Our picksBlood will tell; Chinese economic espionage; ISIS terror and Yellow Vests, and more

Published 13 December 2018

  No evidence for Trump claim on “terrorists”: Government sources

·  Blood will tell

·  Senate bill targets Chinese economic espionage

·  ISIS terror and Yellow Vests: The great French conspiracy machine cranks up

·  Global hacking campaign takes aim at finance, defense and energy companies

No evidence for Trump claim on “terrorists”: Government sources (Mark Hosenball and Jonathan Landay, U.S. News)
President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that U.S. authorities had “caught 10 terrorists,” citing it as a reason for why the United States should build a wall on its Mexican border, but four government sources said there was no recent evidence of terrorism suspects being caught along the border.
A senior U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said: “We do not have evidence of known or suspected foreign terrorist organizations trying to infiltrate the southern U.S. border.”
Three national security officials agreed with that view, saying they knew of no recent border-related arrests. The three officials also asked not to be identified.

Blood will tell (Leora Smith, ProPublica)
From his basement in upstate New York, Herbert MacDonell launched modern bloodstain-pattern analysis, persuading judge after judge of its reliability. Then he trained hundreds of others.

But what if they’re getting it wrong?

Senate bill targets Chinese economic espionage (Elias Groll, Foreign Policy)
New measure would give U.S. prosecutors power to indict hackers working abroad.

ISIS terror and Yellow Vests: The great French conspiracy machine cranks up (Dana Kennedy, Daily Beast)
After the carnage in Strasbourg Tuesday night, Yellow Vest protesters suddenly found they were no longer in the media spotlight. Some claimed it was all a Macron plot.

Global hacking campaign takes aim at finance, defense and energy companies (Dany Palmer, ZDNet)
Targets around the world are in the sights of a cyber espionage operation, which could have links to North Korea.