Athens has signed a €368.5 million deal to sell the operator of Piraeus port to the Chinese shipping group COSCO, Reuters reported. This is the second major privatization for the country since last year. Under the deal, COSCO will acquire 51 percent of the listed Piraeus Port Authority for €280.5 million and the remaining 16 percent for €88 million after five years, once it concludes mand [...]

The Russian president has surprised the audience at a forum in St. Petersburg, by allowing his German language skills to shine. He stepped in as translator for the former West German Defense Secretary Willy Wimmer. Wimmer had something to say on the topic of the national idea and value system that identifies Russia. [...]

Moscow and Tehran are holding talks on digging a ship canal from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf, said Iranian Ambassador to Russia Mehdi Sanai, speaking to students in St. Petersburg. Any canal linking the two has to go through Iran. "Yes, this issue is being discussed", said the ambassador on Thursday without specifying details, quoted by TASS. [...]

The majority of Germans believe that EU-Turkey deal is a bad idea and will not work properly, according to a recent poll. Most also don’t tend to see Ankara as a trusted partner, let alone a potential member in the union. Under a plan agreed in Brussels earlier in March, all migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey would be returned. [...]

The British government’s claim to be tackling tax evasion is about as credible as Al Capone claiming to be leading the fight against organized crime. In fact, Britain is at the heart of the global tax haven network, and continues to lead the fight against its regulation. The 11 and a half million leaked documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca have proven, once again, [...]

Whatever Bernie Sanders thinks of Hillary Clinton's presidential qualifications, the former secretary of state is "uniquely unsuited" to the task of stopping climate change, author and activist Naomi Klein writes in a new op-ed for The Nation. Combating climate change "requires a willingness to go head-to-head with the two most powerful industries on the planet [...]

Despite Libya’s bloodshed and chaos, ex-Secretary of State Clinton still defends her key role in the 2011 “regime change,” but her reasons don’t withstand scrutiny, as Jonathan Marshall explains. Years after the end of the Vietnam War, as memories of its horrors and folly dimmed, conservative “revisionists” emerged to peddle the myth that U.S. commitment there was both justified and [...]

Mainstream U.S. journalism has completely lost its way, especially in dealing with foreign policy issues where bias now overwhelms any commitment to facts, a dangerous development, writes Robert Parry. Several weeks ago, I received a phone call from legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh who had seen one of my recent stories about Syria and wanted to commiserate over the state of modern [...]

French authorities plan to provide foreign prostitutes with six month residence permits in a bid to help them escape the sex trade, according to media reports. Foreign prostitutes in France will be offered six month residence permits if they agree to participate in "the exit program," something that is thought will help sex workers escape the trade, media reports said. [...]

A quadcopter-like contraption, but for humans, the "Volocopter" hopes to change urban transportation by transforming low altitudes into highways. A new vehicle, called the Volocopter, could make flying cars a reality for many people, as the design includes such ideas as creating virtual highways with speed limits for the vehicles. [...]

Lebanon cannot stand on its feet anymore. It is overwhelmed, frightened and broke. It stands at the frontline, facing Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS/ISIL) in the east and north, hostile Israel in the south and the deep blue sea in the west. One and a half million (mostly Syrian) refugees are dispersed all over its tiny territory. [...]

US officials, always sensitive to anti-American leaks and harsh to whistleblowers, now appear unconcerned about how the Panama Papers came to light. Grilled by reporters, the State Department could not tell if the US-funded leak was actually data theft or not. [...]

Dr. Gerald Friedman, University of Massachusetts-Amherst joins Thom. Republicans like Ronald Reagan have successfully made fringe ideas like trickle-down economics and returning to the gold standard part of the mainstream political conversation. So why is the media so skeptical of Bernie Sanders' plan to jump-start the economy by returning the Democratic party to its New Deal roots? Eco [...]

The Soros-funded framing of the document release aimed to smear Putin, but did more to expose the collusion of Hillary Clinton, David Cameron, and other Western scam artists. On Sunday, the "Panama Papers" were released to the world, in the single greatest incriminating document leak in world history. [...]

Beijing is ready to transfer some of its shipyards as well as chemical and steel plants to Russia’s Far East. Russia is interested, but says this can only be done in full compliance with local environmental laws. "We are ready to accept Chinese enterprises to establish joint export-oriented production in the Far East territory", said a spokesman for the Far East Development Department Rustam [...]

The Austrian President Heinz Fischer says the EU has to find a way to lift sanctions against Russia. "I always say that sanctions are disadvantageous for both sides," Fischer said at Wednesday’s meeting with Russia's State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin. "It is important to find a way to lift them in the near future." [...]

The media hype has focused on Vladimir Putin (who was actually not named) and David Cameron (who wasn't either). However, the biggest loser from the Panama Paper’s fallout just might be Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko. [...]

If ‘Get Putin’ really was the agenda behind the data leaks as some believe, then the plan seems to have backfired as it is US ally David Cameron who is currently feeling the most heat from the revelations. Suspicions that this was a ‘hit job’ on an ‘official enemy’ of the US stem from the timing of the Panama Papers release [...]

Washington is behind the recently released offshore revelations known as the Panama Papers, WikiLeaks has claimed, saying that the attack was “produced” to target Russia and President Putin. On Wednesday, the international whistleblowing organization said on Twitter that the Panama Papers data leak was produced by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), "which targets [...]

Through its dysfunctional politics and over-reliance on military force, the United States is destroying both its Republic and its imperial reach, a problem made in the USA, said former Ambassador Chas W. Freeman Jr. in a recent speech. I’m here to talk about the end of the American empire. But before I do I want to note that one of our most charming characteristics as Americans is our amnesia [...]

Mainstream U.S. journalism and propaganda are getting hard to tell apart, as with the flurry of “corruption” stories aimed at Russia’s Putin and other demonized foreign leaders, writes Robert Parry. Sadly, some important duties of journalism, such as applying evenhanded standards on human rights abuses and financial corruption, have been so corrupted by the demands of government propagand [...]

In the first instance of a prominent politician taken down by the 11.5 million documents leaked in the Panama Papers, Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson resigned on Tuesday after fully 10 percent of Iceland's population rallied in protest of his wife's secret, offshore shell company holding millions. [...]