Moscow is prepared to cooperate with a British investigation into the death of ex-spy Sergey Skripal, the Russian foreign minister said. He dismissed rumors of the country's involvement as "hysteria" and "propaganda."

Sergey Lavrov said that Russia is blamed for everything that goes wrong on the planet, and noted that no facts had been presented to suggest any Russian involvement in the poisoning of Sergey Skripal and his daughter.

"We haven't heard a single fact, we only watch TV coverage, where your colleagues speak fervently with serious faces that if it is Russia. The response will be that Russia will remember forever. It's not serious, it's propaganda at its finest and pressing hysteria," said the foreign minister, who was speaking at a press conference alongside his Ethiopian counterpart, Workneh Gebeyehu.

Leaders of the two US military branches have warned that China is "weaponizing capital" - buying strategically valuable land from other countries to give themselves a military edge to "win without fighting."

During a House of Representatives Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing on Thursday, US Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer told lawmakers that the issue of Chinese land purchases "keeps me up at night."

"When it comes to China, the bottom line there is the checkbook," he said. "Not only in the dollars and cents that they are writing to support their military expansion and their technological work, but what they're doing around the globe... weaponizing capital."

Politicians seem to love knee-jerk responses. They routinely respond to tragedies with bills that are supposed stop future such tragedies from occurring, but rarely do much of anything. And then they pretend that they're on the forefront of whatever it is their party is doing so they can make their base happy.

However, sometimes they go too far. Take, for example, the state of Rhode Island.

Rhode Island's Democrat Gov. Gina Raimondo signed an executive order Monday directing authorities in the state to use all legal steps to remove firearms from the home of those they feel are a danger.

Raimondo's action, signed before a crowd of gun control advocates, comes in tandem with a measure introduced in the state legislature to enact so-called extreme risk protective orders which would allow police to take guns from those a judge feels may be a threat to themselves or others. While the bill progresses to her desk, Raimondo said her executive action will help pave the way.

"We cannot wait a minute longer for Washington to take action to prevent gun violence," Raimondo said. "The executive order I signed today is an immediate step we can take to make residents safer. It sets the table for a complementary legislative effort."

The order directs state police to take steps consistent with "all applicable state and federal laws and regulations" to remove guns from the household of those that investigators believe pose a significant danger to themselves or others in a "red flag" report. The investigation would follow up on tips received about recent threats of violence such as posts or statements made on social media coupled with, say, evidence of access to firearms. State police, working with local law enforcement as a part of Raimondo's order, would follow-up with the person reported by a tipster and conduct background checks and information searches before acting.

In an interview with NBC's Megyn Kelly, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that his government is prepared to go after the thirteen Russians who have been accused by Robert Mueller of election interference, but only as long as they have violated Russian laws.

A preview clip of the interview posted online by NBC News shows Kelly asking Putin: "If the thirteen Russian nationals plus three Russian companies did in fact interfere in our elections, is that okay with you?"

Holding back laughter, Putin told Kelly: "I don't care. I couldn't care less." Surprised by his blunt answer, Kelly simply retorted: "You couldn't care less?"

Putin explained his apathetic attitude:

On MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Tuesday morning, Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) admitted that the Trump-Russia probe is a "running joke," with a fellow Democrat lawmaker, later saying his colleague's voters never ask about it.

When asked by Robert Costa of the Washington Post about why Democrats are not campaigning on the probe, the lawmaker had this to say...

HIMES: "...Here's the thing. My good friend [Dem Rep.] Cheri Bustos who represents a very tough district in Illinois, we have sort of a running joke going in the mornings, which is, she's got a district very different from mine and I represent Fairfield County, Connecticut. She's in the heartland in a distinct that we need to figure out how to win again. Every Monday morning when I see Cheri and we come up there's a little bit of laughter and she says, 'you know what? My constituents are still not asking me about Russia.

While Democrats joke about the probe being a nothing burger, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) recently admitted that zero evidence of collusion has been found.

United States Steel announced Wednesday morning that it would call back 500 employees to work at its Granite City, Illinois, plant after President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would impose tariffs on foreign steel.

"Our Granite City Works facility and employees, as well as the surrounding community, have suffered too long from the unending waves of unfairly traded steel products that have flooded U.S. markets," U.S. Steel President and Chief Executive Officer David B. Burritt said in a statement released Wednesday.

The steel company announced that it would need the additional personnel to support increased demand for steel after President Trump announced last week that the U.S. would impose tariffs on aluminum and steel imports.

Former President Barack Obama repeated the false claim of "18 shootings in schools this year" while speaking to a cardiology conference Monday night in Washington, DC.

The Washington Examiner quoted Obama saying, "If you ask me the thing that broke my heart, particularly when now I see there have been, and I've gotta update this, [...] 18 shootings in schools this year... this year!"

The claim of 18 school shootings this year was widely pushed in the immediate aftermath of the February 14 attack on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. However, it was quickly proven false by Breitbart News, the Washington Post, and others.

It's been three months since the media outcry over the open market slave trading in Libya and yet, the problem persists.

And the root cause of how these slave markets were created, thanks to U.S. foreign policy, has been ignored.

Do you want to end the slave trade in Libya?

President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia will retain the status of a great power, including in the defense industry, if innovation becomes the main driver of development.

"We need to make sure that the innovative component of Russia's development is the main driver of the country's development. If we achieve this... then, without a doubt, Russia will retain its status a great power, including the defense capability of the state," Putin said in the documentary film 'World Order 2018' by journalist Vladimir Solovyev.

With a $4 trillion GDP in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), Russia has become the sixth-largest economy in the world after China, the United States, India, Japan and Germany.

"Without an efficient economy, without a social sphere that creates a basis for political stability, there can be no question of any greatness," Putin added.

The US used Russia to prevent Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovich from using his military against rioters in Kiev, and then 'cheated' Moscow by supporting an armed coup, President Vladimir Putin said.

The accusation refers to events that happened in February 2014, when Ukraine was gripped by violent anti-government protests. Yanukovich and three leaders of the opposition forces signed a power-sharing deal, which effectively amounted to a capitulation of the president.

The deal was enforced by three European nations: Germany, France and Poland. The accord lasted only a few days, however, as protestors - led by far-right nationalists - violated its terms and advanced unopposed by demoralized security forces. This forced Yanukovich to flee for his life.

"Here is something not publicly known," Putin revealed in an interview. "At this very moment, our American partners called us and asked to do everything - and that's almost a quote - to ensure that Yanukovich didn't use the army, so that the opposition could clear the squares and governmental buildings on its own terms and go on towards the implementation of the agreement."

The Russian president said Moscow agreed to this request, only to see the situation escalate the next day into a full-fledged armed coup. "They could have at least called us, do something, say a word! They could have said, 'It was a case of agents stepping out of line, but we will fix it and turn everything into the bounds of the law,'"he said.

"Not a word! On the contrary, there was full support of those who committed this coup," Putin recalled. "This is what they did with their own hands. How can they not support the current leadership now? They put themselves into a corner."