When there's a natural rapport between leaders, relationships are easy. In such an atmosphere, negotiating is a doddle. Of course, when the opposite is the case, the reverse often happens. Small disagreements can explode into furious arguments. [...]

Germany has been giving “financial incentives” to the embassies of some African countries to accept asylum seekers from third states who have been rejected by Germany without the consent of the migrants, a refugee aid organization claims. [...]

The Gracchus brothers of Rome, Indian Emperor Ashoka, and Jesus were all left-wingers, former Uruguayan president José Mujica told RT, as he shared a fascinating history lesson on the constant struggle between liberal and conservative ideas. [...]

Eighty Swiss banks have agreed to pay the US fines totaling $1.36 billion in order to avoid court prosecution, according to the US Justice Department. After the investigation has been completed all the banks are required to cooperate in related criminal or civil proceedings, said the department. [...]

Moscow has denied Turkey’s accusation that a Russian Su-34 bomber violated its airspace on Friday. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that Ankara couldn’t have determined which country the jet belonged to under the circumstances they described. He stressed that the airspace controlling radar stations that Turkey has can only determine the altitude, flight line, and speed of an aerial vehi [...]

Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the European Commission, doesn`t see any link between mass sex assaults on New Year's Eve in Cologne and the ongoing refugee crisis, internal minutes has revealed. He also lamented the reintroduction of internal border checks within the Schengen zone. [...]

AP is reporting: “Satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press confirm what church leaders and Middle East preservationists had feared: The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State group’s relentless destruction of heritage sites it considers heretical.” [...]

A waitress at a bar in Austria, which controversially banned asylum seekers after some of them sexually harassed the female clients there, is pressing charges after migrants sexually assaulted her on New Year's Eve, she told Sputnik. Steffi G, a 19 year old waitress at Charly's Bar in the Austrian town of Bad Ischl, told Sputnik German that she is pressing charges after migrants sexually assaul [...]

After the 2014 coup ousting Ukraine’s elected President Yanukovych, the mainstream U.S. media hailed this unconstitutional move as a victory for “democracy” while ignoring the darker side, neo-Nazis coddled by the U.S. government since the Cold War, as Robert Parry wrote four days after the putsch. [...]

Few Americans understand the ugly history behind the Nazi-affiliated movements that have gained substantial power in today’s U.S.-backed Ukrainian regime. Western propaganda has made these right-wing extremists the “good guys” versus the Russian “bad guys,” as Jonathan Marshall explains. The latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine, one of the leading journals in its field, offers a tw [...]

Former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton is the only candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination who supported the invasion of Iraq. That war not only resulted in 4,500 American soldiers being killed and thousands more permanently disabled, but also hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, the destabilization of the region with the rise of the Islamic State and other ex [...]

Europe is on a dangerous, slippery slope of increasing xenophobia and racism engendered by the influx of refugees. Denmark’s new confiscation law is a sign of the brooding, baleful climate. But the real answer to the problem is dealing with Europe’s support for Washington’s criminal wars. [...]

Police said 11,000 people have gathered in the Moldovan capital on Sunday for anti-government protests, disputing organizers' estimates of 100,000 demonstrators. CHISINAU (Sputnik) – Supporters of center-right and left-wing parties took to the streets to voice opposition to the appointment of a new prime minister and to call for snap elections. [...]

Pretty much all that Americans – and much of the West – get to hear about Russian President Putin is heavy-handed propaganda often read over images of him riding shirtless on a horse. He’s either a bully or a buffoon. But editors of a popular German newspaper encountered a much more sophisticated figure, writes Gilbert Doctorow. I was hesitant to write about Vladimir Putin’s recent inte [...]

When the French Prime Minister starts talking of the "end of Europe" and Germany announces indefinite border controls amid the growing refugee crisis - it is time to get concerned. The crisis is not new, so why the sudden panic? The answer lies in the fact that next year – 2017 – the French will go to the polls to elect its president and Germany votes-in a new Bundestag. [...]

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the US and EU will bring Europe more problems than benefits, Bulgarian economist Nina Djulgerova told Radio Sputnik. The critics of the TTIP have long instated that US companies will make trade negotiations instrumental in their attempts to alter European economic laws. [...]

Germany shuts its eyes to the mass killings of the Kurds in southeastern Turkey, the illegal oil trade and Turkey's collaboration with Daesh terrorists, hoping that the Turkish President will help Europe to reduce the inflow of migrants, German newspaper Handelsblatt wrote. German Chancellor Angela Merkel ignores the fact that Turkish President Erdogan is waging war against his own people and c [...]

Since March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition has been bombing Yemen after Houthi rebels toppled its government. According to political analyst Catherine Shakdam, the international community turns a blind eye on Riyadh's war crimes in Yemen. At least 20 people, including rescue workers and an ambulance [...]

American business magnate and investor George Soros no longer views Russia as an enemy of the EU and is now openly calling on Brussels to cooperate with Moscow, German newspaper Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (DWN) wrote. According to him, the European Union may soon collapse due [...]

A breakup of the Schengen area amid the crisis the European Union is now going through will have an immediate impact on the euro and the European economy as a whole, Deutsche Welle warned on Saturday. Brussels is fully aware of the fact that if the European countries fail to get the situation under control and agree urgent measures to end the migrant crisis, it would spell the end of the Scheng [...]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Time magazine’s “person of the year” in 2015, is facing her biggest political crisis as her welcoming of Mideast refugees has troubled and angered many Europeans, raising the possibility that Merkel’s days as the Continent’s undisputed leader may be numbered, writes Gilbert Doctorow. The online edition of Bloomberg News carried a lead story entitled � [...]

The father of a young American who died aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is pressing Secretary of State John Kerry to release evidence to support his early claims that the U.S. government possessed details about the launch of the missile that killed 298 people, reports Robert Parry. The father of Quinn Schansman, the only American citizen to die in the 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Fli [...]