FBN's Maria Bartiromo interviews Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, about military posturing against China, trade deals, and the approaching climax of the Mueller Russian investigation. 

A Norwegian state report says the officials “had very limited knowledge” of what was going on in Libya, but promptly decided to join the US-led intervention, turning the once thriving North African nation into a terrorist hotbed.

Editor's note: How did the Syrian government take the news that Putin called off the Russian-Syrian offensive on Idlib jihadistan (or at least the Russian support for it) in order to appease Erdogan?

For sure they could not be happy with that, but at least publicly they have actually welcomed the Russian-Turkish agreement which on paper also envisages a partial rebel pullout of heavy weapons on their side of the line, the opening of the important M5 highway to Aleppo, and the disbanding of Tahrir al-Sham, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda.

CNN recently discovered a paradox. How was it possible, they asked, that in 1989, Viktor Orban, at the time a Western-acclaimed liberal opposition leader, was calling for Soviet troops to leave Hungary, and now that he is Prime Minister, he is cozying up to Vladimir Putin?

For the same reason, dummy.

Orban wanted his country to be independent then, and he wants it to be independent now.

In 1989, Hungary was a satellite of the Soviet Union. Whatever Hungarians wanted, they had to follow directives from Moscow and adhere to Soviet communist ideology.

As crucial mid-term congressional elections in November draw near, the Trump administration is feeling the heat over higher oil prices. London-traded global oil benchmark Brent breached the $80 per barrel price point on Wednesday, its highest level since May 2. NYMEX-traded U.S. oil benchmark West Texas Intermediate Crude (WTI) reached over $70 per barrel on Wednesday.

Bob Woodward’s book Fear has been a sensation in many respects. But one aspect has barely been mentioned. After two years of exhaustive research for his book, Woodward says that he has found no evidence of collusion between Putin’s government and Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016. Zilch, nada, zero. And Woodward strained very hard looking for it.

Electoral fraud in Russia exists, and is quite prevalent, tilting Putin’s and United Russia’s results upwards of where “they should up” by up to 10% points since the mid-2000s.

That said, Russian electoral fraud has generally not been banana republic tier for a couple of reasons:

It is pretty clear what took place yesterday night.  Even if you don’t read Russian, the following chart released by the Russian Ministry of Defense says it all: