Despite having front-door access to communications transmitted across the biggest Internet companies on Earth, the National Security Agency has been secretly tapping into the two largest online entities in the world, new leaked documents reveal. Those documents, supplied by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and obtained by the Washington Post, suggest that the US intelligence agency and its Bri [...]

China'€™s leadership will soon usher in bold reforms to support a domestic consumption-driven economic model, and globalizing the renminbi as an alternative store of wealth to the US dollar is at the center of the strategy. The scathing commentary published by China’s state-owned Xinhua news agency calling for a "de-Americanized world" was undoubtedly music to the ears of many in the developin [...]

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been ranked the most powerful person in the world by Forbes. He topped the list of the 72 world figures that "€œmatter the most,"€ while US President Barack Obama was rated second. Putin’s Syria “chess match” that prevented the US strike, and his having the last word in the diplomatic row over the fugitive NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, didn’t [...]

The victims of a drone strike alleged to be launched last year by the United States spoke to members of Congress on Tuesday and urged the US government to stop killing civilians with weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles. Rafiq ur Rehman, a primary school teacher from North Waziristan, Pakistan, spoke through an interpreter on Capitol Hill [...]

The US government spending crisis has caused visible pain for research and innovation in America. Already this year, billions of dollars in federal cuts due to sequestration has affected federal grants for scientific research. But this problem is only the tip of a much bigger problem facing the redundant superpower. [...]

The White House is at a loss as it not only depended on espionage in formulating its policies, but also nobody can trust its word anymore, former US Senate foreign policy analyst James Petras told RT. The latest news on monitoring of phone calls in France, and probably German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own cellphone, brought anger from the French and German governments this week. [...]

"What Has America Become" was the title of a letter to the editor written by Ken Huber of Tawas City, Michigan. It contains a series of comparisons and contrasts which causes one to think about the double-standards and conditions under which we now live here in America. Sadly America is in decline. [...]

As the US government went back to work for its first fully operational day in over two weeks, President Barack Obama addressed the nation Thursday morning from the White House, chastising Republican lawmakers who led the country so close to default. Hours after authorizing a deal that allowed the US government to open back up for business, [...]

Lawmakers in the Senate are weighing a bipartisan bill that is expected to re-open the United States government and save the country from default. During an early afternoon hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) acknowledged, “The eyes of the world have been on Washington all this week, and that is a gross understatement. [...]

The National Security Agency is logging hundreds of millions of email and instant messaging contacts belonging to Americans and others around the world, according to a report based on documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. [...]

A US debt default could hit on Thursday, and world leaders are second guessing the dominant role America plays in finance. Regardless of the final decision in Washington, confidence and credibility in the US has already eroded. In an editorial published by the Chinese state-owned press agency Xinhua, a columnist says the US economy has ‘failed’ and put many countries who hold state assets in d [...]

The second planned march against agricultural giant Monsanto takes place around the world this weekend. The protesters are rallying against the company'€™s use of genetically modified organisms and trying to raise awareness about its corporate practices. [...]

The United States is not the first superpower to act as if it'€™s exceptional and will likely not be the last, although US leaders could be squandering a fruitful opportunity for improved international relations, Noam Chomsky said in an interview with RT. [...]

The father of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has arrived in Moscow. Lon Snowden's flight touched down at Sheremetyevo Airport - where his son famously spent five weeks in transit limbo before receiving asylum in Russia. The plane carrying Lon Snowden landed in Moscow Thursday morning, RT crew on the scene reported. [...]

Edward Snowden’s revelations of NSA surveillance programs prove that the US has abandoned the rule of law, betraying its own constitution, whistleblower Thomas Andrews Drake, told RT. A group of US whistleblowers and activists has present Snowden with a Sam Adams Award for ‘Integrity in Intelligence’ in Moscow on Wednesday. [...]

The top Republican in the House of Representatives warned President Barack Obama over the weekend that he’s ready to let the United States default — and that the White House is to blame. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that Republicans in his chamber would not immediately honor the White House’s request to raise the US debt ceiling, setting the stag [...]

Improved surveillance, take down of opposition websites for "€œillegal content€" and paid pro-government commentators are among the increasingly sophisticated tools used by authorities to restrict internet freedom, a new report claims. The 2013 Freedom on the Net report, compiled by non-profit Freedom House, says that 34 out of the 60 countries it surveyed suffered a falloff in internet freedom [...]

The objective of the United States National Security Agency is to eliminate privacy around the world, the American writer who helped expose the NSA'€™s far-reaching surveillance powers said on Tuesday. Glenn Greenwald of the UK’s Guardian answered questions about the ongoing NSA leaks and his source, the now notorious former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, [...]

Agriculture giant Monsanto has announced acquisition of the Climate Corporation, a climate data research company, expecting that its info will help farmers maximize crop yields with fewer resources. The $930 million cash purchase is set to give the company an upper hand in the quickly expanding field of scientific weather data, something that would put vast amounts of climate information at farmer [...]

California Governor Jerry Brown has signed a law barring state cooperation with any attempt by the federal government to indefinitely detain people. The legislation targets the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Brown signed into law AB351, which goes beyond any other state in rejecting federal indefinite detention power, according to the Tenth Amendment Center. [...]

The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case on whether a conviction for domestic violence precludes Americans from obtaining a firearms license. The Obama administration has argued that ending the prohibition would invalidate bans in much of the US. The Justices announced Tuesday they would hear eight cases of the more than 2,000 appeals that accumulated over the summer. [...]

The United States is home to 442 billionaires like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. It conjures images of movie star mansions, Beverly Hills, and Manhattan's 5th Avenue. But the truth is, 1 in 6 Americans are "food insecure," which is how politicians describe people who don't have enough food to survive. In many states, including Texas, Florida, Mississippi and Alabama, hunger affects over 19% of [...]