Internet activists and rights groups have launched a massive online campaign against mass government surveillance, urging users and websites to use encryption. The campaign'€™s inspiration "“NSA whistleblower Snowden" has called to join ResetTheNet. [...]

Two Eastern European nations, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, have refused to host foreign troops and military bases. The prime ministers of both countries have consecutively spoken against the proposal voiced by US President Barack Obama. [...]

The European Central Bank lowered its deposit rate to -0.10% as the continent battles deflation after many failed monetary policy attempts. The European Central Bank cut its main refinancing rate to 0.15 percent from 0.25 percent, and the deposit rate from zero to -.10 percent, the first time the ECB has seen a negative rate and the first time a major central bank has crossed the zero threshold. [...]

The Snowden revelations hit like a bomb, sending out shrapnel which risked severing US ties with friendly and not-so-friendly states alike. Here are the top eight bilateral debacles sparked by NSA spying, whose fallout could be felt for years to come. [...]

President Obama has announced a plan to invest $1 billion in stepping up its military presence in Eastern Europe amid the Ukrainian crisis. The White House will send more troops and equipment to the region to "€œreaffirm"€ its commitment to NATO allies. [...]

Mercer has released their updated Quality of Living Survey for 2013. The survey analyzes 39 factors like political stability, cost of living, crime levels, pollution, and healthcare, which are important for future expats moving to the country. Europe dominated the top five list with just one city being from North America. [...]

Lief Simon discusses the main types of people giving up their U.S. passport. It’s not that they are hiding anything. They are simply private people, which is one of the reasons they no longer wanted to be U.S. citizens. More and more are becoming aware of their tax filing requirements as U.S. citizens, even if they have never lived or worked in the United States. [...]

Several buildings, including an orphanage, have been severely damaged by artillery fire in Slavyansk, eastern Ukraine, where fighting between self-defense troops and Kiev'€™s army renewed over the weekend. [...]

The National Security Agency is collecting millions of images of people through its international surveillance network to be implemented in a number of other facial recognition programs, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden. [...]

World-famous Russian traveller and adventurer Fedor Konyukhov, who has been on a solo-rowing voyage across the Pacific Ocean since December, has reached the Australian coast, completing his adventure in a record 162 days. [...]

The officially released agenda of the prestigious Bilderberg club meeting is not true, claims RT show host Daniel Estulin, a longtime watcher of the "secret world govt"€™ group. He says he obtained the real agenda for this year'€™s gathering in Copenhagen. [...]

"€œI believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being."€ So there it is, straight from the lion'€™s mouth, as in US President Barack Obama. The rest are details: deadly details, as in the US military remaining “at the core” of the exceptional worldview; the Pentagon reserving for itself “the power to launch unilateral attacks when America’s interests are directly thre [...]

The "€œPower of Siberia"€ is much more than a 30 year Sino-Russian gas/pipeline deal. Paying for the process accelerates the vogue to reduce dollar pricing. That, not the energy supply, will become the most acute threat to US economic hegemony. [...]

Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan signed the historic Eurasian Economic Union which will come into effect in January 2015. Cutting down trade barriers and comprising over 170 million people it will be the largest common market in the ex-Soviet sphere. [...]

A toddler is in a medically induced coma after a SWAT team raided the family's home and threw a flashbang grenade into his crib, the boy'€™s mother said. With a 50 percent chance of survival, it could be weeks before it'€™s known if he will even live. [...]

Over one million people in Spain - the eurozone's fourth largest economy - haven't had a job since 2010, according to a report by Spain's National Statistics Institute. Although this number continues to rise, the government says it's witnessing recovery. [...]

Fourteen Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in a helicopter crash near the city of Slavyansk in the Donetsk Region, according to the acting president of Ukraine, Aleksandr Turchinov. Anti-government protesters in Slavyansk have downed a Ukrainian forces helicopter in the south-east of Slavyansk in the Donetsk region. [...]

All of the 80 Ukrainian troops holed up at a Lugansk military base have surrendered to self-defense forces who stormed the military installation hosting the Ukrainian National Guard. The initial assault lasted for 10-15 minutes with almost unceasing gunfire, witnesses say. A video reportedly filmed near the attacked facility has appeared on YouTube. [...]

Glenn Greenwald, who helped Edward Snowden leak sensitive documents about the National Security Agency spying on its citizens, says he’s set to publish his most dramatic piece yet, which will reveal those in the USA who were targeted by the NSA. [...]

Surfing on a wave of euro skepticism following the EU elections, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has called Brussels too big and bossy. The 28-nation bloc voted a record number of EU Parliament seats to anti-integration parties in the recent elections. [...]

There are many lessons to be learnt from the European election results. But whether Europe's spectacularly out-of-touch political and media elite do learn from them is a different thing altogether. The success of the anti-bail-out, anti-austerity party Syriza, who topped the poll in Greece, was one of the most eye-catching results of the election. [...]

Edward Snowden was trained as a professional spy and actually worked undercover abroad for America'€™s biggest intelligence agencies, developing their IT security architecture, the whistleblower revealed in an exclusive interview to NBC News. [...]