Germany and the United States will start negotiations this month on an agreement not to spy on each other, a senior German official has said. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, Ronald Pofalla, said on Monday that such an agreement can set a framework for future activities of western spying agencies, the Associated Press reported. Pofalla, who is responsible for coordinating the various... 

Prince Khalid Bin Farhan Al-Saud Saudi Arabia, a major supporter of opposition forces in Syria, has increased crackdown on its own dissenters, with 30,000 activists reportedly in jail. In an exclusive interview to RT a Saudi prince defector explained what the monarchy fears most. “Saudi Arabia has stepped up arrests and trials of peaceful dissidents, and responded with force to demonstrations by... 

India’s indigenous aircraft carrier INS Vikrant is docked at the Cochin Shipyard Limited in Kerala, August 11, 2013. India has launched its first domestically built aircraft carrier on Monday, joining the world’s military elite. It comes two days after the activation of India’s first nuclear submarine, a move hailed as a “giant stride in technological capabilities.” The INS Vikrant will... 

A Sudanese man sits next to his house in a flooded street on the outskirts of the capital Khartoum on August 10, 2013. Heavy rain and flooding in a region north of Sudan’s capital Khartoum have killed 36 people, state media says. “Thirty-six people were killed in Nile state and 5,000 houses were destroyed because of heavy rain and floods,” Sudan’s Radio Omdurman reported on Sunday. Khartoum... 

A diplomatic scandal broke out between the Republic of Singapore and Malaysia after Singapore newspaper New Paper published an article entitled “Welcome to Malaysia, where it is easy to die and expensive to stay alive.” The Malaysian Government decided that the article may have inflicted a severe material damage on its tourism industry. The author of the article listed recent high-profile... 

US President Barack Obama (R) and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin US President Barack Obama says the United States is pausing to reassess relations with Russia, amid what he called ‘backward’ thinking by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Moscow’s adoption of a more anti-US attitude. Obama said there are a number of other issues of concern such as emerging differences around Syria and around... 

The number of Americans who decided to renounce their citizenship in the second quarter of 2013 increased sixfold the same period in 2012, a number the federal government attributes to strict impending financial disclosure rules. The United States is the only country out of 34 in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that continues to tax citizens regardless of where they... 

Public supports letting murderers, rapists and thieves back on the streets. Another stark reminder of how mind-numbingly slavish many Americans are was provided this week when activist Mark Dice managed to garner several signatures on a petition to release all illegal aliens from prisons, even if they are convicted rapists or murderers. “Help get the illegals out of prisons and jails, and support... 

Contaminated groundwater accumulating under the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant has risen 60cm above the protective barrier, and is now freely leaking into the Pacific Ocean, the plant’s operator TEPCO has admitted. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which is responsible for decommissioning the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, on Saturday said the protective barriers that were... 

Click on the image to enlarge it Landlords in Texas are allegedly allowing police inside homes for “inspections”. Waco, Texas police officers are now allegedly entering apartments and rental homes on “crime prevention” inspections. An alleged inspection notice from the Sanger Oaks Apartments’ management states that the Waco Police Department will inspect “security features” inside apartments... 

Food-stamp use in the US rose by over 1 million during the past year to a record 47.6 million, or nearly one in six Americans. According to a report released by the US Department of Agriculture on Friday, food-stamp use rose 2.4 percent in May, with more than 15 percent of the US population now receiving benefits. There were about 32 million Americans on Food Stamps when President Barack Obama took... 

Japan’s national debt exceeded 1,000 trillion yen, or $10.46 trillion, for the first time. It’s now well above 200% of the country’s GDP and is larger than that of Germany, France and the UK combined. Japan has increased borrowing this year to spend more on the country’s infrastructure as part of an ambitious program of economic stimulus aimed at ending 20 years of stagnation and falling... 

Glowing a dark magenta, the newly discovered exoplanet GJ 504b weighs in with about four times Jupiter’s mass, making it the lowest-mass planet ever directly imaged around a star like the sun. Meet GJ 504b, a cute-looking Jupiter-sized planet, currently the lowest-mass celestial body outside of solar system, which astronomers managed to image directly. Glowing a dark magenta, the newly discovered... 

A package of measures proposed by the Italian government aimed at improving its struggling economy has received final approval by the country’s parliament. The package, approved on Friday, includes measures aimed at reorganizing financial resources, limiting bureaucracy, and improving the country’s civil justice system. The package prioritizes infrastructure by allocating some 3 billion euros... 

Neill Blomkamp’s science fiction action film, Elysium, scheduled for release on Friday, August 9, is slick New World Order propaganda. Although the film’s director and star actor, Neil Blomkamp and Matt Damon, disagree and say the film does not carry political weight, a number of commentators say this simply is not the case. Scott Foundas, a film critic for Variety, characterized Blomkamp’s...