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Europe Is Running Out of Time to Save the Iran Deal (Ali Vaez, Foreign Policy)
After initiating a dispute resolution process, European leaders have a limited window to provide Iran with meaningful economic relief and seek to reduce tensions between Tehran and Washington.

Al-Shabaab’s Attacks Come Amid Backdrop of West’s Waning Interest (Stig Jarle Hansen, The Conversation)
Two significant attacks have been carried out by al-Shabaab in recent weeks.The two attacks, though different, shared some similarities: both targeted some of the group’s main enemies outside the region, Turkey and the US. Al-Shabaab’s global enemies have figured in its propaganda for more than a decade. Turks and Americans have been targeted before. And as recently as last year a US base in Somalia was targeted.
It is significant that these attacks come at a time when the US – as well as other western countries such as France – are increasingly discussing scaling down their military efforts against African extremist organisations, as well as drawing in new partners to share their burden.

Huawei Not Part of Trade Deal (Bill Gertz, Washington Times (Bill Gertz, Washington Times)
China’s efforts to persuade the U.S. government to drop its criminal prosecution of a senior executive of Huawei Technologies, the global telecommunications giant, as part of a partial trade deal were not successful.
Beijing officials for months during talks leading up to the landmark trade agreement signed Wednesday had raised the issue of the Justice Department case against Huawei and Meng Wanzhou, the company’s chief financial officer.
No concessions, however, were made by U.S. negotiators on the Huawei prosecution in the phase 1 deal, since federal criminal prosecutions are outside the scope of the agreement. It also does not appear from the text of the trade agreement that the United States will back off export restrictions of U.S. products to Huawei.

Giuliani Associates May Have Surveilled U.S. Ambassador, New Evidence Shows (Amy Mackinnon, Robbie Gramer, Foreign Policy)
The latest batch of House evidence before Trump’s impeachment trial begins includes explosive evidence linking the president’s lawyer and associates to the campaign to bully Ukraine to investigate Trump’s rivals.

Immigrants Are Big Fans of Germany’s Anti-Immigrant Party (Philip Decker, Foreign Policy)
The fiercest devotees of the far-right AfD aren’t native Germans but migrants from Russia.

Federal Coastal Plan Recommends Way to Protect New Haven from Rising Seas (Mary E. O’Leary, New Haven Register)
The area had damaging flooding from Superstorm Sandy and Tropical Storm Irene, and such storms are expected occur more often, said the report. Sea level over the next 50 years is expected to rise 0.4-3.2 feet in New Haven.

This Is Your Life on Climate Change (Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic)
2019 was the hottest year on record, with one exception.

Airbus Researcher Explores “Stuxnet-Type Attack” for Security Training (Sean Lyngaas, Cyberscoop)
Stuxnet, the potent malware reportedly deployed by the U.S. and Israel to disrupt an Iranian nuclear facility a decade ago, helped change the way that many energy-infrastructure operators think about cybersecurity.
The computer worm drove home the idea that well-resourced hackers could sabotage industrial plant operations, and it marked a new era of state-sponsored cyber-operations against critical infrastructure. Years later, industrial cybersecurity experts are still learning from the destructive potential of Stuxnet’s code and how it was deployed.
While Stuxnet was an extraordinary situation — an intensive operation designed to hinder Iran’s nuclear program — it holds lessons for the wider world in securing industrial equipment that moves machinery.
In a new study to improve security, a researcher at the cybersecurity subsidiary of European planemaker Airbus describes how he designed a program to execute code in a “Stuxnet-type attack” on a programmable logic controller (PLC), the ruggedized computers that monitor and control industrial systems like pumps, circuit breakers and valves.

Killer Robots Reconsidered: Could AI Weapons Actually Cut Collateral Damage? (Larry Lewis, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
The United States, Russia, and China are all signaling that artificial intelligence (AI) is a transformative technology that will be central to their national security strategies. And their militaries are already announcing plans to quickly move ahead with applications of AI. This has prompted some to rally behind an international ban on autonomous, AI-driven weapons. I get it. On the surface, who could disagree to quashing the idea of supposed killer robots?
Well, me for starters.

Berwick-upon-Tweed, the British Town at War with Russia (Nina Strochlic, Daily Beast)
For the first half of the 20th century, residents of a small town straddling the border between England and Scotland believed they were engaged in a long-simmering war with Russia.
Thanks to a bureaucratic mistake, it appeared that all 12,000 residents of Berwick-upon-Tweed were excluded from the 1856 peace treaty between Russia and England that Queen Victoria announced after the Crimean War.