Two weeks ago, author and journalist William Dunkerly broke a story on OpEd News concerning new information about the 2006 death of ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London. We subsequently covered the story on RI.

The accusations are being made by Paul Barril, a retired captain in the French gendarmerie nationale (similar to internal troops in Russia or national guard in some countries) who had a long career in special forces (GIGN) and counter-intelligence, and is well known in France.

Since his retirement Barril has been involved with a number of private security agencies. Currently he is a partner in the Nadjadi Group, courtesy of whom this exclusive interview was obtained.

Barril is also a figure of controversy, having been connected to a few scandals. Some have raised questions surrounding his service as an advisor to the Rwandan government at the time of the 1994 genocide in that country. However, he strongly maintains he played no role in any crimes.

Israeli firms have teamed up with militants in Sudan, operating gold and uranium mines in the South Kordofan state and smuggling the reserves to the occupied Palestinian lands, a report says.

Hassan Abdallah Dudu, a local chief, said the Israelis are tapping mineral reserves in the areas controlled by Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), the Sudanese Media Center (SMC) reported on Thursday.

They are smuggling them, which also include other minerals, across the border into South Sudan to be transported to Israel, he said.

As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan grows increasingly authoritarian, the European Parliament has filed a resolution to express its concern over Turkey's declining democratic values.

The administration of President Erdogan has shown increasingly dictatorial tendencies. He has displayed ill will toward his own people, by conducting military raids against Kurdish communities in the country's southeast, and he has leaned toward military adventurism through his actions in Syria and north Iraq.

Erdogan has also shown a lack of respect for press freedoms, by cracking down on those critical of the government, both at home and abroad. In 2015, 14 journalists in the country were imprisoned, and on Thursday, Sputnik News was added to a growing list of media outlets banned by Ankara.

As the Battle of New York looms, an underground shadow war flirts with High Noon. After nearly one year, the FBI has finally investigated the treasure trove contained in Hillary Clinton's subterranean private email server. The FBI has refused to release any records. Remember, this is a criminal investigation.

Former State Department IT official Bryan Pagliano - who essentially set up Clinton's personal server - was granted immunity in exchange for cooperating with the FBI's investigation. A whodunit applies on whether Pagliano was told this server might be the conduit of secret State Department communications as well as top secret National Security issues.

The timeline of the Clinton subterranean homesick server blues does raise eyebrows. The story first broke in March 2013, when Romanian hacker "Guccifer" leaked four intercepted Sidney Blumenthal e-mails - related to Libya and Benghazi - to selected global media outlets.

Only RT - routinely denounced in the US as a Kremlin propaganda arm published them at the time. It took the New York Times a hefty two years to report that Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, used a private email account.

Now Forbes comes out all guns blazing:

"The Kremlin's cyber warfare army has had ample opportunity to steal Clinton's entire e-mail cache (including 31,830 "private" e-mails). Such hacking would likely have taken place before the Kremlin's propaganda arm, RT (Russia Today), published Sidney Blumenthal's e-mails to Clinton on March 20, 2013, presumably sending out alarms at that late date to Clinton to secure her private server. The Clinton cache of e-mail correspondence in the hands of the Kremlin or other hostile intelligence agencies could represent one of America's greatest intelligence disasters, giving Vladimir Putin the opportunity to determine the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election or, barring that, to cast a cloud over a Clinton presidency."

Away from Putin now cast as The Great Elector, the crucial player is Pagliano. This is entering Grand Jury investigation territory. The Department of Justice (DoJ) - to which the FBI is subordinated - cannot grant immunity; only federal judges can, when formally requested by a DoJ prosecutor. And that, in itself, is a big deal.

The Russian Ambassador to the UN has called on members of the Security Council to exert influence on Turkey so that Kurds be included in the Syria peace process. Vitaly Churkin also warned against any "secret agenda" and further unilateral endeavors in Libya.

Speaking to Izvestiya daily on US-Russian interactions in Syria, Churkin said that Pentagon officials tend to underestimate the much needed cooperation with Moscow, as the Russian success in fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorists took them by surprise.

"Generally speaking, close Russia-US interaction at various levels - political, diplomatic and military - is the backbone of the crisis settlement efforts. Everyone understands that. And the fact that the Americans, especially Pentagon representatives, are underestimating it may probably mean that they are still at a loss over Russia's energetic actions in Syria in the last six months," he said.

For the peace process in Syria to move on, the Russian envoy has once again stressed that Kurdish participation in Geneva is essential. Yet at the same time, he expressed concern that Western countries are unwilling to pressure Turkey, who repeatedly refuse to allow the Kurds to join the discussions, despite them remaining one of the most important elements of resistance to terrorism in Syria.

It's a bitter five years that have been endured by the Syrian people as a whole. Those who are either pro-state or in opposition have experienced this war. These two parties are the only ones who love and work for the homeland, of course according to the vision of each party in regards to the country and the leadership of the country. The behavior of each party is dependent on a long time procedure, which was built through the influence of different factors and formats on the concept of each party. Although the concepts of the pro-state party and the opponent's party are different, there are still many common values between them both, like loving the country and seeing their land as a great land from the point of view of history and culture. Even the fighting against each other has their love for their homeland in common.

Both parties have given a lot in terms of martyrs, who were put on the sacrificial altar of the homeland, or in terms of the economic burden suffered by the Syrian people, which amounted to a degree that is hard to believe that any other people can endure, or in terms of the psychological burden caused by this war, which changed the peaceful and beautiful reality of co-existence to the contrary. Doubt began to enter into the souls and the hearts, asking about the reality of co-existence.

Here, once again, the Syrian people showed a huge understanding, analyzed the situation, and knew what was meant by co-existence and cohesion between themselves. The Syrian people built a collective consciousness that is aware that what is happening in Syria is a "conspiracy and not a revolution". They knew that what happened in Syria was happening due to the will of the countries that want to destroy Syria. Some are hopeful of the possibility of looting our wealth and the others saw in Syria (Levant) a center, from a historical and cultural point of view, for human values, while these "others" in our region do not have the minimum level of these values and think that money can compensate for these values.

These two parties in Syria were probably, at the beginning of the crisis, in two positions close to each other, especially in terms of objecting to some phenomena of the internal situation that existed in Syria, which President Bashar Assad indicated to them. Perhaps the two parties could have stood in the same position if the course of events in Syria had happened differently. Many from both sides receded after the first months of the crisis, and were content with monitoring and trying to understand what is going on in Syria. This period of retreating and overlooking from both Syrian parties was not long; they discovered that what is happening cannot be described as a "revolution", and those who were carrying weapons cannot be "revolutionaries", as "revolutionaries" do not kill their own people, they do not tear hearts from the chest, they do not destroy their land, and they never do such dirty acts like the ones these "revolutionaries" actually have done.

On March 23 General Breedlove, Chief of Staff of the American European Command gave an address to the Ministry of Defence of Georgia, announcing new American-British-Georgian military exercises to be conducted in May this year under the code-name Noble Partner 2016. In that address he set out the real intention of the American elite; war with Russia. He stated the following, to his Georgian puppets, apparently with a straight face;

"Now, to my visit here. The security situation across Europe continues to evolve and become more and more complex. We continue to face security direct challenges from two directions. To the East, we face a resurgent, aggressive Russia, which has voluntarily chosen to be an adversary and poses an aggressive and long-term threat to the United States and our European allies and partners.

"To the South...Europe faces the daunting challenge of mass migration, spurred by state instability and collapse...and masking the movement of criminals, terrorists, and foreign fighters. As a result of conflict in the region "Daesh" - is spreading like a cancer, taking advantage of paths of least resistance, threatening European nations - and our own - with terrorist attacks. Its brutality is driving millions to flee from Syria, and Iraq...creating an unprecedented humanitarian challenge.

"As we work with allies and partners to respond and overcome both of these serious threats, we stand fully behind Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Today I was privileged to visit the Administrative Boundary Line with your Chief of Defense and our Ambassador. There I witnessed the illegitimate division of the Georgian people. As your brave, valiant nation has witnessed first-hand, Russia continues to seek to extend its coercive and corrosive influence on its periphery, and now it is also trying to re-establish a leading - and aggressive - role on the world stage. Russia ultimately seeks to overturn the established rules and principles of the international system, fracture the unity of the free world, and to challenge our resolve."

On April 5th Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a series of presidential decrees "transforming" the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) into a new "Federal Service of the Troops of the National Guard" (Federal'naya sluzhba Voisk Natsional'noi Gvardii or FSVNG) and transferring the MVD's 187,571 Internal Troops to the FSVNG and renaming them the National Guard or NG (kremlin.ru and echo.msk.ru). Putin appointed his long-time associate Viktor Vasilievich Zolotov as FSVNG director (kremlin.ru). He appointed Zolotov to head the MVD's Internal Troops in October 2014. Although the formal transfer of these troops to the new FSVNG will not be completed until the beginning of 2018, the transfer is de facto already taking place with the formation of the new federal service and the requirement that the MVD coordinate with Zolotov as the transition proceeds and Zolotov now reporting directly to the president rather than through MVD chief.

In making this reorganization, Putin has addressed several problems facing him this year. I emphasize 'several' problems, since many analysts tend to focus on one cause to explain events, falling into a bias trap formed by their area of specialization of study or political or interpretative prejudices or both. In particular, Putin has acquired some robust insurance against political threats both from above and from below.

Putin's move accomplishes at least six tasks.

The Turkish President Erdogan offered the U.S. "Turkmen" troops to take the Syrian-Turkish border region currently held by the Islamic State. In return he demanded that the U.S. stop its support for the Syrian-Kurdish YPG group that also fights the Islamic State. Erdogan's new demand comes on top of the long standing plan to create a "safe zone" in north Syria in which refugees and "rebels" would be kept safe under a Turkish artillery and U.S. air umbrella.

Over the last two weeks "Turkmen" (Turkish special forces, Turkish volunteers and some Uighur fighters) together with al-Qaeda and some Syrian "rebels" proceeded from the Azaz area towards east along the Turkish-Syrian border. With Turkish cross-border artillery support and U.S. A-10 ground attack air support they managed to take a dozen Syrian villages from the Islamic State. They also captured the important Al-Rai border station.

But the Islamic State counterattacked, reoccupied Al-Rai and today cut off some of the attacking "rebel" forces from their support area around Azaz (black arrow).

Here is a map of the current situation in north Syria.

"We declare our right on this earth...to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary." ~ Malcolm X

Yesterday Parliamentary elections were held in Syria. 7000 polling booths were opened across the country. 11,341 candidates were proposed from across Syria with 250 to be elected to Parliament, including a number of female candidates.

Candidates were spread out as follows: 988 in Damascus, 817 in Damascus countryside, Aleppo 1437, in Aleppo regions 1048, In Idleb 386, in Homs 1800, Hama 700, Lattakia 1653, Tartous 634, Deir Ezzor 311, Hasaka 546, Raqqa 197, Daraa 321, Sweida 263 and in Quneitra 240

Voting centres opened at 7.30 am and were obliged to extend their sessions by five hours to accommodate the high turn out of voters.