A breakup of the Schengen area amid the crisis the European Union is now going through will have an immediate impact on the euro and the European economy as a whole, Deutsche Welle warned on Saturday. Brussels is fully aware of the fact that if the European countries fail to get the situation under control and agree urgent measures to end the migrant crisis, it would spell the end of the Scheng [...]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Time magazine’s “person of the year” in 2015, is facing her biggest political crisis as her welcoming of Mideast refugees has troubled and angered many Europeans, raising the possibility that Merkel’s days as the Continent’s undisputed leader may be numbered, writes Gilbert Doctorow. The online edition of Bloomberg News carried a lead story entitled � [...]

When Sunday’s Democratic presidential debate turned to world affairs, the NBC correspondents and both Sen. Sanders and ex-Secretary Clinton fell in line behind “group thinks” about Syria, Iran and Russia that lack evidentiary support, writes Robert Parry. A curious reality about Official Washington is that to have “credibility” you must accept the dominant “group thinks” whether t [...]

The father of a young American who died aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is pressing Secretary of State John Kerry to release evidence to support his early claims that the U.S. government possessed details about the launch of the missile that killed 298 people, reports Robert Parry. The father of Quinn Schansman, the only American citizen to die in the 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Fli [...]

Stunned by falling poll numbers, Hillary Clinton is hoping that Democrats will rally to her neocon-oriented foreign policy and break with Bernie Sanders as insufficiently devoted to Israel. But will that hawkish strategy work this time, asks Robert Parry. In seeking to put Sen. Bernie Sanders on the defensive over his foreign policy positions, ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is embracing [...]

The final tally is in: 2015 was the hottest year in recorded history—by a record-breaking margin. On Wednesday, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced the official record for last year's runaway temperatures, which by NOAA's calculation hit an average of 58.62 degrees Fahrenheit (14.79 degrees Celsius). [...]

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday released a report urging the European countries accepting a majority of refugees to "temporarily" pay them less than minimum wage. In its report, the IMF recommended implementing a short-term differentiation between asylum seekers and EU [...]

Just two days after a poll showed Bernie Sanders 'trouncing' the national frontrunner Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, a new survey of Iowa voters released late Thursday afternoon shows Sanders with a "solid" 8-point lead over his rival in the early caucus state. [...]

The idea of a single-payer healthcare system has entered the presidential debates—and that's a very good thing, a doctors group says, as it is "only equitable, financially responsible and humane cure for our healthcare ills." [...]

In the last years of the 20th century fraud entered US foreign policy in a new way. On false pretenses Washington dismantled Yugoslavia and Serbia in order to advance undeclared agenda. In the 21st century this fraud multiplied many times. Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya were destroyed, and Iran and Syria would also have been destroyed if the President of Russia had not prevented it. [...]

The financial situation in the world has become so unstable that a new wave of defaults and bankruptcies will soon emerge, says William White, the chairman of the OECD's review committee and former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). [...]

Early U.S. presidents warned that foreign entanglements could endanger the Republic, but it turns out that modern U.S. interventions are hazardous to the rest of the world as well, achieving neither democracy nor human rights, while spreading chaos and death, a tragic turn addressed by ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller. [...]

The independent senator from Vermont says the economic system is rigged against working-class Americans. He’s right. The electoral political system is a subsidiary of those who rule the economy. Which is why Bernie Sanders never stood a chance. The political system was rigged against him. [...]

German tabloid Bild has accused starving residents of the Syrian town of Madaya of being “actors.” But RT's correspondent believes some media simply dislike what people suffering from malnutrition had to say about rebels selling off government aid. Last week RT’s Murad Gazdiev accompanied the Red Cross and the UN convoy that brought food to the besieged Syrian town of Madaya, some 44km no [...]

As a new poll out Thursday shows Bernie Sanders practically tied with Hillary Clinton in Iowa, the Vermont senator's campaign is reporting a surge of donations in response to the former Secretary of State's "panic attacks" earlier this week. "As of now, we are at about $1.4 million raised since yesterday when the panic attacks by the Clinton campaign began," said Sanders spokesman Michael Brigg [...]

Finnish women have offered lone refugee boys €20 for sex, a Helsinki-based tabloid wrote on Friday. Elderly Finnish women are believed to have offered lone migrant teens money for having sex with them, Inta-Sanomat wrote. [...]

According to Seymour Hersh, one of America’s best-known investigative journalists, the US recognizes Russia’s military success in Syria. Russians have acted in a very professional manner and managed to strengthen the Syrian Army, while US policy in the region has remained inconsistent [...]

Vladimir Putin's first big interview of the year was with Germany's leading newspaper Bild. Nikolaus Blome, Bild's deputy editor-in-chief who spoke to the Russian president, told Deutsche Welle that he was "happy with the result" and shared what impressed him the most. "Although I was aware of that, I was still surprised by how well [Putin] speaks German and understands the subtleties of the la [...]

The Hill reports in “Obama, Democrats at odds before State of the Union address” that “a group of House Democrats on Monday held a press conference introducing the State of the Union … by condemning the TPP, a mammoth trade deal among 12 Pacific Rim countries that would encompass as much as 40 percent of the world’s economy.” [...]

The grip that neocons and liberal interventionists have on Official Washington’s opinion circles is now so strong that “realists” who once provided an important counterbalance have been almost banished from foreign policy debates, a dangerous dilemma that James W Carden explores. In a widely remarked upon article for the online version of Foreign Policy last week, Harvard’s Stephen Walt [...]

The Kremlin has found a new ally in the Kurds during its anti-terrorist campaign in Syria. They are effective in pushing Daesh (ISIS/ISIL) and other terrorist groups out of key areas in Syria, French political journalist Olivier d’Auzon wrote for Le Huffington Post. Turkey's decision to shoot down a Russian Su-24 bomber in November made Moscow furious; in turn, the Kremlin decided to support [...]

Washington's constant attempts to impose its own vision of an ideal state system on Moscow are a huge mistake. While it might be acceptable to more modest, smaller countries, it is not to be tolerated by such a heavyweight, according to Matt Rojansky, Director of the Kennan Institute. [...]