At age 29, Brittany Maynard was diagnosed with aggressive terminal brain cancer and given only six months to live. She has since moved to Oregon, which has a death-with-dignity law, and is advocating for more assisted-death legislation in the US. After suffering from debilitating headaches, Maynard, called a vivacious, adventurous individual from birth by her mother, was diagnosed on Jan. 1 wit [...]

The Pentagon's 1033 Program, which is militarizing state and local police forces with everything from high-powered firearms to armored vehicles, is also giving weapons to officials who have no law enforcement functions. The practice is leading watchdogs and even some US government officials to question why the US military is so desperate to unload its cache of used military hardware that it is [...]

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 [...]

The election of Barack Obama in 2008 brought hope and optimism to Americans and non-Americans alike. But after one and a half terms, the reality is sinking in that for all the promised change, it’s the “same old, same old.” The big question is why, writes Australian Greg Maybury. For folks who were fans of the late, great comedian Bill Hicks, they likely will be familiar with one of his m [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

An armed man who has been convicted of assault and battery three times was somehow able to slip past the Secret Service and ride in an elevator with President Barack Obama earlier this month, several media reports have said. The incident – which reportedly took place just three days before a man with a knife in his pocket climbed over the White House fence and made it into the building – is [...]

ulian Assange has transcended the confinement of his Ecuadorian embassy asylum to attend the 2014 Nantucket Project – as a hologram. In his ghostly entirety Assange was speaking about censorship, control and manipulation of history. Speaking with filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, Assange closed the 2014 event, sharing his thoughts on importance of research and free access to information, and risks of [...]

Less than two weeks after the 13th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, three New York firefighters who worked at Ground Zero died of cancer, all on the same day, the Fire Department of New York said. Lt. Howard Bischoff, 58, and firefighters Robert Leaver, 56, and Daniel Heglund, 58, died within hours of one another Monday. [...]

The United States and its partners launched a new round of strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria on Wednesday, only hours after President Barack Obama called on the world to help end the extremist group's reign of terror in the Middle East. “I can confirm that US military and Arab partner forces are undertaking additional strikes today against ISIL terrorists in Syria,” Pentagon [...]

US whistleblower Edward Snowden was among five winners of the Swedish human rights award, announced in Stockholm on Wednesday. The decision to the honor former National Security Agency contractor might have cost the 2014 Right Livelihood Awards’ jury the ability to announce the winners from Swedish Foreign Office pressroom, a usual place for such statements since 1995, Foundation director Ole [...]

According to top-secret documents from the NSA and the British agency GCHQ, the intelligence agencies are seeking to map the entire Internet, including end-user devices. In pursuing that goal, they have broken into networks belonging to Deutsche Telekom. When it comes to choosing code names for their secret operations, American and British agents demonstrate a flare for creativity. [...]

The United States launched at least one airstrike against Islamic State militants near Baghdad on Monday, marking the expansion of the US military campaign against the extremist group. The airstrike was reportedly requested by Iraqi forces under attack. According to US officials cited by the Associated Press, the airstrike was authorized after Iraqi security forces requested air power support a [...]

US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has voiced concerns that, without sufficient protections, the age of unmanned drones and ubiquitous surveillance will usher in an "Orwellian world." Sotomayor told faculty and students at Oklahoma City University last week that technological capabilities allow devices to monitor "your conversations from miles away and through your walls." [...]

In the first-ever gathering of the world's leading whistleblowers, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald joined internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom to discuss threats to privacy worldwide. The whistleblowers came out in support of Dotcom's campaign against unaccountable surveillance by the NZ government, at an event to promote Dotcom’s [...]

US and UK intelligence services have secret access points for German telecom companies’ internal networks, Der Spiegel reports, citing slides created in the NSA’s ‘Treasure Map’ program used to get near-real-time visualization of the global internet. The latest scandal continues to evolve around the US’ NSA and the British GCHQ, both of which appear to be able to eavesdrop on German g [...]

In response to a Freedom of Information request, the NSA denies that its former NSA contractor-turned whistleblower Edward Snowden ever raised concerns in emails to colleagues to his colleagues over the agency's surveillance work. Interest in Edward Snowden’s past email communications with his former NSA colleagues arose following an interview Snowden gave to NBC News in May, when he said he [...]

Two US Navy F/A-18 Hornets have crashed in the western Pacific Ocean, the US Navy has confirmed. One pilot has been rescued, while the second is still missing. “Two F/A-18 Hornets from Carrier Air Wing 17 embarked on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) crashed at 5:40 p.m. local time, today, while operating at sea in the western Pacific Ocean,” said a statement from the US Navy. [...]

Key US allies, Turkey and Jordan, are thought to backing away from US calls for a 'bomb ISIS' coalition. Ankara is a notable absentee among the nations that signed a joint communiqué at a Thursday meeting in Saudi Arabia, where US Secretary of State John Kerry was drumming up support for the US anti-Islamist effort. Turkey refused to join 10 Arab nations, who vowed to contribute “as appropri [...]

A highly-placed Defense Ministry official says that Russia may be forced to match the US Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPGS) doctrine, which prescribes that a non-nuclear US missile must be able to hit any target on Earth within one hour. “Russia is capable of and will have to develop a similar system,” Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov said during a public discussion of the Russian [...]

A federal judge ruled that the General Services Administration (GSA) wrongly infringed on the First Amendment rights of Occupy Eugene protesters by severely restricting the hours and days they were allowed to demonstrate. The group, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement, sued the GSA for denying a permit so its members could protest in a public plaza in Eugene, Oregon in 2012. [...]