Unidentified hackers attacked the website of Le Soir, a French language Belgian newspaper, the director general of the daily said.

"Le Soir fell victim of a cyberattack," Didier Hamann said on his Twitter account Sunday.

According to Hamann, there is no immediate evidence that the incident is linked to the recent massive cyberattack against the French TV channel TV5Monde so far.

On Wednesday night, 11 channels, a website and social media accounts of TV5 Monde network were knocked out.

The hackers posted a statement on the TV5 Monde's Facebook page, saying that French President Francois Hollande had made a mistake in supporting the US-led international coalition carrying out airstrikes against Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq and Syria.

Both France and Belgium are members of the US-led operation. In February, Belgium pledged to send about 35 servicemen to Iraq to help train its army in the fight against the IS.

The unknown foreign vessel the Swedish Navy searched for near Stockholm last autumn was actually a "workboat," a senior navy official says. Local media had alleged a hunt was on to try and find a Russian submarine, which was believed to be in the area.

Swedish Rear Admiral Anders Grenstad told the Swedish TT news agency on Saturday that what was thought to be a vessel or a foreign submarine was actually just a "workboat."

The Swedish Navy changed the wording from "probable submarine" to "non-submarine" when referring to the reconnaissance mission connected to the unidentified vessel spotted in the Stockholm archipelago.

The massive hunt was used by the Swedish Defense Ministry to justify a six billion kronor ($696 million) hike in defense spending between 2016 and 2020.

The drama started after an amateur photograph of an alleged underwater vessel of unidentified origin was sent to the ministry. The man who took the photo raised the alarm because he thought he saw the object surface and disappear again.

Sweden undertook an intense one-week search in late October, looking for possible "foreign underwater activity" near Stockholm. During the operation, the Swedish Navy reportedly used over 200 troops, helicopters, stealth ships and minesweepers to search the waters of the Baltic Sea.

Russia says the United States, Britain, France, and Jordan have rejected Syria's proposal to add ISIL to the United Nations Security Council's sanctions list as a separate terrorist group.

"In the UN Security Council's Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee, the United States, Britain, France, and Jordan have blocked Syria's request supported by Russia to include the Islamic State (ISIL) terrorist group in the sanctions list as a separate group," read the statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday.

According to reports, ISIL Takfiri terrorist group is currently mentioned as al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) in the UN's sanctions list.

The US Air Force and Navy plan to pursue the development and acquisition of sixth-generation F/A-XX fighters; they consider the fleet of existing jets incapable of handling their Russian and Chinese fifth-generation counterparts, something which they feel constitutes a real threat to national security.

The Chinese Chengdu J-20 and the Russian Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA are becoming a real threat to the US Air Force and Navy, according to The National Interest, an international affairs magazine.

"When you see these next-generation fighters, the PAK-FA out of Russia and the J-20 out of China, and some of their new missile technology, our advantage is dwindling," the magazine quotes one senior industry official as saying, without disclosing his name.

Neither of the two jets currently in service with the US Air Force and Navy, the Lockheed Martin F-35C Joint Strike Fighter and the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, can adequately handle new threats like the Chinese Chengdu J-20 or the Russian Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA, the magazine cites "some industry insiders with deep knowledge of both jets" as saying.

Traitors from developing countries unite!

It is much easier to rule over those people who have lost all their dignity.

There is no reason to fear resistance where cynical consumerism, lack of knowledge, and constant anxiety are shaping the behavioral patterns of a nation; of most of its citizens.

The West made an art form out of controlling the world. Its once rough and simple 'divide and rule' tactics have reached, with time, great virtuosity. What Richter, Rostropovich or Argerich did for the art of Western classical music, people like Brzezinski, Kissinger and Negroponte matched with their brilliance in the art of destruction and terror.

In today's world, everything is upside down. Brothers fear brothers, guerilla fighters are made to spy on each other, and heroes who are fighting for the survival of the planet are labeled by Western regime as demagogues, strongmen or even terrorists.

The Empire successfully mobilized the most regressive elements in each society that it controls. It upheld religions, archaic family compositions and feudalist power structures in order to make rebellion almost impossible.

Hillary Clinton, a former US secretary of state (and senator, and First Lady), will (has) reportedly announce her 2016 presidential run Sunday via social media. Expect these recent Clinton scandals to surface again (and again) for the duration of her candidacy.

State Department emails

The latest Clinton controversy stems from her use of a private email account and server -- which was found to be insecure for at least three months -- to conduct official business as US secretary of state. Clinton has said she used her private email account -- just as past secretaries of state have done -- as a matter of convenience.

WESTERN VALUES™. We're sure learning the difference between reality and rhetoric, aren't we? Constitutional order: Yanukovich leaves town and loses his position, Yemen president leaves town, keeps his. "I'm not going to draw parallels here" says Harf as she proceeds to. Freedom of speech: pianist cancelled because of her tweets or, as they might say, "Charlie? Qui est-il?".

AN ESSENTIAL READ. I highly recommend Vladimir Golstein's essay "Politics, Bullshit, and Ukraine". Putin & Co are telling the truth or lying; but in either case they believe there is a factual reality to be addressed. The other side is simply bullshitting: reality is whatever they say it is (vide Harf above). BS engenders conspiracy theories: obviously last year's coup was not about improving the life of Ukrainians so it must be about something else (my entries here). But read the whole essay, it's very illuminating.

THE RUBLE. Remember when it was on its way to complete destruction? Well it's now the best performing currency of the year. The Russian economy is stabilising. Predicting is tough - what you want to see often gets in the way.

Everything about the war on Yemen is a smokescreen. Concealed behind the smoke is a tale of geopolitics and petro-politics that aims to control the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden.

The House of Saud and a military coalition that consists mostly of anachronistic monarchies are claiming to bomb Yemen as a means of saving the Yemenite people and their transition to democracy. The irony should not be lost on observers that recognize that the Saudi-led coalition — consisting of the Kingdom of Morocco, the UAE, Kuwait, Kingdom of Bahrain, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Qatar, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia itself — is comprised of an unhealthy mixture of backward family dictatorships and corrupt governments that essentially are the antithesis of democracy.

Just as important to note, the Saudi-led war on Yemen is a criminal act. The military attack on Yemen was not authorized by the UN Security Council. Nor can the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia justify its bombing campaign under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, because Yemen and Ansarullah (the Houthi movement) pose no threat of war to Riyadh and never had any intentions of igniting a war in the Arabian Peninsula. This is why the Kingdom's war on Yemen is categorically a violation of the Charter of the UN and international law.

The Houthis never wanted to aggravate Saudi Arabia let alone start a war against the Kingdom. Days before the Saudi-led war on Yemen, the Houthis had stealthily sent a delegation to Riyadh to establish an understanding with the Saudis and to calm them down.

Instead of opposing the illegal war on Yemen, Washington and its allies, including Britain, have thrown their political support behind the bombing of Yemen by the malfeasant Royal Saudi Air Force, which has committed war crime by intentionally bombed civilian infrastructure, including refugee camps and children's schools.

It is no coincidence that most of the victims in Yemen are civilians. This is part of a Saudi strategy of establishing rapid military dominance, which is colloquially called "shock and awe." Ring any bells? This is a strategy taken right out of Uncle Sam's playbook that intends to demoralize resistance and scare the opponent into surrendering.

Britain's Green Party announced on Sunday plans to raise the top rate of income tax by 15 percent.

The party suggested pushing the rate of income tax for the richest UK citizens from the current 45 percent to 60 percent.

"The 60p tax will raise money to fund crucial public services, contributing towards the reversal of the failed policy of austerity that is making the poor, the disadvantaged and the young pay for the greed and fraud of the bankers," the party's leader Natalie Bennett was quoted as saying on the Green Party's website.

According to Bennett, this measure will help raise some 2 billion pounds (almost $3 billion) annually, acting as a disincentive to companies that pay "excessively high" salaries.

"For too long now the economy in this country has worked for those at the top, while failing everyone else," Bennett said.

The 45-percent tax rate concerns those whose income is more than 150,000 pounds a year. According to the Green Party, the tax rate affects only the top one percent of earners.

A secret memo prepared by a Congressional think tank and seen by the Daily Mail says that the US may need a "reassessment of the special relationship" with its key economic partner, Britain, "because its geopolitical setting has been changing."

Winston Churchill's 1946 speech to Westminster College, in Fulton, coined the phrase "special relationship" to describe the exceptionally friendly political, diplomatic, economic, military and cultural relations between the United Kingdom and the United States.

Some 69 years later, when PM David Cameron last visited the White House in January, he quoted President Barack Obama as saying that "the special relationship is stronger than it has ever been privately and in public and I agree."

However, a classified document dated April 2015 and prepared for the for members of US Congress reportedly states that "the UK may not be viewed as centrally relevant to the United States in all of the issues and relations considered a priority on the US agenda."

The congressional memo, edited by Derek E Mix, the CRS's chief European affairs analyst, is meant to brief the Senate and House of Representatives on the impact of Britain's upcoming May 7 general election.