Domestic Islamist extremismDomestic Islamist extremism in the U.S.: 2018-2019

While white supremacists and other right-wing extremists are responsible for most extremist-related domestic murders committed in the past decade, terrorism and violence inspired by Islamist extremism continues to pose a serious threat to Americans. ISIS’s violent ideology continues to resonate with and radicalize U.S. citizens, but domestic Islamist extremists are increasingly seeking inspiration from other foreign terror organizations such as Al Qaeda. In 2018, 13 individuals were arrested for domestic criminal activity motivated by Islamist extremism — all of them were lawfully in the United States at the time of their arrest. The number of individuals arrested for domestic Islamist extremist criminal activity decreased from 2017 to 2018 by approximately 40 percent.

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Preventable diseasesTexas vaccine exemption rates have reached an all-time high. Did Texas make it too easy for parents to opt out?

By Elizabeth Byrne and Shiying Cheng

Texas has resisted recent attempts to change its vaccine laws, allowing parents to get their children exemptions for “reasons of conscience.” Use our lookup tool to see how exemption rates have changed in school districts and private schools across the state.

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CryptographyQuantum – a double-edged sword for cryptography

By Jon Cartwright

Quantum computers pose a big threat to the security of modern communications, deciphering cryptographic codes that would take regular computers forever to crack. But drawing on the properties of quantum behavior could also provide a route to truly secure cryptography.

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EbolaEbola outbreak spreads to Uganda – it should never have happened

By Sterghios Moschos

The DRC is where the Ebola virus was first discovered in 1976. And the country is no stranger to this menace – this is the ninth time it has had to contain the disease. Still, this outbreak is the second largest on record – and the second to have crossed into another country.

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PerspectiveAlphabet-owned jigsaw bought a Russian troll campaign as an experiment

For more than two years, the notion of social media disinformation campaigns has conjured up images of Russia’s Internet Research Agency, an entire company housed on multiple floors of a corporate building in St. Petersburg, concocting propaganda at the Kremlin’s bidding. But a targeted troll campaign today can come much cheaper—as little as $250, says Andrew Gully, a research manager at Alphabet subsidiary Jigsaw. He knows because that’s the price Jigsaw paid for one last year. Andy Greenberg writes in Wired that as part of research into state-sponsored disinformation that it undertook in the spring of 2018, Jigsaw set out to test just how easily and cheaply social media disinformation campaigns, or “influence operations,” could be bought in the shadier corners of the Russian-speaking web. In March 2018, after negotiating with several underground disinformation vendors, Jigsaw analysts went so far as to hire one to carry out an actual disinformation operation, assigning the paid troll service to attack a political activism website Jigsaw had itself created as a target.

Our picksIt’s 2016 all over again; lethal climate change; Greenland’s Cold War secrets, and more

·  To Congress: If Russians seek to provide dirt, make it a requirement to report!

·  It’s 2016 all over again

·  Trump’s electoral shenanigans are getting worse

·  A victim of terrorism faces deportation for helping terrorists

·  Will climate change kill everyone — or just lots and lots of people?

·  The top secret Cold War project that pulled climate science from the ice

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Preventable diseasesAs measles cases crack 1,000, a look at what to do

Measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, but by early June, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 1,022 cases in 28 states, the most since 1992. The disease is occurring in clusters of unvaccinated people who, for religious, personal, or medical reasons, have refused to be vaccinated or to have their children vaccinated. “What we haven’t seen before — or at least it’s much more intense now — is the extent to which a foreign power, Russia, is utilizing the sense of division in our country, using social media, websites targeting low-information communities, isolated communities, to propagate an unhealthy status for Americans, says a national security expert.

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RainstormsMore frequent downpours of torrential rain with global warming

The frequency of downpours of heavy rain—which can lead to flash floods, devastation, and outbreaks of waterborne disease—has increased across the globe in the past 50 years, a period when global warming also intensified

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PerspectiveHow China could shut down America’s defenses

Advanced U.S. weapons are almost entirely reliant on rare-earth materials only made in China—and they could be a casualty of the trade war. Keith Johnson and Lara Seligman write in Foreign Policy that President Donald Trump has often argued that China has much more to lose than the United States in a trade war, but critics say his administration has failed to address a major U.S. vulnerability: Beijing maintains powerful leverage over the war-making capability of its main strategic rival through its control of critical materials.

PerspectiveDystopian Future Watch: Is San Francisco’s facial recognition ban too little, too late?

Life just keeps creeping along, leading us step-by-step closer to living in a Philip K. Dick dystopian future—in real-time. And often, in our surveillance culture, we are willing participants to work alongside Big Brother. Harmon Leon writes in the Observer that Remember how fun it used to be to see facial recognition and retina scanning in sci-fi movies? We loved it in RoboCop and Blade Runner, right? Now, many of these biometrictechnologies have become a nightmarish reality.