Austria’s highest court will rule on whether a case filed against Facebook over its privacy policies could be regarded as a class action lawsuit. Austrian law student Max Schrems, who launched the case against Facebook over the way it handles personal information in July 2014, has claimed 500 euros ($532) on the behalf of more than 25,000 people who took up his idea and signed up to the lawsu [...]

A $2.4 million daydreaming study and a very scientific examination of the sex habits of coked-up quails topped Senator Rand Paul’s annual list of maddening government waste, which this year clocked in at $114 million. [...]

Unable to win concessions from from its trading partners ahead of the Friday deadline, the US has introduced tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union. The new 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports from the EU, Canada and Mexico come into force at midnight (04:00 GMT, Friday), according to US Commerce Secretary Ross. [...]

Turkey's aggressive strike on the Russian Su-24 has clearly demonstrated the impotent rage of those who planned to redraw the map of the Middle East, British political writer and journalist Dan Glazebrook emphasizes. Syria appears to be a hard nut to crack for the "regime change camp," British political writer and journalist Dan Glazebrook notes, adding that Turkey's shooting down of the Russia [...]

Rejecting the trade deal, which has been blasted for favoring big corporations, was an election campaign pledge by US President Donald Trump and he announced the projected move on his first day in office. [...]

Turkey didn’t acquire the Russian-built S-400 air defense systems for them to collect dust and may use them, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said, adding the purchase was to reduce Ankara’s dependency on US arms supplies. “We will not just buy the S-400s and place them in a storehouse. We will use them if need be,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday, as quoted by Hurr [...]

When people think about genes, they tend to apply the words "good" or "bad" to them. Depending on how your life is going, you might thank your genes or feel victimized by them. Yet this kind of thinking seriously misrepresents how genes work. [...]

Earth’s magnetic field, the basis for modern global navigation systems, is constantly in some state of flux. However, it now seems to be going haywire, pushing the North Pole closer to Siberia, and no one’s sure why. [...]

From the 2017 Vancouver Resource Investment Conference. Make sure to register for the 2018 event, January 21st & 22nd at the Vancouver Convention Centre West... The Reason Trump is President - Peter Schiff Richard Wolff Speech Capitalism Has Failed America is Morally Bankrupt | Ed Schultz | Oxford Union /* */ /* */ /* */ [...]

As the U.S. military continues its war against the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL), the Air Force is reportedly dropping so many bombs that it is struggling to find more. "We're in the business of killing terrorists and business is good," Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said in statement quoted by USA Today on Thursday.   [...]

Berlin might face a lawsuit from one of Germany’s largest defense contractors, Rheinmetall, over its decision to halt all arms deals with Riyadh in the wake of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Der Spiegel reports. [...]

The United States welcomes the recent evacuation from Syria of members of the White Helmets non-governmental organization (NGO) and their family members, the US State Department said in a press release. "The United States welcomes the safe evacuation of more than 400 members of the Syrian Civil Defense, otherwise known as the White Helmets, and their families from southwest Syria. [...]

The International Monetary Fund has agreed to change its policy on lending to countries that are in arrears to other governments. With Ukraine being among the states that asks for financial aid while owing Russia, the move has angered Moscow. "The IMF's Executive Board met today and agreed to change the current policy on non-toleration of arrears to official creditors," according to the IMF's C [...]

At a time when the eyes of the world are closely watching his country, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has given an exclusive interview to RT Spanish, speaking about the threats of war and of foul play in politics. [...]

The global talks known as COP21 ended Saturday with nearly 200 countries agreeing to a carbon emissions-slashing deal (pdf).  But climate campaigners are saying that the agreement doesn't go far enough, and that the real work is just beginning. [...]

Conservative firebrand Ann Coulter has put a final nail into the coffin of her long-since-cooled political romance with Donald Trump, calling him an “idiot” and an “emergency” after he said that he “hardly” knows her. [...]

Britain is not in a rush to strike Syria, says Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, as it is revealed the Royal Air Force (RAF) has not struck an Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) target in the country for 11 days. [...]

German chemicals and pharmaceuticals giant Bayer is set to face a second US trial over allegations that its glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup causes cancer. This is six months after the company was rocked by a $289-million verdict by a California state court. [...]

Russian intelligence has spotted up to 12,000 tankers and trucks on the Turkish-Iraqi border, the General Staff of Russia’s armed forces has reported. “The [aerial] imagery was made in the vicinity of Zakho (a city in Iraqi Kurdistan), there were 11,775 tankers and trucks on both sides of the Turkish-Iraqi border,” Lieutenant-General Sergey Rudskoy told journalists on Friday. [...]

Ann Coulter, the author of "In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome," responded to the president's comment that she was "off the reservation" in an interview Friday on KABC Radio in Los Angeles. President Trump mentioned Coulter in his Friday emergency declaration speech, saying he "hardly knows her," and hasn't "spoken to her in way over a year." [...]

A lawsuit has reportedly been filed against the US Treasury Department, alleging that some 150 NGOs sent as much as $280 billion worth of tax-deductible donations to Israel in the past 20 years. According to a report by Al Jazeera, the donations were "pass-throughs" to support the Israeli army and settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories which had been ruled illegal by the UN. [...]

Donald Trump seems to be taking the “running the country as a business” shtick pretty seriously. Why else would he refer to Venezuela, a country his administration targeted for its latest regime change op, as a “company”? [...]