The Romanian cabinet has resigned in response to nationwide mass protests that followed a deadly fire in a Bucharest nightclub in which 32 people died, Ministers said they would continue to carry out their duties until a new government is formed. "I'm handing in my mandate, I'm resigning, and implicitly my government too," AP cited Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta as saying in a statement Wednesday. The PM said he was "obliged to take note of the legitimate grievances which exist in society."

"I hope handing in my and my government's mandate will satisfy the demands of protesters," Ponta said.

The PM stepped down after an estimated 20,000 protesters took to the streets of Bucharest, the Romanian capital, demanding the resignations of PM Ponta, Interior Minister Gabriel Oprea and the mayor of the district where the nightclub was located.

On Monday, the crowds in the streets of Romanian capital waved national flags, chanting "Assassins!" and "Shame on you!" The Romanian government has long been perceived as corrupt, and Friday's nightclub tragedy brought emotions to boiling point. Cristian Popescu Piedone, the mayor of the Bucharest district where the nightclub fire took place, told reporters he is morally guilty for the deadliest fire in Romania's history.

"I assume the moral blame. As for the legal [blame], I will leave it to justice to pronounce," Piedone said.

"I understand what is being asked and what is expected, and they are right, someone has to take political responsibility," President Klaus Iohannis wrote on his Facebook page late Tuesday, adding that "the next step is for politicians, who cannot ignore this sentiment of revolt."

Russia's president has signed legislation enabling countermeasures in the case of the wrongful arrest of Russian state property abroad. The law, based on reciprocity, curtails the jurisdictional immunity of the country in question if not agreed otherwise. The document was published on Russia's official legal information website and therefore has come into effect. According to the new law, the jurisdictional immunities of a foreign state and its property could be limited on the territory of Russia on the principle of mutuality, in the case that the jurisdictional immunity of Russia has been found to be suffering limitations on the sovereign territory of that country.

The provisions of the law would not be applied if Russia and the other country have reached an agreement to act differently. The judicial immunity of a foreign entity that has filed a legal action, entered legal argument or has taken any other substantive action in a Russian court will be considered revoked. The revoking of a foreign country's judicial immunity in any given legal argument is irrevocable and will be applied to all stages of judicial examinations.

Physical money is going the way of the fax machine in Sweden. The country's sophisticated digital payment technologies are leading to a completely cashless society.

Cash is so taboo now that banks are hauling off old ATMs, several branches don't even have any on the premesis, and trying to pay with physical money is seen as just plain wrong. Kids get allowances added to their cards, and churches collect donations digitally. Use too much cash and bank staffers call the cops.

It all comes down to tech. Stockholm's KTH Royal Institute of Technology credits the mobile payment system Swish with helping the country shift away from physical kroner. Swish is a direct payment app used for person-to-person transactions in real time that began in 2011 as a collaboration among Danish and Swedish banks. It's revolutionizing the Swedish banking system, KTH researcher Niklas Arvidsson said in a press release.

He also predicts that Sweden will be completely cash-free in 15 years. If that pace seems slow, well, there are some kroner in circulation that would need to come out.

Swedes are humming about virtual money, money, money for safety reasons as well. Björn Ulvaeus of Abba fame began advocating for a cash-free Sweden after his son was robbed, the Guardian reported. (Don't bother trying to pay with physical kroner at Abba: The Museum.) Buses stopped accepting cash, too, after a bunch of drivers were robbed.

US military advisors are alleged to have started training so-called moderate rebels near the city of Salma in the Latakia province in what amounts to breaking a pledge not to put US boots on the ground in Syria, Lebanon's satellite television channel al-Mayadeen reported, citing an unnamed military source.

"American officers began training Turkmen militants around Salma in the Latakia Province," the media outlet noted, adding that the mission was previously carried out in Turkey.

The Syrian Armed Forces have taken control over a strategically important highway in the north of the country, a military source told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.

The highway is connecting the cities of Aleppo and Al-Salamiyah in the Syrian province of Hama. Moreover, the highway is the main supply route for the Syrian government army in the city of Aleppo.

"After fierce fighting with ISIL terrorists, the [Syrian] army has taken full control over the Aleppo-Ithriya-Khanasser-Salamiyah highway. Dozens of terrorists were eliminated. Mine clearance specialists have started to demine explosive devices," the source said.

Paul Ryan, who on Sunday slammed national paid family leave in the US as an "entitlement", may not want you to have time with your kids but he sure will have time with his. According to legislative calendars released on Tuesday by House and Senate leaders, our representatives will only be working 30% of the time in 2016.

"I cannot and will not give up my family time," Ryan said last month as a condition of his candidacy for House speaker, and it looks like he will have plenty of it.

The House will recess on July 15, 2016 and not reconvene until September 6. They will then return and be in session for a whopping 24 days until September 30, when they once again adjourn until November 14.

GM: You are a brilliant young researcher who entered with rocket speed into the first-world echelon of geopolitical analysts. Your insights penetrate into the heart of the problems the world faces today. These problems can best be studied from the perspective of the nature of modern warfare: hybrid wars and network-centric wars. Present us, please, the nature of these wars you're talking about in your study: HYBRID WARS: the indirect adaptive approach to regime change.

First off, thank you for the very kind words, that's real nice of you to say and I profoundly appreciate it. I also want to thank the audience for their interest in reading my interview, and I promise that they'll be left with a completely new picture of the world by the time they're done. This exclusive may be lengthy, but I hope to make it worth everyone's precious time in giving them an experience that they won't soon forget.

To address your question, my book focuses on the most cutting-edge form of warfare, which I define as being the transformation of failed Color Revolutions into Unconventional Wars. Using the examples of Syria and Ukraine, I assert that the US' new cost-saving strategy to regime change is to use embedded NGOs to orchestrate state destabilization, and if this doesn't succeed in overthrowing the government or blackmailing it to the point of submission, then the next step is to turn the placard-holding protester into a gun-toting insurgent. What's really astounding, I've learned, is that it's actually not all that hard to do, since there are certain strategic and organizational commonalities between Color Revolutions and Unconventional Wars, both in terms of what motivates their participants and the role of the external forces guiding the campaign, for but only two such examples.

This is post-modern warfare, the evolution of what everyone had unfortunately grown accustomed to ever since the end of the Cold War. This type of conflict is waged indirectly and via proxy, and in some cases, many people don't even realize they're in the middle of a warzone until it's too late. Taking advantage of new information platforms like social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), the organizers are capable of luring thousands of unaware civilians into their "protest marches" for use as human shields against the authorities, all with the eventual intent of having professional provocateurs instigate violence so that as many causalities are caused as possible.

It has become an emotional staple of athletics in the post-9/11 world: patriotism at the stadium. Some of those tear-jerking moments honoring U.S. heroes, however, are "paid acts of patriotism" and the practice is more widespread, ABC News has learned. The Pentagon buys on-field opportunities for military men and women to carry as part of marketing and advertising packages with more than 50 professional sports teams.

Moments such as unfurling the giant flag at a NFL Buffalo Bills game or even throwing out the first pitch at three MLB Milwaukee Brewers games, and rappelling down a rope at center ice to drop the puck at a Minnesota Wild game. All paid for.

Israeli forces stormed a radio station in the Palestinian city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, accusing it of "incitement" amid the ongoing recent escalation of violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) broke into the office of the Palestinian Manbar al-Hurriyya (Freedom Tribune) radio station on Tuesday and destroyed the contents of its offices, including the walls and interior. The security forces also confiscated all the station's broadcasting equipment and ripped out the wires in the building as well.

"About 2 am huge forces... around 30 military vehicles surrounded the building of the radio station and stormed in. They completely destroyed the station's property and ... took the transmitters," the station's director, Ayman Qawasmeh, told RT.

Magazine editors accused of coup plot and Gülenists detained in wake of Justice and Development party's resounding electoral victory

The Turkish government has resumed a crackdown on journalists and political rivals of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan just two days after a major electoral victory for his party that will see it return to single-party rule.

Police officers and bureaucrats loyal to an exiled cleric based in the US are among dozens of people who have been arrested by Turkish authorities in an ongoing move against a group whose members have become bitter rivals of the president.