"This can't be America's fight alone," US President Barack Obama stressed in his ISIS speech. Indeed, about 40 countries have joined the battle with the radical group that's left scores dead in Iraq. But who does what on that battlefield? The main role is still with the US, which has already carried out over 150 airstrikes against the Islamic State (also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and t [...]

UK airstrikes against Islamic State extremists in Syria could be illegal without the agreement of President Bashar Assad's government or a UN Security Council resolution, according to a House of Commons Library assessment. Prime Minister David Cameron will recall MPs to parliament to outline his plans for deeper military intervention in Iraq and Syria when he returns from the UN General Assembl [...]

Iran has refused an offer from the United States to join a global alliance preparing to combat Islamic State militants, according to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei said Monday that the US offered to discuss a coordinated effort with Iran against Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS or ISIL), a common foe in the region, in the midst of an escalating campaign of violence [...]

In the first-ever gathering of the world's leading whistleblowers, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald joined internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom to discuss threats to privacy worldwide. The whistleblowers came out in support of Dotcom's campaign against unaccountable surveillance by the NZ government, at an event to promote Dotcom’s [...]

The heads of Iran and Russia’s state-run nuclear agencies discussed the construction of new nuclear plants in Iran during a meeting held on Friday around the same time that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, also sat down for a chat about Tehran’s ongoing nuclear negotiations with the West, according to regional reports. [...]

Russia considers the latest round of Western sanctions illegal and is ready to appeal against them to the World Trade Organization (WTO), Russian Economy Minister Aleksey Ulyukaev told reporters on Friday. “The latest round of sanctions provides grounds to appeal to the WTO. And we will appeal,” Ulyukaev said. [...]

What’s wrong with this picture? Israel gets $3 billion a year in military aid from the US. Over the last 60 years, the Jewish state has received about $250 billion worth of airplanes and armaments. Yet when Obama appeals for a “a broad international coalition” to fight ISIS, which supposedly threatens the whole Middle East, Israel is not asked to join. Canada, Germany, Australia, France, T [...]

Sterling falls sharply to lowest level since November 2013 as surge in support for pro-independence campaign rattles markets. The pound has slumped to a 10-month low after the yes campaign took the lead in the opinion polls just 10 days before the Scottish independence vote. [...]

London - Friday 19 September 2014, the morning after Scotland votes for independence from the UK. And David Cameron said to Alastair Darling, “Stretch out your hand over Scotland so that locusts swarm over the land and devour everything growing in the fields, everything left by the hail.” So Darling stretched out his staff over Scotland, and Cameron made an east wind blow across the land al [...]

The US has no real plan for tackling the Islamic State in Syria, with airstrikes and arms supplies to the unreliable opposition announced “just to do something,” Matthew Hoh, former US marine and analyst at the Center for International Policy, told RT. Damascus has warned that unauthorized US airstrikes in Syria would be tantamount to an act of war, with Moscow stressing that such action ca [...]

NATO member states have started supplying weapons to Ukraine, the country's Defense Minister said on TV. His comments came a few days after a similar statement by a Ukrainian presidential aide sparked a diplomatic scandal and a rash of denials. In an interview with Channel 5, Ukrainian Defense Minister Valery Geletey said that he had held verbal consultations with the defense ministers of the � [...]

Failure by the US to investigate Saudi Arabia’s connection to the 9/11 attacks is among the factors that led to the rise of ISIS, Bob Graham, a former senator and co-chairman of the official inquiry into 9/11, told The Independent in an interview. Graham has expressed doubts about the US’s reliance on Saudi Arabia as an ally in fight against Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL). [...]

Islamic State jihadists have released a video which they claim shows the beheading of a 44-year-old British aid worker, David Haines, who has been held hostage since his abduction last year. The masked man in the latest video released across social media on Saturday night claims that Haines was killed because of UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s pledge to arm Kurdish forces in order to battle [...]

US and UK intelligence services have secret access points for German telecom companies’ internal networks, Der Spiegel reports, citing slides created in the NSA’s ‘Treasure Map’ program used to get near-real-time visualization of the global internet. The latest scandal continues to evolve around the US’ NSA and the British GCHQ, both of which appear to be able to eavesdrop on German g [...]

Sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and the EU are a part of a larger military agenda agreed by NATO in a summit 2014, Michel Chossudovsky, of the Centre for Research and Globalisation, told RT, calling such a strategy economic and financial warfare. Despite the truce in Ukraine, the EU and the US went ahead with fresh rounds of sanctions – why was the de-escalation of the conflict in the e [...]

The last truck from Russia's second humanitarian aid convoy to the Eastern Ukrainian city of Lugansk has returned home after delivering its cargo. All vehicles had reached the Ukrainian-Russian border without incidents and the last of them crossed the border in the direction of Russia at around 6:30 pm local time (2:30 pm GMT). [...]

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has officially authorized the OSCE mission in Ukraine to deploy drones in order to monitor compliance with the ceasefire terms agreed last week between the government and the self-proclaimed eastern republics. “In order to keep the conditions of the ceasefire, the Ukrainian President and OSCE Chairperson Didier Burkhalter agreed on the matter of a substant [...]

"We need the money," said Emilio T. Gonzales, director of Citizenship and Immigration Services in a May 30, 2007 article in the LA Times. Citizenship Renunciation Fee up more than 400% as of as of Sept. 12, 2014! [...]

Pope Francis has compared the current situation internationally to a third World War “fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres and destruction.” Calling wars irrational, the Pontiff lamented conflicts are often “justified by an ideology.” "War is irrational; its only plan is to bring destruction: it seeks to grow by destroying," Francis said while visiting Italy’s largest war memorial [...]

All 200 trucks in Russia's 2nd convoy carrying humanitarian aid for devastated areas of eastern Ukraine have arrived in the city of Lugansk after weeks of delays that occurred despite an agreement on relief corridors in the Minsk ceasefire deal. Six of the nine trucks carrying medicines have been unloaded, RIA Novosti reports. [...]

In response to a Freedom of Information request, the NSA denies that its former NSA contractor-turned whistleblower Edward Snowden ever raised concerns in emails to colleagues to his colleagues over the agency's surveillance work. Interest in Edward Snowden’s past email communications with his former NSA colleagues arose following an interview Snowden gave to NBC News in May, when he said he [...]

The report on the Malaysian jet crash is very "calm" and doesn't provide much information about the tragedy, said Russian FM Sergey Lavrov. He added that despite all the hype around the crash, the investigators do not seem to be in a hurry. In a Saturday interview to Russian channel TV-Center, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov revealed he was disappointed by the latest report from Dutch experts on [...]