Tehran has been facing economic hardship with its currency losing half its value since April and the economy's growth slowing down, following the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and subsequent threats to re-impose sanctions on the country.

The Iranian parliament has prepared a list of questions regarding the cabinet's policy on coping with economic challenges facing the country and has given President Rouhani one month to present his answers to lawmakers, the Iranian news agency ISNA reported, citing Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani.

According to ISNA, the cabinet of the Iranian president (specifically the Economic Commission) will have to provide an explanation for the country's economic recession, the struggle against unemployment, the national currency's declining value, as well as the smuggling of goods and currencies. Rouhani's government was also asked why Iranian banks are still facing sanctions, despite the Iran nuclear deal having been signed three years ago.

The Iran nuclear deal, which lifted economic sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic in exchange for the country maintaining a peaceful nature of its nuclear program, was signed in 2015, but the US withdrew from the agreement in May, 2018.

Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko on Saturday called the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church a national security threat.

At a ceremony marking the country's conversion to Christianity 1,030 years ago, AFP reported that the Ukrainian leader said that the Russian church's sway among Ukrainian believers is a "direct threat to the national security of Ukraine." The head of state also added that "this obliges us to act."

There are two branches of the Orthodox Church active in Ukraine: the Russian church and its Ukrainian cousin. The former, whose clerics are loyal to the patriarch in Moscow, has the most adherents, according to the report. The Ukrainian church and its patriarch are based in Kiev.

"I believe it is absolutely necessary to cut off all the tentacles with which the aggressor country operates inside the body of our state," said Poroshenko, speaking about the Russian church.

He said that the religious body is "separated from the state only on paper" while it "fully and unconditionally supports the Kremlin's revanchist imperial policy."

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) filed a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against Twitter following revelations the social networking giant shadowed his account.

Screenshots emerged this week showing the Florida Republican's account would not autocomplete in search results. In a statement to Breitbart News, the lawmaker's office said it was "investigating the depths and impact," of the serious allegations.

A spokesperson for the Trump ally said:

It is curious that these allegations would arise the week following Congressman Gaetz's heated exchange with Twitter senior executives before the House Judiciary Committee. Congressman Gaetz continues to believe that interactive computer services, such as Twitter, should not discriminate against content while simultaneously asserting that they are a nonbiased public forum under federal law.

It is no coincidence that some of the world's most ardent imperialists are behind the cynical exploitation of one heinous murder — of British MP Jo Cox — to enable global mass-murder as well as human trafficking under the pretext of "ethical" and "humanitarian" intervention.

Just over two years ago, the senseless and savage murder of British Labour Party MP Jo Cox stunned Britain and much of the world. After her death, families, friends and colleagues pledged that her memory would live on, thanks in part to the memorial funds posthumously set up in her honor.

Among those memorial funds, the Jo Cox Fund is by far the most notable, having greatly surpassed its £1.5 million ($1.97 million) fundraising goal. That money, according to the fund's GoFundMe page, was divided among three organizations that had been "close to her [Cox's] heart:" the Royal Voluntary Service, Hope Not Hate, and the White Helmets of Syria, with funds raised in excess of that goal being used to establish the Jo Cox Foundation.

Though Jo Cox was undeniably a vocal supporter of all three of those causes, the past two years have revealed a concerted effort on the part of powerful interests, including globalist billionaires and prominent figures of the Western political elite, to exploit Cox's death for the purpose of furthering the long-standing Western agenda of effecting regime change in Syria.

Our media's valiant efforts to distract us notwithstanding, information continues to seep out that underscores how badly a housecleaning is needed in Washington, D.C.

Last week saw the release of the applications used to obtain warrants from the FISA court to spy on Carter Page, an adviser to the Trump presidential campaign. Obtained by Judicial Watch, the 400-plus pages of (heavily redacted) documents support the conclusions earlier drawn by the House Intelligence Committee (and denounced by Democrats as hysteria): the FISA warrants were obtained through obfuscation and deceit.

As various commentators predicted would be proven, the bulk of the information that formed the basis for the FISA warrant applications was the "dossier" of allegations about Donald Trump's activities in Russia. This dossier was provided to the FBI by British spy Christopher Steele. Steele was hired during the 2016 presidential campaign by opposition research firm Fusion GPS, who was paid by Hillary Clinton's law firm Perkins Coie, who was paid by the Clinton campaign and the DNC. The allegations were scandalous and completely unverified, in violation of federal statutes and FISA court rules.

In other words, the FBI used oppo research paid for by the Democrats as justification for government spying on a political opponent and other Americans.

But there's more. In another incredible coincidence, Fusion GPS had hired scholar and professor Nellie Ohr as a "paid Russian expert." Nellie Ohr happens to be married to Bruce Ohr, deputy attorney general in the Justice Department. Bruce Ohr is alleged to have passed his wife's anti-Trump research to the FBI. He was demoted for failing to disclose not only his wife's employment with Fusion GPS, but also his own meetings with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson.

The FISA court was never told any of that. They were never supposed to know. None of us was ever supposed to know.

When thousands of DNC emails were leaked to the public through Julian Assange's organization WikiLeaks, we learned that Hillary Clinton had abused the primary process, nearly bankrupted the DNC and effectively stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders. We also learned the press played favorites with Clinton, getting her approval before running stories and forwarding debate questions to Clinton in advance. (The official line is Russians hacked the DNC computers and gave the emails to WikiLeaks. Assange and former U.S. and U.K. intelligence officials vehemently deny this, and maintain it was an inside "leak," not a hack. The DNC refused to turn over their servers to the FBI for inspection.)

And then there is Hillary Clinton's misuse of a personal email server to handle classified State Department information. We now know that then-FBI director James Comey decided not to prosecute Clinton before the investigation was even concluded. We also know that FBI attorney Peter Strzok rewrote Comey's initial report to change Comey's description of Clinton's conduct from "grossly negligent" - which was a violation of the applicable federal statute - to "extremely careless."

This is the same Peter Strzok who expressed his loathing for Donald Trump in many of the tens of thousands of texts he exchanged with his lover and fellow FBI attorney Lisa Page. Strzok infamously assured Page that they had an "insurance policy" and that they "would stop" Trump from becoming president. At a congressional hearing two weeks ago, Strzok arrogantly insisted that his bias did not affect his job performance.

He must think we're all idiots.

But then, we were never supposed to know any of this.

Hillary Clinton was supposed to win. No one would know the FBI "investigation" into her violations of federal statutes was a foregone conclusion that would exonerate her. No one would know that members of the FBI and the DOJ were using their government powers to attack and discredit the man who wasn't "supposed" to win, but did.

Trump's unorthodox presidency has been a great gift. It has exposed the corruption in our government, and the betrayal of the American public by so much of the press.

It would be unthinkable for an American opposition party run openly out of Moscow to compete in American elections. It would be even more unthinkable for the Russian government to declare US elections illegitimate for disallowing a Moscow-backed party from running in American elections.

Yet this is precisely what the US and the European Union have attempted to do in the wake of Cambodia's recent elections regarding an opposition party created by Washington and whose leadership calls Washington a second home.

US-EU Seek to Undermine Cambodian Election Results

The BBC in their article, "Cambodia election: Ruling party claims landslide in vote with no main opposition," would claim:

Critics have called the vote a sham as the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which narrowly lost the last election, has been dissolved.

The US said the poll was "flawed".

"We are profoundly disappointed in the government's choice to disenfranchise millions of voters, who are rightly proud of their country's development over the past 25 years," a statement from the White House said.

The US will consider placing visa restrictions on more government officials, it added. The EU has said it is considering economic sanctions.

A second Russian scientist has reportedly been charged with sharing state secrets with another country this month, a week after the high-profile detention of a space researcher on treason charges.

Last week, Viktor Kudryavtsev, a scientist at one of Russia's leading space research labs, was charged with state treason for a suspected leak of hypersonic missile technology to a NATO country in 2013.

World-renowned author and lecturer Noam Chomsky pointed out in a recent interview that Israel has actually had far more influence in the United States political system than Russia ever has, in the wake of mass media hysteria about alleged "collusion" in the 2016 election.

In an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, Chomsky said:

So, take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections. Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that's almost a joke. First of all, if you're interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done, I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president's policies - what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015. Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to - calling on them to reverse U.S. policy, without even informing the president? And that's just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence. So if you happen to be interested in influence of - foreign influence on elections, there are places to look. But even that is a joke.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced $113 million (86.01 million pounds) in new technology, energy and infrastructure initiatives in emerging Asia on Monday, at a time when China is pouring billions of dollars in investments into the region.

In a policy speech delivered amid increased U.S. trade frictions with China and other Asian countries, Pompeo sought to define the economic aspect of President Donald Trump's "Indo-Pacific" strategy, which aims to cast the United States as a trustworthy partner in the region.

Pompeo said Washington wants a "free and open" Asia not dominated by any one country, an apparent reference to China's growing economic clout and heightened tensions in the disputed South China Sea.

Over the last two weeks, the U.S. has imported a record amount of Ecuadorian oil, leading to speculation that a deal or pay-off may have been made to ensure Moreno's cooperation with Washington's long-standing efforts to have Assange arrested and extradited.

Speaking in Madrid on Friday, Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno told an audience that WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange would need to leave Ecuador's London embassy "eventually." Moreno offered no time-table for Assange's possible exit, which several sources just last week asserted could take place within "weeks" or even "days." Assange has spent over six years in the embassy after being granted political asylum by Ecuador in 2012.

However, Moreno asserted that Assange's "departure [from the embassy] should come about through dialogue." He went on to state that "for a person to stay confined like that for so long is tantamount to a human rights violation" and affirmed his commitment to reach a resolution to Assange's situation that did not "pose a danger" to the journalist's life.