The Russian president intends to continue the fight against corruption

Russian President Vladimir Putin has endorsed the initiative to continue the fight against corruption, but emphasized that some people use it as an instrument for self-promotion and grandstanding.

"We must distinguish between those who indeed want to do this [fight corruption] and to really strengthen the state and those who seek to use it as an instrument in their own political games, for self-advertisement," the president said as he met with members of the Council of Legislators.

The situation in northwest Syria is turning favor of the Syrian government, though much work needs to be done. The army is recovering new ground in Hama governate and an intense bombing campaign is waged over Idleb governate which is held by al-Qaeda. As an analyst generally in favor of the opposition concedes:

Continued support for the northwest insurgency amounts to effectively subsidizing a jihadist safe haven in the Levant.
...
The proxy war against the Syrian regime in the northwest, for the West, is lost.

The head of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, agrees. He tells his forces in Syria stop holding land and to revert to guerilla war:

Ayman al-Zawahri told the jihadis, who control Syria's northwestern Idlib province and other territory, to remain steadfast and change tactics in order to wage guerrilla war.

Al-Qaida began fighting alongside Syria's rebels early in the civil war and won allies among the opposition because of its military prowess. Al-Qaida's official branch, the Nusra Front, changed its name to the Fatah al-Sham Front and formally cut ties with al-Qaida last year, but is still widely seen as being linked to the global terror network.

In the southwest Israel is trying to steal another part of the Golan Heights by giving fire support for al-Qaeda groups which fight against the Syrian army in the area.

She has resigned her leadership position of her party in order to take on a role of leading the country.

Marine Le Pen has temporarily resigned from her role as leader of her party, Front National.

Le Pen described her move in the following way,

"I have always considered that the president is the president of all the French. Under this banner, he or she must unite all the French.

Tonight, I am no longer the president of the Front National. I am the presidential candidate.

I will be above partisan considerations".

Le Pen's move will come as a surprise to many as it comes very late in the game with less than a fortnight until the final round of French elections.

Antifa flies under the radar despite escalating acts of violence against president's supporters

On April 15, a pro-Trump, pro-free-speech rally at University of California, Berkeley, descended into violent mayhem after radical far-leftists — members of the organization Antifa — began to attack the peacefully assembled crowd.

Antifa, which stands for "anti-fascist action," is a network of loosely affiliated far-left anarchist and communist groups that orchestrate violent protests and attacks on populists, conservatives, and anyone else its members deem to be "fascists" or "Nazis."

Antifa was formed originally in Germany in the 1980s, its members taking the name of the communist paramilitary groups that engaged the Nazis in street-fighting in the 1930s. It now has active cells across the world, including in Germany, the U.S., Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Czechia, and France.

"Anyone who tries to hold any sort of right-wing event literally gets beat up by militant communists in the street," said independent journalist Lauren Southern, who was present at one of the pro-Trump Berkeley rallies, in a video taken immediately following the violence.

New papers released by whistleblower Edward Snowden, and published by The Intercept, reveal that Japan made secret deals with the NSA - with one document noting that the agency's relationship with Tokyo goes back to the 1950s.

The information, published in collaboration with Japanese news outlet NHK on Monday, states that Japan has allowed the US National Security Agency (NSA) to maintain at least three bases on its territory while contributing more than half a billion dollars to help fund its facilities and operations.

In return, the NSA has provided Japanese spies with state-of-the-art surveillance tools and shared intelligence.

The Intercept notes multiple documents and instances which outline the NSA's ongoing relationship with the NSA.

However, it also notes that the agency has secretly spied on Japanese officials and institutions while maintaining friendly ties with Tokyo.

The Pentagon's plan for seizing and occupying territory in east Syria is beginning to take shape. According to a Fox News exclusive:

"The Islamic State has essentially moved its so-called capital in Syria... ISIS is now centered in Deir ez-Zur, roughly 90 miles southeast of Raqqa, the officials said."

The move by ISIS corresponds to the secretive massing of US troops and military equipment on the Syria-Jordan border. It creates the perfect pretext for a ground invasion followed by a long-term military occupation in an area that Washington has sought to control for the last 18 months. Here's more on the topic from South Front:

"The US military is reportedly concentrating troops and military equipment at the Syrian-Jordanian border. Local sources said that about 20 US Army armoured vehicles (including battle tanks and artillery pieces) carried on trucks were spotted in Al-Mafraq. US troops were allegedly accompanied with the Jordanian Army's 3rd Division.

The US Special Operation Forces, the UK Special Operation Forces and units from some other countries -have been conducting operations across the Syrian-Jordanian border for a long time. They even had a secret military facility inside Syria where members the so-called New Syrian Army militant group were deployed. However, it was the first time when a notable number of US armoured vehicles was reported there. The US Ro-Ro ship Liberty Passion, loaded with vehicles, had arrived to the Jordanian port of Al-Aqapa few days ago. These moves followed a meeting between the Jordanian King and the US president.

Thus, the US-led coalition could prepare a large-scale military operation in southern Syria. The goal of the operation will likely be to get control over the Syrian-Iraqi border and to reach Deir Ezzor. It will involve militants trained in camps in Jordan and the US-led coalition's forces."

Turkey has failed to recognize the Armenian Genocide, which began in 1915 as World War I raged across Europe, for over a century but now new evidence has come to light which may prove beyond doubt the slaughter took place.

Taner Akcam, a Turkish historian at Clark University in Massachusetts claims to have uncovered and deciphered an original Ottoman government telegram from 1915 which, he argues, proves state complicity in the genocide.

"Until recently, the smoking gun was missing," Akcam said, as cited by The New York Times. "This is the smoking gun."

The systematic killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire which is widely, but not completely, recognized as the first genocide of the 20th century, has long been denied by successive Turkish governments for over a century.

The safety of over 400,000 people in Raqqa, Syria, where US-backed Syrian opposition forces are bombing ISIS, is of "deep concern" to the UN. The offensive has resulted in "an escalating number of civilian deaths" as well as damage to vital civilian infrastructure, the organization added.

"In past weeks, civilians have been exposed to daily fighting and airstrikes which resulted in an escalating number of civilian deaths and injuries as well as damage to civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, markets and water infrastructure," a Monday statement from a spokesman for UN Secretary General read.

"There are worries" about how the US-backed operation will affect civilians, Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the UN Secretary-General told RT.

"We have set up camps in the area that are receiving people and we are trying to make sure that all the people displaced by the fighting can be placed in camps for their safety. But we want to make sure that whatever operations are conducted, they will bear in mind that there is a huge number of civilians who are trying to flee to safety," the UN official said.

"We need to make sure that all parties abide by the basic humanitarian norms, so civilians can be spared the consequences both of the actions by Daesh [IS] and by the air strikes," he added.

In 1961, John F. Kennedy was starting to ramp up America's presence in Vietnam. This, after standing up to the Joint Chiefs of Staff by refusing to authorize the CIA's Bay of Pigs invasion fiasco to received air force support, starting on April 17, 1961. To paraphrase Donald Trump's Vice President Mike Pence, it was time for JFK to show his "strength and resolve", in the endless war against communism.

VP Pence was in South Korea this week, to pound on America's King Kong chest. He snarled that Trump had already proved his mettle in Afghanistan (the MOAB bomb) and Syria (the bogus missile attack on an empty government air base), and is now threatening the North not to test the strength of the armed forces of the United States.

In May, 1961, Kennedy's VP Lyndon B. Johnson, dutifully flew to Saigon. Sound familiar? He met with America's fascist, puppet South Vietnamese dictator, President Diem, who was despised by almost every citizen under his brutal control. With a straight face, LBJ announced to the world that this butcher was the Winston Churchill of Asia. Given Churchill's racist and genocidal policies in every British colony across the planet, the comparison was much closer to the truth than admitted by the obedient Western press.

A recent airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq is believed to have caused more than 270 civilian deaths, a tragedy that provoked an international outpouring of grief and outrage.

But the uproar over the March 17 deaths in the Jadidah neighborhood of Mosul masks a grim reality: Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of other civilians have died in hundreds of airstrikes in Iraq and Syria during the war against Islamic State, and it appears likely that the vast majority of those deaths were never investigated by the U.S. military or its coalition partners.

It also appears that the number of civilian casualties has risen in recent months as combat has shifted to densely populated west Mosul and the coalition has undertaken the heaviest bombing since the war began almost three years ago.

The Pentagon insists the written rules of engagement in Iraq and Syria have not changed, but there are signs that military commanders on the ground are more empowered under President Trump.