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MI6 has pulled its spies out of 'hostile countries' and America's intelligence agencies are on high alert after Russia and China cracked encrypted files leaked by fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden. The top-secret documents contain information that could lead to the identification of British and American spies, according to senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and the security services. A senior Home Office official accused Snowden - the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor responsible for the biggest confidential information leak in US history - of having 'blood on his hands' after they gained access to over one million...

Britain has pulled out agents from live operations in "hostile countries" after Russia and China cracked top-secret information contained in files leaked by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, the Sunday Times reported. Security service MI6, which operates overseas and is tasked with defending British interests, has removed agents from certain countries, the newspaper said, citing unnamed officials at the office of British Prime Minister David Cameron, the Home Office (interior ministry) and security services. SNIP Russia and China have both managed to crack encrypted documents which contain details of secret intelligence techniques that could allow British and...

BRUSSELS/ATHENS (Reuters) - Talks on breaking a deadlock between Greece and its international creditors broke up in failure on Sunday, with European leaders venting their frustration as Athens stumbled closer toward a debt default that threatens its future in the euro. With Athens insisting it would never give in to demands from the EU and IMF for pension and wage cuts, the European Commission declared that the negotiations in Brussels, also involving the European Central Bank, had not succeeded.

Why Is The EU Forcing European Nations To Adopt 'Bail-In' Legislation by the End of the Summer? Are they expecting something to happen? As you will read about below, the European Union says that any nation within the EU that does not enact "bail-in" legislation within the next two months will face legal action. The countries that are being threatened in this manner include Italy and France. If you fast forward two months from this moment, that puts us in early August. So clearly the European Union wants everything to be squared away by the end of the summer. Is...

But can it ever hope to compete with SpaceX? Like the Falcon 9, Adeline is only partially reusable -- but the way it's meant to work is quite creative. While most of the rocket's fuselage goes unrecovered after launch, the bottom portion of the rocket housing the main engine (most expensive part and arguably the most important) is designed to safely return back home. The design calls for the first stage of the rocket to come equipped with wings and propellers, allowing it to travel back to Earth like a small plane and land gently on a runway. The key...

Political elites and super-bureaucrats are worried. It’s becoming harder to control consensus reality. A history stitched together by lies and cover-ups, political assassinations, slight-of-hand false flag deceptions, secret societies, dual loyalties and stolen fortunes – this has been the exclusive privilege of organized crime and the ruling elite for centuries. Putting aside history’s ‘big ticket’ items though, the real reason for this authoritarian trend is much more fundamental. By knocking out their intellectual competition, political elites and their media moguls hope to minimalize, and thus eliminate any alternative analysis and opinion by applying the completely open-ended and arbitrary label of...

he anti-Israel Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has been the focus of fierce debate over its calls to boycott the State of Israel. Its critics claim it is motivated by pure anti-Semitism - noting that only the Jewish state faces such a campaign, and not serial human rights violators such as Iran, North Korea, Sudan and others. BDS supporters, on the other hand, claim they are motivated by concern for human rights, and that the singling out of the world's only Jewish country is a mere coincidence. So, who's right? To find out, Jewish activist Ami Horowitz decided to...

Here is a live map of different war zones. You can zoom in or out just like on Google Maps. Hover over different icons and more. Check out how close ISIS is to Baghdad. Yikes!

'Seventy five years after the sinking of the Lancastria - Britain's worst maritime disaster in history - why is the tragedy largely forgotten? And what do those touched by the catastrophe want now? "The trouble with the story of the Lancastria is it doesn't fit with the grand narrative of that period - the miraculous evacuation of Dunkirk, and the Battle of Britain," reflects Mark Hirst. "No amount of spin can turn the story of the Lancastria into something triumphant." Mark - a former broadcast journalist and co-founder of the Lancastria Association of Scotland - has studied the life of...

Germany’s upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, voted on Friday in favor of a resolution calling for full marriage and adoption rights for same-sex couples. The debate followed a referendum in Ireland in which the population voted massively in favor of allowing same-sex marriage. “This is an unmistakable signal to the federal government and the Bundestag [German parliament],” said Axel Hochrein of the Lesbian and Gay Federation (LSVD). “Discrimination against same-sex couples is incompatible with a democratic system.” …

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany has a budget of around 4 billion euros (2.9 billion pounds) to buy four new multi-role combat ships and plans to issue a tender open to European firms, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday. The new MKS 180 warships are expected to be delivered from 2023. They are intended to be capable of attacking targets on land and underwater, and providing aerial protection to other vessels in a range of 20 km (12 miles). A ministry source said German firms, notably Luerssen, would be well placed to compete for the contract. The defence...

A hacker attack on the Bundestag (German parliament) earlier in 2015 means that an entirely new network will have to be built after experts failed to fix the breach. The Federal Office of Information Technology Security (BSI) decided that it could no longer defend against the attack and had to give up, broadcasters NDR and WDR and the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on Thursday. Der Spiegel reported on Wednesday evening that data was still flowing out of the parliament to unknown recipients, and that rebuilding the network using completely new hardware would take months and cost millions. …

Hundreds of migrants brought to Italy after being rescued at sea camped on streets near Rome's Tiburtina train station and gathered in Milan's main terminal on Thursday, making a brief stop on their journey to northern Europe. At Tiburtina, migrants from Syria, Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia were among those resting in the shade under olive and fig trees. Children played in the supermarket nearby, and dozens napped on cardboard under an overpass. Italy is struggling to handle the summertime surge in migrants, with thousands rescued at sea each week and more than 50,000 so far this year. Almost 2,000 have...

German discounter Aldi on Thursday detailed a plan to grow in the U.S., saying it would invest billions of dollars and create thousands of jobs as it works to ramp up its footprint. Aldi is opening its first stores in Southern California in March of next year, and will open about 25 stores by July. The company plans to employ 1,100 people across its stores and at its regional headquarters and warehouse in Moreno Valley, CA. The retailer, which described its U.S. expansion plans as “aggressive,” said it would put more than $3 billion behind a five-year plan to open...

A survey published by the Pew Research Center on Wednesday showed that the majority of Germans would be against their country using military means to defend a NATO ally against Russian aggression. Despite the notion that an attack on one is an attack on all being enshrined as Clause 5 in the NATO Charter, 58 percent of Germans said they would be against helping a NATO member on the border with Russia militarily. Only 38 percent of Germans said they would agree with the triggering of Clause 5 under such circumstances. …

This week England’s Former Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks gave a speech described by the media as doom and gloom at a conference in Herzliya. He admitted a belief that the BDS movement had succeeded in making the State of Israel a “divisive factor” in Jewish life and claimed that, as a result, supporting Israel was “almost impossible” for European Jews. It was an astonishingly defeatist speech, which is troubling enough. But most disturbing was the false dichotomy he presented to European Jews. In his own troubling words he said, “Jews have been faced with a choice: live in Europe...

Capital pioneers law prohibiting landlords from charging new tenants more than 10% above local average __ Berlin has become the first city in Germany in which rent-control legislation has come into force in a bid to put the brakes on some of the fastest rising rents in Europe. From Monday, landlords in the capital will be barred from increasing rents by more than 10% above the local average. Such controls were already in place for existing tenants but have now been extended to new contracts. “The rent ceiling is very important for Berlin because the difference between the rent paid...

Germany inched ever closer to joining its neighbor Belgium in allowing active assisted suicide on Tuesday as two new draft bills were presented to the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, ahead of a debate on the subject in July. According to German daily Die Welt, one version, which was sponsored by at least one member of every party in the Bundestag, is meant to represent a “middle way” between punishing those who provide euthanasia assistance and a complete deregulation of the process. It stipulates that groups which would provide these services for a fee—which are legal in Belgium, the...

BERLIN (AP) — Germany plans to acquire a new air defense system and four new battleships over the coming years for a total of nearly 8 billion euros ($8.9 billion).

It looked more like a scene out of the “The Sound of Music” in Austria than the G7 Summit in Germany. In between family photos with leaders at the G7 Summit, cameras caught German Chancellor Angela Merkel animatedly speaking with a relaxed President Obama. The photo of Merkel with her arms outstretched prompted comparisons to Julie Andrews’ famous twirling scene in the Austrian Alps in “The Sound of Music.”