cities and throughout Europe. [...]

At the Autumn Meeting of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (PA), Russian official Sergey Naryshkin made the Ukrainian crisis a top European security issue, while speaking at a conference on new security challenges in the region. At a meeting on "New Security Challenges: The Role of Parliaments" on Friday, Naryshkin, the Head of the Lower House of Russian Parliament, who leads the Moscow delegatio [...]

America's leadership had to embarrass Europe to impose economic hits on Russia over the crisis in Ukraine - even though the EU was opposed to such a motion, US Vice President Joe Biden revealed during a speech at Harvard. “We’ve given Putin a simple choice: Respect Ukraine’s sovereignty or face increasing consequences,” Biden told a gathering at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard [...]

Prime Minister David Cameron has vowed to scrap the Human Rights Act if the Conservatives are re-elected in Britain's 2015 general election. The controversial proposal has stoked the ire of civil rights groups across the nation. Speaking on the final day of the Conservative Party’s four-day conference, Cameron pledged to do away with the Act and replace it with a British “bill of rights.” [...]

The German Air Force has spotted a manufacturing fault in the hull of Eurofighter Typhoon multirole fighter jet. The Defense Ministry ordered annual flying hours for each aircraft be halved due to the fuselage possibly becoming unstable. The defect was discovered in the rear section of the aircraft’s hull, forcing the announcement of suspended delivery of the jets assembled at the EADS plant [...]

An extended period of calm on the bond markets has led many to conclude the euro crisis is over. But German central bank head Jens Weidmann says in an interview that the coast still isn't clear and that there is still great need for reforms. SPIEGEL: Mr. Weidmann, you are notorious for being a tough critic of European Central Bank President Mario Draghi. But the euro crisis seems to be over, la [...]

More than 90,000 people have signed an online petition calling for last weeks’ Scottish Independence vote to be recounted, backing accusations that the referendum was marred by vote-rigging. “We the undersigned demand a re-vote of the Scottish referendum, counted by impartial international parties,” the petition reads. [...]

The Ukrainian parliament has approved laws on special status for the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions, as well as amnesty for those participating in the hostilities. The special status law has received 277 ‘yes’ votes from a total of 450 MPs, while the amnesty law was approved by 287 parliamentary members. The session of the Verkhovna Rada is underway during which MPs are to ratify an agreement [...]

A total of 1,300 troops from 15 nations, either active NATO members or would-be members, have come together for a military exercise in western Ukraine – even as the fragile truce in the east of the country barely holds. The exercise, code-named “Rapid Trident” has been an annual event since 2006, and has been organized by the Germany-based US European Command (EUCOM). It was initially pla [...]

Russia considers the latest round of Western sanctions illegal and is ready to appeal against them to the World Trade Organization (WTO), Russian Economy Minister Aleksey Ulyukaev told reporters on Friday. “The latest round of sanctions provides grounds to appeal to the WTO. And we will appeal,” Ulyukaev said. [...]

What’s wrong with this picture? Israel gets $3 billion a year in military aid from the US. Over the last 60 years, the Jewish state has received about $250 billion worth of airplanes and armaments. Yet when Obama appeals for a “a broad international coalition” to fight ISIS, which supposedly threatens the whole Middle East, Israel is not asked to join. Canada, Germany, Australia, France, T [...]

Sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and the EU are a part of a larger military agenda agreed by NATO in a summit 2014, Michel Chossudovsky, of the Centre for Research and Globalisation, told RT, calling such a strategy economic and financial warfare. Despite the truce in Ukraine, the EU and the US went ahead with fresh rounds of sanctions – why was the de-escalation of the conflict in the e [...]

Russia has been put into an impossible situation, meaning they are responsible not only for what has been done in Lugansk and Donetsk, but also for what has been done on the side of Kiev, political analyst Alexander Pavic told RT. Apparently, the truce in Ukraine is not enough for the EU to hold back on yet more sanctions. [...]

Imports of Western cars and clothes into Russia could be restricted as part of a second round of "retaliatory" measures prepared in response to the sanctions against Moscow, says presidential aide Andrey Belousov. There are many sellers of non-agricultural goods in the West who are heavily dependent on the Russian market, the official said. [...]

Moscow scored a major diplomatic coup after Kiev agreed to postpone the enforcement of its Association Agreement with EU until the end of next year, following three-way talks between Russia, Ukraine and European Union officials in Brussels. "We agreed on delaying the provisional application until the end of next year and to prolong the autonomous trade measures for the same period. [...]

The latest list of sanctions looks “quite odd” in view of the peace drive including a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said as the EU’s restricting measures came into force Friday. Speaking after a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Putin said that Russia has not ruled out responding with tit-for-tat sanctions. At the same time, he sai [...]

Arms producer Kalashnikov and oil giant Rosneft are among Russian companies hit by a new round of EU sanctions, which have come into effect Friday morning upon being published in the EU Official Journal. The sanctions target the finance, energy and defense sectors. The union has restricted three Russian energy companies from raising long-term debt on European capital markets – Rosneft, Transn [...]

Moscow will take “appropriate measures” in response to possible new sanctions from the European Union, the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokesperson said. “On many levels, the Russian leadership has made it clear that we’ll take adequate measures and our response will be absolutely comparable with the actions by the EU,” the Foreign Ministry spokesman said at briefing in Moscow. [...]