Thread for obviously newsworthy stuff

[Broken_Erika]

Idiot Boy should have listened to his wife.

Missouri Walmart panic caused by armed man testing gun rights
A man who sparked panic by walking into a Walmart with a rifle and body armour told police he was testing his right to bear arms in public.

Dmitriy Andreychenko entered the shop heavily armed, days after a mass shooting at another of Walmart's stores.

"I wanted to know if that Walmart honoured the second amendment," the 20-year-old told police after his arrest.

Prosecutors have charged him with making a terrorist threat.

If found guilty, the charge could result in a four-year prison sentence and a fine of $10,000 (£8,300), Greene County prosecutor Dan Patterson said in a statement.

On 8 August, Mr Andreychenko entered the store "armed with an AR style rifle slung across his chest", police said, wearing a ballistic vest and recording himself. Both the rifle and a handgun he carried were loaded.

He told police he did not expect the reaction his walk generated.

"This is Missouri, I understand if we were somewhere else like New York or California, people would freak out," he said, according to police filings.

Days before, 20 people had been killed in a Walmart in El Paso by a gunman carrying an automatic rifle.

The police statement also revealed that his wife, Angelice, had told him "it was not a smart idea".

"She told him that people were going to take this seriously due to recent events... she told him he was just an immature boy," it said.

His sister Anastasia also told police he had asked her to record video of what he called his "social experiment".

"She told him that it was a bad idea and that she did not want to do that," it said.

Mr Andreychenko told police he only intended to buy some grocery bags and check if anyone tried to stop him.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49303879

[Uncle Sparky]

Apparently Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell this morning. Yesterday, court documents were unsealed that 'named names'.
I wonder if Trump is vacationing in a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US?

[-Jrabbit]

LOL. I blame the honorable Julius Gaya, based on the universally accepted theory of "He who smelt it, dealt it."

[Broken_Erika]

Kenya's Homa Bay: Fart pushes Speaker to suspend debate

A heated debate about market stalls was disrupted by a foul smell and furious finger-pointing at a Kenyan regional assembly on Wednesday, local reports say.

"Honourable Speaker, one of us has polluted the air and I know who it is," Julius Gaya reportedly told Homa Bay county assembly.

But the member he accused of farting is said to have replied:

"I am not the one. I cannot do such a thing in front of my colleagues."

• More news and views from BBC Africa Live
• Kenyan MP with baby ordered to leave parliament
• Engineer fights 'fart bullying' ruling
• Row blows up over 'fart' in parliament

Hoping to clear the air, the assembly's Speaker Edwin Kakach then instructed members to step outside and take a break from the chamber.

Reports also say he asked officials to bring in air fresheners "to make it pleasant. Get whatever flavour you will find in any office, whether it's vanilla or strawberry.

"We cannot continue sitting in an environment that smells bad."

Yet the smell is said to have subsided before any such sprays were found, allowing the debate to continue.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-49290641

[giblets]

A scathing new Pentagon report blames Trump for the return of ISIS in Syria and Iraq

A report from the Pentagon inspector general found that President Donald Trump's decision to rapidly pull troops out of Syria and divert attention from diplomacy in Iraq has inadvertently aided the Islamic State's regrouping in Syria and Iraq.

The Department of Defense's quarterly report to Congress on the effectiveness of the US Operation Inherent Resolve mission said that "ISIS continued its transition from a territory-holding force to an insurgency in Syria, and it intensified its insurgency in Iraq" — even though Trump said ISIS was defeated and the caliphate quashed, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Many officials and experts have repeatedly warned that a rapid US withdrawal from Syria would enable ISIS to regroup into an insurgency after their battlefield defeats by the US-led coalition.

The IG's report also explicitly said the troop drawdown in Syria, which Trump announced at the end of last year, contributed to instability in the region. The drawdown, which prompted the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, left the US's Syrian partners in the lurch, without the training or support they needed to confront a resurgent ISIS. In Iraq, the Iraqi security forces (ISF) lack the necessary infrastructure to fight off ISIS for sustained periods.

ISIS is estimated to have 14,000 to 18,000 combatants, according to the report, who are carrying out assassinations, suicides, crop burnings, and ambushes in Iraq and Syria — different from the large-scale attempts to seize territory since 2014 but a violent threat to civilians in both countries nonetheless.

Perhaps more importantly, ISIS is again generating revenue by extorting civilians in both countries, kidnapping for ransom, and skimming money from rebuilding contracts. This decentralized method of income generation — unlike the detailed tax and revenue system ISIS employed during its caliphate — makes the income more difficult to track.

The al-Hol refugee camp in Syria seems to be a perfect storm for ISIS recruitment — thousands of internally displaced people, security forces unable to guard the area against insurgents, and little US support to maintain safe conditions or counter ISIS propaganda.

The Trump administration's decision to focus its attention on Iran reduced its capacity to effectively counter ISIS in Iraq and Syria, according to Brett McGurk, the former special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS who served under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.

McGurk, like Mattis, resigned his post after Trump announced his drawdown. In a January op-ed, he warned that Trump's policies in the region would give "new life" to ISIS and other US adversaries, and that the decision would "precipitate chaos and an environment for extremists to thrive," exactly what the IG's report said was happening on the ground.

The US has the same expectations of success in Syria, but now without putting in the resources to ensure that success; with around 1,000 troops in Syria, it expects to counter ISIS, stop Syrian President Bashar Assad from developing weapons of mass destruction, and counter Iranian influence.

The decision to pull nonemergency personnel from Iraq reduced US diplomatic influence there, and, according to the State Department, reduced humanitarian groups' ability to offer support.

Trump campaigned in part on a promise to withdraw the US from conflicts in the Middle East, as part of his "America First" policy. But his shortsighted decision-making based on that premise doesn't just destabilize Iraq and Syria, it also has the potential to do the same in Afghanistan, where the US is negotiating with the Taliban to withdraw from the country.

There, an ISIS branch, ISIS Khorasan, or ISIS K, is gaining ground and recruiting militants disillusioned with the Taliban's decision to operate as a political entity and not, primarily, as a jihadi one. As the Middle East expert Nicholas Heras of the Center for a New American Security previously told INSIDER, ISIS K is trying to make the case that Afghanistan is the perfect place to wage holy war on a multiplicity of fronts.

"ISIS K will likely succeed," Heras said.

https://www.businessinsider.com/pentagon-blames-trump-for-return-of-isis-syria-and-iraq-2019-8

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

We need a smilie that starts out laughing and gradually changes to crying just for kid posts. Laugh because it's so funny/insane then cry because he is, unfortunately, not alone in his POV.

Also?

[Kidlicious]

Right, right. I do that.

[Lorizael]

You don't even know me. You think you do. That's your folly. You and ray both think I ramble incoherently. So what? Keep thinking that. It makes you weak.

Ray, when someone asks you if Kidicious rambles incoherently, you say YES!

[Aeson]

You and ray both think I ramble incoherently. So what? Keep thinking that.

I will continue to until that glorious day ... when finally ... you spring your trap upon all of us who you have fooled into thinking you're a moron via your moronic posts over the years.

[Kidlicious]

You don't even know me. You think you do. That's your folly. You and ray both think I ramble incoherently. So what? Keep thinking that. It makes you weak.

[Aeson]

Yah, just another decade of acting like a complete moron to fool me into thinking you're weak minded ...and then you'll be ready to spring that trap and catch me unprepared when you make a coherent point!

[Kidlicious]

Aeson thinks I don't use strategy because I use Sun Tzu tactics on him.

[BeBMan]

Sun Tzu was never elected by the American people.

[Aeson]

I use the Sun Tzu tactics

Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. - Sun Tzu

Sounds about right ...

[Kidlicious]

Who cares

I guess not you because you can't figure out how to say that it's racist.