Ukrainian and American naval forces are taking part in joint maritime drills dubbed Sea Breeze 2014, which began on Monday in the northwestern part of the Black Sea and will last till September 10. “Today in the north-west part of the Black Sea, we are beginning the joint Navy exercises of Ukraine and the US, known as ‘Sea Breeze 2014’. The exercises will continue until September 10. The [...]

Arms firms that provide core military components for drones deployed by the US to conduct covert strikes in violation of international law allegedly bought access to NATO's summit in Wales last week, a British human rights charity says. The defense companies concerned doled out up to £300,000 to ‘exhibit’ their military wares at the conference in Newport. Among the firms present were Gener [...]

America – its government, businesses, and people – are nearly $60 trillion in debt, according to the latest economic data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve. And private debt – not government borrowing – is the biggest reason for the huge deficit. Total US debt at the end of the first quarter of 2014, on March 31 totaled almost $59.4 trillion – up nearly $500 billion from the end of t [...]

The widening gap between America's richest and the middle and working classes is unsustainable and is unlikely to improve a survey released on Monday by the Harvard Business School has found. The study which is called “an economy doing half its job” said that while large American companies were showing signs of recovery and were maintaining their competitive edge on the world stage, many mi [...]

Major airlines saw stock shares nosedive on Wednesday, after media reports said that Russia could block flights over Siberia. However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the reports are simply rumors. “I’m not an advocate of using the method of bans and creating real problems for passengers, ordinary citizens who have absolutely no connection to the actions of those who unleashed t [...]

Switzerland has reportedly decided it will not extradite National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden to the US if he comes to testify against the NSA's spying activities, Swiss media said. In the document, titled “What rules are to be followed if Edward Snowden is brought to Switzerland and then the United States makes an extradition request,” Switzerland’s Attorney General stat [...]

A 2009 intelligence document provided to journalists by former government contractor Edward Snowden suggests the United States weighed someday conducting espionage to prevent losing its economic prowess to other countries. The document, published first by The Intercept on Friday this week, outlines tactics the American intelligence community may implement in the future in the event of certain s [...]

Nearly 500 protesters were arrested in three dozen US cities on Thursday as fast-food workers and supporters staged sit-ins and acts of civil disobedience nationwide to call attention to their low wages and lack of union representation. Organizers of the strike said that, all told, actions at fast-food restaurants occurred at about 150 cities nationwide, from Manhattan’s Times Square to Littl [...]

A federal judge on Thursday said oil giant BP acted with gross negligence ahead of the catastrophic 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico, paving the way for the corporation to pay perhaps billions of dollars in fines. “BP’s conduct was reckless,” United States District Judge Carl Barbier wrote in a decision handed down early Thursday from a federal courthouse in Louisiana. [...]

If the massive supervolcano at Yellowstone National Park erupted again, scientists believe it would blanket much of the United States in ash and potentially sever communication as well as travel between the country's coasts. According to a new study published by the US Geological Survey, cities about 300 miles away from the volcano’s location in Wyoming would be covered in up to three feet of [...]

Evidence of America's widening wealth gap since the 2007 financial crisis show that the bottom tier of US income earners is falling rapidly behind on the nutrition front. Meanwhile, the diets of higher wage earners are also sub-par. Despite government efforts to promote nutritional awareness, a 12-year study shows that eating habits in the United States remain a national concern. [...]

With the escalating Ukrainian crisis towards the top of the agenda at this week's NATO summit in Wales, a group of former American intelligence workers is urging the alliance to be careful before crafting a response. Sixty foreign leaders and dozens of diplomats and defense officials from around the globe will convene at the event this week and are expected to approve a plan that calls for asse [...]

After months of failed telephone diplomacy between Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin, hardliners are gaining the upper hand in discussions over the appropriate response to Russia. They may soon prevail with demands that go far beyond new economic sanctions. [...]

America’s war hawks, including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, were thrilled by the Libyan “regime change” engineered through a U.S.- European bombing campaign in 2011. But now with Libya torn by civil war and Arab powers intervening, the “victory” has a bitter aftertaste, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains. [...]

Alarmed at the anti-Russian hysteria sweeping Official Washington – and the specter of a new Cold War U.S. intelligence veterans took the unusual step of sending this Aug. 30 memo to German Chancellor Merkel challenging the reliability of Ukrainian and U.S. media claims about a Russian “invasion.” [...]

In an August 29 editorial calling for the US and NATO to adopt a retaliatory policy against Russia over its alleged “large and unacceptable escalation of … aggression against Ukraine,” the New York Times asserts in passing that after rebels in eastern Ukraine “shot down a Malaysian jetliner with a Russian missile … Russia’s involvement became more overt.” [...]

Marsha Coleman-Adebayo recently co-wrote “No Rights that a White Man is Bound to Respect” for Black Agenda Report. She will be speaking at a rally outside the Justice Department Wednesday afternoon “to call on the Attorney General to help secure justice for Michael Brown and the people of Ferguson, Missouri, as well as an overhaul of U.S. law enforcement tactics in order to stop police bruta [...]

Documents from the archive of whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal wide-scale spying against Turkey by America's NSA and Britain's GCHQ. They also show the US worked closely with Ankara to battle Kurdish separatists. On a December night in 2011, a terrible thing happened on Mount Cudi, near the Turkish-Iraqi border. One side described it as a massacre; the other called it an accident. [...]

The rally in Berlin against federal surveillance gathered thousands of people under the motto "Freedom not fear," who were calling for stricter control of German intelligence agencies. The organizers said about 6,500 demonstrators, a broad coalition of pro-transparency, anti-surveillance and civil rights groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reporters Without Borders, Digital Cou [...]

Around 110 million Americans are now receiving welfare benefits, including food stamps, Medicaid and subsidized housing. This has prompted calls to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. A third of Americans are now on welfare benefits, prompting calls to raise the minimum wage and encourage more people to stay in work. [...]

Microsoft has been told it must handover emails stored abroad to US prosecutors by a New York court. However, the software giant says it will fight the ruling, saying that an email deserves the same privacy protection as a paper letter sent by mail. The company says they will not release any emails to US authorities, while it appeals the ruling, made by Chief Judge Loretta Preska of the US Dist [...]

A New Jersey woman who worked four jobs, who sometimes "wouldn't sleep for five days," according to a co-worker, died Monday while napping between shifts in her car on the side of the road. Maria Fernandes died in her 2001 Kia Sportage after inhaling carbon monoxide and fumes from an overturned gas container she kept in the car, according to the New York Daily News. [...]