WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The US Department of Defense has no information regarding US nationals being taken hostage near the Syrian city of Deir Ez-Zor, Pentagon spokesperson Cmdr. Sean Robertson told Sputnik. Earlier on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Daesh* terrorists had recently begun expanding their presence on the left bank of the Euphrates river in Syria, taking nearly 700 peo [...]

A joint investigation headed by investigative journalist organization Corrective alongside French newspaper Le Monde and German broadcaster ARD uncovered a scandal involving "cum-ex" deals, which helped shareholders run off with profits at taxpayers' expense. [...]

VIENNA (Sputnik) - Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Thursday, commenting on Italy's 2019 draft budget, that Vienna had no intention to be accountable for someone else's debts and called on Rome to respect the euro convergence criteria, or the Maastricht criteria. [...]

The board of Trump Tower Condominium has filed suit against a resident for $90,000 in unpaid fees, including late fees. What’s the problem? The man died in a fire inside the tower in April. Todd Brassner, an art collector who had lived on the 50th floor of Trump Tower in New York City since 1996, died in a fire in April that was determined to have been caused by an overloaded electrical board, [...]

Former FBI Special Agent Terry Albury received a four-year prison sentence on Thursday for leaking documents to the press that he thought exposed wrongdoing at the FBI. Albury was charged for leaking classified national defense information and retaining such information in April. He pleaded guilty. [...]

New Avangard hypersonic glider warheads are just months away from entering military service, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, adding that Russia is the first in the world to develop the breakthrough technology. A hypersonic glider is a type of projectile that can fly and maneuver in the upper atmosphere at speeds of over Mach 5. [...]

The missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi appears to be dead, US President Donald Trump has told reporters, saying there would be “severe” consequences for whoever is behind it. [...]

Ukraine pursues the same policy against its own people that cost Georgia to lose territory after then-leader Mikhail Saakashvili’s war on Ossetia, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, warning Kiev not to go down the same road. The Ukrainian authorities are not just leading the situation into a deadlock, they are pursuing an anti-state and anti-national policy,” the Russian leader said, speak [...]

"Flooding Europe with Democracy" | Public lecture at Vienna's University of Economics Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU) is the largest business and ... in Europe, and it hosts 450 annual exchange students from 210 universities and 50 ... Students love to talk business at WU, but student activities, including sports ... With a public bus pass, you can not only get to class but [...]

Senior congressional lawmakers are calling for a radical overhaul in US relations with Saudi Arabia. But Trump’s indulgence to let Saudi rulers off the hook shows the strategic alliance is too important for US’ power interests. [...]

Journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s body was cut into pieces after his death at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago, a Turkish source has told CNN and Al Jazeera. The source told Al Jazeera that the murder took about seven minutes and said that Saudi forensics expert Saleh al-Tubaiqi dismembered Khashoggi’s body and asked his colleagues to listen to music while he did it. [...]

The US sanctions threat against Saudi Arabia will likely remain only a threat, analysts have told RT. The kingdom is a major buyer of American arms and is also a huge holder of US Treasury bonds which makes sanctions improbable. [...]

Washington’s aggressive policy against Moscow could be a sufficient reason behind the recent fall of the dollar’s share of global central-bank reserves, according to economist at US multinational investment bank Goldman Sachs.  Russia’s Central Bank has sold some $85 billion of its $150 billion holding of the US assets from April through June after the US Treasury Department announced new s [...]

The murder of columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul sparked international uproar. Germany says it will halt arms exports to Riyadh and calls on Western allies to follow suit. The Turkish president delivered a powerful statement claiming to have evidence that the operation was planned. Saudi Arabia's main ally, however, remains silent. Boris Malagurski asks why Washington is [...]

Although the Chinese government has not yet gone so far in the ever-escalating trade war as to sanction United States oil, imports are drying up anyway as Chinese buyers shy away from US crude. According to US Census Bureau data released last week, for the first time since 2016, China has halted purchases of US crude, importing zero barrels in August. [...]

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is a curse for Democrats, who are now going out of their way to distance themselves from the former lawmaker, according to political operatives. Clinton, who just two years ago enjoyed the almost unanimous support of the Democratic Party, is now a perceived as a ‘kiss of death' whose mere appearance can torpedo the upcoming midterm electio [...]

Keen as ever on his idea of creating an American fighting force in space, US President Donald Trump has said it's a necessity for Washington, because its perceived top adversaries – Russia and China – are beating it to the punch. [...]

Construction is due to start on October 13 and will reportedly cover a number of French departments along the border. French authorities will set up a fence on the country’s border with Belgium to keep out the swine pest, which is spreading from the African continent, the French media outlet Republicain Lorrain reported, citing the prefect of the department Meurthe-et-Moselle. [...]

Facebook has reported about a hack into the data of at least 30 million users of the social network, exploiting a vulnerability in Facebook’s code that existed between July 2017 and September 2018. "We now know that fewer people were impacted than we originally thought. Of the 50 million people whose access tokens we believed were affected, about 30 million actually had their tokens stolen," F [...]

As China develops cutting-edge deep-sea surveillance, the nation’s navy is concurrently designing a satellite-mounted laser to locate and destroy enemy submarines. The satellite, which will be able to spot targets 500 meters below the surface, would also be used to gather data on the world's oceans, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported Monday. [...]

During operations to clear terrorist-controlled areas across the country in recent months, Syrian forces discovered countless caches of Western and Israeli-made weapons, munitions and supplies. Authorities in the town of Yalda, about 10 kilometers south of the Syrian capital, have discovered a large stock of weapons and ammunition carefully hidden inside a plastic water tank at a local farm [...]

The minister-president of the state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania in northern Germany has lambasted critics of the gas pipeline project, who didn’t play with “open cards,” and rejected claims that the venture would make her country fully dependent of Russia as “nonsense.” [...]