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A federal judge scolded State Department attorneys during a tense hearing last week, ordering officials to produce Hillary Clinton-related records that The Associated Press has been requesting for years. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon said he wants to “find out what’s been going on” at the State Department,” or rather, “what’s not been going on over there” that the AP’s records requests have been ignored for four years, Politico reported. The news publication is reportedly seeking records about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s schedules and her former top staffers.

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — A dozen Palestinian Muslim men gathered after midnight at an isolated farm house this week to indulge in a new delight. They were going to watch a soap opera about Jews. “Hush, hush. It’s starting!” someone said. The group settled down, sipped fresh lemonade, nibbled sweets, sucked on water pipes and then cranked up the volume for the opening credits of “Haret al-Yahud,” or “The Jewish Quarter.” The steamy Egyptian soap tells a Romeo and Juliet tale of a beautiful daughter of a well-to-do Jewish merchant and a dashing Muslim army commander falling in and out...

US President Barack Obama hailed the recently concluded nuclear agreement in Vienna between the P5+1 world powers and Iran as a step towards a “more hopeful world.” On July 14 CNN cited President Obama’s claim that, “This deal is not built on trust. It's built on verification.” This nuclear agreement, however, seems to be predicated more on this administration’s proclivity towards building on hope. The Obama administration is hoping that an inspection regime by the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will accomplish under this agreement what the UN has failed to do for decades under the Non-Proliferation of...

Tu-95 Bear bombers intercepted off Mendocino on day Putin calls Obama Two Russian nuclear bombers flew within 40 miles of the California coast and one of the pilots relayed a veiled threat during the Fourth of July aerial incident, defense officials said. “Good morning American pilots, we are here to greet you on your Fourth of July Independence Day,” a Russian Tu-95 Bear bomber crew member stated over the emergency aircraft channel. Defense officials and the Colorado-based U.S. Northern Command said this week that two U.S. F-15 jets intercepted the Russian bombers on July 4 as they flew as close...

I'm feeling a bit Onion-y today and consequently I must offer a explanation–a theory–about what we are seeing these days in this hallucinogenic political season. Now that Donald Trump has taken the lead in the latest Fox poll, it’s time to call this perverse reality show for what it really is. Trump is working for his friend Hillary Clinton’s landslide election.

Head of state-affiliated Saudi TV channel reveals Saudi Arabia will 'seriously try to get' nuclear weapons following Iran deal. While US President Barack Obama claimed he prevented a nuclear arms race in the Middle East when he presented the Iran deal last Tuesday, a key source in Saudi Arabia laid bare that claim by expressing the country's sense of urgency to acquire its own nuclear weapon. Jamal Khashoggi, head of the Saudi Al Arab news channel that is owned by a prince of the ruling Saudi royal family, and who previously was the media aide to Saudi Arabia's ambassador to...

Hundreds of Ukrainian right-wingers were rallying in Kiev on Tuesday to protest against government policies in the wake of a deadly stand-off between radical nationalists and police in the country's west. The radical Right Sector group was one of the most militant factions in the massive protests in Ukraine's capital that prompted pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych to flee the country in February 2014. Since the war broke out in eastern Ukraine between government forces and pro-Russia separatists several months later, the Right Sector has fought on the government side.

The self-proclaimed Islamic State has used National Security Agency documents stolen by former contractor Edward Snowden to evade U.S. intelligence services, officials told the New York Times in a Tuesday story. The Times reported that fact deep in a story on the group’s efforts to evade and recover from American and Iraqi military strikes. Documents stolen and leaked to reporters by Snowden, who remains in hiding in Russia, have led to changes in IS operations that have prevented U.S. forces from gathering intelligence on the group, the Times reported. The Islamic State has also studied revelations from Edward J. Snowden,...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said a speech by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday vowing to defy American policies in the region despite a deal with world powers over Tehran's nuclear program was "very disturbing".

Secretary of State John Kerry admitted to Al-Arabiya that it’s “very disturbing” how Ayatollah Ali Khamenei continues talking about destroying the U.S. and Israel after signing the P5+1 nuclear agreement.Kerry said he would be pitching Gulf partners on “all of the ways in which this agreement, in fact, makes the Gulf states and the region safer.” “I will also discuss with them at great length the things that the United States of America is going to do, working with them, in order to push back against the terror and counterterrorism efforts and other activities in the region that are very...

DUBAI, (Reuters) - The United States said on Tuesday it was very disturbed by anti-U.S. hostility voiced by Iran's top leader after a nuclear deal, as both countries' top diplomats sought to calm opposition to the accord from political hardliners at home. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said a speech by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday vowing to defy American policies in the region despite a deal with world powers over Tehran's nuclear programme was "very troubling". "I don't know how to interpret it at this point in time, except to take it at face value, that...

If President Barack Obama and other world leaders hoped the nuclear agreement with Iran would lead to normalized relations down the road, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has nipped that prospect in the bud. Speaking Saturday about the deal, the Islamic holy leader denied a wider shift in foreign policy. “We have repeatedly said we don’t negotiate with the U.S. on regional or international affairs; not even on bilateral issues. There are some exceptions like the nuclear program that we negotiated with the Americans to serve our interests,” Khamenei said. Iranians are excited about the ramifications of the deal,...

The Russian navy plans to purchase a “submarine-killer” version of its Be-200 amphibious aircraft by 2020, an unnamed official said Sunday. President Vladimir Putin has made the modernization of Russia’s military aircraft a priority as part of a larger plan to revamp the armed forces by the end of the decade. The Be-200 aircraft’s anti-submarine version will help to replace the Russian navy’s existing fleet of Be-12 amphibious planes, a decades-old model that officials now consider obsolete, the source told Russian agency Sputnik International News. Current versions of the Be-200 are used to contain fires or transport personnel, with a...

The Indian Navy, clearly, has an appetite for punishment. One might imagine that the nightmarish experience of refurbishing the Gorshkov - now the aircraft carrier, INS Vikramaditya - in a Russian shipyard would be enough to forestall any more such warship building projects. But no! Although the Gorshkov took more than twice the contracted time (118 months instead of 52 months) and almost thrice the contracted cost ($2.3 billion instead of $947 million), the navy now wants to involve itself in building three Russian Talwar-class frigates. Frigates are versatile, multi-role warships of 4,000-6,000 tonnes that can deal with threats from...

The UN Security Council on Monday unanimously adopted a resolution endorsing the Iran nuclear deal and paving the way to lifting longstanding sanctions on the Islamic Republic. The 15-0 approval of the Iran nuclear deal clears one of the largest hurdles for the landmark pact, which will now go before the US Congress where it may face an uphill battle for confirmation. The UN vote came shortly after the European Union approved the nuclear deal, okaying the pact between the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany and Iran that lifts punishing economic sanctions on Tehran in exchange...

Canada’s last destroyer is temporarily sidelined after a series of engine problems and other technical issues on the 43-year-old vessel caused senior navy leaders to worry the ship might not be able to continue operating. HMCS Athabaskan, the flagship of the country’s Atlantic fleet, is undergoing a series of repairs in Halifax, according to Royal Canadian Navy documents leaked to Postmedia. Earlier this year, the ship broke down in Florida because of engine problems. It later broke down in the Caribbean, again because of engine issues. HMCS Athabaskan sailors have contacted Postmedia to point out a litany of problems, including...

There was a brief time this year when it almost seemed like the nation’s biggest newspapers, including the Gray Lady, were going to be giving Hillary Clinton the same level of required scrutiny which should apply to every candidate for elected office. It came when they actually covered the email server story and went into a fair amount of depth on it. Of course, it would have been embarrassing in the extreme to not do so, since everyone else on the planet was talking about it. But all good things must come to an end, as they say, and New...

At the beginning of my recent article, Will Wisconsin's Ignorance Become America's Ignorance Again? (Pravda.Ru, 03/04/2015), I stated, "Ever since America's politicized, corrupt, unethical, corporate-controlled Supreme Court decided the cases of Citizens United vs. FEC (2010) and McCutcheon vs. FEC (2014), I have written numerous articles for Pravda.Ru describing how these two decisions destroyed the ability of working class Americans to exercise their once fundamental right to freedom of speech and unleashed a torrent of unbridled political corruption that is rapidly replacing democracy with corporate fascism." As the machinations of Wisconsin governor, and newly announced presidential candidate, Scott Walker graphically...

Terrorism and Middle East insurgencies are not going away. Yet in the 21st century, the United States must understand it faces a return of a serious national-security concern that shaped the last century: the risk of great-power conflict. The Defense Department’s new military strategy acknowledges this by noting the implications of the renewed rivalry with China and Russia. The possibility of a major war with great powers, like World Wars One and Two, is “growing,” according to the U.S. National Military Strategy released this month. Consider, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is back on high alert after Russia’s land grab...

A group of Russian hackers called Cyber Berkut have released a video showing a staged ISIS beheading, hacked from an electronic device from one of the staff of U.S. Senator John McCain. The fake ISIS execution appears to take place inside a film studio and shows a ‘prisoner’ (played by an actor) going through the motions of being ‘executed’ in front of several video cameras. Another actor is dressed as an ISIS executioner who puts a knife to the throat of the prisoner and goes through the motions of cutting him.Recall that since August 2014, the terrorists of the Islamic...