One year into the Ukrainian crisis, Washington reveals a desire to jump on the bandwagon of the Minsk peace accords - brokered by France and Germany. Not bad news, after all, but when it comes from Victoria Nuland... News that US Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Sochi to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and President Putin came as only a small surprise this week. [...]

America,s National Security Agency has spied on German chancellors and their offices for more than 10 years, a new WikiLeaks report says. The three leaked NSA intercepts indicate that the US targeted 125 phone numbers of top German officials. The National Security Agency’s (NSA) intercepts published on Wednesday show that Washington has been tapping the phones of the political offices of the [...]

What happens when those allies you held closest to you turn out to be working towards your demise? Worse still, what if those truths you held as certainties were no more than a web of lies weaved by politicians to sell you on their wars? We are living in strange times indeed when politicians and governments can argue supporting radicals in the name of national security and democracy. [...]

The US has bought the Kiev government, trained its troops and has been sending equipment to Ukraine, said Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute.It would be naïve to assume that the US has backed off on the situation. At least one civilian has been killed in the shelling of Donetsk which is an apparent violation of the ceasefire reached under the Minsk agreement. [...]

Greece and its lenders have been gridlocked in talks over its €240-billion debt for about six months. Fears of Greece defaulting are causing a run on the banks, with people withdrawing record amounts of deposits. RT will report on the latest developments. The EU could easily give Greece debt reduction or even cancel it, Richard Wolff, Professor of Economics, University of MA, told RT. [...]

Rewriting history shatters the pillars of the world order perpetuated by the UN Charter, Russia's foreign minister said in an article published in Russian and Chinese media. The world's fate cannot be held in the hands of just one state, he added. [...]

The US House has approved a $612-billion measure to fund the military. The Obama administration and many Democrats opposed the defense policy bill for its alleged budgeting "gimmicks," as well as its provisions for arming Ukrainian forces. The House of Representatives passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2016 by a vote of 269 to 151. [...]

Ukrainian nuclear inspectors have measured a significant increase in radiation in the Chernobyl exclusion zone caused by heavy wildfires raging in close proximity to the crippled nuclear power station. Air near the desolated settlement of Polesskoye in the Chernobyl zone is contaminated with the radioactive element cesium-137. [...]

Defeating ISIS should be the first priority for everyone and only once it’s solidly accomplished, should work on a more representative Syrian government begin, says Lawrence Wilkerson, retired US Army Colonel, ex-chief of staff to Secretary Colin Powell. What do you think about the western media’s reaction to Russian airstrikes in Syria? Would Russia’s involvement, as western media claims [...]

How should we assess the behavior of Samantha Power, Washington’s top diplomat at the United Nations? Called by some a “foremost scholar on genocide,” Power is quick to back the use of military power in the service of so-called humanitarian goals. She is also fond of using the word ‘outrage’ – what does this tell us about her? CrossTalking with Daniel McAdams, Scott Rickard, and Patri [...]

The BRICS New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), both seen as alternatives to US – led institutions, will not compete, but rather complement each other, said the head of the Central Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina. Nabiullina made the statement Thursday in Washington where she is attending the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Ban [...]

Let's consider for a moment what the response would be from Washington if Russia announced the start of international war games near American borders. Impossible you say? Yet that is almost exactly what the Pentagon has announced near Russia. “The Russian Ministry of Defense has announced that over 350 Russian soldiers and 80 armored vehicles with Air Force cover will begin a 300-mile march a [...]

News Corp Australia has obtained a previously unknown video allegedly taken minutes after Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was downed in Ukraine exactly one year ago. The voices cited by the transcript of the full footage claim a warplane shot down the Boeing. The four-minute clip posted by News Corp Australia is an extract from what is claimed to be a longer 17-minute video, which allegedly depi [...]

Iran's supreme leader says the United States has created the “myth” of nuclear weapons to paint Tehran as a “source of threat.” The tough rhetoric comes days before nuclear talks are set to resume in Vienna. "They created the myth of nuclear weapons so they could say the Islamic Republic is a source of threat,” Khamenei said in a televised address to a hall of several hundred military [...]

WikiLeaks has published secret "core text" related to the controversial trade agreement currently being negotiated behind closed doors between the US, EU and 23 other countries. Big corporations look to be the biggest winners in the deal. Leaked documents of TiSA (Trade in Services Agreement) negotiations reveal that the treaty is looking to undermine “governments involved in the treaty” by [...]

Russia's Foreign Ministry has decried the US Senate-backed Ukrainian support bill as "anti-Russian" in a statement released on Friday evening. It says that Washington is seeking to "destroy cooperation" between the two nations. The bill, titled,“An act to support freedom in Ukraine in 2014”, would provide Kiev with weapons, millions of dollars in military assistance, and other forms of aid, [...]

Globalization is a barbarity, believes Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Front party, adding that now the world is in hands of multinational corporations and large international finance. “Globalization is a barbarity, it is the country which should limit its abuses and regulate it [globalization],” Le Pen wrote on her Twitter account. [...]

NATO has started its biggest exercise since 2002 with 36,000 international troops from 30 states, including non-NATO nations, participating in the drills which are taking place at sea, in the air and across the territory of three European states. The alliance has kicked off its massive “Trident Juncture 2015” exercises which will last until November 16. [...]

The White House is determined to block the rise of the key nuclear-armed nations, Russia and China, neither of whom will join the "world's acceptance of Washington's hegemony," says head of the Institute for Political Economy, Paul Craig Roberts. The former US assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy, Dr Paul Craig Roberts, has written on his blog that Beijing is currently "confr [...]

A senior Russian diplomat has expressed bewilderment over the decision to limit Russian officials' access to the European Parliament, adding that such unexplained and unmotivated actions were reminiscent of medieval witch hunts. “I have an impression that the European bureaucracy is partially returning into the times of the Holy Inquisition. [...]

BRICS states should support their IT-companies and open their markets to each other in order to challenge the US monopoly in the sphere, Russia’s minister of Communications and Mass Media said at the first meeting of the BRICS Communications Ministers. [...]

Over 100 descendants of the Russian nobility residing outside the country have addressed European nations with a call to stop irrationally alienating Russia and give an unbiased appraisal to the current Ukrainian crisis. The open letter written by Prince Dmitry [...]