After endangering -- and knowingly harming -- residents in Flint, Michigan, the government is reportedly threatening to take the children of those who opt not to pay to have the toxic water pumped into their homes. According to Michigan law, parents are considered to be neglectful if they do not have running water in their home, so if they do not pay for Flint’s poisonous water, they could be [...]

Police said 11,000 people have gathered in the Moldovan capital on Sunday for anti-government protests, disputing organizers' estimates of 100,000 demonstrators. CHISINAU (Sputnik) – Supporters of center-right and left-wing parties took to the streets to voice opposition to the appointment of a new prime minister and to call for snap elections. [...]

One of the charms of the future is its powerful element of unpredictability, its ability to ambush us in lovely ways or bite us unexpectedly in the ass. Most of the futures I imagined as a boy have, for instance, come up deeply short, or else I would now be flying my individual jet pack through the spired cityscape of New York and vacationing on the moon. [...]

While the dangers of a power system based on the burning of fossil fuels are increasingly apparent, a new report on Monday argues that a rapid, affordable energy transformation is, in fact, within our grasp. Within 15 years, the United States could slash greenhouse gas emissions from power production by nearly 80 percent below 1990 levels without increasing cost and, at the same time, meeting i [...]

Hillary Clinton represents 'status quo,' says Justin Bamberg, who is representing the family of Walter Scott, a black man shot and killed last year by a police officer. In what political observers are describing as a "big get" for the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, a prominent South Carolina lawmaker and lawyer said Monday he is switching his support from Hillary Clinton and endorsing [...]

There is a real fear among the powers that be not of what Bernie Sanders is, but what he could become, says political analyst Caleb Maupin. Rallies in support of Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders have drawn thousands across the US. [...]

The World Economic Forum in Davos is submerged by a tsunami of denials, and even non-denial denials, stating there won’t be a follow-up to the Crash of 2008. Yet there will be. And the stage is already set for it. Selected Persian Gulf traders, and that includes Westerners working in the Gulf confirm that Saudi Arabia is unloading at least $1 trillion in securities and crashing [...]

Pretty much all that Americans – and much of the West – get to hear about Russian President Putin is heavy-handed propaganda often read over images of him riding shirtless on a horse. He’s either a bully or a buffoon. But editors of a popular German newspaper encountered a much more sophisticated figure, writes Gilbert Doctorow. I was hesitant to write about Vladimir Putin’s recent inte [...]

The 2008 Wall Street crash resulted from a combination of unrestrained greed and political contempt for government regulators who might have prevented the devastation. In The Big Short, the tale is told from the perspective of a few players who saw the inevitable and made money on the crash, writes James DiEugenio. If you read Michael Lewis’s book The Big Short or see the movie by the same na [...]

The goal? A total revamp of the economic system that sidelines the interests of the majority. The time? Now. And the stakes couldn't be higher. At issue is the global inequality crisis that is "spiraling out of control," an alliance of nine groups including Amnesty International, Association for Women's Rights in Development, Greenpeace, International Trade Union Confederation, and Oxfam says, [...]

The US economy is generating breathtaking wealth for an elite minority of the population at the expense of millions of people now tumbling through the gaping cracks of the system. So why do we continue to watch the painful spectacle year after year? America’s once-glorified middle-class is on its way to being relegated to the history books; an artifact of a bygone era when good-paying jobs, c [...]

When the French Prime Minister starts talking of the "end of Europe" and Germany announces indefinite border controls amid the growing refugee crisis - it is time to get concerned. The crisis is not new, so why the sudden panic? The answer lies in the fact that next year – 2017 – the French will go to the polls to elect its president and Germany votes-in a new Bundestag. [...]

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the US and EU will bring Europe more problems than benefits, Bulgarian economist Nina Djulgerova told Radio Sputnik. The critics of the TTIP have long instated that US companies will make trade negotiations instrumental in their attempts to alter European economic laws. [...]

Germany shuts its eyes to the mass killings of the Kurds in southeastern Turkey, the illegal oil trade and Turkey's collaboration with Daesh terrorists, hoping that the Turkish President will help Europe to reduce the inflow of migrants, German newspaper Handelsblatt wrote. German Chancellor Angela Merkel ignores the fact that Turkish President Erdogan is waging war against his own people and c [...]

Since March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition has been bombing Yemen after Houthi rebels toppled its government. According to political analyst Catherine Shakdam, the international community turns a blind eye on Riyadh's war crimes in Yemen. At least 20 people, including rescue workers and an ambulance [...]

American business magnate and investor George Soros no longer views Russia as an enemy of the EU and is now openly calling on Brussels to cooperate with Moscow, German newspaper Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (DWN) wrote. According to him, the European Union may soon collapse due [...]

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). [...]