Experts tell us the North American shale oil boom is responsible for low prices despite Middle East unrest. But the price slump serves Western aims of weakening Russia and Iran.
Crimean Tatars pledge to resist Russian demands that they register their Majlis as a "civic organization" and surrender "forbidden" Islamic literature.
In a little-noted irony, as Vladiimir Putin backs the "People's Republics" in eastern Ukraine, he has cracked down on a separatist movement that has emerged in Siberia.
Crimean Tatar leaders, forced into exile by Russian judicial orders, accuse Moscow of a campaign of raids and harassment aimed at driving Tatars from the peninsula.
Putin's political machine convened an "anti-fascist" summit at Yalta in annexed Crimea, attended by Hungary's Jobbik party, the British Nationalist Party and other neo-fascist entities.
At the NATO summit called in response to the Ukraine escalation, a particularly hard line is being taken by Canada—now in a race with Russia to claim Arctic oil resources.
As Obama blames Russian-backed rebels in the downing of the Malaysian flight over Ukraine, Putin blames Kiev—and the people of eastern Ukraine are brutalized by both sides.
As the 1914 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand is commemorated in a bitterly divided Sarajevo, the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria show grim potential for a new world war.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report citing abductions, detentions, torture and killings in the eastern regions of Ukraine where armed groups hold control.
The rise of far-right "anti-Europe" parties in the Europarliament elections echoes escalating ultra-nationalist and neo-fascist rhetoric on both sides in the Russo-Ukraine conflict.
Amid claims that Blackwater mercenaries are fighting for Kiev, come reports of reactionary neo-Cossack paramilitaries fighting for the separatists in Ukraine's east.
While claiming to withdraw troops from Ukriane's borders, Russia conducted military maneuvers that included nuclear missile tests—as NATO sends a special delegation to Kiev.
