AP is reporting: “Satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press confirm what church leaders and Middle East preservationists had feared: The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State group’s relentless destruction of heritage sites it considers heretical.” [...]

In order to justify regime change strategies in certain countries, official Washington demonizes their leaders, making them objects of revulsion and ridicule and thus influencing opinions of the American people, a game particularly dangerous when played against the leader of nuclear-armed Russia, according to an American psychology professor. [...]

A waitress at a bar in Austria, which controversially banned asylum seekers after some of them sexually harassed the female clients there, is pressing charges after migrants sexually assaulted her on New Year's Eve, she told Sputnik. Steffi G, a 19 year old waitress at Charly's Bar in the Austrian town of Bad Ischl, told Sputnik German that she is pressing charges after migrants sexually assaul [...]

After the 2014 coup ousting Ukraine’s elected President Yanukovych, the mainstream U.S. media hailed this unconstitutional move as a victory for “democracy” while ignoring the darker side, neo-Nazis coddled by the U.S. government since the Cold War, as Robert Parry wrote four days after the putsch. [...]

As public anger toward America’s self-interested establishment bubbles into a boil, the mainstream media has grown frantic appealing to the masses to “stay sane,” reject populism — especially Bernie Sanders’s variety — and renew the establishment’s lease on the White House, as Norman Solomon notes. For a long time, as he campaigned for President, a wide spectrum of establishment m [...]

Few Americans understand the ugly history behind the Nazi-affiliated movements that have gained substantial power in today’s U.S.-backed Ukrainian regime. Western propaganda has made these right-wing extremists the “good guys” versus the Russian “bad guys,” as Jonathan Marshall explains. The latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine, one of the leading journals in its field, offers a tw [...]

Former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton is the only candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination who supported the invasion of Iraq. That war not only resulted in 4,500 American soldiers being killed and thousands more permanently disabled, but also hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, the destabilization of the region with the rise of the Islamic State and other ex [...]

A newly obtained document and related emails released on Thursday show that while the residents of Flint, Michigan were slowly being poisoned by lead-contaminated water last year, the offices of state officials in the city were "quietly" outfitted with water coolers by Gov. Rick Snyder's administration. [...]

The Post, Owned by Man Worth $53.2 Billion, Really Doesn't Like Bernie Sanders. The Washington Post has been on something of an anti-Sanders kick lately. Its latest editorial, Bernie Sanders’s fiction-filled campaign, is somehow worse than its last one, [...]

"The arguments against divestment are all quickly falling away," said Jamie Henn, communications director for 350.org, after United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged financial leaders to double their clean energy investments by 2020 at a global investor summit on Wednesday.   [...]

With wall-to-wall crowds, climbing poll numbers, and a wave of critical new endorsements, less than one week before the primary contests officially commence, Bernie Sanders is riding high. Two new polls out on Wednesday show that the senator from Vermont is not only holding fast on his lead in Iowa, but also continues to gain against frontrunner Hillary Clinton nationally. [...]

Europe is on a dangerous, slippery slope of increasing xenophobia and racism engendered by the influx of refugees. Denmark’s new confiscation law is a sign of the brooding, baleful climate. But the real answer to the problem is dealing with Europe’s support for Washington’s criminal wars. [...]

Noam Chomsky, the noted radical and MIT professor emeritus, said the Republican Party has become so extreme in its rhetoric and policies that it poses a “serious danger to human survival.” “Today, the Republican Party has drifted off the rails,” Chomsky, a frequent critic of both parties, said in an interview Monday with The Huffington Post. [...]

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. [...]