The head of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) has promised that if elected president in 2018 he will rename the city of Volgograd as Stalingrad - but noted this would be to honor the World War II battle in the city, not the Soviet dictator.

"We will rename Volgograd as Stalingrad because it was the greatest battle. As a memory of the battle," Vladimir Zhirinovsky was quoted as saying by TASS.

A week ago, Zhirinovsky sparked a major scandal in the Russian State Duma by issuing another promise - saying in parliament that he would start executing his opponents should he win next year's presidential polls.

MPs from parliamentary majority party United Russia asked the Parliamentary Commission for Ethics to look into Zhirinovsky's statements, with the LDPR leader responding by ordering all members of his caucus to boycott parliamentary sessions.

Washington insiders are attempting to undermine the presidency by having a continual investigation, and it's unbelievably irresponsible, Daniel McAdams, executive director at Ron Paul Institute told RT.

FBI Director James Comey has admitted the agency is investigating suspected collusion between President Trump and Russia, something which had not been publicly confirmed until now. Comey and other intelligence chiefs testified before Congress on Monday about claims Russia meddled in last year's US presidential election. Asked whether alleged Russian influence changed vote tallies in key states, both the FBI and NSA chiefs said 'no.' McAdams said it seems like Washington has been gripped by "a collective hysteria" and most noticeably among "Democrats and their new best buddies - the neocons."

The executive director of the Ron Paul Institute posed the rhetorical question: "What are the Russians accused of doing?" We know now that they didn't hack, they didn't change any votes, they didn't hack the voting machines, they didn't go and switch the votes," he continued. "What did they do?"

McAdams provided the answer to his own question: "They exposed the fact that Hillary Clinton cheated Bernie Sanders out of a bunch of votes. Supposedly, that is what Russian hacks revealed, but of course we found out from WikiLeaks subsequently that the US intelligence agencies have the ability to put false flags in hackings. So, was it a CIA false flag? Who knows."

When does a man become US Secretary of State? When his wife tells him to. At least that's what Rex Tillerson said in his latest interview. Apparently, he didn't want the job and only took it because his wife said he was "supposed to."

"I didn't want this job. I didn't seek this job," Tillerson said during a three-nation Asia trip in an interview on his plane with the Independent Journal Review (IJR), a little-known US news and opinion website founded by former Republican party staffers.

"My wife told me I'm supposed to do this," he said, adding that he had not even met Donald Trump before he was summoned to Trump Tower to discuss global affairs and subsequently offered the position as the administration's top diplomat.

"When he asked me at the end of that conversation to be secretary of state, I was stunned," Tillerson confessed. The former CEO of Exxon Mobil, the world's largest oil explorer, said he had planned to retire from business in March of this year and "go to the ranch to be with my grandkids." Yet, when he got home from that fateful meeting and told his wife Renda St. Clair about the offer, she said, "I told you God's not through with you."

Russia-bashing and innuendos about disloyal Americans were all the rage at Monday's House Intelligence Committee hearing on alleged Russian "hacking" of the presidential election, but logic is often missing.

As Rep. Adam Schiff tries out for the lead role in a remake of the Joe McCarthy hearings by maligning specific Americans as suspected Russian moles, some of the actual evidence argues against the Democratic notion that the Russians own President Trump and other key Republicans.

For instance, last week, Democrats circulated a report showing that retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served briefly as President Donald Trump's national security adviser, had received payments from several Russia-related entities, totaling nearly $68,000.

The largest payment of $45,386 came for a speech and an appearance in Moscow in 2015 at the tenth anniversary dinner for RT, the international Russian TV network, with Flynn netting $33,750 after his speakers' bureau took its cut. Democrats treated this revelation as important evidence about Russia buying influence in the Trump campaign and White House. But the actual evidence suggests something quite different.

After President Donald Trump proposed a $54 billion increase in military spending, a new report suggests that money will not fix fundamental problems that have existed since the Cold War ended.

A report released Monday by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) says that the current system of recruiting, training and retaining military personnel is a "holdover from the Cold War, reflecting the national security priorities and American society of that time."

After World War II, when the Soviet Union was the only major threat to the US, defense leaders created the "one-size-fits-all" system to ensure that the armed forces would "remain 'young and vigorous' enough to meet the physical demands of battle but also retain a large number of midgrade officers and NCOs prepared to command units in case of another major war."

The BPC says that the system helped win the Cold War, however, is no longer working in the current environment.

Russian upper house MPs have proposed reworking a bill that, if passed, would list any events in which lawmakers meet their electorate as public rallies, claiming that the move would damage democracy and increase red tape.

The senators reacted to the motion drafted by lower house MP Irina Belykh (United Russia) that would require meetings between lawmakers and voters to comply with the same rules as public rallies.

Currently, the key difference between the two formats is that an elected lawmaker must coordinate a meeting with voters with the local municipal authorities at least seven days ahead of the planned date. Organizers of a public rally, on the other hand, would have to coordinate it at least 15 days ahead.

The proposal caused protests in both chambers of the Russian parliament. Representatives of lower house opposition caucuses said in comments with Kommersant daily that they planned to vote against the bill.

The trans-Atlantic relationship is "getting stronger," Defense Secretary James Mattis told NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, amid an ongoing dispute between the US and Germany over European military spending.

The White House announced Tuesday that President Donald Trump will attend a NATO summit on May 25 in Brussels.

"The President looks forward to meeting with his NATO counterparts to reaffirm our strong commitment to NATO, and to discuss issues critical to the alliance, especially allied responsibility-sharing and NATO's role in the fight against terrorism," the statement read.

Stoltenberg is scheduled to visit Trump at the White House on April 12, according to the statement.

Also Tuesday, the NATO secretary general arrived in Washington, DC ahead of the anti-ISIS coalition summit scheduled for Wednesday, and met with Mattis at the Pentagon.

NUNES: [partial opening comments] The Putin regime has a long history of aggressive actions against other countries, including the outright invasion of two of its neighbors in recent years, as well as its brutal military action in Syria to defend the Assad regime. But it's hostile acts take many forms, aside from direct military assaults.

For example, the Kremlin is waging an international disinformation campaign through the RT propaganda network which traffics in anti-American conspiracy theories that rivaled the extravagant untruths of Soviet era Pravda (ph). Russia also has a long history of meddling in other countries, election systems and launching cyber attacks on a wide range of countries and industries.

The Baltic's and other Russian neighbors have long decried these attacks. But their warnings went unheeded in far too many nations' capitals, including our own. The fact that the Russia — that Russia hacked U.S. election-related databases comes as no shock to this committee. We have been closely monitoring Russia's aggression for years.

A year ago, I publicly stated that our inability to predict Putin's regime plans and intentions has been the biggest intelligence failure that we have seen since 9/11 and that remains my view today. However, while the indications of Russian measures targeting the U.S. presidential election are deeply troubling, one benefit is already clear. It has focused wide attention on the pressing threats posed by the Russian autocrat.

In recent years, committee members have issued repeated and forceful pleas for stronger action against Russian belligerents. But the Obama administration was committed to the notion against all evidence that we could reset relations with Putin. And it routinely ignored our warnings. I hope today's hearing will shed light on three important focus points of the committee's investigation on Russia active measures.

First, what actions did Russia undertake against the United States during the 2016 election campaign and did anyone from a political campaign conspire in these activities?

Number two, were the communications of officials or associates of any campaign subject to any kind of improper surveillance? ... We know there was not a physical wiretap of Trump Tower. However, it's still possible that other surveillance activities were used against President's Trump and his associates.

Number three, who has leak classified information? ...

The White Helmets. The biggest propaganda heist in the six year history of the dirty war against Syria is unravelling. The glamour of an Oscar is not enough to disguise the sordid details of the White Helmet ties to Al Qaeda (Nusra Front in Syria) and various other extremist, atrocity committing groups embedded in Syria by the NATO and Gulf state regimes. No amount of money laundering is going to wash their image clean after the latest series of reports from Swedish Doctors for Human Rights, exposing macabre, medical malpractice and suspected use of drugged or dead children as props in a propaganda campaign to unseat the Syrian government and to destabilize an entire nation & its people.

Gowdy makes tender shish kebab out of Comey

FBI Director James Comey and Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, went to Capitol Hill on Monday to testify before the House Select Committee on Intelligence concerning allegations of Russian interference in the recent elections and Trump's claims that Obama gave him the "Merkel treatment".

There's a lot to unpack here, but we especially enjoyed Rep.Trey Gowdy's questioning.