In the wake of President Obama's promise to stop spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the US intelligence has switched its attention to her top government officials, a German newspaper reported. Washington's relations with Germany were strained last year after revelations that the US National Security Agency (NSA) was conducting mass surveillance in Germany and even tapped the mobile phone o [...]

Treatment of radioactive water at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant might be indefinitely suspended after malfunctions crippled the water purification process and recontaminated thousands of tons of partially purified water, Japanese media report. [...]

Call for military assistance to the coup government in Kyiv. On Sunday Republicans mounted attacks against President Obama over what they consider his inappropriate response to the crisis in Ukraine. Rep. Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox News Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russians have “been running circles around us.” [...]

Steve Watson | Security hole appeared just one month before NSA bragged it had penetrated Apple servers. Following an admission by Apple that a “bug” in its operating system had left devices open to potential hacking, experts are questioning whether the security hole was intentional, in order to allow the NSA backdoor access as part of its mass spying program. [...]

Seumas Milne: The external struggle to dominate Ukraine has put fascists in power and brought the country to the brink of conflict. Diplomatic pronouncements are renowned for hypocrisy and double standards. But western denunciations of Russian intervention in Crimea have reached new depths of self parody. [...]

The recent on-air resignation by former RT news anchor Liz Wahl was just the latest stunt orchestrated by a neo-conservative think tank, according to a new investigative report shedding light on the group'€™s role in an ongoing Cold War revival campaign. [...]

€‹European lawmakers are calling into question the ability of the Troika to effectively deal with the crisis, and many are attacking its methods. An investigation report due in April will look at the handling of the Greek sovereign debt debacle. [...]

Ukraine'€™s statement at the UN that "€˜16,000 Russian soldiers had been deployed"€™ across Crimea sparked a MSM feeding frenzy that steadfastly ignored any hard facts that got in their way. Especially unwelcome is the fact that the so-called ‘invasion force’ has been there for 15 years already. [...]

United States taxpayers make large interest payments to the top four technology firms for the $163 billion in US government debt the companies own and shelter in tax-free offshore accounts. United States taxpayers make large interest payments to the top four technology firms for the $163 billion in US government debt the companies own and shelter in tax-free offshore accounts. [...]

Press freedom in the United States has suffered "€œone of the most significant declines"€ in the last year after sacrificing information to national security, with the NSA surveillance scandal topping the list of wrongdoing. That’s according to The World Press Freedom Index for 2014 from Reporters Without Borders (RWB), which put the US in 46th place out of 180 countries, a 13-place drop fr [...]

Several hundred people have been arrested during a peaceful protest in Washington DC after they strapped themselves to the White House fence and laid out their demands on Pennsylvania Avenue in protest against the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline. [...]

Thousands of people have trekked across Spain to protest austerity they claim is destroying their country. Under the banner of "no more cuts!" the protesters are calling for an end to the Spanish government'€™s "empty promises." Six “columns” of trains, cars and buses, as well as bands of pedestrians have travelled from Extremadura, Andalusia, Valencia, Murcia, Asturias, Galicia and Aragon, [...]

The EU is a hurry to sign the long-awaited association treaty with Ukraine, while the new leaders in Kiev are turning to Washington for support. Whose interests were at stake during the Ukrainian revolution? Should the promises of the West be trusted by the new authorities? Sophie talks to former US intelligence officer Scott Rickard to find out the answers to these questions. [...]

Brazil'€™s public prosecutor wants to suspend use of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s pervasive herbicide Roundup. A recent study suggested glyphosate may be linked to a fatal kidney disease that has affected poor farming regions worldwide. [...]

The Albuquerque Police Department in the state of New Mexico is coming under fire following the release of video footage taken from the helmet-mounted camera of an officer who shot and killed a man earlier this month for camping. James Boyd, a 38-year-old homeless man thought to be schizophrenic, was shot by the Albuquerque PD on Sunday, March 16 after he became engaged in an hours-long standoff w [...]

Nafeez Ahmed: Natural and social scientists develop new model of how "perfect storm" of crises could unravel global system. A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution. [...]

White House suggests executive order might not be the end of measures taken in response to events in Ukraine. President Barack Obama has extended financial sanctions against Russia to include wealthy supporters of Vladimir Putin and a bank said to be close to the Kremlin, in a bid to deter further aggression against Ukraine. [...]

The referendum on Crimea's status is going peacefully, with record-breaking turnout, international observers report. Most of them told RT that the referendum is credible and the vote of the Crimean people should be respected. [...]

The situation has only underscored Europe'€™s divisions and exposed the chasm between the bloc'€™s high-minded aspirations and the rough reality of geopolitics. Three months on, with those same pro-European protesters now victorious but their country at risk of being dismembered by Russia, [...]

Who would have thought a unitary superpower on Earth would accelerate a return to regionalism in place of globalization? For all those who deem ‘Financial Innovation’ to be an oxymoron, that brilliant invention the credit card springs to mind. [...]

Russian president delivers speech laced with patriotic bluster and anger at west, saying Russia has been "cheated again and again." Vladimir Putin announced the annexation of Crimea on Tuesday in a searing speech to assembled political elites in Moscow shot through with angry rhetoric about western aggression and hypocrisy. [...]

Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko has stated that his country accepts that Crimea is now de-facto a part of Russia. "We agree with the Russian Federation on that," the leader said. “Crimea isn’t an independent state. It’s part of the Russian territory. One can recognize or not recognize that, it will change nothing,” Lukashenko told journalists in Minsk on Sunday. [...]