A senior Cuban official says the country is looking closely at the Special Purpose Vehicle the EU is creating for Iran, because Havana may benefit from a similar mechanism. [...]

After the incidents of sexual assault in Cologne, Germany on New Year’s Eve committed by Muslim refugees against German women, feminist apologetic have acquired renewed vigor in the European debate. Pundits and politicians assure the public that refugee males now storming the gates of Europe from the Middle East, Northern Africa and Central Asia will be required to learn that Western women ar [...]

The controversy around the Sea of ​​Azov has been created out of thin air as Kiev and its Western backers continue to search for new ways to apply pressure on Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said. [...]

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 US has long planned to withdraw from the INF Treaty but it's only now that they started seeking justifications for it and conveniently pinned the blame on Russia, Vladimir Putin said after Washington’s 60-day ultimatum. [...]

Germany has been giving “financial incentives” to the embassies of some African countries to accept asylum seekers from third states who have been rejected by Germany without the consent of the migrants, a refugee aid organization claims. [...]

In 2018, Russia's relations with Western countries severely deteriorated against the backdrop of numerous scandals and sanctions. In an interview with Sputnik on the eve of 2019, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, spoke about whether we should wait for further alienation, about Moscow's possible response to Washington scrapping the INF Treaty, the price of a potential conflict between Russia [...]

The Copenhagen City Council on Tuesday is expected to approve a vote to divest the city's investment fund, worth 6.9 billion kroner, or roughly $1 billion USD, from all its fossil fuels holdings. If the vote passes, the Danish capital will sell off its stocks and bonds in coal, oil, and gas in its continued effort to become "the world’s first CO2-neutral capital by 2025," Mayor Frank Jensen told [...]

Source: Bogdan Khmelnytskyi / iStock A record number of Americans are forecast to travel to other countries this year, buoyed by a strong dollar and a surging economy. Last year, the number of U.S. visits overseas rose by 9.1% from the previous year to 38.3 million, according to data from U.S. Department of Commerce, International […] [...]

Raw Milk Sales May Soon Be Legal in New Jersey . New bill moving through legislature will legalize raw milk sales. Assemblymen John DiMiao (R-Dist. 23) introduced Assembly Bill 696 (A696) on Jan. 27. The legislation would allow holders of a raw milk permit “to sell, offer for sale or otherwise make available raw milk directly to consumers but only at the farm or property where the raw milk is [...]

Over 61,000 professional aircraft pilots are telling Trump to end the government shutdown, warning of security threats in US skies. With US President Donald Trump hunkered down in the White House tweeting his new "presidential harassment" slogan regarding the growing political opposition on Capitol Hill at the hands of a newly Democratic House of Representatives, US airline pilots have released on [...]

The magnitude of Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire drubbing has establishment Democrats wringing their hands as it dawns on them that no candidate in modern U.S. political history has bounced back from a 22-point loss in that first-in-the-nation primary to win the White House, reports Robert Parry. [...]

Earlier, President Trump accused the "Radical Democrats" of being a "Party of open borders and crime" amid the ongoing government shutdown standoff over funding for the US-Mexico border wall. [...]

The Syrian government has accepted the terms of a ceasefire deal announced by the US and Russia, a foreign ministry source said, as cited by Sana news agency. But Damascus wants the fight against terrorists such as Islamic State to continue. [...]

A TSA agent has jumped off a hotel balcony inside Orlando International Airport in an apparent suicide. The incident saw panicked passengers rushing through checkpoints, causing nearly 100 flights to be cancelled. [...]

Step back from the campaign fray for just a moment and consider the enormity of what’s already occurred. A 74-year-old Jew from Vermont who describes himself as a democratic socialist, who wasn’t even a Democrat until recently, has come within a whisker of beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus, routed her in the New Hampshire primary, and garnered over 47 percent of the caucus-goers in [...]

US State Secretary Mike Pompeo's quest to scare Hungary away from dealing with Russia and China appears to have turned sour, as Budapest said it's fed up with lectures about its foreign policy. [...]

Facing an increase in domestic terrorism, Turkish President Erdogan's government is scrambling to fine-tune its terrorist prevention methods and plans to purchase a number of new intelligence and surveillance systems. Last October, suicide bombers killed over 100 peace activists in Ankara. In January, a radical Islamist killed ten in Istanbul. Earlier this month, an attacker killed nearly 30 pe [...]

Ratings agency S&P Global said governments are continuing to run up huge debt levels and will borrow an equivalent of $7.78 trillion this year, which would be up 3.2 percent on 2018. That will come as another jump in borrowing to take the global mountain of sovereign debt to $50 trillion in 2019. [...]

Amid official economic statistics that claim “the world’s largest paper economy is in a marvelous recovery” and the insistence of leading US economists that the national debt doesn’t matter as it is owed to itself, geopolitical analyst F. William Engdahl argues that the country is almost bankrupt and its end could be nearer than any of us imagine. [...]

Following the defeat of the UK government over its Brexit deal on Tuesday and ahead of the decision on a no-deal exit on Wednesday, the EU27 hold a unanimous view, according to the Austrian Chancellor. [...]

Consistent disregard of Russia’s interests by the US, as well as Washington’s dismissive attitude towards Moscow in the post-Cold War era, have led to strained relations between the two, former US Defense Secretary William Perry told the Guardian. [...]