Ukrainian National Guard troops are protesting outside the presidential administration office in Kiev as they demand demobilization. They are refusing to return to their barracks outside the capital. About 200 soldiers have surrounded the building claiming they have served six months longer than their contracts stipulated. [...]

NATO and Afghan officials are disputing an airstrike in E. Afghanistan that killed at least seven people. An Afghan official said all the dead were civilians, including a 12-year-old child, but NATO said the "precision" strike only killed militants. Abdul Wali Sahi, deputy governor of Paktia province, told Reuters that villagers had found seven bodies in the Udkey area of Gardez city and brough [...]

In two months, Russia is planning to send a new experimental vaccine against Ebola to Africa, according to the country's health minister. The efficiency of the drug, which is to be tested on the ground, is about 70-90 percent. “Today we are discussing that we will have enough of Triazoverin vaccine in two months so that we can send them to our personnel in Guinea and test its efficiency in cl [...]

The Catholic Church, which previously condemned homosexuality as "intrinsically disordered," is considering embracing homosexual believers, as well as partially accepting same-sex, and other religiously unsanctioned partnerships. [...]

An investigation concerning the use of federal civil forfeiture law by local law enforcement agencies across the United States has exposed problems with a routine but rarely discussed police tactic. After obtaining 43,000 reports from agencies across the United States, journalists at the Washington Post wrote over the weekend that the budgets of police departments and drug task forces are being [...]

Terror tactics have always been partly theater designed to elicit public reaction, whether to draw attention to a grievance or to draw the U.S. military into a conflict. Yet, American pols and pundits seem to have forgotten this reality and thus continue to get manipulated, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar. International terrorism has evolved in significant ways even just in what could be c [...]

Haunting images taken at the shelled Donetsk airport recall the nuclear ghost towns of Chernobyl and Pripyat. After half a year of fighting in eastern Ukraine, the once regional airline hub has now been abandoned and left in ruins. [...]

The recent Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights activist Kailash Satyarthi has condemned the violence against children in Ukraine urging Kiev to act against it amid the ongoing crisis. “It is the responsibility of the Ukrainian government to save their citizens particularly children. [...]

Marching across the world to inspire actions on the ecological crisis, thousands of anti-fracking activists in over a dozen countries united against what they call dirty energy technology, which contaminates groundwater and causes health problems. Over 250 events across all continents are taking place as part of the Global Frackdown day, organized to target fracking, a technique used to extract [...]

Tens of thousands of people are flooding the streets of cities all over Europe on Saturday in mass rallies against a controversial trade agreement between the US and the EU. Talks on the pact, called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), started last February and, having been mostly held behind closed doors, have raised widespread concerns in the European Union and beyond. [...]

Ukrainian CyberBerkut hacktivists claim that they have penetrated the internal network of Ukraine's Defense Ministry and found proof that Kiev is getting secret data from MH17 crash investigators, including information which implies its involvement. A document, posted on the website cyber-berkut.net, and allegedly downloaded from Ukraine’s Defense Ministry network, dates back to August 7 and [...]

Although there is always reason to celebrate the toppling of an autocrat, the outcome of the Iraq war and the rise of Islamic State have demonstrated in horrific terms that the alternative can be even worse. In mid-April 2003, German author Hans Magnus Enzensberger published a piece in the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in which he celebrated the fall of Saddam Hussein. [...]

Western nations are fond of using “democracy promotion” as a justification for interfering in other countries, including overthrowing elected leaders (as in Ukraine). But Western democracies themselves often fall short of democratic values, as John Chuckman explains. I read and heard about Hong Kong’s students putting themselves at risk demonstrating for democracy, and my first instinct w [...]

The overwhelming majority of Russians think the US is their main enemy, and more than half name China as Russia's main friend, a recent poll shows. According to the research conducted by the influential Russian VTSIOM center, the number of Russians who think that USA is their country’s main foe grew from 25 percent in 2008 to 73 percent currently. [...]

British MPs will vote on Monday on an historic motion to symbolically recognize Palestine as an independent state. With Labour instructing its MPs to vote in favour, the non-binding motion would increase pressure on PM David Cameron over the issue. Proposed by the chair of Labour Friends of Palestine, the back-bencher’s motion also has the support of Liberal Democrat MPs. [...]

A Reuters examination of Ukraine's probes into February's Maidan shootings, which left over 100 dead and nearly a thousand injured, uncovered 'serious flaws' in the case against Berkut officers, arrested by the country's officials. The research, carried out by journalists, is based on interviews with prosecutors, defense attorneys, protesters, police officers and legal experts. [...]

The Ukrainian economy, weakened by war, needs additional funding from sources beyond the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to stay afloat, the fund's head Christine Lagarde has said. The IMF’s December estimate of the cash needed has turned out to be insufficient following the continued conflict in the country. [...]

Leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia have signed a treaty that will make Erevan a new member of the Eurasian Economic Union, a free trade zone made up of former Soviet states to rival the European Union. The deal was signed Friday at the summit of the Eurasian Economic Union in Minsk. [...]

The Russian Lower House is calling on international organizations and national parliaments and governments to investigate crimes against civilians in south-east Ukraine, and to step up efforts to find a peaceful settlement in the region. The motion was passed by 428 votes in favor with only one abstention. [...]