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Nine days into marathon nuclear talks, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday said the diplomatic efforts "could go either way," cutting off all potential pathways for an Iranian atomic bomb or ending without an agreement that American officials have sometimes described as the only alternative to war. The EU's top foreign policy official, Federica Mogherini, said agreement was "very close." But Kerry said there was still a ways to go. "We are not yet where we need to be on several of the most critical issues," Kerry told reporters outside the 19th-century Viennese palace that has hosted the...

The gold appears to have been released as part of a sanctions relief package that will have awarded Iran nearly $12 billion in unfrozen cash assets by the time negotiations wrap up next week. The State Department calculates that Iran will have received a total of $11.9 billion in cash assets. The governor of Iran’s Central Bank announced to the country’s state-controlled media that the South Africans have finally returned the 13 tons of gold. “A sum of 13 tons of gold that had been purchased before and was deposited in South Africa in the past two years and could...

A sick new 'challenge' is going viral, urging people to disrespect and stomp on the American flag. Give us your reaction. See video at: https://www.facebook.com/foxandfriends/videos/854403174647280/?fref=nf

During recent meetings with Chinese officials, Secretary of State John Kerry agreed to establish a "U.S.-China Civil Space Cooperation Dialogue." A State Department spokesman says the first meeting will be held before the end of October, but could not provide any other details. The lengthy list of "outcomes" from the seventh round of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) held in Washington, DC June 22-24, 2015, includes a section on cooperation in science, technology and agriculture. Under that heading, the two countries agreed as follows: "101. Space: The United States and China decided to establish regular bilateral government-to-government consultations...

VIENNA, Jun. 29 (MNA) – US Secretaries of Energy and State have wrapped up their gist of nuclear negotiations along with difference points with Iran, awaiting a final verdict by president Obama. Mehr News International correspondent in Vienna reported that John Kerry had been residing in Vienna thanks to a fractured femoral bone. But Mr. Kerry would not be off the working desk; rather, he and Mr. Ernest Moniz await a final decision by president Obama. During Vienna 8 (8th round of talks held in Austrian capital) held in last November, Barack Obama issued a last-minute directive mandating extension of...

Secretary of State John Kerry is rejoining the Iran nuclear talks in Vienna as negotiators race to meet a June 30 deadline to complete an agreement. The State Department said in a one-sentence statement on Wednesday that Kerry would leave for the Austrian capital on Friday. It will be his first overseas trip since breaking his leg in a bicycle accident earlier this month after a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Geneva.

Allen Weinstein, a historian of Cold War espionage whose 1978 book, “Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case,” marshaled a mountain of new evidence to argue that Alger Hiss was guilty as charged in one of the most famous spy trials of the postwar era, and who served as the ninth national archivist of the United States, died on Thursday at a nursing home in Gaithersburg, Md. He was 77. The cause was pneumonia, his son Andrew said. He had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for several years. Making use of newly available F.B.I. documents totaling tens of thousands of pages, Mr. Weinstein...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)80% cast the deciding vote for Obamatrade on Tuesday as it squeeked through the U.S. Senate 60-37, and his Senate office is still outright refusing to answer whether he even knew what he was voting on.

The NSA and its British counterpart the GCHQ have put extensive effort into hacking popular security software products to “track users and infiltrate networks,” according to the latest round of Snowden docs unearthed today by The Intercept. Cybersecurity companies, including the Moscow-headquartered Kaspersky Lab, were targeted by government agencies to gain intelligence of the latest exploits. Details of the security software’s inner workings were deciphered by agencies through a process called software reverse engineering (SRE), which allowed them to analyze and exploit the software suites. A top-secret warrant renewal request issued by the GCHQ details the motivations behind infiltrating the...

He switched languages 27 minutes into his announcement speech. "Ayúdennos en tener una campaña que les da la bienvenida--Help us to have a campaign that welcomes you," Jeb Bush said to a crowd of supporters Monday. "Work with us for the values we share and for a great future that is ours to build for our children." For a man who started learning Spanish as a teenager, married a Mexican woman, lived three years in Venezuela and was the governor of Florida for eight years, switching languages wasn't that difficult ... it was expected by the roughly 3,000 supporters, many...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)He wasn’t supposed to say it, but he couldn’t help himself. John Ellis Bush, former Governor of Florida let’er rip. He said exactly what a careful review of the transcript reveals he was supposed to avoid during his announcement for president speech at Miami Dade College. It appeared that Jeb Bush, or just “Jeb” as the signs and placards read to distinguish him from the field and other Bushes before him, was not going to mention comprehensive immigration reform. Not here, not in this speech. This speech was intended to show him for what he is, a devoted father, son...

War On Terror: Rushing to empty Gitmo, President Obama has freed three bin Laden bodyguards, ignoring warnings they'd rejoin al-Qaida. Given high recidivism rates of already released inmates, what could go wrong? Chances are that the terrorists will return to the battlefield or carry out other acts of terror against the U.S. Obama's own intelligence czar has documented that nearly 30% of prisoners transferred from the Cuban prison have been confirmed or suspected of having re-engaged in terrorist activities.

In the two years since the Edward Snowden saga went public, a handful of people who actually understand the Western signals intelligence system have tried to explain the many ways that the Snowden Operation has smeared NSA and its partners with salacious charges of criminality and abuse. I’ve been one of the public faces of what may be called the Snowden Truth movement, and finally there are signs that reality may be intruding on this debate. No American ally was rocked harder by Snowden’s allegations than Germany, which has endured a bout of hysteria over charges that NSA was listening...

While UK government officials are said to have been briefing the Sunday Times that the Russians and the Chinese have managed to “crack” the encryption on the Snowden files, cyber-security experts have been casting doubt on the credibility of the story. The Sunday Times reported this weekend that the top-secret cache of files stolen by Edward Snowden from his former employer the NSA had been decrypted by Russia and China, forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries. The story was built around anonymous briefings by officials from Downing Street, the Home Office and the security...

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...

Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday left the hospital where he has been recovering from a broken leg after a bicycling accident, and said he expects to join the Iran nuclear talks for their “last slog” at the end of June. Kerry, who is 71, emerged from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston shortly before 5 p.m., walking gingerly on two crutches. He wore what appeared to be white running shoes instead of his normal wingtips, and he looked pale after spending almost two weeks in the hospital. But he seemed in good humor as he joked that he was...

John KerryVerified account ‏@JohnKerry Feeling good a week after surgery. Good chats today w/@AmbassadorRice & @StateDept senior team. The work continues!

Well, this is a new one.While announcing his candidacy for the highest office in the land, newly minted Democratic presidential candidate and former Rhode Island senator and governor Lincoln Chafee made the bold case for … the U.S. to switch to the metric system?Bloomberg's Dave Weigel was there: Chafee, a Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat, gave a brief and chipper address that called for America to re-engage with "international community" with diplomacy and "symbolic" moves. That meant everything from barring campaign donors from becoming diplomats, to allowing Edward Snowden to come home without punishment, to bringing America into the Metric system."It doesn't take long...

Speaking via telephone to the summit he was scheduled to attend before his bike accident scrubbed those plans, Kerry forcefully pushed back against any notion that ISIS is a state, despite the group's broad territorial gains. Kerry spoke about the need to "maintain momentum in the battle of ideas," according to excerpts from the call provided by the State Department. "One way is to expose at every opportunity the false nature of Daesh's claim to be the Islamic State. In reality, Daesh is no more a state than I am a helicopter," Kerry said, using another name for ISIS widely...