A view of the Dutch parliament in The Hague The Dutch parliament will approve a motion to abolish a law that criminalizes blasphemy, mainly due to strong support by the Liberal Party (VVD). On Wednesday, a majority of parties in the Netherlands stated that the blasphemy law was no longer relevant in the 21st century. The VVD party had refused to support efforts to annul the law during the tenure of... 

Russia seriously considers an opportunity to take up the role of a supplier of organic products within the scope of the World Trade Organization. Russian lawmakers are working on the bill to support the production of organic agricultural products. This law will help Russian farmers enter the EU market with organic products. As expected, the bill will be handed over to the Ministry of Agriculture of... 

Bankia’s headquarters in Madrid Spain’s nationalized Bankia says it plans to cut 6,000 jobs by laying off about 28 percent of its staff over the next three years. The announcement on Wednesday follows a preliminary report on Madrid’s overall economy by the Spanish Central Bank suggesting that the country’s job-killing recession is expected to persist into the final quarter of 2012. Bankia’s... 

Spain’s Catalan nationalist party Convergencia I Union (CiU) led by Artur Mas won the elections in the Catalan Parliament on Sunday, but failed to win an absolute majority that it expects to govern alone. CiU secured 50 seats of the 135-seat local parliament in the elections, a setback from its previous 62 seats, which appeared to be a failure of its pro-independence campaign. Another nationalist... 

Facebook’s new privacy policy violates EU law, raising concerns over the sharing of private data with affiliated business without user consent. US privacy experts expressed concern over how Facebook shares this data with advertisers. European Data Protection Commissioner Gary Davis has asked for Facebook to clarify its new changes to users’ privacy policy. As commissioner, Davis is responsible... 

From Stalin to Steve Jobs, from Brezhnev to Berlusconi, from Hitler to Marilyn Manson: some of the world’s most recognized figures have been reinvented in a new exhibition by a young Russian artist who prefers comedy to politics. ­Kazakhstan-born Victoria Tsarkova studied icon painting, and says the heroes of her portraits could be described as “iconic” just as well. ­The 29-year-old artist... 

Heart surgeons have performed the first-ever implantation of the artificial heart valve, which was developed in Russia. The valve was produced in the Moscow-based Bakulev’s Center of Cardiac Surgery in cooperation with a company from Penza. The valve differs from all of its predecessors for better blood passability. For the time being, the Russian, full-flow valve is considered the best in the... 

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s plan to revolutionize the NHS by cutting appointments with doctors and promoting virtual clinics using iPads and Skype has faced criticism, with warnings that it could put lives at risk. The proposed reforms aim to save £2.9 billion by adopting a “digital-first” approach, utilizing technology for remote consultations and reducing the number of personal... 

Whatever the actual risks for EU-national mothers in Irish hospitals, if their babies are fed infant formula, it will contain amounts of fluoride that are neither safe nor medically legal in other EU member states. The Food Safety Authority of Ireland’s (‘FSAI’) guide of 19th Nov 2012 (1) recommends Irish tap water be used to make up baby bottles even though this is totally at odds with safety... 

During a recent speech in Poland, former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski warned fellow elitists that a worldwide “resistance” movement to “external control” driven by “populist activism” is threatening to derail the move towards a new world order. Calling the notion that the 21st century is the American century a “shared delusion,” Brzezinski stated that American... 

An unexpected source of new, clean energy has been found: the Plant-Microbial Fuel Cell that can generate electricity from the natural interaction between living plant roots and soil bacteria. The technique already works on a small scale and will soon be applied in larger marshland areas throughout the world. On 23 November, researcher Marjolein Helder will defend her PhD research on generating electricity... 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Moscow has called on the Arab League and the Middle East Quartet comprising Russia, the European Union (EU), UN, and US, to work together to end frequent Israeli aggressions against the Palestinians. “The Quartet needs…to work together with the Arab League representatives and work out solutions together… to restart Israeli-Palestinian talks,”... 

Italian police arrested four people for using a US nationalist online forum on November 16 and later banned access to the website in the entire country. The four nationalists are from Milan, Frosinone and Pescara and are accused of “inciting to racial-hatred”. The police has raided the homes of 17 other people, mostly in the north-eastern region of the country. The forum in question is... 

Participants in the Russian March rally held to mark up the National Unity Day in Moscows Lyublino district. Russian nationalists have decided not to participate in the December opposition rally as they see no point in joining the event which has no clear purpose, says the head of the Russians Movement Dmitry Dyomushkin. A series of anti-Kremlin protests have been going on for almost a yea, following... 

A startling report prepared by the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) states that evidenced uncovered by France’s General Directorate for External Security (DGSE), during their investigation into the hacking of former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s computers by the United States and Israel, is revealing that our world is about to experience a “technological singularity”, which is seen as an intellectual...