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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Despite the increasing polarization of US society, the Democratic Party has still failed to regain the support of its original working-class base, Brown University associate professor Vladimir Golstein told Sputnik. He explained why the American public would still prefer Republicans in the long run. [...]

As the entire F-35 fleet was yet again grounded for technical inspections, in the wake of its first crash in September. RT looks at the abject history and prospects of the most expensive Pentagon program in history. Over $300 billion has been spent on the project to create a state-of-the-art fifth-generation multi-role fighter since 1992, with the eventual cost likely to easily cross the trillion [...]

China has sold $3 billion of sovereign dollar bonds. This is only the third such move by Beijing in the last 14 years, and the first involving bonds with a 30-year maturity. China sold $1.5 billion of five-year bonds at 3.25 percent, $1 billion of 10-year bonds at 3.5 percent, and $500 million of 30-year bonds at four percent, the Finance Ministry said on Friday, as quoted by Reuters. [...]

The US military wants to cut down a large swathe of green woodland in Poland, designated by the EU as a conservation site for rare and endangered species. The cleared area will be used to expand an existing air force base. The US Army Corps of Engineers procurement documents, obtained by RT Russian, detail the Pentagon's plans to cut down 38.18 hectares of protected forest in order to build a prep [...]

Some 800 anti-establishment accounts and pages have been yanked from Facebook in a sweeping crackdown the social media giant framed as a fight against spammers. RT talked to those who were targeted in the cleansing. Among the hundreds of pages and accounts Facebook and Twitter took down were those both on the political left and right, ranging from conspiracy theorists and police brutality watchers [...]

The Trump administration has shot itself in the foot by tightening the screws in the US-China tariff war: Beijing is turning its back on American liquefied natural gas (LNG) in response to Washington's third round of tariffs. The move is especially painful for the US, as it had projected to jump on the bandwagon of the booming Asian gas market. [...]

The US stock market sustained yet another day of massive losses on Thursday following Wednesday's sell-off of tech stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered a loss of 548 points Thursday after watching 830 points evaporate on Wednesday, sending the two-day decline well over 1,000 points. The Dow has now lost 5.3 percent of its value over the past two days, the most significant dip in [...]

Turkey has accused Saudi Arabia of murdering journalist Jamal Khashoggi during his visit to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Riyadh has denied the accusations and expressed readiness to help with the investigation into the disappearance of the journalist. [...]

The sell-off wave that has hit US equities this week is also affecting the world’s other economies, veteran trader Jim Rogers has told RT. The investor is predicting a ‘very bad’ bear market ahead. America is [the] largest debtor nation in the history of the world and the largest economy in the world. [...]

Alternative voices online are incensed after Facebook and Twitter closed down hundreds of political media pages ahead of November's crucial midterm elections. Facebook says they broke its spam rules, they say it’s censorship. [...]

The entire fleet of F-35 fighter jets has been grounded to inspect the aircraft for suspected faulty fuel tubes, the US military said. The decision comes in the wake of a Marine Corps’ F-35B crash in South Carolina last month. [...]

Anya Parampil reports on blowback from metals tariffs, specifically Ford’s $1 billion loss in profit that could lead to layoffs of up to 24,000 workers. Richard Wolff, Professor Of Economics & International Affairs and Co-Founder of “Democracy at Work” joins the show to explain why Trump’s “America first” policies are resulting in losses for US workers. Will Trump's Tr [...]

A recent worldwide opinion poll conducted by Pew Research Center shows that Vladimir Putin enjoys more trust than Donald Trump, and analysts blame this fact on America’s selfish and reckless foreign policy. Trade wars with key economic partners, continuing military operations abroad, and the ongoing split among US political elites have been thought to do little for the president’s image. This [...]

Internal research commissioned by Google confirms Orwellian-scale censorship powers enjoyed by tech giants. It says free speech is a “utopian idea,” and creating “ordered spaces for safety and civility” is Google's new mission. The name of the briefing, leaked to Breitbart, says it all. ‘The Good Censor,’ prepared by a host of prominent industry researchers and "cultural leaders," stat [...]

A tweet from the IDF thanking Nikki Haley for her “unwavering support” for Israel has sparked an avalanche of snarky comments, with many pointing out that Haley was supposed to be the US, not Israeli, envoy to the UN. [...]

The US pop singer earlier broke her silence regarding her political affiliation after sharing on social media that she would support two democratic candidates in November’s congressional midterm elections. Taylor Swift's stunning revelation about her preferences in the upcoming midterm elections didn't go unnoticed by Donald Trump who said he will like her songs "about 25 percent less" now. [...]