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As tension mounts between Russia and the West, Syria’s brutal seven-year civil war has become an arena for world powers to display their advanced weaponry and ability to project their military might. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said his country had tested nearly 215 advanced weapons in Syria since his country directly intervened in the conflict to support Syrian President Bashar Assad in September 2015. Russia has shown off both its Kalibr cruise missiles, launched from warships and submarines in the Mediterranean and Caspian Seas, and the ability of its Tu 160 bombers to fly an 8,000-mile strike round trip mission...

<p>This thread is a friendly collaborative place for FReepers to analyze information and share opinons. FReepers have a wide variety of reasons for investigating Q Anon content; this is not the appropriate place to criticize or badger those who choose to use some of their time in this manner.</p>

Syrian government forces have intensified their attack on rebels in Eastern Ghouta as fighter jets rained fire down on one of the last insurgent strongholds in the region. Bombs containing what appeared to be white phosphorus, a banned weapon, lit up the night sky over the town of Douma in the early hours of Friday as videos from the ground showed dozens of fires burning in hellish scenes. The bombardment came as hundreds of anti-government fighters and civilians stranded in another rebel enclave around the town of Harasta were allowed to flee to Idlib province.

5:10 a.m. update: The suspect in a string of bombings in Austin is dead, interim Austin Police Chief Brian Manley confirmed early Wednesday. Investigators identified several leads but the case really broke in the past 24 to 36 hours, Manley said. The chief described how authorities tracked down the suspect’s vehicle to a Round Rock-area hotel. Police began following the suspect’s vehicle, and as SWAT approached, the suspect detonated a bomb in the car, Manley said. The name of the suspect, described only as a 24-year-old white man, has not been released, pending notification of his family, Manley said. Although...

AUSTIN, Tex. — The Austin police responded on Sunday night to an explosion that injured two people in a neighborhood in southwest Austin, just hours after an unusual direct appeal to whoever was responsible for several deadly package explosions this month that have kept the capital of Texas on edge. A short time after the authorities said they received reports of an explosion, two men in their 20s were taken to a hospital with serious injuries, the Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Service said.

ATCEMS @ATCEMS 26m Multiple #ATCEMS assets responding to an unconfirmed report of an Explosion at 4721 Eagle Feather Dr (20:32); Initial unconfirmed reports of 6 patients "on the ground". Assets still responding More to Follo

Aleppo Province – The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights: Afrin area is witnessing Turkish aerial, artillery and rocket shelling, which did not calm down all last night, where the shelling targeted areas in Afrin city, its outskirts and its vicinity, in conjunction with ongoing displacement of citizens towards the towns of Nubl and Al-Zahraa, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights learned that the number of people displaced from Afrin city exceeded 150 thousand citizens who has been displaced since Wednesday night, the 14th of March 2018, towards the towns of Nubl and Al-Zahraa in the northern countryside of...

A Honduran man living in Miami has pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State terrorist organization, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida announced Thursday. Vicente Adolfo Solano will face up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for planning to bomb a local shopping mall in 2017, the attorney's office said in a statement. The 53-year-old man told an undercover government source in early 2017 that he was unhappy with the United States as a whole and wanted to carry out an attack in Miami. He later said he wanted...

Police in Austin say "similarities" between two deadly package explosions in Texas' capital city this month lead them to believe the incidents are related. The latest incident, reported Monday morning, killed a 17-year-old boy and wounded a woman, Austin police chief Brian Manley said. The boy died at the scene and the woman in her 40s was taken to the hospital with potentially life threatening injuries after the explosion at the East Austin home before 7 a.m. In an earlier incident March 2, Anthony Stephan House, 39, was killed when a package exploded at his northeast Austin home, CBS affiliate...

AUSTIN, Texas — Austin Police say a package exploded at a home in east Austin on Monday morning, killing one person and injuring another. It happened in the 4800 block of Oldfort Hill Drive, north of E. MLK Blvd.

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if Richard Dowling's statue ended up saving a whole lot of lives. Here's what happened now. Andrew Cecil Schneck, 25, was charged with attempting to maliciously damage or destroy property receiving federal financial assistance, federal prosecutors announced. A park ranger doing a routine patrol of the area around Hermann Park on Saturday caught Schneck kneeling in the bushes near the statue of Richard Dowling, a commander in the Confederate army

Cyprus is Turkish, after all. Turks can do whatever they want there. They can even celebrate dropping napalm on Greeks and slaughtering them. Greek Cypriot civilians in the Turkish-occupied enclave of Kokkina in Cyprus. Mustafa Akıncı, the president of the self-styled “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” (TRNC), which is recognized only by Turkey, also participated in the celebrations.

More than a week before three people were killed and more than 175 people were injured in the Boston Marathon bombings, a Jersey City man was arrested at the train station in Hoboken while carrying two home-made bombs, authorities say. Police also found explosive devices in the Newport Parkway home of Mykyta Panasenko, 27, Jersey City police said today. According to a criminal complaint, Panasenko is charged with having "two destructive devices, specifically improvised explosive devices (IEDs) constructed from a cylinder containing Pyrodex (black powder)" on April 5, the criminal complaint says.

The FBI on Monday announced terrorism charges against 23-year-old Harlem Suarez of Key West, Florida, who portrayed himself online as a member of ISIS and allegedly wanted to carry out a terrorist attack on American soil.Toward this end, law enforcement says Suarez thought he was purchasing an operational backpack bomb for deployment in Florida, but it was actually a dud sold to him by FBI operatives. He was also allegedly trying to get his hands on an AK-47 rifle.According to NBC News, Suarez told informants of a plan to pack the bomb with nails, bury it on the beach, and...

All the suspects arrested over last month's Manchester concert bombing have been released without charge, British police said Sunday, acknowledging that detectives are still not sure whether the attacker had accomplices.

By Philip Cottraux The arena filled with young people as a cloud of anticipation grew thick in the air. A pop star emerged on stage before an adoring crowd. The cheers mingled with acoustics thundered into the night sky. Some were close enough to see their idol, but most could only faintly see her in the distance. Her image played on a giant telescreen, singing to the backdrop of glittery music. Then a terrible explosion shook the ground, and screams of adoration were drowned by shrieks of bloody horror. Pop music concerts are exercises of pure fantasy. A famous young...

LONDON (Reuters) - British police have arrested a "large part of the network" behind this week's Manchester suicide bombing but more arrests are likely, the country's top counter-terrorism officer said on Friday. Mark Rowley said "immense" progress had been made in the investigation into Salman Abedi, who killed 22 people, seven of them children, at a pop concert in Manchester on Monday. "They're very significant, these arrests. We're very happy we've got our hands around some of the key players that we are concerned about. But as I say, there is still a little bit more to do," Rowley told...

The police and security services missed at least five opportunities over five years to stop Salman Abedi from carrying out his deadly terror attack, it has emerged. Following the deadly attack at the Manchester Arena by Abedi on Tuesday night, which claimed 22 lives, questions are being raised as to why the British authorities did little to follow up on repeated reports from friends and community members that Abedi was radicalised and had expressed support for suicide bombing. The reports date back five years, when two youth workers are said to have phoned an anti-terrorism hotline to report concerns over...

     . Overnight saw one of the closest intelligence-sharing partnerships tested as never before in the fight against global terrorism, as Prime Minister Theresa May confronted President Donald Trump over U.S. media leaks from the Manchester bombing probe. As Bloomberg reports, police investigating the suicide bombing that killed 22 people at a pop concert in the city in northern England have suspended sharing information with the U.S., according to a report by the security correspondent of the BBC. “I will make clear to President Trump that the information shared between our law-enforcement agencies must remain secure,”...

Manchester bomber Salman Abedi apparently wasn't the only member of his family to harbor extremist views as Libyan officials arrested the suicide bomber's father and two brothers, and uncovered what investigators called a plot for a new attack.(snip)