China factory ordeal: Blast kills 68, leaves 187 injured

China factory ordeal

 China factory ordeal: Blast kills 68, leaves 187 injured ... Almost 200 people were injured in the blast at a factory in Kunshan on August 2, 2014.
Death toll nears 600 in China earthquake · China factory ordeal: Blast kills 68, leaves 187 injured · Scenes from hell: Aftermath of Taiwan gas explosion.

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Record breaking rainfall inundates New York suburbs

Record breaking rainfall inundates

People stuck In their cars had to Climb Out of windows because they couldn't open their doors, as heavy overnight rains flooded New York suburbs on August 13.
NEW YORK – Some records are broken. Other people are smashed beyond belief.  Black box has no record of Brazil's Campos fatal flight. Marina Silva likely to ... tear gas, rubber bullets. Record breaking rainfall inundates New York suburbs.

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Ferguson protesters defy

Ferguson protesters defy

Ferguson police fired shots and pointed rifles at protesters as they defied a midnight curfew.
protesters who are continuing to react to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 17, 2014. 

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Ferguson protesters defy police curfew, tear gas

Ferguson protesters defy police curfew

Protesters walk through smoke as police clear a street after the passing of a midnight curfew meant to stem ongoing demonstrations in reaction to the shooting of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 17, 2014. 
Police fire smoke and tear gas into a crowd of protesters who gathered ... Ferguson police fire tear gas at protesters defying emergency curfew.

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Gaza celebrates as Israel

Gaza celebrates as Israel

Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip reached a long-term ceasefire after seven weeks of fighting, halting the longest and bloodiest battle either side .

Hours after rocket and missile fire, Gaza City celebrates a deal that was reached between Palestine and Israel, bringing a long-term.

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Gaza celebrates as Israel, Palestine reach long-term ceasefire

Gaza celebrates as Israel

Hours after rocket and missile fire, Gaza City celebrates a deal that was reached between Palestine and Israel, bringing a long-term end to seven weeks of Israel's Protective Edge military operation on August 26.
Hamas leader resurfaces to declare that Gaza will build sea-port, airport and show Palestinians can "target any part of Israel.Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip reached a long-term ceasefire after seven weeks of fighting, halting the longest and bloodiest battle either side .

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Golden era of jihad British student’s video urges UK Muslims to join ISIS

Golden era of jihad British student’

A British student has thrown in his lot with hundreds of UK citizens fighting with the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), bragging of joining the “golden era of jihad” in a new online video.
In the video, 21-year-old Londoner Hamzah Parvez called on fellow Muslim Britons to “come to the land of jihad and shout Allah,” while claiming he has been fighting with the IS for five months.
“This is the golden era of jihad,” says Parvez in a thick London accent, his face hidden behind a black scarf. “What are we doing sitting in the UK? Sitting in the land which kills Muslims every day. What are we doing in their lands? It is not the lands for us.”

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Liberals darling Elizabeth Warren defends Israeli attacks on Gaza schools and hospitals

Liberals darling Elizabeth Warren defends

Israel has the right to shell Palestinian hospitals and schools out of self defense as long as Hamas stores rocket launchers next to them, US Sen. Elizabeth Warren said during a town hall meeting in Massachusetts this week.
Warren, darling du jour of American liberals, defended her vote to send more defense funding to Israel in the middle of its recent fierce offensive on Gaza, saying she believes civilian casualties are the “last thing Israel wants,” according to the Cape Cod Times.
"But when Hamas puts its rocket launchers next to hospitals, next to schools, they're using their civilian population to protect their military

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EU drafts new sanctions against Russia over Ukraine, but ‘wants no confrontation’

EU drafts new sanctions against Russia

Ahead of an EU summit, the European Commission has drafted a new set of sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine crisis, adding that it wants neither confrontation nor a Cold War with Moscow, which would be “detrimental” to all Europe.
“We are ready to take very strong and clear measures but we are keeping our doors open to a political solution,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told a news conference in Brussels after his meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko Saturday.
Speaking about “restrictive measures”, Barroso said that the commission had already prepared “some options”, but it would be up to the EU

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European volunteers fighting Kiev troops in Eastern Ukraine

European volunteers fighting Kiev

European volunteers are streaming into Ukraine to join the fighting on both sides. While Kiev’s forces are beefed up with mercenaries from private military companies, Europeans have also come to defend the rebel Donbass region of their own free will.
One of the latest reinforcements of anti-Kiev troops in Eastern Ukraine are four French ex-serviceman who have come to fight this war, thousands of kilometers from home.
“It’s our war. It’s everybody’s war, it’s every European’s war,” Guillaume, a French fighter in Ukraine defending the Donbass region, told RT’s Paula Slier.

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Swatting of Colorado gamer’s office livestreamed on the internet

Swatting of Colorado gamer’s

An internet prank on Wednesday this week ended with the storming of an office building in Littleton, Colorado by heavily-armed SWAT police while computer gamers watched the raid unfold live on the internet.
Jordan Mathewson, co-founder of The Creatures online gaming company, told a local ABC News affiliate that around 3,000 people were watching online early Wednesday as he broadcasted the gameplay of a popular first-person shooter along with a live feed taken from his computer’s webcam. Things nearly took a turn for the tragic, however, when around two hours in he heard what turned out to be a barrage of tactical officers racing through his building.

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Ring of steel NATO summit turns Welsh cities into massive open-air prisons

Ring of steel NATO summit

A “ring of steel” likened to a prison or the Berlin Wall has been erected around the NATO Summit venues in Newport and Cardiff city center ahead of the military alliance’s conference next week.
Ten miles of nine-foot high security fencing has been set up to protect world leaders attending the September 4-5 conference amid fears issued by former foreign office minister Kim Howells of a possible attack by Islamic extremists.
“It will be a target, there is no question about it, that is why the security measures taken are so intense,” Howells said. “With a NATO summit there

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Obama threatens Russia with new sanctions over Ukraine

Obama threatens Russia

President Barack Obama acknowledged during an impromptu press conference on Thursday afternoon that the United States is considering new sanctions to impose against Russia over the escalating crisis in Ukraine.
From the White House, Pres. Obama told reporters that he’s certain Russia is playing a direct role in the ongoing fighting in eastern Ukraine between anti-Kiev separatists and the country’s military, and that the US is weighing further sanctions to intensify the restrictions previously waged against Moscow.

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Canada opposes NATO budget boost - sources

Canada opposes NATO

The NATO chief wants member states to agree to increase their defense spending at next week’s summit. But Canada is determined to block the move, Reuters reports, citing anonymous sources familiar with negotiations on the issue.
NATO would like to see its member states commit to raising their defense spending to 2 percent of GDP over the next 10 years. In 2013, only four countries - the US, Britain, Greece and Estonia – spent this much on defense.

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Police riot Ferguson citizens want $40mn for police brutality and humiliation

‘Police riot’: Ferguson citizens

Five people are suing the Missouri police for $40 million, claiming officers treated US citizens “as if they were war combatants.” The five were arrested in the wake of rioting and unrest following the death of teenager Michael Brown on August 9.
The group claims they were going about their everyday business before they were assaulted and arrested by the police who showed, “militaristic displays of force and weaponry.” The defendants in the case are the city of Ferguson, St. Louis County, Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Delmar, Ferguson police

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Ukraine moves to drop non-aligned status, apply for NATO membership

Ukraine moves to drop

Ukraine’s Cabinet has asked the country’s parliament to consider dropping the country’s non-aligned status and seek membership of NATO.
Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk’s government submitted to the parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, a draft bill that would cancel Ukraine’s non-aligned status and revive the country’s quest to join NATO – a path ditched by ousted President Viktor Yanukovich in 2010.
The move followed a decision by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. It also coincided with an emergency meeting of NATO

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Anonymous launches 4-day privacy rights protest outside UK spy base

Anonymous launches 4-day

A four-day protest organized by the hacktivist collective Anonymous UK in support of a legal challenge against pervasive use of mass surveillance has begun outside Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
Anonymous has dubbed the protest ‘Operation GCHQ’, and is appealing to UK activists to attend the protest outside the UK government’s controversial listening post.
Activists expected to travel to the event are campaigning for a swift change in surveillance policy that will prioritize citizen’s right to privacy over the interests of security agencies.

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UN: Ukraine conflict death toll hits 2,600, civilians ‘trapped inside conflict zones’

UN: Ukraine conflict death

At least 2,593 people have been killed in eastern Ukraine since the start of the Kiev’s military operation against anti-government forces there started in mid-April, according to a new estimate by the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights.
The death toll includes civilians, members of the Ukrainian troops and also fighters in the anti-government forces.
"The trend is clear and alarming. There is a significant increase in the death toll in the east," Ivan Simonovic, U.N. Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights, told journalists.

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Recipe for hate: Al-Qaeda publish car bomb ‘shopping list’ and suggest UK targets

Recipe for hate: Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda this week published an online magazine featuring instructions on how to build homemade car bombs and an appeal to Muslims to attack UK and US targets in the vein of the Boston bombers.
The English-language magazine, entitled ‘Palestine: Betrayal of the Guilty Conscience Al-Malahem’, urges Muslims in the West to assemble pressure cooker bombs like those used to attack the Boston marathon last year.
In a list of “examples of targets,” the magazine suggests attacks on the UK’s Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, MI5’s Thames House and

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US intelligence: 300 Americans fighting alongside Islamic State

US intelligence: 300 Americans

The United States government is tracking as many as 300 Americans supposedly fighting with Islamic State, the jihadist group with a heavy presence in parts of Syria and Iraq, according to senior US officials.
Washington is worried that radicalized foreign fighters could become a risk to the US if they return to employ skills learned overseas to carry out attacks, anonymous US officials said, according to the Washington Times.
“We know that there are several hundred American passport holders running around with ISIS in Syria or Iraq,” a senior US official said. “It’s hard to tell whether or not they’re in Syria or moved to Iraq.”

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Russia: We don’t want the Arctic to become arena of conflict

Russia: We don’t want

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov attempted to dampen the escalating rhetoric around the Arctic, after his Canadian counterpart said his country was ready “to protect its sovereignty” in the resource-rich region.
"The Arctic shouldn’t be dragged into the rhetoric of militarization,” the Russian official said during a Q & A at the Seliger youth forum in central Russia.
“There are accusations flying about that we are trying to make a land-grab during a latter-day gold rush. This is nonsense. We don’t want the Arctic to become an arena of conflict.”

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Most Russians see Ukrainian turmoil as civil war - poll

Most Russians see Ukrainian

Almost 60 percent of Russians consider the current crisis in Ukraine a civil war, and the same share of those polled do not expect the strain in Russia-Ukraine relations to develop into a ‘hot’ military conflict.
The latest research conducted by the VTSIOM public opinion center shows the number of Russian citizens who call the Ukrainian crisis a full scale civil war at 59 percent, double the 27 percent of six months ago.
Only six percent of those polled call the events in Ukraine a coup d’état, compared to about25 percent in late February and 16 percent call the events just anarchy andarbitrariness, compared to 29 percent in the beginning of the year.

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Communists say Russia should throw off ‘strangling noose’ of WTO

Communists say Russia

Communist Party MPs have prepared a bill detailing Russia’s exit from the World Trade Organization, claiming membership leads only to problems and promotes attempts at the ‘external management’ of the national economy.
The bill on the ending of Russia’s WTO membership has been prepared by lawmakers Valery Rashkin and Sergey Obukhov.
“Russia must quit the WTO agreement to protect its agriculture, manufacturing, and other branches of economy. Russia’s membership in the WTO in times when a great number of foreign countries are introducing stricter sanctions against our country is against common sense,” reads the explanatory note attached to the bill.

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Russia, Ukraine agree to kick-start stalled gas talks

Russia, Ukraine agree

Leaders of Russia and Ukraine have decided to resume talks on energy issues between the two countries in September, as fears of gas delivery disruptions and Kiev's unwillingness to settle disputes and pay bills threaten Europe’s energy security. Following an intense round of direct talks between President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko, the head of the Russian state said that both leaders were able to reach an agreement on the resumption of consultations on energy and gas.
Yet Putin said, there are “a lot of concrete questions,” stressing that while Russia fully complies with all the conditions of the gas contracts with Ukraine, the actions of Naftogaz create risks for gas transit to Europe.

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Kiev’s Moscow confrontation strategy yields no result – senior Russian MP

Kiev’s Moscow confrontation

The Minsk summit has shown that the policy of ignoring and boycotting Russia promoted by Ukrainian authorities is ineffective and harmful, holds the State Duma’s foreign relations chief.
MP Aleksey Pushkov who chairs the State Duma Committee for International Relations has told ITAR-TASS that the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko demonstrated that the line chosen by the government in Kiev in early summer was not up to their expectations.

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UK not ready to join US air campaign against ISIS

UK not ready to join

UK government sources have expressed surprise at US media reports indicating that Britain is willing to take part in an air campaign alongside the US against Islamic State (IS) fighters in Syria.
Downing Street said there had been no request from Washington for the UK to contribute to air strikes yet. "Our focus has not been on air strikes. It is not under discussion at the moment,” a Uk government spokeswoman said. She also insisted that the UK would not send combat troops to Iraq.

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F-15 military jet crashes in Virginia

F-15 military jet crashes in Virginia

An F-15 military jet crashed in western Virginia early Wednesday, according to local media reports.
In Deerfield, Virginia, multiple news outlets have reported already that an aircraft crashed shortly after 9:00 a.m. local time in a wooded part of the region near Staunton, VA, around 180 miles west of Washington, DC. By 10:30, the Staunton News Leader had confirmed that a spokesperson for the National Travel Safety Board identified the aircraft as a military jet, and that a police scanner dispatch suggested one person had been on board.

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IceBucketChallenge leaves Scottish island without water, highlighting worldwide scarcity problem

IceBucketChallenge leaves

With the Ice Bucket Challenge going viral worldwide, water scarcity has also come under the spotlight even in water abundant places such as Scotland, where a whole island was cut off from the water supply over the hashtag activism craze.
The so-called Ice Bucket Challenge launched in order to raise awareness for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) has reached gigantic proportions across the social media sphere as friends nominate each other to a freezing dare. Once challenged, the person has 24 hours to complete the task or donate cash, if they chicken out.

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FSB presses intl audit majors to store data in Russia, step up secrecy – report

FSB presses intl audit majors

The State Security Service may deprive the ‘big four’ audit companies of their licenses to work with Russian state secrets if they refuse to relocate data servers to Russia and limit access to them from abroad, a popular business daily reports.
Unnamed sources in two of the ‘big four’ companies (Deloitte, EY, PwC and KPMG) have told the Vedomosti newspaper that the FSB had revoked the license for working with state secrets from the Russian

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UK would be the poorest state if joined the US - report

UK would be the poorest state

If Britain were to leave the European Union and join the United States, it would be the poorest of all US states based on GDP per capita, figures uncovered by The Spectator show.
According to Fraser Nelson, editor of the current affairs magazine, if you were to take GDP per US state, divide it by population, and compare it with the latest data from the UK Treasury, Britain would fall behind the poorest US states of Kansas, Alabama and Missouri, currently marred by the Ferguson riots.

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'Bad Boys' jihadist cell could be key to identifying UK militant who killed Foley

'Bad Boys' jihadist cell could be

Five men who left Britain in October last year have been shown on CCTV footage leaving the UK to join the Islamic State under the guise of taking a vacation in Turkey. One of the men could now be the key to identifying James Foley’s murderer.
CCTV footage shows the ‘Britani Brigade Bangladeshi Bad Boys’ making their way through Gatwick Airport en route to join the militant group Islamic State (IS), formerly known as ISIS or ISIL.

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US has ‘no plans’ to coordinate with Syria airstrikes against Islamic State

US has ‘no plans’

The US has already began surveillance flights over Syria, American officials say, as Washington contemplates airstrikes against Islamic State targets and confirms there are no plans to coordinate anti-terror attacks with the Syrian government.
In light of steady advances of the jihadist Islamic State (IS) across Syria and Iraq, the US Department of Defense is considering a number of options for president Obama to consider, including airstrikes against militant positions, similar to those the US has recently carried out against IS in Iraq.

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Dozens of police departments suspended for losing US military-grade weaponry

Dozens Of Police

Close to 200 state and local police departments in the United States have been suspended for losing military-level equipment transferred to them by the Pentagon, a new investigation found.
According to the media outlet Fusion, its independent investigation into the Pentagon’s “1033 program,” which equips state and local police departments across the US with excess military equipment, turned up an alarming trend: Not only did many law enforcement agencies fail to comply with the program’s guidelines, they routinely lost dangerous weaponry.

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American, 33, killed while fighting alongside Islamic State militants in Syria

American 33 Killed

A 33-year-old American man who grew up in Minnesota and then moved to California was killed over the weekend in Syria while battling alongside the militant grew formerly known as ISIS, NBC News reported on Tuesday.According to the network, Douglas McAuthur McCain was killed over the weekend while fighting with the Islamic State, or IS, against members of a separate opposition group in Syria. Family members confirmed his passing to NBC, and senior administration officials speaking anonymously acknowledged that they were aware of the man’s death.

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