As residents of Louisiana this week struggle to recover from "one of the worst floods in modern history," there is a chance that federal aid may not be so forthcoming thanks to a trio of Bayou State Republicans, who back in 2013 voted against helping victims of another storm: Sandy. House majority whip Rep. Steve Scalise, Rep. John Fleming, and Sen. Bill Cassidy all cast their votes against the [...]

The devastating blitz on Saudi Arabia’s oil industry has led to a flurry of accusations from US officials blaming Iran. The reason for the finger-pointing is simple: Washington’s spectacular failure to protect its Saudi ally. [...]

A top Daesh leader with a 3-million-dollar bounty from the US State Department on his head received counter-terrorism training in the United States for 11 years, CNN reported. In an interview with Sputnik, Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, political analyst told Radio Sputnik that the case with Khalimov is not isolated. According to Ben-Meir, US trained militants that formed the core of what is now known as Daes [...]

Under development since 2012, the 20+ tonne stealthy flying wing design began rigorous military testing earlier this year. The Sukhoi S-70 Okhotnik heavy unmanned combat aerial vehicle may one day become a full-fledged replacement for all sorts of combat aircraft, including the latest generation of Russian fighter jets, Izvestia has reported, citing the military and a military aircraft specialist [...]

In the last week of his presidency, Barack Obama extended sanctions against Russia. Next US President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the policy of sanctions. However, experts warn that Trump is unlikely to lift the sanctions in the first months of his term. [...]

A new survey from consultancy McKinsey & Co has found that a majority of banks globally may not be economically viable because their returns on equity aren’t keeping pace with costs. The study looked at 1,000 banks in developed and emerging countries and found that just over a third had made a return on capital of just 1.6 percent over the past three years. This compares to returns of j [...]

The US-based YouTube online video hosting service stated its request on sanctioned RT employees was not politically motivated, RT Head of Online Projects Kirill Karnovich-Valua said Thursday. Earlier in the day, the broadcaster said it had received a request from YouTube urging it to prove that its employees were not mentioned in the US anti-Russian individual sanctions lists. [...]

WhatsApp is a “Trojan horse” exploited to snoop on millions of users naive enough to believe that the Facebook-owned messenger differs from its parent company, long beset by privacy scandals, Telegram founder Pavel Durov said. [...]

Russia’s Defense Ministry has said UK defense officials were putting on a show by escorting the Russian aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, while pointing at their own issues in the Royal Navy, such as the infamous Trident situation. [...]

Allseas, a Swiss-Dutch company laying the Nord Stream 2 pipeline off the Danish coast, has announced it is suspending its work and will pull out of the project after being faced with an avalanche of sanctions by the US. The company, which operates two vessels installing deep-sea pipes for Nord Stream 2 on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, released its statement just before US President Donald Trump si [...]

US mainstream media outlets, pundits and officials have pulled out all the stops in attempting to smear Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who traveled to Syria earlier this month and then had the courage to criticize the US's policy of funding and arming terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda on national television. [...]

Earlier, Gen. (ret.) Ben Hodges, former commander of US Army Europe, suggested that Russia’s historical claims to Crimea were “false and unacceptable” because the peninsula became part of Russia only during the reign of Catherine the Great. Alexei Pushkov, an outspoken Russian senator known for his commentaries on foreign affairs, has responded to Gen. Hodges remarks about the status of the [...]

Over many decades, the U.S. establishment has become practiced at putting out claims that are completely false or that leave out key details to mislead the public, but now come complaints about “fake news,” observes William Blum. As the Queen in Alice in Wonderland explained, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Or as new Secretary of Defen [...]

Commenting on US Defence Secretary Mark T. Esper's statement that a group of US troops will remain in eastern Syria, allegedly to prevent Daesh from accessing the oil fields, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said the statement should not be a surprise. In a statement, the chief spokesman for the Russian Defence Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, noted that the US' stated goal of protecting Syrian oi [...]

Russia has always taken pride in its powerful, reliable and efficient tanks, which still remain an armored vehicle of choice for many countries. All this can be said about the Kirovets tractor, widely touted as a Russian civil tank. The Kirovets family of four-wheel drive, heavy duty tractors first and foremost includes the legendary K-700 model, a vehicle that was first manufactured by the K [...]

During self-congratulatory remarks about his “deal of the century” to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict, Donald Trump threw in another boast; he claimed US forces defeated “100 percent” of the Islamic State caliphate. Have they? “Thanks to the courage of US forces, the ISIS territorial caliphate — 100 percent — not 95 percent, not 99 or any other percent — 100 percent of their ca [...]

When the global military empire takes money from programs that poor people depend on and gives it to rich military contractors - it is a theft and looting of the national budget, says Brian Becker, the National Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition. [...]

Under the 2018 Sochi agreement, Turkey was supposed to disarm and disassociate itself from the terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Its failure to do so has sown the seeds of Turkey’s inevitable defeat in Syria. When Turkey threw its weight behind the anti-Assad rebellion in 2011, it did so believing that it would be able to dictate the outcome on the ground by controlling the main organ [...]

Conflicting reports on an alleged airstrike on an Aleppo mosque won’t change the Pentagon’s attitude towards the various shady “activist” groups they cite as “reliable” sources when it suits them, says retired US AF Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski. [...]

China is pulling the press credentials of US journalists from outlets including the New York Times and the Washington Post whose passes expire in 2020, in the latest move of an ongoing tit-for-tat with America over media access. [...]

The Pentagon is asking Congress for an extra $30 billion for 2017, mostly to address pressing readiness issues and the fight against Islamic State – yet Russia and President Trump’s budget proposal dominated the Senate appropriations hearing. [...]

US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced that the Trump administration may send checks to Americans “in the next two weeks” to fight the economic fallout of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus. Though the amount is unknown, an economics expert tells Sputnik that the government has already failed on the matter. “We’re looking at sending checks to Americans immediately,” Mnuchin said durin [...]