The president of Catalonia, Artur Mas, has signed a decree calling an independence referendum for Nov. 9. The secessionist drive of the Spanish region has been rebuked by Madrid, which vowed to block the vote. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has called a government meeting Monday that is expected to provide a legal response to Barcelona’s announcement. Madrid plans to challenge the vote [...]

The hatchet-wielding man who assaulted four New York police officers in Queens conducted a terrorist attack, New York City police said. At a briefing at New York Police Department headquarters on Friday, New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton was asked if the incident was a terrorist act. In response, he said, "I’m very comfortable this was a terrorist attack, certainly,” according to Ca [...]

An elevator every 30 seconds will be a feature of future skyscrapers, promises German tech giant ThyssenKrupp. They have unveiled technology that allows more than one car in a single shaft and the lifts can go sideways as well as up and down. The company says its invention will revolutionize modern architecture, because central blocks of elevator shafts – a necessary element of today’s buil [...]

Imports of Western cars and clothes into Russia could be restricted as part of a second round of "retaliatory" measures prepared in response to the sanctions against Moscow, says presidential aide Andrey Belousov. There are many sellers of non-agricultural goods in the West who are heavily dependent on the Russian market, the official said. [...]

Moscow is bewildered by Washington's warmongering rhetoric, which accompanied President Petro Poroshenko's visit to the US. Russia has also noted all the Russia-unfriendly opinions voiced recently by hawkish American politicians. “We’ll keep in mind all signals, including those unfriendly towards Russia, that were heard during the visit of the Ukrainian president to Washington,” commented [...]

Publicly announcing that US intelligence agencies “underestimated” the presence and activity of Islamic State militants in Syria, US President Barack Obama in an interview with CBS called the country a “ground zero” for international jihadists. “Over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swaths of the country that are compl [...]

Moscow is ready to support Ukraine in its overcoming of the crisis, as the recovery of the bordering country is in Russia's national interests, President Putin said, adding that the state is keen to have a 'reliable, predictable partner and neighbor.' Speaking at VTB’s Russia Calling! annual investment forum on Thursday, Putin said Russia's “closest, fraternal” nation is now in deep polit [...]

The US is no stranger to fatal railway accidents: over the last decade, dozens of lives were lost, and hundreds of people injured in train wrecks. All this is due to lack of funding, infrastructure and development, critics say. The latest Amtrak train crash has left at least six people killed and dozens injured, with the cause of the crash remaining unknown. [...]

Russia's "Breakthrough" energy project enables closed a nuclear fuel cycle and a future without radioactive waste. The first batch of MOX nuclear fuel has been manufactured for the world's only NPP industrially power generating breeder reactors. The first ten kilograms of the mixed-oxide fuel (MOX) - a mixture of plutonium and uranium dioxides (UO2 and PuO2), have been industrially produced by [...]

There is no draft law on creating a special status for the restive regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine, President Petro Poroshenko said, adding that Ukraine is only to be decentralized. “There will be no law on the special status of the Donbass region,” Poroshenko said on Thursday, speaking at a press conference in Kiev. [...]

Intelligence service BND failed to protect the private data of German citizens as it handed over internet data collected at a Frankfurt traffic hub to the US, German media report citing secret documents. The documents cited by VDR and EDR television and the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which broke the news together, were obtained from the federal government during an ongoing parliamentary in [...]

A top US political consultant, dubbed "Dr. Evil", has been caught on tape at an industry conference, advising oil and gas execs to regard public policy as "endless war" and to play on people's fear and greed to lobby their interests. Richard Berman's speech, which he gave in June in Colorado Springs, was leaked to The New York Times by one of the participant's at the conference who said: "It ju [...]

An Arab sheikh seems to think the 'world's poorest president,' Uruguay's Jose Mujica, is in dire need of cash. He's offered $1 million for Mujica's iconic 1987 VW Beetle - but the pot-smoking leader says he will donate the money to the homeless instead. “I didn’t give it any importance,” the humble ex-guerilla leader told a news conference, after the Uruguayan weekly Busqueda broke the st [...]

Armed British RAF jets have been deployed on their first mission in Iraq since UK lawmakers voted to authorize military strikes against so-called Islamic State (IS) targets in the country. A Ministry of Defense Spokesman (MOD) confirmed on Saturday that "Royal Air Force Tornados continue to fly over Iraq and are now ready to be used in an attack role as and when appropriate targets are identifi [...]

The chief director of ARD, Germany's largest public TV broadcaster, responded to viewers' criticism and the supervisory committee over its coverage of the Ukraine crisis. He said it conveyed Russian interests "too little" and could question NATO more. [...]

According to top-secret documents from the NSA and the British agency GCHQ, the intelligence agencies are seeking to map the entire Internet, including end-user devices. In pursuing that goal, they have broken into networks belonging to Deutsche Telekom. When it comes to choosing code names for their secret operations, American and British agents demonstrate a flare for creativity. [...]

London politicians gulled Scottish voters out of independence by making a false "vow" to grant Glasgow extra powers, First Minister Alex Salmond has said. He also raised the prospect of another referendum, saying the break-up is inevitable. Alex Salmond, leader of the 'Yes' campaign and the outgoing head of the Scottish National Party (SNP), told the BBC's Sunday Politics program that the UK go [...]

The mainstream U.S. news media’s narrow parameters, especially on foreign policy issues, give the American people little opportunity to engage in meaningful debate or to influence outcomes. Typically, public perceptions are managed and consensus is manufactured, as Lawrence Davidson writes. Most Americans believe they have a range of choices in their daily lives and that they may choose among [...]

Emotions are running high at the 69th UN General Assembly, with Islamic State, "economic terrorists" and US spying firmly in the firing line. RT has listened to all the speeches (so you don't have to) to bring you the best quotes of the week so far. The UN chief made an impassioned plea against violence, painting an alarming picture of current global crises, saying that warmongers are sabotagin [...]

Israeli intelligence has given up to modern trends and introduced an online questionnaire for would-be spies. Unlike the businesslike CIA or MI5 web draft campaigns, Israelis are luring volunteers with mystery halo always shrouding Mossad's activities. Mossad has become one of the last intelligence agencies in the world that vouchsafed to recruiting volunteer spies online, facilitating the indu [...]

Despite President Obama’s claim on Monday that he has not yet made a decision about supplying defensive weapons to the Ukrainian army, which is battling Russia-backed separatists who want an independent region within that country, the Russian media is full of predictions. They’re warning of the terrible impact further U.S. involvement in the conflict might have. [...]

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? [...]