Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has announced that he had resigned, local media reported Sunday.

"I decided to resign from the post of Ukraine's prime minister. On Tuesday, April 12, the decision will be submitted to the Verkhovna Rada [Ukrainian parliament]", Yatsenyuk said as quoted by Ukrainian TV channels Sunday.

Yatsenyuk said that destabilization in Ukraine is "inevitable," if a new government is not formed.

"We cannot allow one thing [to happen] — the destabilization of the executive power during the war [in the southeastern region of Donbass]. This prospect is inevitable, if after the resignation, a new government is not formed."

"Since now, I see my goals broader than the powers of the government head."

After liberating Palmyra from terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), Syrian forces are now preparing a similar operation for the country's second-largest city, Aleppo, according to Syrian PM Wael al-Halaki. Russia is to assist, he added.

"We, together with our Russian partners, are preparing for an operation to liberate Aleppo and to block all illegal armed groups which have not joined or [which have] broken the ceasefire deal," Wael al-Halaki said Sunday, as cited by TASS.

As the journalist Wolfgang Bauer reminds us, the Syrian people witness the horrors of the Paris and Brussels attacks every single day

The most relevant newspaper cartoon on the asylum story popped up on the front page of The Irish Times this week, for Martyn Turner's sketch caught two scandals in one.

On the left hand side was a rich businessman stepping onto a palm-fringed island under the caption: "Since forever, RICH people have been taking their assets offshore to avoid tax..." On the right hand side of the cartoon, refugees in a flimsy rubber boat sail across choppy seas beneath the words: "Since recently POOR people have been taking their assets offshore... Guess which problem we have worked day and night to stop?"

Well, of course, it's the poor guys who are getting the chop - courtesy of an annual €3bn to the Turks and an easy visa for anyone from Izmir to Iskanderia who wants to take a look at the EU which the refugees risked their lives to reach.


It's not just that - nor the clever-clogs way in which the EU packed its first boat of returnees with Pakistanis who don't quite qualify for our pity, and thus couldn't be seen on our television screens as refugees fleeing for their lives.They all went meekly aboard, guarded by the blue legions of Frontex, that least accountable of all border institutions the EU has yet invented. I'm sure they're all gentle lads and lasses, but why on earth do they wear these preposterous hygiene masks over their faces when confronted by refugees?

A recent Amnesty International report sounded the alarm on a "blood mineral" mined by Congolese children as young as seven and used in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries found in laptops, smartphones and even electric cars.

The mineral is cobalt, and more than half of the world's supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, including at least 20 percent which is mined by so-called "artisanal miners" in the southern part of the country. The report, titled "This Is What We Die For," explains the conditions these miners work in:

"These artisanal miners, referred to as 'creuseurs' in the DRC, mine by hand using the most basic tools to dig out rocks from tunnels deep underground. Artisanal miners include children as young as seven who scavenge for rocks containing cobalt in the discarded by-products of industrial mines, and who wash and sort the ore before it is sold."

The most unusual aspect of this week's 'Panama Papers' scandal was the appearance of the Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson alongside the West's favourite 'bad guys', Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

Iceland rarely makes world headlines and for most people this was probably the first time they had ever seen the country's Prime Minister. There is a good reason for the corporate media's obstinate disinterest in Iceland over the past few years: the country recovered from the financial crisis by jailing 29 corrupt high-level bankers and has refused to pay foreign bondholders since the 2008 financial crisis devastated its economy.

Iceland managed to do this because it had control over its own currency and a government with enough national pride to risk defying the global financial powers-that-be.

Marxists have often made the distinction between two types of capitalists - the "national bourgeoisie" (a class of capitalists linked to domestic manufacturing), and the "comprador bourgeoisie" (linked to international finance). Although the schema is far from exact, one could argue that this inter-class antagonism is at play here. The "national capitalists" under Gunnlaugson coming into conflict with the "comprador elites" of global finance capitalism.

"Antiques" with a declared value of $26 million have been imported to the United States from Syria since 2011, when the civil war there began, according to documents that the U.S. Census Bureau provided to Live Science.

It's not clear what, exactly, the antiques actually are, nor whether the items were illegally brought here or where the money from any sales is going. Their age is also unclear. In most cases the documents say only that they are "antiques" that are more than "100 years old," although occasionally a shipment of coins is identified.

The documents say that the bulk of them are brought to New York City where numerous antiquities dealers, art galleries and auction houses are based. Whether or not the antiques are resold after arriving in New York is unclear.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has detained the members of a radical Islamic group, which recruited fighters for Islamic State and planned a terror attack in the southern Volgograd Region.

Five perpetrators were detained by the FSB, with assistance of the local police, in the town of Pallasovsk, Volgograd Region, the security agency said.


The detained were members of the so-called 'Pallasovsky Jamaat' group, which "was involved in recruitment... of residents of the region to participate in activities of Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS] international terrorist organization," the FSB added.

The Islamist group Jaysh al-Islam admitted to using chemical weapons against Kurdish militias in Aleppo. It also uses human shields and publishes execution videos - yet it has a delegation at the UN-backed Syria peace talks in Geneva.

Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam), formerly known as Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam), is a coalition of Salafist Islamist militant groups based in the Douma and Eastern Ghouta neighborhoods of the Syrian capital Damascus.

1 Who supports it

Jaysh al-Islam is one of the two major militant groups in Syria supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and is part of a larger coalition called the Islamic Front. The coalition seeks to make Syria a country ruled by sharia law, exactly what its rival Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) aims to achieve.

Originally appeared at Politika, translated by A. Djurich/А. Ђурић exclusively for SouthFront

It was discovered that about 140 politicians from more than 50 countries is connected directly or indirectly with fictitious companies in 21 tax haven - Name of Vladimir Putin is not mentioned in the documents
Munich daily newspaper "Sueddeutsche Zeitung" yesterday has succeeded to shake the world with the help of numerous media partners by releasing part of the documents revealing that there are hundreds of heads of state, kings, politicians, athletes, officials, business people, celebrities and their relatives and close friends who have, through a Panamanian law firm "Mossacka Fonseka", founded the companies in so-called tax havens, mostly in order to avoid paying taxes, but also to verify the origin of the money.

Analyzing 11 million documents obtained by the "Sueddeutsche Zeitung", about 400 journalists members of the international research team have identified 140 politicians from more than 50 countries that are linked directly or indirectly with companies in 21 tax havens.

That integrity is a foreign land where Washington is concerned is an inarguable fact. In the latest example, the failure to complete the construction of a nuclear disposal plant agreed with Russia once again leaves Washington's credibility in tatters.

Underlying this issue is the attempt by the US federal government to alter the terms of the agreement it signed with Russia in 2000 for the disposal of weapons-grade plutonium, with each country building industrial plants with this specific objective in mind. Russia has kept its side of the bargain and, at no small cost, built the facility required to dispose of its excess nuclear material in the manner agreed.

The US on the other hand is now looking at an alternative method of disposal, which amounts to storing said material in a process that allows it to retain its "breakout potential" - i.e. its ability to be converted back into weapons grade plutonium.

Given the record of subterfuge and double-dealing on the part of successive US governments when it comes to its failure to honour treaties and agreements, nobody should be surprised. Indeed, this subterfuge is so common where Washington is concerned that you could be forgiven for considering it a quintessentially American trait.

Since 2000 alone, the record in this regard makes stark reading. The willfully false assertion that Saddam Hussein possessed stockpiles of WMD, for example, was used as justification for one of the most disastrous wars ever unleashed, certainly in modern times, which only succeeded in plunging Iraq and the wider entire region into a dark night of terrorism and sectarian bloodletting. It is a state of affairs that shows no evidence of abating anytime soon, 13 years later.

Following on from that, when Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009, he did so as the supposed antidote to the arrogance and mendacity that typified the Bush years before him. One of his very first pledges upon taking office was that he would close of the controversial US prison facility, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, during his first term in office. It was a pledge and an announcement that met with support across the world, given that along with rendition, waterboarding and torture, the very name Guantanamo conjured up his predecessor's "war on terror," which replaced international law with might is right as the cornerstone of global affairs.