Switzerland has reportedly decided it will not extradite National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden to the US if he comes to testify against the NSA's spying activities, Swiss media said. In the document, titled “What rules are to be followed if Edward Snowden is brought to Switzerland and then the United States makes an extradition request,” Switzerland’s Attorney General stat [...]

The cost of decommissioning Britain's nuclear sites, and particularly the Sellafield complex, has increased by billions of pounds with both regulators and the government being accused of incompetence by anti-nuclear campaigners and union leaders. The estimated cost of decommissioning the UK’s nuclear legacy over the next century has rocketed from £63.8 billion ($104.1 billion) two years ago [...]

Dozens of people gathered in the harbor of Saint-Nazaire in western France on Sunday to protest against the French government's decision to suspend the delivery of a Mistral warship to Russia. Some two hundred protesters gathered by the docked Vladivostok – the first of two Mistral-class helicopter carrier ships – holding banners that read, "Hollande wants to kill Saint-Nazaire. [...]

Britain has announced plans to erect a huge fence in the French port city of Calais. The steel fencing was previously used at a NATO summit. The move is part of the UK's campaign to deter illegal immigrants from entering the British Isles. Dubbed the "ring of steel," the barrier – which measures more than 12 miles long and nine feet high – was previously used at a NATO summit in South Wales [...]

Foreign Policy magazine – Russia’s fierce critic – met with the leader of Azov Battalion, an irregular force assisting Kiev to cleanse eastern Ukraine of “terrorists.” The group boasts fierce tactics, “values far from European,” and Nazi-like attributes. Azov, which has an estimated personnel of 500 people, is one of about 50 volunteer battalions formed by Maidan activists and ult [...]

Just two days after the President of Ukraine and Russia both expressed a desire to resolve the conflict in Ukraine peacefully, representatives from the two self-proclaimed republics in East Ukraine and Kiev’s government agreed to a ceasefire after meeting behind closed doors in Belarus. Interesting timing considering that on Wednesday, after his phone call with Poroshenko, President Putin p [...]

The OSCE has revealed the 12-point roadmap behind the September 5 truce signed in Minsk. It says that Ukraine must adopt a new law, allowing for a special status for Lugansk and Donetsk regions, and hold early elections there. The document, titled ‘Protocol on the results of consultations of the Trilateral Contact Group’ and signed in Minsk on September 5, outlines what needs to be done for [...]

Six vessels fom the Russian North fleet have left their base in Severomorsk in the Barents Sea and set off for the New Siberian Islands, where a military base under reconstruction will start functioning later this year. “The major goal of the latest expedition of the North fleet ships to the Arctic is to deliver personnel, equipment and property of the North fleet’s tactical group, which st [...]

"The mismatch between the realities on the ground and the nature of the president’s pronouncements reveals a president who is out of touch with reality." This has been one of the underlying themes of those who have argued from the beginning of this drama that the West doesn’t have a stake in Ukraine’s fate to even approach the stake of Russia, which has included Ukraine within its sphere [...]

A favorite tactic to get Americans and Europeans ready for another war is to liken some foreign “enemy” to Hitler, no matter how ill-fitting or absurd the comparison. But once the Hitler slur is slung all rational debate ends, as Danny Schechter explains. The ISIS gang makes great enemies. They dress in black, wear Halloween masks, wave flags, act viciously, and cut off the heads of journal [...]

We are at the beginning of an epoch where at some point in the future there could be an open war between the advanced powers, and there is not much faith in the ceasefire in Ukraine, Samir Dathi, National Officer of the Stop the War Coalition, told RT. Ukraine's President is confident about a ceasefire - do you think he's right to be? [...]

Moscow has accused NATO of using the Ukrainian crisis as a “pretext” to “push its military presence closer to Russia’s borders,” and says that plans for a new rapid response force will sabotage the peace process in eastern Ukraine. “The [expansion] plans have been harbored by NATO for a long time, and recent events have served as a pretext to put them into action,” said a statemen [...]

It is too late for decentralization, as E. Ukraine's self-defense forces want full independence from Kiev after its bloody military campaign, international law expert Alexander Mercouris told RT. Kiev now needs a ceasefire because it's losing, he argued. On Friday, Kiev officials and representatives of the two self-proclaimed republics in southeastern Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire as the contac [...]

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has announced ceasefires before and was always the first to violate them, Spanish volunteer Ramiro Gomez, who fought in eastern Ukraine against the troops of the coup-imposed Kiev government, told RT. According to the European volunteer, this ceasefire is in effect a part of Poroshenko’s strategy: “to reorganize the [Ukrainian] army which is already a la [...]

Lugansk and Donetsk residents are now used to gunfire. RT's Maria Finoshina crossed Ukraine's southeast to see the aftermath of war there - and how it is the civilians who have carried the heaviest burden: relatives lost, homes destroyed, and hope gone. “I worked all my life and what did I get for it,” exclaims a weeping elderly woman. “Why is this happening? Why, God, why?” Many of tho [...]

Camp XRAYFew realize how expensive it is to keep Guantanamo Bay prison operational. The Joint Task Force (JTF) detention center, which opened in 2002, costs US taxpayers $140 million a year, breaking down to about $800,000 per detainee. The JTF was never meant to be permanent, yet twelve long years after the first round of prisoners arrived, 149 prisoners remain detained there indefinitely. [...]

A 2009 intelligence document provided to journalists by former government contractor Edward Snowden suggests the United States weighed someday conducting espionage to prevent losing its economic prowess to other countries. The document, published first by The Intercept on Friday this week, outlines tactics the American intelligence community may implement in the future in the event of certain s [...]

After admitting last week that "we do not have a strategy yet" for dealing with the Islamist militants in Syria who have beheaded two Americans, Barack Obama has struck a more confident note on a trip to Europe this week. The American president used a visit to Estonia on Wednesday to declare that the "defence of Tallinn and Riga and Vilnius is just as important as the defence of Berlin and Pari [...]

Lithuania has asked the European Commission to allocate €46 million ($60 million) as compensation for Russian food embargo losses. Slovakia has also asked the EU to lift some sanctions against Russia to partially allow exports. Vilnius is expecting to receive at least part of the requested compensation, as Brussels sees Lithuania as one of the countries most affected by the Russian sanctions, [...]

Both sides in the Ukrainian conflict have agreed to “all to all” prisoners of war exchange, hardware withdrawal and humanitarian aid access to the area. Kiev and rebel troops laid down arms as the main agreement – ceasefire- came into force at 15:00 GMT. The contact group in Minsk agreed on three key issues: ceasefire, exchange of war prisoners and humanitarian aid access, OSCE envoy Tagl [...]

President Obama has been having a rough summer, reflected in poll numbers that are as low as they have been during his presidency. Clearly a concatenation of developments overseas that appear to most Americans to be to some degree threatening accounts for much of the sour public mood and the broadsides being directed at the president and his administration for how they have responded to those deve [...]

United States President Barack Obama said Friday that the US and European Union are still prepared to impose sanctions against Russia if the crisis in Ukraine continues to escalate following the signing of a ceasefire agreement. Speaking in Newport, Wales at the close of a major NATO alliance summit, Pres. Obama expressed skepticism over a pact signed only hours earlier in Minsk during a meetin [...]