About 400 elite mercenaries from the notorious US private security firm Academi (formerly Blackwater) are taking part in the Ukrainian military operation against anti-government protesters in southeastern regions of the country, German media reports.

The Bild am Sonntag newspaper, citing a source in intelligence circles, wrote Sunday that Academi employees are involved in the Kiev military crackdown on pro-autonomy activists in near the town of Slavyansk, in the Donetsk region.

On April 29, German Intelligence Service (BND) informed Chancellor Angela Merkel's government about the mercenaries' participation in the operation, the paper said, RIA Novosti reported. It is not clear who commands the private military contractors and pays for their services, however.

In March, media reports appeared suggesting that the coup-imposed government in Kiev could have employed up to 300 mercenaries.That was before the new government launched a military operation against anti-Maidan activists, or "terrorists" as Kiev put it, in southeast Ukraine.

At the time, the Russian Foreign Ministry said then that reports claiming Kiev was planning to involve "involve staff from foreign military companies to 'ensure the rule of law,'" could suggest that it wanted "to suppress civil protests and dissatisfaction."

"In the state of Israel, someone does not have sex with prostitutes but rapes sex slaves." Rabbi Levi Lauer, the founding executive director of ATZUM-Justice Works, reiterated this point repeatedly Tuesday at a lecture he gave at Brandeis University titled "When Hope Ends in Slavery: Human Trafficking in Israel." The lecture was sponsored by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism.

ATZUM is an Israeli nonprofit organization with four goals: helping Israeli survivors of terror attacks; assisting non-Jews who helped Jews during the Holocaust; educating and assimilating Ethiopian youth; and ending the sex-trafficking trade in Israel.

ATZUM's Task Force on Human Trafficking has been working for six years with the Israeli law firm Kabiri-Nevo-Keidar to change Israeli policy to prevent the trafficking of women and the slavery of women once within in Israel. The law firm's pro-bono work with ATZUM allows ATZUM to spend "more time and less money" on this project, according to Lauer.

For their work, on May 8 Lauer and ATZUM received Hebrew Union College's 2011 Roger E. Joseph Prize, which grants $10,000.

"There are 3,200 women annually who are going to be raped daily and brutalized in ways unimaginable," Lauer informed the audience of about 40 people. Approximately 3,200 women - although there are no official statistics on this - are forced into Israel, stripped naked, sold on the block and distributed to pimps, mainly in Tel Aviv, Lauer said. "After 12 months, many of them are physically and emotionally useless. They are dumped on the street, arrested and deported."

Kiev did not take any steps towards fulfilling the Geneva agreements set during four-party talks between Russia, Ukraine, the EU, and the US on April 17, Russia's envoy to the UN Vitaly Churkin said, adding that the West did not help either.

"Nothing has been done on behalf of Kiev's authorities to implement the Geneva document. Our Western colleagues, primarily the Americans - who now have an unprecedented influence over Kiev - could not or did not want to convince Kiev to fulfill its obligations under the Geneva agreement," Churkin said during the UN Security Council meeting in New York on Tuesday.

Addressing the meeting, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power accused Russia of stirring up trouble in eastern Ukraine and undermining the government in Kiev.

"Russia continues to fund, to coordinate, and to fuel the heavily-armed separatist movement," she said.

Brunei is to become the first East Asian country to adopt Sharia law as the sultan confirmed the Islamic penal code on Wednesday. The move sparks broad concern over the rights of women and minorities.

Sharia law will be implemented nationwide starting Thursday.

"Today... I place my faith in and am grateful to Allah the almighty to announce that tomorrow, Thursday May 1, 2014, will see the enforcement of Sharia law phase one, to be followed by the other phases," Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah said in a speech, AFP reports.

The implementation of Sharia law would mean that residents will face conviction by Islamic courts for their crimes. Most of the laws will apply to non-Muslims, as well. The first phase, which goes into effect on Thursday, will give offenders fines or jail time for acts ranging from pregnancy outside marriage, propagating other religions, or failure to perform Friday prayers. A second phase will go into effect after a year, punishing those who steal or consume alcohol with whipping and amputations. The final stage will take effect in two years, and will use the death penalty - possibly by stoning - for crimes like adultery, sodomy, or insulting the Koran or the Prophet Mohammed.

Dear Humans,

Today I would like to return to your awareness an aspect of the Human condition that condones violence under certain circumstances. To this end, we find ourselves going along with the most egregious of things, not least of which is war. Here we find not only a consensus of opinion - but an accepted truth. People kill people. That's what we do. People have been killing each other over borders, religion, ideology, politics and resources as far back as history will take us. It's a given that we will continue in this maniacal cycle of war, truce and temporary peace until our time on this planet is through. It's our nature and so it is our course and therefore our destiny! - Or is it?

Of course most people are good-natured, loving and kind, but they are often unaware of some of the more sinister elements in our world. Does our slumber make us a threat to the survival of humanity? If so, can one surmise that our "enemy" might actually be the person we see every morning in the mirror? Are we complicit in some way by simply being oblivious? Is this what the others mean by "sheeple," those who simply go along to get along and never ask probing questions?

We sit around the proverbial card table and we're handed the rules. We don't really question them. The rules are the rules and that's that! And at the end of the night, should one run out of money because the others understood the rules better, then maybe a moment of truth will beckon. Perhaps one will decide it is best not to bother with the rules at all - and instead seek to unmask the rule maker.

Former security service chief Oleksandr Turchynov said he didn't order the destruction of a case file on reputed mobster Semyon Mogilevich. Two former heads of the Security Service of Ukraine offered vastly different accounts this week of the alleged role of Semyon Mogilevich in the lucrative gas trade between Ukraine, Russia and other former Soviet states, as well as the contents and fate of secret agency files about the alleged mobster.

Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, who headed the spy agency from 2006 to 2010, told the Kyiv Post in an interview that documents connecting Mogilevich with the nation's gas trade had been destroyed by one of his predecessors, Oleksandr Turchynov, in 2005.

Turchynov, who was security service (SBU) chief in 2005, called such claims an "elaborate ruse" to discredit his close ally, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who made a fortune in the gas trade in the 1990s.

The controversy over the so-called Mogilevich SBU dossier dates back to the split in a coalition between Tymoshenko and former President Viktor Yushchenko in 2005, largely provoked by arguments over whether to retain gas trader RosUkrEnergo as an intermediary in the lucrative business of importing Russian and Central Asian gas to Ukraine.

When the men in black uniforms cocked their guns and pointed them at us, I realised that it was a bad idea to make a cold call on Ukrainian paramilitary forces at their secret hideout in the woods.

"How did you find us? Are you Russian spies?" yelled one, his face twisted with tension as he waved his 9mm-calibre pistol at my stomach.

Our terrifying encounter came after a drive down a meandering dirt road deep into a forest near the port city of Mariupol, on the Azov Sea. The men's improvised headquarters lies on a small island surrounded by a pond. It is a hunting lodge that belongs to a local oligarch sympathetic to their cause.

This is the Azov battalion - known as the "Men in Black" - a secretive special unit of 70 volunteers, one of a number of paramilitary groups set up by the Ukrainian interior ministry as part of increasingly desperate attempts by the government in Kiev to fight the Russian-backed armed rebellion in the east of the country.

The paramilitaries' activities risk fuelling an escalation in tit-for-tat violence that has claimed nearly 100 lives in just under a month, propelling Ukraine towards civil war ahead of two crucial votes that could determine its fate.

Today separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk are holding a contested referendum on leaving Ukraine; on May 25 the country is to choose a new president.

Venezuela "does not recognize and will not recognize as legal a government that emerged as a result of a state coup," the Bolivarian Republic's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

"In view of a regrettable development of events in Ukraine, the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela confirms that it rejects violent processes that, with the support of the United States and NATO, led to the overthrow of the government, jeopardizing the peace and unity of the Ukrainian people as well as the stability of the entire Eurasian region," the statement says.

"Until free elections are held in Ukraine and broad dialogue starts, Venezuela will keep warning the world's nations of the danger of foreign interference, speaking for the creation of a multipolar world that guarantees the peace and sovereignty of all peoples," it says.

Ukraine is in turmoil after a coup occurred in the country in February following months of anti-government protests dubbed "Euromaidan", which often turned violent. New people were propelled to power amid riots as President Viktor Yanukovich had to leave Ukraine citing security concerns. The new authorities set early presidential elections for May 25.

A new report shows that an Israeli spy hid 16 years ago in an air duct in the hotel room of the vice president of the United States at the time but US officials quickly hushed up the incident after they learned about it.

Newsweek magazine, which published a scathing article about Israel's espionage activities in the US earlier this week, broke the story in an exclusive report on Thursday. Citing a senior former US intelligence operative, the magazine said the spying incident "crossed the line" of acceptable behavior between the two spying allies.

According to the report, Vice President Al Gore's security detail had secured his "room in advance and they all left except for one agent, who decided to take a long, slow time on the pot."

"So the room was all quiet, he was just meditating on his toes, and he hears a noise in the vent. And he sees the vent clips being moved from the inside. And then he sees a guy starting to exit the vent into the room," Newsweek quoted the former US operative as saying.

Algeria has rejected a US demand to establish a military base in the North African country, a report says.

Local sources in Algeria say the United States demanded the military base as part of its plan to mount aerial surveillance in the Africa continent.

The US military established its Africa Command in 2008, but so far the command has not found any African state willing to host its headquarters.

In a move observers see as the US reaction to the Algiers decision, US Ambassador to Algeria Henny Ensher said Washington would not sell combat drones to the country, despite earlier agreements.

Ensher said the use of drones in Algeria requires various arrangements including an air system and further coordination between different security services.

In January 2013, the United States sent a drone aircraft for surveillance over the Algerian gas plant, where Algerian forces launched an operation to free several American hostages taken by militants. During the raid, only two of the American captives were freed, according to Reuters.