The appearance came hours after President Donald Trump tweeted criticism of the "unfair" and "vicious" media coverage of his wife.

First lady Melania Trump made her first public appearance in nearly a month on Wednesday, tamping down rumors about her noticeable absence from the public eye after she underwent a kidney procedure.

The first lady sat next to President Donald Trump at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a 2018 hurricane season briefing with the vice president and several cabinet officials also in attendance.

"She's doing great," Trump said, next to a smiling Melania Trump. "She went through a little rough patch but she's doing great."

The US State Department would never admit to backing George Soros's alleged attempts to "rock the euro," yet Kremlin is being told to come clean on private internet companies meddling in politics, Vladimir Putin told Austrian TV.

In an interview published Monday, Armin Wolf of the Austrian state ORF channel went full steam ahead into the issue of the so-called "troll farms," which Moscow is often accused by the western media of operating. These nefarious "farms" are being given credit for many feats, from trying to divide voters on social media to altogether securing the victory of US President Donald Trump.

When asked about his personal relations with businessman Evgeny Prigozhin, who is blamed by the West for sponsoring the alleged St. Petersburg-based "trolls," Putin replied by saying: "So what? I know a lot of people in Moscow and Saint Petersburg."

Investigators reportedly searched the offices of the French finance ministry as part of their conflict of interest probe into President Emmanuel Macron's chief of staff.

The building was searched on Wednesday, Reuters and AFP report, citing sources at the ministry. It happened two days after France's top financial prosecutor launched a probe into allegations that Alexis Kohler breached conflict of interest rules while working for the state and the Italian-Swiss ship and cruise business the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC).

On Monday, the Elysée Palace rejected the claims as "totally unfounded suspicions" and said Kohler has "systematically deported all decisions relating to this company and his informed hierarchy has naturally ensured the potential conflict of interest."

At the time when Kiev is seeking to get another tranche of the stalled $17.5 billion aid from the IMF, Ukraine's Finance Minister Aleksandr Danylyuk is accusing Prime Minister Vladimir Groysman of corruption.

Danylyuk asserts that Groysman gave him a choice of supporting "political corruption" or quitting after the latter officially asked the parliament to sack the finance minister.

The two ministers have a long history of complicated relations - after Groysman rejected Danylyuk's candidate for deputy minister in charge of tax policy, Danylyuk accused him of backing candidates from the inner circle of President Petro Poroshenko.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has recommended that Congress withhold funding for the F-35 program, saying the jet fighter is plagued with almost 1,000 deficiencies that must be resolved before production can begin.

The shortcomings include an ejector seat that can cause neck injuries, an unusable helmet-mounted display system, failing oxygen-supply systems and a mid-air refuelling probe that can break off during use. In total, the F-35 had 996 unresolved deficiencies as of January. Of these, 111 were considered 'Category 1' deficiencies - faults and flaws that could seriously jeopardize user safety or security.

With the F-35 due to enter full-rate production next year, at a cost of $10.4 billion per year for the next two decades, the GAO has recommended that no funds be made available for the next phase of production until these issues are fixed and until the Pentagon makes a sound business case for the funds.

The EU is urging the Trump administration to exempt European companies from sanctions on Iran, as fears grow over the fallout of the US abandoning the international nuclear deal with Tehran.

Ministers from Germany, the UK and France, along with EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini, have signed a letter asking the US to allow its companies to continue to trade with Iran and spare certain industries from punitive measures.

The letter, dated June 4, was addressed to US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. It expressed 'strong regret' over President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the 2015 Iran deal, to which their nations were also signatories.

A Palestinian man was shot dead for throwing a stone at an Israeli soldier during a confrontation in the village of Nabi Saleh in the West Bank.

According to the initial report by human rights group B'Tselem, the victim was 21-year-old Izz ad-Din Tamimi, who died from a neck wound after being shot by Israeli forces.

An IDF spokesman confirmed on Twitter that they did indeed shoot a Palestinian man, who was confronting soldiers with 10 others, while they were conducting an arrest in the village northwest of Ramallah.

On May 29, the OAS panel of "independent experts" convened in Washington to build the case for toppling the Bolivarian government and prosecuting Maduro at the International Criminal Court.

Venezuela is in the vise-grip of a deep crisis; this much was undeniable even prior to the release of a 400-page report by a dubious "independent panel of experts" at the Organization of American States (OAS).

For the past several years, the South American country has been mired in crippling inflation, major shortages of food and goods, and widespread political turmoil. Tens of thousands of desperate people have spilled across the border, multiplying the presence of unauthorized Venezuelan migrants across the Andes. Cities have witnessed violent clashes between the anti-Chavista­ U.S.-backed opposition and the elected government of President Nicolas Maduro and the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, with opposition forces firebombing public transportation systems and children's hospitals, and even burning alleged Chavistas alive in broad daylight.

Venezuela is a champion in democracy, in democratic elections, as proven twice within the last twelve months and more than a dozen times since 1999. Never mind that the lunatic west doesn't want to accept it - simply because the west - the US and her handlers - and her European vassals, cannot tolerate a socialist country prospering - one that is so close to the empire's border and on top of it, loaded with natural riches, like oil and minerals. Venezuela's economic success could send intellectual "left-wing" shock waves to the dumbed and numbed American populace, with shrapnel ricocheting all the way to blindfolded Europe.

That would be terrible. That's why Venezuela must be economically strangled, literally, by illegal sanctions, by totally unlawful outside interventions within sovereign Venezuela, by corrupting internal food and medicine distribution, literally buying off bus drivers to stay home rather than driving their assigned routes to take people from home to work and vice-versa; and corrupting truck drivers not to deliver the merchandise, so that supermarket shelves are empty. They can be photographed, to make the world believe that Venezuela is at the brink of collapse. Those who are not too young, may recall exactly the same pattern of outside (CIA) interference on the Chilean system in 1973, leading up to the CIA instigated coup that killed the democratically elected President, Salvador Allende and put hard-core neonazi Augusto Pinochet in power. Outside interference - CIA and other State Department funded secret services - was also widely responsible for trying boycotting and influencing the Venezuelan democratic election process. To no avail. They did not succeed.

As Syria prepares to liberate the southwestern portion of the country still held by Western-backed terrorists, the United States is repeatedly threatening "firm and appropriate" responses against the Syrian government, proving yet again that the U.S. is nothing more than al-Qaeda's air force. However, while most of the world has come to the conclusion that the biggest threat to peace and stability is actually America, not Syria or Iran, the public of the United States and Western Europe continue to somnambulently absorb the propaganda spewed by their governments and corporate media outlets.

This then provides the world with an ever-present danger since the West is able to propagandize its own populations so successfully regarding false flag chemical weapons, tales of Assad "killing his own people," and other "crimes against humanity" perpetrated by the Syrian government against civilians in order to whip up support for another more intense military adventure. This narrative has been used repeatedly not just on the Western populace but also the member states of the United Nations, firmly ensconced in the deeply corrupt and agenda driven institutions who are themselves part of the Atlanticist UN.