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I have got to hand it to Amy Chozick of the New York Times for her deadpan article on Hillary Clinton’s “quandary” over what to do about the Hamptons this summer. You see, she and Bill have for years vacationed there, among the show business and Wall Street elites who rent or own fabulous mansions along the shore of eastern Long Island, mingling with one another. It takes a lot money:  In 2011 and 2012, there was the eight-bedroom, 12,000-square-foot East Hampton rental with a heated pool that the couple took for part of August, the kind of house...

With a little help from her friendly Dad (Paul) Stella McCartney has made quite a name for herself as an ultra-chic fashion designer. This week she introduced her spring line on Manhattan’s Elizabeth Street with a Cuba-themed garden party where Fidel Castro and Che Guevara featured among the main props of the cheeky soiree.The Stalinist mass-murderers featured both as mannequins and as live costumed humans who walked around posing for pictures with the ultra-chic models and guests along with the delighted (and scrupulously vegetarian) hostess. In keeping with Stella Mc Cartney’s “anti-cruelty” beliefs the event featured strictly vegetarian foodstuffs. None...

U.S. Senator John McCain has again called on the United States to send weapons to Ukrainian forces fighting pro-Russia separatists in the east of the country. At a press conference in Kyiv on June 20 with two other visiting U.S. senators, McCain (Republican-Arizona) said it would be "disgraceful and shameful" for the West not to act as Russian President Vladimir Putin, in McCain's view, sought to dismember Ukraine. McCain, one of the most vocal supporters in the U.S. Congress on arming Ukraine, said the Ukrainians had "proven they are willing to fight." Speaking alongside McCain, U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (Republican-Arkansas)...

Iran’s support for international terrorist groups remained undiminished last year and even expanded in some respects, the Obama administration said Friday, less than two weeks before the deadline for completing a nuclear deal that could provide Tehran with billions of dollars in relief from economic sanctions. The assessment offered a worrying sign of even worse terror-related violence to come after a year in which extremists in the Middle East, Africa and Asia committed 35 percent more terrorist acts, killed nearly twice as many people and almost tripled the number of kidnappings worldwide. Statistics released by the State Department on Friday...

Russian propaganda kills. It kills reason and common sense but it also kills human beings. The tragic death of my father on 27 February was an act of political violence for which Russia’s state TV channels, among others, bear responsibility. For years, they stoked hatred towards him and other opposition figures, casting them as “national traitors”. Propaganda is not a crime, in and of itself: it is part of the furniture of the modern world. What is a crime is to use propaganda to incite people to break the law, employ violence or wage war. It was for these crimes...

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin said after Friday's talks with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras that a prospective Russian natural gas pipeline should help Greece service its debt, but the Kremlin said the question of direct Russian financial aid to Greece was not discussed. Speaking of the pipeline deal at a meeting with top executives of global news agencies, including The Associated Press, which began nearly three hours behind schedule at around midnight, Putin said he saw no support for the Greeks from the EU. "If EU wants Greece to pay its debts it should be...

It is one thing to hate Greeks or Turks, for want of example, and quite a different thing to hate Jews. Likewise, to hate this country or that one is not akin to hating Israel. The faultless logic of a felon explains all. Asked why he robbed banks Willie Sutton explained, “That’s where the money is.” Well, Israel is where six million Jews are, and Iran is not the only power that, day and night, aches to wipe them off the face of the earth. Clearly there’s more to hating Israel than meets the eye. By “more” I mean a...

O'REILLY "Clinton Cash" investigated the charitable enterprise known as the Clinton Foundation. How do you see it? BOB WOODWARD: this is a giant story... The question is how the Clinton Foundation activities are organized? Who decides -- that story will take weeks and months. O'REILLY Do you know if the "Washington Post" has an investigative team? WOODWARD: Yes....this week there's been serious meetings about it. It's going to be looked at in the New York Times.....there is independent media aggressiveness. Now, the big question you've raised, are there illegal transactions here? And that requires digging. O'REILLY.....you need somebody from the...

In a disclosure that could have political implications for election campaigns, the State Department’s chief watchdog reported Thursday that worker harassment complaints have nearly tripled inside the department during the tenures of Hillary Rodham Clinton and John F. Kerry — but the department still doesn’t have mandatory training for all employees. “A significant increase in reported harassment inquiries in the Department of State over the past few fiscal years supports the need for mandatory harassment training,” the department’s inspector general warned in an oversight report that reviewed the agency’s Office of Civil Rights. The report states that formal harassment claims...

TEHRAN — Women have been "forbidden" from watching Iran play the U.S. volleyball team on Friday night despite the government signaling it would loosen restrictions on females attending sports events. Earlier this month, Iran's Vice President for Women and Family Affairs Shahindokht Molaverdi announced that a limited number of women — mainly members of players' families — would be allowed at upcoming men's volleyball matches. In an interview with The Associated Press, Molaverdi said women could also now watch live basketball, handball and tennis. However, women would not be allowed to attend soccer, swimming and wrestling. Hardliners objected angrily to...

France transferred several pieces of advanced technology and know-how to Russian shipbuilders before the Mistral warship deal was put on ice following Western sanctions, a news report said Thursday. “According to the contract between the Russian Defense Ministry and France's DCNS [shipbuilding company] there are three types of technology that were transferred,” said Alexei Diky, the director of military-industrial cooperation at Russia's massive state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC), RIA Novosti reported. Under the 1.2 billion euro ($1.4 billion) deal, signed in 2011, France was to build two Mistral-class helicopter assault ships for Russia and transfer shipbuilding expertise to the Russian...

A senior U.S. Air Force officer says Russian bombers’ increasing probes of skies near Europe pose a risk to commercial air safety. Lt. Gen. Stephen Wilson said Friday that Russian bombers are not following international norms when flying near Britain, the Baltics or Scandinavia. He said Russian bombers that have approached European airspace as tensions have risen in the last year are not filing flight plans, using their transponders or communicating with air traffic controllers. …

Emails showing Democratic operative Sid Blumenthal directing public relations efforts for Hillary Clinton in the wake of the 2012 Benghazi attacks were withheld from a select committee investigating the attacks, Politico reported on Wednesday. Blumenthal sent four posts from the Democratic research outfit Media Matters to Clinton on October 10, 2012, emails show. Blumenthal was on Media Matters’ payroll at the time, Politico reported, receiving about $10,000 a month from the group in addition to similar compensation from the Clinton Foundation. “Got all this done,” Blumenthal wrote in the Oct. 10, 2012, email to Clinton, according to the description of...

(AP) Russian President Vladimir Putin listens during an annual call-in show on Russian television, "Conversation With Vladimir Putin," in Moscow, April 16, 2015. Russia's ambassador to Sweden has warned the country of the potential military "consequences" associated with joining NATO in an interview with the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, The Local reports. Russian Ambassador Viktor Tatarintsev told Dagens Nyheter that Russia does not have any military plans against Sweden, in line with Stockholm's alliance neutrality.

The next president may want to go to the videotape. In his 2012 foreign-policy debate with Mitt Romney, President Obama offered a now-famous line: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War has been over for 20 years.” Oh? This week Vladimir Putin reacted to a Pentagon plan to place 5,000 NATO troops in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Poland and Hungary with a counter-threat: “Our nuclear forces will be supplied with more than 40 new intercontinental ballistic rockets.”

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Adolf Hitler started World War II by attacking Poland on September 1, 1939. Nazi Germany moved only after it had already remilitarized the Rhineland, absorbed Austria and dismantled Czechoslovakia. Before the outbreak of the war, Hitler's new Third Reich had created the largest German-speaking nation in European history. Well before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese government had redrawn the map of Asia and the Pacific. Japan had occupied or annexed Indochina, Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan, in addition to swaths of coastal China. Attacking Hawaii, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia was merely the logical 1941 follow-up...

A Knesset Channel poll published Thursday indicates that almost one half of the Israeli public agrees with MK Michael Oren (Kulanu), the former Israeli ambassador in the US, who said this week that US President Barack Obama has “deliberately” caused a deterioration in US-Israel ties. […] “From the moment he entered office, Mr. Obama promoted an agenda of championing the Palestinian cause and achieving a nuclear accord with Iran,” wrote Oren. Obama abandoned the two core principles of Israel’s alliance with America, he accused. …

The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad is systematically targeting civilians and hospitals, often with chemical weapons, to reverse recent setbacks in the country’s civil war, witnesses told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday. Assad’s forces have suffered a number of battlefield defeats in recent months, with the Islamic State and the al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra gaining ground north of the capital Damascus and more moderate rebel groups achieving victories in the south. The Syrian army has also lost about half of its soldiers throughout the course of the four-year civil war and has increasingly relied on outside militant...

Ambassadors from the 28 EU nations have agreed at a meeting in Brussels to extend sanctions on Russia until next January. The decision will be ratified by EU foreign ministers next week.