On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump released his “efficient, effective and accountable” budget for fiscal year 2019 and, to no surprise, social programs are on the chopping block. Aside from wanting to privatize the International Space Station and eliminate the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, Trump is also looking to cut food assistance programs by $214 billion. [...]

Russian financial institutions and firms are ready to work without SWIFT's interbank cash transfer services, according to Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich. “Certainly, it is unpleasant, as it will prove a stumbling block for companies and banks, and will slow down work. It will be inevitable to deploy some aged technologies for information transfer and calculations. [...]

As Iraq recovers from a long series of horrific wars, starting with the US invasion of 2003, the US has to take on the responsibility for destroying the Iraqi nation, analysts have told RT. The government of Iraq needs $88 billion in reconstruction funds for areas devastated by war, Iraqi officials claimed at the international donors’ conference in Kuwait on Monday. [...]

As the wealthy continue sucking the country dry, the question isn’t if the US will cease to provide a decent standard of living for its people. Rather it is how many people will be sacrificed on the way down. In America, the richest nation in the world when measured by raw GDP, children are getting sick from living by open pools of raw sewage.. [...]

At a time of unprecedented goodwill between Seoul and Pyongyang over the Winter Olympics, the US has decided to double down on its inflammatory rhetoric, undermining a fragile thaw on the Korean Peninsula. On the eve of the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, one would be forgiven for temporarily forgetting history’s bitter divisions on the Korean Peninsula. [...]

ABBY MARTIN: While many talk about the growth of the Alt-Right movement under Trump, there's a much less discussed and much better organized sector of the far right that has obtained significant power. The Christian Right.DONALD TRUMP: I brought my bible. Okay? Part of the way the U.S. Empire's elections are rigged is the corporate media's censorship of third-party candidates, despite their nat [...]

A full-blown war with North Korea wouldn’t be as bad as you think. It would be much, much worse. Late last September, I moderated a discussion about North Korea with retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, whose 37-year military career included a stint running NATO, and Michèle Flournoy, the No. 3 official at the Pentagon during the Obama administration, who has helped shape US policy toward North K [...]

The group is calling for a rational drug policy based on promoting responsible cannabis use, rather than repression and arrest. The Confederation of German Criminal Officers (BDK) has called for the legalization of cannabis, saying that its ban makes no sense. "The prohibition of cannabis has historically been arbitrary and until today it has been neither intelligent, nor purposeful," [...]

Stephen Hawking is backing a group of campaigners in bringing Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to the High Court over a new policy which they claim will lead to the privatization of the NHS. The acclaimed physicist is joining campaigners in challenging the health secretary over his introduction of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), partnership organizations between hospitals, care organizations an [...]

US President Donald Trump attacked Britain’s “broke” National Health Service (NHS) in a tweet that came just minutes after Brexiteer Nigel Farage appeared on Fox News to blame immigrants for stretched UK health services. [...]

Lebanon is a pressure cooker which could blow at any moment, but don’t worry about confused US policy. Israel’s threats to invade are not irking the Lebanese, but many wish Hezbollah would end a local Shiite-Christian spat. [...]

A new study from advocacy group Tax Justice Network reveals that Switzerland is the world’s most-corrupt country, with a “high secrecy score of 76.” It’s followed by the US and the Cayman Islands. [...]

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been left flailing as Washington desperately struggles to avoid being shut out of Syria by its own allies – following a crisis it helped provoke just days ago. For all the backpedaling and reframing the US officials are now doing, the chronology of the volte-face from Afrin to Ankara is startlingly straightforward. [...]

More than half a year after being liberated, Mosul's battle wounds still fester. Entire districts lie in ruins with bodies scattered in the streets, and locals say they have yet to see the aid they were promised. [...]

A majority of French and Germans, along with a considerable number of Britons and Poles, oppose the new US bill which may result in European companies being punished for cooperating with Russia. The French Institute of Public Opinion (Ifop) has conducted an opinion poll for Sputnik in order to try and determine how Europeans will react toward a new bill implemented by the US that threatens to impo [...]

A video has emerged of former American Vice President Joe Biden admitting that the US had to strong-arm its European partners into imposing economic sanctions on Moscow following the Crimean referendum in 2014. The said restrictions at the time led to retaliatory measures from Moscow, which have in turn considerably damaged the bloc's economy. [...]

From the Archive: With Moscow saying that U.S. proposals in its new Nuclear Posture Review to develop “tactical” nukes are “confrontational” and “anti-Russian,” we republish a 2016 article by Robert Parry. Through an endless barrage of ugly propaganda, the U.S. government and the mainstream American press have put the world on course for a potential nuclear showdown with Russia, an exi [...]

Perpetual war is leading to a host of societal ills, yet debates on war and peace are almost entirely absent from public discourse, Robert Wing and Coleen Rowley observe. Last October marked the 16th anniversary of our unending war – or military occupation – in Afghanistan, the longest conflict on foreign soil in U.S. history. [...]

Norway surprised to discover its new fleet of F-35 fighter jets relay 'sensitive data' to US-manufacturer Lockheed Martin. The Royal Norwegian Air Force recently received the first three of the 40 F-35 fighter jets it ordered from Lockheed Martin. [...]

SIMFEROPOL (Sputnik) - German lawmakers, who arrived in Crimea with a visit on Saturday, want to send a signal of greater cooperation possibilities with Russia, a member of the delegation said. "We want to send a special signal by this visit. Because we consider joint fruitful coexistence with Russia [...]

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon told Sputnik on Saturday, hours after a Russian Su-25 attack aircraft was downed by militants in Syria, that the United States did not equip partner forces in Syria with surface-to-air weapons. Alongside by, with, and through our partners in Syria, the United States remains focused on the fight against ISIS [Daesh]. [...]

Russian lawmakers have called for a thorough investigation on the origins of the man-portable missile launcher that was likely used by militants in Syria to shoot down a Russian fighter jet before killing the pilot in a firefight. "Certainly, we will investigate, including a great many things: [...]