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Police said a man carrying a rifle and wearing body armor entered a Walmart store in the Midwestern U.S. state of Missouri Thursday.  Springfield police said his appearance caused a “panic” in the store, but no shots were fired and no one was injured.  An off-duty fireman held the man at gunpoint until police arrived.  Lieutenant Mike Lucas told the Springfield News that the man had more than 100 rounds of ammunition.  “All we know is the fact that he walked in here heavily armed with body armor on, in military fatigues and caused a great amount of panic inside the store,” Lucas said.  “So he certainly had the capability, the potential to harm people.”  The incident comes just days after two U.S. mass shootings — one at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas that left 22 people dead and another shooting in Dayton, Ohio that killed nine.  …

More than 2 million Muslims are in Saudi Arabia at Mecca, Islam’s holiest site, for the yearly Hajj pilgrimage. The Hajj is one of the world’s largest religious gatherings. The faithful began the annual five-day ritual Friday by walking counterclockwise seven times around the Kaaba, the cube-shaped structure at the center of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, which Muslims believe is the spot where the Prophet Abraham built his first temple. Observant Muslims around the world face toward the Kaaba during their five daily prayers. During the Hajj, devoted Muslims perform a series of religious rituals. In addition to walking around the Kaaba, they also drink the alkaline water from the Well of Zamzam, believed to have healing qualities. They also perform a symbolic stoning of the devil. The pilgrimage is one of the five pillars of Islam, and all able-bodied Muslims who can afford to do so are expected to take part in the Hajj at least once in their lifetimes. This year 200 survivors and relatives of the victims of the March mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed 51 people are attending as guests of the king of Saudi Arabia. King Salman bin Abdulaziz is paying …

Updated Aug. 9, 6:09 a.m. HONG KONG — Thousands of protesters returned to Hong Kong International Airport for the second time in as many weeks Friday to raise global attention to their fight against the local government and a controversial extradition bill. The airport’s vast arrivals hall was filled with drumbeats and chants of “Free Hong Kong” and “Add Oil,” a Cantonese slogan of encouragement, as protesters sat on the floor of the arrival hall, careful to create channels for passengers to exit the airport. Dozens handed out pamphlets, stickers, and tote bags in English and simplified Mandarin to inform tourists about the protest movement, which is entering its 10th week Sunday. Others wore photos of violent clashes with police and a number of people held signs condemning police brutality. Protesters say they plan to occupy the airport for three consecutive days this weekend in an attempt to reach tens of thousands of international travelers. More than 74 million people transited through Hong Kong International Airport in 2018, according to government figures, which has connections to 220 destinations. Anti-extradition bill protesters hold up placards for arriving travelers during a protest at the Hong Kong International Airport in Hong Kong, Aug. …

Authorities plan to relax curbs in India’s Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir to allow people to offer Friday prayers, media said, as a five-day lockdown damped protests over the withdrawal of the Himalayan region’s special status. Seeking to tighten its grip on the contested region, the Indian government this week withdrew the state’s right to frame its own laws and allowed non-residents to buy property there. Since Sunday mobile networks and internet services have been suspended, at least 300 leaders detained and public gatherings banned, effectively confining residents to their homes to stop protests in the revolt-torn region. There will be “some relaxation” for Friday prayers, K. Vijay Kumar, an adviser to the state’s governor, told the Indian Express newspaper. The prayers are likely to be held in neighborhood mosques, and not the main mosque in the region’s main city of Srinagar, media said. “The forces have been given flexibility to impose prohibitory orders with minimum force and maximum compassion,” Kumar said, adding there had been only a few cases of stone pelting in parts of Srinagar. Indian security force personnel stand guard in a deserted street during restrictions after the government scrapped special status for Kashmir, in Srinagar …

U.S. President Donald Trump is renewing focus on mental illness as a major cause of gun violence, following two mass shootings in two days in the U.S. that killed 31 people. VOA’s Brian Padden reports that while Trump has called for more treatment and involuntary detention of mentally disturbed individuals, his administration has rolled back federal regulations to restrict the mentally ill from buying guns and has tried to abolish a health care law that expanded access to mental health services. …

Climate change is about to hit the world in the stomach, according to the United Nations. A new scientific report from the world body that examines land degradation concludes that climate change will imperil crops and worsen hunger.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has the story.   …

Russia appears to be using one of its most powerful weapons — tourism — against Georgia, its smaller neighbor to the south. Moscow has banned direct flights between Russia and Georgia, after the latest wave of protests in Georgia against Russia’s occupation of two of its regions.  Moscow has also called for its citizens to return home. That is meant to damage the Georgian economy, which is highly dependent on tourism.  Ricardo Marquina reports from Tbilisi in this report narrated by Jim Randle.   …

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority says more than 15,000 people in Los Angeles County in the state of California live in their cars. It’s not just uncomfortable, it’s also unsafe. To make their life a little easier, a nonprofit called Safe Parking LA was founded in 2016 and is creating what they call “Safe Parking Lots.” Angelina Bagdasaryan has the story narrated by Anna Rice. …

Two Cambodian journalists who had worked for U.S. government-funded Radio Free Asia were back on trial Friday on espionage charges that rights groups have characterized as a flagrant attack on press freedom. One of the journalists, Uon Chhin, said Thursday he still hoped the court would drop the case.  “It has been nearly two years now, and I thought this groundless charge would be finished, and I hope the court will drop all the charges against us, so that we can exercise our rights fully to make a living, like other Cambodians,” he said. Uon Chhin and Yeang Sothearin are charged with undermining national security by supplying information to a foreign state, which is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. They were arrested in November 2017 during a crackdown on the media and political opponents of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government during the run-up to the 2018 elections. The pair testified two weeks ago in Phnom Penh Municipal Court that they had covered news events for RFA after leaving its employment, but they denied any wrongdoing. RFA left Cambodia in 2017 Radio Free Asia closed its Phnom Penh bureau in September 2017, citing “unprecedented” government intimidation of the …

VOA’s Afghanistan Service contributed to this report. WASHINGTON — Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, the country’s intelligence agency, released a new video showing its special forces attacking Islamic State sleeper cells in rural areas of Kabul Wednesday. The agency also said it arrested this week a key member of the terror group accused of coordinating suicide attacks and managing suicide bombers in the capital. The agency said in a statement that it acted on prior intelligence about three locations around the capital, killing two IS suicide bombers and seizing a large amount of explosives and ammunitions. “We have killed two IS suicide bombers and seized heavy weaponry, suicide vests, explosives and materials used to improvise vehicular bombs,” the statement said. At least two members of the Afghan security forces also died in the operation. Afghan National Directorate of Security Attacks IS Sleeper Cells video player. An injured man receives treatment inside an ambulance at a hospital after a blast in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 7, 2019. Increase in violence The recent crackdown on IS comes amid an increase in violence in the city perpetrated by both Taliban and IS militants, officials said. On Wednesday, a car bomb exploded outside a police station …

A U.S. judge ruled that the Trump administration cannot withhold millions of dollars in law enforcement grants from Oregon to force the nation’s first sanctuary state to cooperate with U.S. immigration enforcement. U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane in Eugene said in his ruling late Wednesday that the Trump administration lacks the authority to impose conditions on the grants that were provided by Congress. Gov. Kate Brown and Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum had sued President Donald Trump in November to get a total of $4 million in grants from fiscal years 2017 and 2018 restored to the state, saying Oregon was “unlawfully deprived” of the money.  Funding for public safety purposes Rosenblum welcomed the judge’s ruling. “We look forward to having these moneys we have relied upon continue to be available for critical public safety purposes,” Rosenblum said in an email. A Veterans Treatment Court in Eugene and 40 other specialty courts, including mental health and civilian drug programs, risked losing all or part of their budgets if the money was withheld. The Trump administration in 2017 threatened to withhold law enforcement grants from 29 cities, counties or states it viewed as having sanctuary policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration …

A judge on Thursday ordered the publisher of a neo-Nazi website to pay a Jewish real estate agent $14 million for inciting his readers to harass her family with hundreds of threatening and anti-Semitic messages and calls. U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen entered Tanya Gersh a default judgment in her civil lawsuit after The Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin refused to appear for a scheduled deposition in the case.  He ordered Anglin to pay Gersh over $4 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages, and told him to permanently remove all posts, comments and images about Gersh, her husband and son. Anglin accused Gersh of trying to run the mother of white nationalist Richard Spencer out of the mountain resort town of Whitefish in 2016. He published the personal information of the Gersh family on his website and wrote to his readers, “Are y’all ready for an old fashioned troll storm?”  Gersh said she and her family received threatening and horrifying messages for months. Christensen’s order adopts the findings of a magistrate judge who called Anglin’s conduct against Gersh “egregious and reprehensible.” FILE – Muslim comedian Dean Obeidallah speaks at a news conference in New York, June …

Dialing back annual joint summer U.S.-South Korea military drills runs counter to North Korea’s continued missile launches and lack of denuclearization, said experts pointing to the computer simulation training unaccompanied by field combat exercises that is underway. “If there were no North Korean threat, maybe I wouldn’t be as concerned,” said Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the Rand Corp. “But North Korea keeps building its nuclear capabilities so they’re increasing their threat. They’re testing more missiles, which is increasing their threat. Scaling back the U.S. and South Korean preparations to deal with that threat doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Bennett continued. South Korean protesters shout slogans during a rally demanding withdrawal of the U.S. troops from Korea Peninsula near the U.S. embassy in Seoul, South Korea, July 31, 2019. Following the launch Tuesday, North Korean leader People watch a TV showing an image of North Korea’s rocket launch during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Aug. 1, 2019. ‘Ramping up’ exercises This year’s drills are not a proportional response to Pyongyang’s continued provocations and military buildup, Bennett said, because the U.S. Army soldiers are seen during a military exercise in Yeoncheon, …

The leader of Italy’s ruling League party, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, declared the governing coalition to be unworkable on Thursday after months of internal bickering and said the only way forward was to hold fresh elections. The shock announcement follows a period of intense public feuding between the right-wing League and its coalition partner, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, and it throws the eurozone’s third-largest economy into an uncertain political future. Salvini said in a statement he had told Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who belongs to neither coalition party, that the alliance with 5-Star had collapsed after barely a year in power and “we should quickly give the choice back to the voters.” Parliament, which is now in its summer recess, could reconvene next week to carry out the necessary steps, Salvini said, referring to the need for a no-confidence vote in the government and the resignation of the premier. Tensions came to a head on Wednesday when the two parties voted against each other in parliament over the future of a project for a high-speed train link with France. 5-Star has more parliamentary seats than the League, but Salvini’s party now has twice as much voter support, according to …

The wife of a U.S. student imprisoned in Iran on spy charges is reaching out to President Donald Trump to do more to get him out.    “I implore Iran, the U.S., my own country, China, and other members of the international community to come together and find a way to secure the release of this innocent man,” Hua Qu said Thursday on the third anniversary of Xiyue Wang’s arrest. “My husband and our family have become innocent victims in an apparently ever-intensifying quarrel between world powers.”     Hua said Trump should give Wang’s case as much attention as he gave the case of U.S. rapper A$AP Rocky, who was released from a Swedish jail where he was being held for alleged assault.     Iran has proposed a prisoner swap with the U.S. for Iranians it says are being held in the United States. But Washington has demanded that Tehran immediately free all those Americans in Iranian prisoners it says are innocent.    “This case will not be automatically resolved. They definitely need to come to the negotiating table and to speak to each other,” Hua said.    The Chinese-born Wang is a doctoral student in history at Princeton University. He was …

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY – The Republican Party, the Trump campaign and other GOP organizations said Thursday that they were freezing their spending on Twitter to protest the platform’s treatment of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.      Twitter temporarily locked McConnell’s campaign account Wednesday after it shared a video in which some protesters spoke of violence outside his Kentucky home, where he is recovering from a shoulder fracture.  The social media platform said in a statement that users were locked out temporarily because of a tweet “that violated our violent threats policy, specifically threats involving physical safety.” The statement did not indicate exactly how long the account was frozen, saying only that it was temporary. The account was active Thursday, but no longer contained the tweet.   The Courier-Journal reported one protester said McConnell should have broken his neck instead of fracturing his shoulder; another spoke of violence when responding to a reference about a hypothetical McConnell voodoo doll.      Republicans say social media platforms censor conservative viewpoints. Social media companies say they have no political bias.    National Republican Congressional Committee Executive Director Parker Hamilton Poling said her organization was halting Twitter spending “until they correct their inexcusable targeting of @Team Mitch.”  …

The S&P 500 registered its largest one-day percentage gain in about two months Thursday, with technology shares providing the biggest boost as equities continued to rebound along with bond yields. All major sectors advanced at least 1%, and the S&P 500 technology index, which was at the heart of the recent sell-off, climbed 2.4%. The benchmark S&P 500 extended a rebound that began Wednesday and closed near its high of the day. The index gained 4% from Wednesday’s intraday bottom to Thursday’s close. Strategists said stock market futures strengthened heading into the day, and bargain hunters stepped in to snap up beaten-down shares. “The overnight action was positive. That, along with the bounce back yesterday, gave us a nice tailwind coming into the market today, both for high-frequency traders who were buying the trend and also for bargain hunters who had seen stocks that were on the watchlist come down to a level that looked attractive,” said Bucky Hellwig, senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama. “So we’ve seen a lot of the tech names pop after they got hammered.” Advanced Micro Devices Inc gained 16.2% after the chipmaker launched its second generation of processor chip and …

Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS), the country’s intelligence agency, released a video showing its special forces attacking Islamic State sleeper cells in rural areas of Kabul on Wednesday.  The agency also says it arrested a key member of the terror group this week accused of coordinating suicide attacks and managing suicide bombers in the capital.  …

This story originated in VOA’s Georgian and Ukrainian services. Eleven years after Russian tanks rolled through a mountain tunnel in the Greater Caucasus mountains to invade neighboring Georgia, State Department officials say the U.S. underestimated the geopolitical implications for all of Western Europe.    “What happened 11 years ago today, when Russia invaded Georgia, is that actual war came back to Europe in ways that none of us anticipated,” George P. Kent, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs at the U.S. State Department, told reporters from VOA’s Eurasia division.    “Russia, a member of the U.N. Security Council, invaded its neighbor. It did so in Georgia in 2008 and, as many Georgians warned, did so in Ukraine in 2014,” he said. “In retrospect, the events in Georgia 11 years ago today changed the geostrategic realities in Europe and across the Eurasian continent.”   FILE – Graves are seen at the memorial cemetery for Georgian soldiers killed during the war with Russia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia in 2008 in Tbilisi, Georgia, Aug. 8, 2017. Russian forces swept into Georgia on Aug. 8, 2008, bombing targets and occupying large swaths of territory. In a battle that lasted …

The chief facilitator of negotiations between Venezuela’s socialist administration and opposition has downplayed the decision by President Nicolas Maduro to skip a scheduled round of talks. Dag Nylander of Norway’s Foreign Affairs Ministry told The Associated Press on Thursday he’s in contact with both sides about finding a date for talks to resume. Maduro on Wednesday night said he had decided not to send envoys to the Caribbean island of Barbados, where talks were to resume Thursday. That was to protest the Trump administration’s decision to freeze the Venezuelan government’s assets in the U.S. and threaten to retaliate against foreign companies that continue to do business with his government. Maduro’s government also said it would review the mechanism of the talks to ensure it contributes to an efficient solution to the problems Venezuelans face. “Norway is facilitating the negotiation process at the request of the principal political actors in Venezuela and schedules all meetings based on the availability of the parties. Accordingly we are in touch with them regarding the next meetings,” said Nylander, the head of the peace and reconciliation office at the Foreign Affairs Ministry. He added:  “The facilitation continues under the principle that the parties would like …

Lebanon’s only English-language daily protested the country’s deteriorating economic and political conditions by publishing a blank edition Thursday, calling it an “alarm bell.”    Each page of The Daily Star’s Thursday edition bore a single phrase referring to one of the country’s problems, including government deadlock, rising public debt, increasing sectarian rhetoric and unemployment. The back page had a photo of a cedar tree, a national symbol, with a caption reading: “Wake up before it’s too late!” “We are sounding the alarm bell over the many challenges the country is facing,” the paper’s editor-in-chief Nadim Ladki told The Associated Press. “It’s a call on everyone — politicians, activists, ordinary people — to pull together in the same direction to resolve the crises and challenges.” Lebanon has been in the grip of an economic crisis for months, and the government has not met since a June 30 shooting in a mountain village that escalated tensions between the Christian and Druze communities. A man looks through a copy of the Lebanese local English-language newspaper, The Daily Star, in Beirut, Lebanon, Aug. 8, 2019. Rival groups in the Cabinet have been divided on how to proceed with the investigation of the shooting, which …

Most people in Guatemalan farming towns like San Martin Jilotepeque have a relative or two living in the United States, giving them sympathy for the plight of migrants. But they now find themselves fearing an influx of Salvadoran or Honduran migrants after their government signed a “third safe country” agreement with Washington. Such migration fears, poverty and corruption provide the backdrop to Guatemala’s presidential runoff vote Sunday, which is generating little enthusiasm among a population embittered after witnessing a succession of presidents accused of graft and other crimes, and the expulsion of a U.N. commission that was fighting the impunity. “I no longer believe them,” grumbled Efrain Morales, 49, as he listened to final campaign pitches from the two candidates: former first lady Sandra Torres and Alejandro Giammattei, the top vote-getters in the first round election June 16. Recent polls show the conservative Giammattei with a modest lead in a race between two unpopular candidates. Giammattei received only 14 percent support while the center-left Torres received about 26 percent in a first round of voting with 19 candidates. Election authorities had barred some of the more popular candidates from running. “In my town people are migrating. The young people are …

More than 200 U.S. mayors demanded Thursday that the Senate return from its summer recess to approve gun control legislation in the aftermath of two mass shootings last weekend that killed 31 people in Texas and Ohio. The U.S. Conference of Mayors, representing 214 cities with both Republican and Democratic leaders, told Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic leader Chuck Schumer that it was urgent for the Senate to approve the measures already passed by the House of Representatives in February. That legislation calls for background checks for all gun purchasers and would extend the waiting period for gun transactions from three to 10 days when instant checks raise questions about would-be buyers. Schumer has also urged Senate approval, but McConnell has blocked a vote because he opposes the measures. “Already in 2019, there have been over 250 mass shootings,” the mayors said in a letter to the lawmakers. They said the “tragic events” in the U.S.-Mexican border city of El Paso, Texas, and Midwest city of Dayton, Ohio, “are just the latest reminders that our nation can no longer wait for our federal government to take the actions necessary to prevent people who should not have access …

The chief facilitator of negotiations between Venezuela’s socialist administration and opposition has downplayed the decision by President Nicolas Maduro to skip a scheduled round of talks. Dag Nylander of Norway’s Foreign Affairs Ministry told The Associated Press on Thursday that he’s in contact with both sides about finding a date for talks to resume. Maduro on Wednesday night said he had decided not to send envoys to the Caribbean island of Barbados, where talks were to resume Thursday. That was to protest the Trump administration’s decision to freeze the Venezuelan government’s assets in the U.S. Maduro’s government also said it would review the mechanism of the talks to ensure it contributes to an efficient solution to the problems Venezuelans face. “I take note that this week’s scheduled meetings in Barbados will not take place,” said Nylander, the head of the peace and reconciliation office at the Foreign Affairs Ministry. “Norway is facilitating the negotiation process at the request of the principal political actors in Venezuela and schedules all meetings based on the availability of the parties. Accordingly we are in touch with them regarding the next meetings.” “The facilitation continues under the principle that the parties would like it to, …