• PandemicL.A. Imposes Sweeping COVID Restrictions

    Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles has issued an order for residents to stay at home and minimize other contacts. The order, which supersedes one from June, prohibits public and private gatherings of people from more than one household and states that all businesses in the city which require people to work on location must stop operations. Walking, driving, travel on public transport, bikes, motorcycles and scooters are prohibited, other than for those undertaking essential activities.

  • The Russia connectionA New White House Spokeswoman, An Old Photo, And A Message About Russian Propaganda

    By Mike Eckel

    Six years ago, Jen Psaki, who was the face of the U.S. State Department, was subjected to constant trolling on the Russian-language Internet, not to mention derision from the state-controlled satellite channel that used to be known as Russia Today. Psaki is to become the White House spokeswoman when Joe Biden is formally inaugurated as president on January 20, 2021. “For anyone who hasn’t been the target of Russian propaganda,” Psaki wrote in a tweet, “the purpose is to discredit powerful messengers and to spread misinformation to confuse the public. Anyone who repeats it is (unwitting or not) simply a puppet of the propaganda machine.”

  • TerrorismTeaching Anti-Terrorism: How France and England Use Schools to Counter Radicalization

    By Jonathan James

    The murder of the schoolteacher Samuel Paty, beheaded by 18-year-old Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov in October 2020 after Paty had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad during a civic education lesson, has understandably caused shock and fear among teachers in France. Many teachers were already struggling to manage classroom discussions on sensitive topics such as the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo’s publication of the controversial caricatures. Some now fear for their personal safety.

  • PandemicCDC Panel Moves Health Workers, Nursing Home Residents to Front of COVID Vaccine Line

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine advisory group, in an emergency meeting Monday, approved an interim recommendation for who should receive the first COVID-19 vaccine doses once authorized, which puts healthcare workers and nursing home residents at the front of the line.

  • PandemicBritain Becomes First Nation to Approve Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine

    Britain has given emergency approval to a new COVID-19 vaccine developed by U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, becoming the world’s first western nation ready to begin mass inoculations against a disease that has sickened nearly 64 million people worldwide, including more than 1.4 million deaths.

  • PandemicValuing “Natural Capital” Vital to Avoid Next Pandemic

    Pandemics will emerge more often, kill more people than COVID-19 and do even more damage to the world economy unless urgent steps are taken to address risk drivers such as deforestation, warns a major new report on biodiversity and pandemics.

  • SurveillanceEFF Urges Federal Appeals Court to Rehear Case Involving Unconstitutional Baltimore Aerial Surveillance Program

    By Nathaniel Sobel

    In May, the Baltimore Police Department launched its Aerial Investigation Research (AIR) Pilot Program. For six months, three surveillance aircrafts operated by a private company called Persistent Surveillance Systems flew over Baltimore—covering about 90 percent of the city—for 12 hours every day. The planes produced images that even at a resolution of “one pixel per person” allowed the police to track individual’s movements over multi-day periods, especially when combined with the police’s networks of more than 800 ground-based surveillance cameras and automated license plate readers.

  • Climate challenge2020 on Track to Be One of Three Warmest Years on Record

    Climate change continued its relentless march in 2020, which is on track to be one of the three warmest years on record. 2011-2020 will be the warmest decade on record, with the warmest six years all being since 2015, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

  • HurricanesClimate Change Causes Landfalling Hurricanes to Stay Stronger for Longer

    Climate change is causing hurricanes that make landfall to take more time to weaken. The researchers showed that hurricanes that develop over warmer oceans carry more moisture and therefore stay stronger for longer after hitting land. This means that in the future, as the world continues to warm, hurricanes are more likely to reach communities farther inland and be more destructive.

  • Our picksAnarchists Attack Northwest Train Tracks | The Nazi Inspiring China’s Communists | Climate Change & National Security, and more

    ·  The Nazi Inspiring China’s Communists

    ·  Women Linked with Anarchist Group Charged with Terrorist Attack on Train Tracks North of Seattle

    ·  Anonymous Shell Companies Fund Crime and Terror; It’s Time to Crack Down

    ·  Germany Bans Far-Right, Pro-Nazi Group, Police Raid Homes

    ·  NATO Should Expand Its Focus to Include China, Report Says

    ·  How Biden Can Fight “Truth Decay”

    ·  How Right-Wing Extremism Moved into Mainstream America

    ·  Climate Change, National Security, & the New Commander-in-Chief

  • Election securityBarr: DOJ Has Found Nothing that Could Impact Election Result

    Attorney General Bill Barr has thrown cold water on the president’s false claims of massive voter fraud and a “stolen election.” Despite Department of Justice investigations turning up no evidence, and despite the fact that the president and his legal team have lost practically every legal challenge they filed — Trump and his allies are 1-39 in post-election litigation — Trump continues to spread falsehoods about the election, and continues to raise money — $170 million so far — based on these untrue claims.

  • CybersecurityNew Cyberattack Tricks Scientists into Making Dangerous Toxins, Synthetic Viruses

    An end-to-end cyber-biological attack, in which unwitting biologists may be tricked into generating dangerous toxins in their labs, has been discovered by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev cyber-researchers. It is currently believed that a criminal needs to have physical contact with a dangerous substance to produce and deliver it. However, malware could easily replace a short sub-string of the DNA on a bioengineer’s computer so that they unintentionally create a toxin producing sequence.

  • Cybersecurity educationCybersecurity Curriculum, Pilot Focused on Veterans and First Responders

    The University of Arkansas at Little Rock is part of a coalition of universities and industry partners that are developing a curriculum to increase cybersecurity talent focused on health care with $6.3 million in funding from the National Security Agency. The curriculum focuses on health care cybersecurity.

  • TerrorismNew Book Examines Threat of ISIS in the United States

    Despite the large amount of media reporting, there had yet to be a definitive accounting of what ISIS supporters in the U.S. looked like. Researchers have collected mountains of data to try to paint at least a partially representative picture for the public, explaining why some Americans are attracted to jihadist ideology—and what we can do about it.

  • Mass shootingsMass Shootings in the U.S. Have Risen Sharply in 2020 – Why?

    By Craig Jackson

    Despite the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic using sporadic stay-at-home orders and lockdowns, as of 26 November 2020 there have been 578 mass shootings so far this year. According to data provided by the Gun Violence Archive, which records mass shooting deaths, this is already significantly above the 417 mass shootings recorded in the whole of 2019.

  • PolicingDispelling the “Bad Apple” Excuse for Racialized Policing

    In the first study of its kind, University of Miami researchers find that police exhibit significantly higher levels of anti-Black biases than the general public. Culled from one of the largest, public data sets of hidden biases, those statistics seem to confirm that biases among police are widespread, a finding the researcher hope will lay the bad apple explanation to rest and prompt police departments to focus on eradicating the imbedded biases that workers everywhere bring to their jobs.

  • Food securityIsraeli locust slayers train Ethiopians to save crops

    By Abigail Klein Leichman

    The enemies are huge armies of desert locusts destroying farm and grazing lands across nine East African countries. In Ethiopia alone, the locusts have conquered three million acres since January. Experts from Israel bring equipment and knowhow enabling Ethiopian farmers to protect their fields from deadly desert locust swarms.

  • Our picks5 Years after San Bernardino Terrorist Attack | The World’s COVID Anti-Vaxxer Epicenter | Border Wall, and more

    ·  Fired Director of U.S. Cyber Agency Chris Krebs Explains Why President Trump’s Claims of Election Interference Are False

    ·  Universities Urge Biden to End Curbs on Foreign Students

    ·  5 Years after San Bernardino Terrorist Attack, Unfinished Business in Courts and Capitols

    ·  Trump’s Border Wall Nearly 90 Percent Complete as CBP Races to Finish Before Biden Takes Office

    ·  Inside the World’s COVID Anti-Vaxxer Epicenter

    ·  How a Terror Group Recruited Budding Neo-Nazis

    ·  Are We Any Closer to Stopping the Next Usman Khan?

    ·  Largest Number of Prevent Referrals Related to Far-Right Extremism

    ·  Growing Far-Right Threat Should Spark New Approach to Extremism, Australian Expert Says

    ·  How Russian Disinformation Protects Violent Wagner Group Mercenaries in Africa

  • Terrorism2020 Global Terrorism Index: Deaths from Terrorism Reach 5-Year Low

    Globally, deaths from terrorism fell for the fifth consecutive year in 2019, to 13,826 — a 15 percent decrease from the prior year. In North America, Western Europe and Oceania, far-right attacks have increased by 250 percent since 2014 - they are higher now than at any time in the last fifty years. Sixty-three countries recorded at least one death from terrorism, the lowest number since 2013. The global economic impact of terrorism was $16.4 billion in 2019, a decrease of 25 percent from the previous year. IS’s center of gravity moves to sub-Saharan Africa with total deaths by IS in the region increasing by 67 percent. IS and their affiliates were also responsible for attacks in 27 countries in 2019.

  • The Russia connectionRussian Influence Peddlers Carving Out New Audiences on Fringes

    By Jeff Seldin

    After four years of warnings and preparations, the 2020 presidential election did not see a repeat of 2016, when intelligence officials concluded Russia meddled using a combination of cyberattacks and influence operations. But according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials, as well as analysts, the good news ends there.

  • Extremism & social mediaAfter 8Chan

    By Florence Keen

    The notorious imageboard 8chan was taken offline in August 2019 after several far-right attacks revealed a connection to the site – most notably, the terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand in March 2019, which left 51 people dead. A few months later in November 2019, a site known as 8kun was launched as a replacement, boasting similar freedoms and owned by the same person, Jim Watkins. What is evident is that almost a year into 8kun’s creation, the general attitude towards the site is wholly different to that of 8chan – in that the primary audience it was created for has largely rejected it as a less important and relevant site within chan culture.

  • Extremism & social mediaParler Is Bringing Together Mainstream Conservatives, Anti-Semites and White Supremacists as the Social Media Platform Attracts Millions of Trump Supporters

    By Alex Newhouse

    Since the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Parler has caught on among right-wing politicians and “influencers” – people with large online followings – as a social media platform where they can share and promote ideas without worrying about the company blocking or flagging their posts for being dangerous or misleading. However, the website has become a haven for far-right extremists and conspiracy theorists who are now interacting with the mainstream conservatives flocking to the platform.