Prime Minister David Cameron says members of the so-called Islamic State (IS) responsible for the murder of British hostage Alan Henning "will be hunted down and face justice." The PM's warning comes as militants threatened to murder a fifth hostage. On Saturday Cameron met with security chiefs and the Foreign Office at his official country residence Chequers to discuss the murder of Henning, D [...]

Video footage of American officials force feeding inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison complex in Cuba cannot be kept secret and must be released to the public, a federal judge ruled on Friday. Specifically, US District Court Judge Gladys Kessler said the US government must release 28 videos that show hunger-striking inmate Abu Wa’el Dhiab – a Syrian man who has been in custody since 2002 � [...]

Intelligence service BND failed to protect the private data of German citizens as it handed over internet data collected at a Frankfurt traffic hub to the US, German media report citing secret documents. The documents cited by VDR and EDR television and the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which broke the news together, were obtained from the federal government during an ongoing parliamentary in [...]

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed he would wash his hands of Joe Biden if reports that the US vice president blamed Turkey in part for the rise of the so-called Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) were true. On Thursday, Biden said his “old friend” Erdogan had admitted to making a mistake in allowing foreign fighters to cross the Turkish border into Syria. [...]

For the past three years, Official Washington has viewed the Syrian civil war as “white-hatted” rebels against “black-hatted” President Assad, but finally some of the “gray-hatted” reality is breaking through, though perhaps too late, Robert Parry reports. By Robert Parry In late summer 2013, Official Washington was rushing to the judgment that the “evil” Syrian President Bas [...]

Armenia has decided to hang its hat with its former Soviet ally Russia instead of joining a European free-trade agreement, President Serzh Sarksyan announced after meeting with Vladimir Putin. Armenia said it would join Russia in the Customs Union, as well as engage in the Eurasian integration process instead of negotiating a free trade agreement with the EU. [...]

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law ratifying a historic treaty, committing Russia to an economic union with Belarus and Kazakhstan. The Eurasian Economic Union will come into effect in January 2015. Putin’s signature in the document puts the final dot in Russia’s ratification of the union which will be in place on January 1, 2015, as the other union states are expected to com [...]

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 [...]

Whenever the public right to know comes under attack, a heavy responsibility falls on the journalist. When I was 17, my teacher told the class this salient information. Did the Western mainstream media learn it too or have they simply forgotten it? “News is what someone wants to stop (you) from printing; all the rest is ads.”- William Randolph Hearst. [...]

The Russian government has decided to pull out of a major student exchange program with the US. The American side apparently violated the terms and conditions, with a Russian schoolboy not returning home, having been adopted by a gay couple. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented a note to the US Embassy in Moscow, saying that the country is canceling the largest US-Russian educational excha [...]

The Swiss Red Cross worker, who died in Donetsk shelling on Thursday, was killed on a rebel-held territory as a result of an attack from the position controlled by Kiev's armed forces, Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “We note the hectic reaction of the Kiev authorities, who hurried to shift the blame for the death of the employee of this established international organization [ [...]

Within the context of the recent 58th IAEA General Conference held in Vienna on September 22-26, it is worth making an overview of Russia's position in this important and sophisticated global industry. Civil nuclear energy is fascinating, promising and complicated. In the right hands it is able to bring power to remote parts of the world, move huge icebreakers and cure people. [...]

Sweden's newly-formed center-left government is set to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state, said Prime Minister Stefan Lofven. If Stockholm proceeds with the move it will be the first EU-member to officially endorse Palestinian statehood. "The conflict between Israel can only be solved with a two-state solution, negotiated in accordance with international law," Lofven said in the parliamen [...]

Moscow is ready to support Ukraine in its overcoming of the crisis, as the recovery of the bordering country is in Russia's national interests, President Putin said, adding that the state is keen to have a 'reliable, predictable partner and neighbor.' Speaking at VTB’s Russia Calling! annual investment forum on Thursday, Putin said Russia's “closest, fraternal” nation is now in deep polit [...]

US Vice-President Joe Biden has accused America's key allies in the Middle East of allowing the rise of the Islamic State (IS), saying they supported extremists with money and weapons in their eagerness to oust the Assad regime in Syria. America’s “biggest problem” in Syria is its regional allies, Biden told students at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Institute of Politics at Harvard [...]

Canberra has authorized deployment of special forces to Iraq to join operation against militants of the Islamic State. From now on, the Australian Air Force craft present in the region will also take part in combat missions against terrorists. It has only ever been a matter of time that Australia’s 600 military personnel and aircraft deployed to a United Arab Emirates airbase in mid-September [...]

Fear of extremism has led to Austria having drafted amendments to a 102-year-old law on Islam. Muslim organizations are to be banned from being financed from abroad, while the Koran is to get a unified German-language translation. The amendments have already been criticized for singling out Islam, which has so far existed in Austria on equal terms with other religions like Catholicism, Lutheran [...]

Islamic State has been a key foreign policy instrument for the US and a number of its allies and become one of the main drivers of the rebellion in Syria, Charles Shoebridge, security analyst and former British army officer, told RT. The US has one of the most powerful intelligence services in the world, but reports suggest it's not robust enough to target jihadists and safeguard civilians. How [...]

Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia have together re-exported 1.7 billion cubic meters of Russian gas to Ukraine, Gazprom, Russia's biggest gas exporter said Friday, questioning the legality of the practice. “There is every reason to believe that Russian gas is being delivered to Ukraine that isn’t intended for them, but for other European customers. [...]

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.” [...]

Secret Service Director Julia Pierson resigned from her post atop the security detail in charge of protecting United States President Barack Obama on Wednesday following several recent serious breaches. Pierson, who was appointed only last year to head the US Secret Service after the agency’s reputation was marred by events that preceded her tenure as director, testified on Capitol Hill earli [...]

Washington harshly criticized Israel's decision to move forward with new settlements in east Jerusalem on Wednesday, adding that the plan could alienate Tel Aviv from "even its closest allies." US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the development – which calls for more than 2,600 new homes in a highly contested area of east Jerusalem – would make world nations “question Israel� [...]