American troops will apparently remain in Iraq even when the fight against Islamic State has ended, according to Pentagon officials, including US Defense Secretary James Mattis, who said that keeping soldiers on the ground is in America's "national interest."

The US Defense Department's top officials expressed their desire to keep US troops in Iraq at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday.

Mattis made it clear that US involvement will not end when Mosul is finally captured from Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

"I believe it's in our national interest that we keep Iraqi security forces in a position to keep our mutual enemies on their back foot," he said, as quoted by the Military Times.

In a tit-for-tat war of words, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he won't turn the other cheek and promised to keep calling European leaders "Nazis" as long as they keep calling him a "dictator."

"How does that work, you have the right to call Erdogan a 'dictator' but Erdogan doesn't have the right to call you 'fascist' and 'Nazi?'" he said in an interview with CNN-Turk and Kanal D television channels.

"They accuse me then they speak of Erdogan as a 'dictator,'" he said, referring to himself in the third person, as cited by AFP.

Six Russian servicemen have been killed and several more injured in a militant attack on a Russian National Guard base in the Chechen Republic.

The incident took place near the Chechen village of Naurskaya, 70 kilometers north-west of Grozny.

According to a statement posted on the Russian National Guard website, "around 2:30am on March 24 a group of armed militants attempted to enter the territory of one of the military camps of the Russian National Guard."

The militant group was spotted by an army detachment, which confronted it. Six attackers were killed. At the same time, six servicemen died in the shootout too while several more were wounded.

The National Guard says the militants took advantage of the thick morning fog for the attack.

Fillon, who accused him of ordering leaks of compromising materials about Fillon's wife getting a "fictitious" job as a parliamentary aide.

Fillon has seen his ratings plummet since the revelation by satirical French magazine Le Canard Enchainé in January that his wife, Penelope Fillon, has received some 700,000 euros ($757,000) over 15 years allegedly working as his parliamentary assistant. The report came under heightened media scrutiny and allegations of a fictitious character were put forward, eventually prompting a formal investigation into purported fraud.

Earlier this week, reports emerged that the investigation has been broadened with Fillon now facing allegations of "aggravated fraud, forgery and use of forgeries," with the latest additions to the case relating to him reportedly falsifying documents to prove his wife's employment.

If Russia's powers in PACE are not restored in full, Moscow may resign its membership in the Council of Europe, according to deputy head of the upper house's International Relations Committee.

"We have outlined our position at the recent session of PACE's permanent committee in Madrid. It is absolutely obvious and it is that the situation in which Russia remains a member of the Council of Europe but takes no part in the work of its Parliamentary Assembly is absolutely absurd," Vladimir Lukin was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti. "This is like being a little pregnant, this situation must be corrected."

The senator also said that if PACE fails to return the Russian delegation its full rights in all spheres of decision-making in the nearest future Russia would face "a very serious dilemma": either quit the Council of Europe altogether or tell its partners that such situation cannot last any longer.

Republican congressional investigators expect a potential "smoking gun" establishing that the Obama administration spied on the Trump transition team, and possibly the president-elect himself, will be produced to the House Intelligence Committee this week, a source told Fox News.

Classified intelligence showing incidental collection of Trump team communications, purportedly seen by committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and described by him in vague terms at a bombshell Wednesday afternoon news conference, came from multiple sources, Capitol Hill sources told Fox News. The intelligence corroborated information about surveillance of the Trump team that was known to Nunes, sources said, even before President Trump accused his predecessor of having wiretapped him in a series of now-infamous tweets posted on March 4.

The value of the Russian ruble is set to rise for the fourth consecutive month despite a drop in oil prices of more than 10 percent. Other energy exporters have seen their currencies crash.

Investors are still lured by Russia's high carry trade return, spots an expert interviewed by Bloomberg.

"This is Russia's paradox, which is still logical: lower rates, better economy, buy the ruble. The carry is good enough even with the upcoming gradual easing," Vladimir Miklashevsky, a Helsinki-based senior economist at Danske Bank told the media.

Despite the optimism professed by the White House, the plan to vote on repealing Obamacare on the controversial healthcare law's seventh anniversary fell through due to objections from a number of Republican lawmakers.

The vote on the American Health Care Act (AHCA), a budget reconciliation bill intended to start the repeal process, was scheduled for Thursday but postponed by the House Republican leadership after it became apparent it would not get enough support.

To ensure the AHCA passes in the House and moves to the Senate requires 215 votes. There are 237 House Republicans, meaning that the party can afford 22 members crossing the aisle and joining the Democrats in opposing the bill. However, the current number of renegade Republicans is anywhere between 24 and 36, according to mainstream media outlets.

The United Kingdom will be made to pay about £50 billion ($62 billion) after it triggers Article 50 to leave the European Union, according to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. This will be a warning to others who want to follow the UK.

According to Juncker, Brussels doesn't want to "punish" Britain but has to prevent the domino effect of countries fleeing the bloc.

"We have to calculate scientifically what the British commitments were and then the bill has to be paid," he told the BBC.

He confirmed the bill will be about £50 billion or $62 billion.

Realistically, no major change in U.S. foreign and defense policy is possible without substantial support from the U.S. political class, but a problem occurs when only one side of a debate gets a fair hearing and the other side gets ignored or marginalized. That is the current situation regarding U.S. policy toward Russia.

For the past couple of decades, only the neoconservatives and their close allies, the liberal interventionists, have been allowed into the ring to raise their gloves in celebration of an uncontested victory over policy. On the very rare occasion when a "realist" or a critic of "regime change" wars somehow manages to sneak into the ring, they find both arms tied behind them and receive the predictable pounding.

While this predicament has existed since the turn of this past century, it has grown more pronounced since the U.S.-Russia relationship slid into open confrontation in 2014 after the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych and sparking a civil war that led Crimea to secede and join Russia and Ukraine's eastern Donbass region to rise up in rebellion.

But the only narrative that the vast majority of Americans have heard - and that the opinion centers of Washington and New York have allowed - is the one that blames everything on "Russian aggression." Those who try to express dissenting opinions - noting, for instance, the intervention in Ukrainian affairs by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland as well as the U.S.-funded undermining on Yanukovych's government - have been essentially banned from both the U.S. mass media and professional journals.

When a handful of independent news sites (including Consortiumnews.com) tried to report on the other side of the story, they were denounced as "Russian propagandists" and ended up on "blacklists" promoted by The Washington Post and other mainstream news outlets.