A cross-party group of British parliamentarians met with Russia's UK ambassador, Alexander Yakovenko, in a bid to heal the rift in the countries' approach to Syria. On Thursday, Yakovenko was also summoned to the Foreign Office over concerns related to Aleppo.

The MPs, who called the meeting and spoke with the Russian diplomat for an hour and a half at the Russian Embassy in London, included Labour's Dan Jarvis, Hilary Benn and Ann Clwyd; Tania Mathias from the Conservatives; and representatives from the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, and Northern Ireland's SDLP.

Conversation focused on eastern Aleppo, a former rebel stronghold, which was retaken by Syrian government forces earlier this week after four years of fighting.

"They were concerned about humanitarian aid, but I said I see no plans from the UK to provide direct humanitarian aid. I informed them what Russia was doing - 35 tons of food a day, supplies for two hospitals, capable of treating 450 people a day," Yakovenko told RT in an interview straight after the talks. "All this talk of humanitarian problems in Aleppo should be supported by deeds."

White House press secretary Josh Earnest has accused media outlets which reported on the contents of the hacked DNC emails as being "arms of Russian intelligence," once again accusing Moscow of being behind the cyberattack.

The statement was made during the White House press briefing on Wednesday, in response to New York Times reporter Gardiner Harris, who, siding with the official White House rhetoric, stated that "from the first days, investigators knew it had Russian ties."

Harris then asked why it took until October for Washington to announce it believed the hack was carried out by Russia, when the cyberattack was confirmed in April.

One by one, all the mainstream media outlets are announcing they will join Facebook's "fight" against "fraudulent stories" and the "scourge of fake news" to be defined arbitrarily by said media outlets. First it was "fact-checkers" such as Snopes and Politifact, now it's AP, and soon to follow, the rest of the mainstream.

From AP's blog:

The fight against fake news

As part of its broader fact-checking efforts, The Associated Press announced Thursday that it will work with Facebook to help identify and debunk trending "news" stories being shared online that are false.

AP stories dispelling patently false trending news articles already appear on the AP wire, on APNews.com and on the AP News app. These stories, which will now say "AP Fact Check" in the headline, include details on AP's efforts to verify the facts in fake news stories.

Now, when AP or another participating fact-check organization flags a piece of content as fake, Facebook users will see that it has been disputed and there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why. That flag will follow the content if a Facebook user chooses to share it.

"AP has long done some of the most thorough fact-checking in the news business," said Sally Buzbee, AP's incoming executive editor. "This initiative is a natural extension of that tradition, and of the AP's long-standing role setting the standards for accuracy and ethics in journalism."

AP has consistently provided nonpartisan fact checks to its member news organizations and customers, which objectively examine the claims of politicians and government and other officials.

In recent weeks, AP has been identifying fake news stories, such as a false report that President-elect Donald Trump had allowed a homeless woman to live in Trump Tower. It also debunked a trending story that claimed Hillary Clinton won only 57 counties in the U.S. presidential election.

AP has long set the industry standard for accuracy and ethics in journalism, through its rigorous code of News Values and Principles and through The Associated Press Stylebook, which is used by news organizations around the world.

In an earlier memo to staff signed by AP news leaders, Vice President for U.S. News Brian Carovillano explained:

It is our job - more than ever before - to guide people to legitimate news and help them sort out "fake news" from the real thing.The AP has a critical role to play in fighting the scourge of fake news. We are not going to transform ourselves into the fake news police of the internet, but we are going to be more aggressive about knocking down fraudulent stories when we can.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest has had a tough week. Just days after a press briefing blunder, Donald Trump has now slammed Earnest, calling him a "foolish guy" who makes everything "sound bad."

The president-elect made the comments on Thursday during an appearance in Hershey, Pennsylvania as part of his 'Thank You' tour.

"This foolish guy Josh Earnest, I don't know if he's talking to President Obama. You know, having the right press secretary is so important because he is so bad, the way he delivers a message," Trump told his supporters, complimenting them on how they were "laid-back" now they have won the election.

Trump criticized Earnest for his inability to deliver a positive message without making it "sound bad."

As Moscow is wondering why there is no aid coming to Syria from the US and the EU, despite statements on civilians' plight in Aleppo, the UK and US defense ministers allege that Russia is hampering humanitarian action. The Red Cross and the UN say the opposite.

RT's Anastasia Churkina asked UK Defense Secretary Michael Fallon and US Defense Secretary Ash Carter to comment on their governments' claims that Russia is preventing humanitarian aid deliveries to Aleppo. The two spoke to reporters at a news conference following a London meeting of defense ministers on Syria.

"We've been trying to get food and medicines and other humanitarian aid into Aleppo since the summer and we had absolutely zero cooperation from Russia," Fallon said.

"On the contrary, we've seen aid convoys attacked and we've seen hospitals bombed and a barbaric attitude to the plight of civilians in Aleppo," he added.

President-elect Donald Trump's spokesman Jason Miller tells reporters that the policy team is looking at a number of different options on how to handle President Obama's executive orders.

Miller was asked specifically about the current administration blocking states from not dispersing federal funds to Planned Parenthood in a new rule, which was finalized on Wednesday. "The policy team is reviewing a number of different options for day one executive order as well as additional executive orders during the first 100 days," Miller told reporters.

"There's not yet been a final list that's put forward, but as most of you saw Stephen Miller, who is our national policy director, [...] is working with a team to get those put together."

The European Union reiterated its call to Russia to abandon the practice of labeling NGOs as "foreign agents" following a decision of a Moscow court to include the Memorial International Society on the "foreign agents" list, a spokesperson for EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said in a statement on Friday.

The statement added that the European Union remained committed to supporting Russian NGOs and civil society despite the difficulties. It stressed that the law on foreign agents "further tightens the restrictions on the exercise of fundamental freedoms in Russia."

"We continue to call on the Russian authorities to align their policies and legislation with the human rights obligations and commitments that they have undertaken, and to abandon the practice of branding Russian NGOs as "foreign agents," as well as all resulting administrative harassment," the statement read.

President-elect Donald Trump is challenging the Obama White House over its public investigation into the hacks of Democrats during the election. "If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act?" he asked on Twitter on Thursday. "Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?"

Trump's comment challenges the president's motivation for the investigation, after Obama repeatedly promised a smooth transition of power in the White House. Obama defended his decision during an interview with the Daily Show's Trevor Noah:

"The reason that I called for a review is really to just gather all the threads of the investigations, the intelligence work that has been done over many months, and put it in a single document that can be shared with members of Congress, relevant intelligent agencies, that can be shared with the transition team so that they understand what exactly happened and so that the public and our elected representatives going forward can find ways to prevent this kind of interference from having an impact on elections in the future."

Trump spokesman Jason Miller challenged the political motivation behind the investigation earlier this week. "Going back to this overall narrative that is in the news right now, I think really clearly what this is, is an attempt to try to delegitimize President-elect Trump's win," Miller told reporters on Monday. "That really seems to be what is going on here."

In an interview with Sean Hannity on Thursday, founder Julian Assange officially and definitively declared Russia did not provide hacked documents to Wikileaks — directly contradicting nebulous intelligence reports from unknown officials with the CIA.

"Our source is not the Russian government," Assange told Hannity.

"In other words, let me be clear," Hannity asked, "Russia did not give you the Podesta documents, or anything from the DNC?"

"That's correct," Assange replied.

Wikileaks has been accused by the U.S. government of working in some sort of tandem with Russian state actors during the presidential election to hack Democratic Party organizations and provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton in order to sway the election in favor of Donald Trump. Recently, and utterly absurdly, the Obama administration went so far as to accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin of being personally involved in this putative hacking — and that Trump had been aware of the effort since its supposed inception.

Despite innumerable attempts by Trump, Russian officials, and Putin to denounce those claims as completely invalid, the controversy has continued to rage and has driven a deepening cleft in the intelligence community.

One criticism of Wikileaks publishing of the documents and emails has been its seeming lopsided disclosing of information only damaging to the Democratic establishment — and seemingly nothing of the same about the Republican Party.

Asked to confirm whether or not Wikileaks had received hacked information from the Republican National Committee, Assange explained, "We received about three pages of information to do with the RNC and Trump, and ... but it was already public somewhere else."

The mainstream media's coverage of Syria is an "unprecedented lie at a global scale," said Pedro Garcia Hernandez, journalist from Cuban news agency Prensa Latina.

According to him, while some media outlets and Western politicians accuse the Syrian government of ceasefire violations, Syrian President Bashar Assad and his allies are putting maximum efforts to bring an end to the war.

"An information campaign launched against the Syrian government and Russia once again proves that the United States and its allies support terrorists in the Middle East," Hernandez told Sputnik Mundo.

'The journalist also suggested that concerns of those "sponsoring militants in Syria from abroad," is related to the fact that after terrorism is defeated they could tell the truth about the situation in Syria.

"As for video clips of Aleppo residents 'scared' of the Syrian Army, they are also a lie. I'm working in Syria and I saw the life of Syrians in the part of Aleppo controlled by government forces. The army did a lot to help people. At the same time, in the areas controlled by militants conditions for civilians were unbearable," Hernandez said.