Last month a United Nations panel asked social-media companies such as Twitter and Facebook to respond to how terrorist groups use their networks to spread propaganda or recruit members with increasing success. As these terrorist groups, such as ISIS or al-Qaeda, evolve their social-media skills, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Minerva Project is funding a research project by a team of researchers who will be monitoring these groups’ advancements and trying to determine how their online actions can be negated.

At least sixty Egyptian soldiers have been killed so far in several coordinated attacks this morning by ISIS militants on Egyptian military positions and political buildings in the Sinai Peninsula. The attacks, which according to Egyptian sources involved more than seventy Islamists, included the simultaneous explosion of car bombs and at several locations. Islamists militants in northern Sinai, which borders Israel and the Gaza Strip, have battled the Egyptian security forces for years. After the Muslim Brotherhood was removed from power in July 2013, and after thousands of the movement’s followers were killed and jailed and it was banned, the Islamists in Sinai expanded their activity inside Egypt, getting support from some of the followers of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Turkey, for the first time since the war in Syria began four years ago, is preparing to send troops into Syria. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has authorized a change in the rules of engagement which were agreed to by the Turkish parliament, and the changes would allow the Turkish army to strike ISIS and Assad regime targets. The goal of the new policy is not new: to create a buffer zone inside Syria for Syrian refugees fleeing the regime’s bombing, but Erdogan has also suggested that the main target of the intervention, if it takes place, will be to prevent the Syrian Kurds from creating a Kurdish state in the Kurdish regions of Syria.

U.S. law enforcement agencies rank the threat of violence from anti-government extremists higher than the threat from radicalized Muslims, according to a report released last Thursday by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security (TCTHS). The data were collected in early 2014, before security agencies began noting increased activity and recruitment of Americans by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS). In follow-up telephone interviews with law enforcement personnel, the officers did not modify their initial responses in light of ISIS threats within the United States.

The French police is investigating what appears to be a terrorist attack on a factory owned by a U.S. gas company after a decapitated body and a flag with Islamist inscriptions were found in a factory in south-east France belonging to a U.S. gas company. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said one of the attackers was killed by a firefighter, and that other firefighters captured the second attacker, who was identified as Yessim Salim. Cazeneuve told reporters that Salim was under surveillance by the French security services since 2008. The severed head was found on top of the gate at the entrance to the factory.

Niger’s army has said it killed fifteen Boko Haram militants in land and air operations against the Islamist group. Earlier this year, frustrated by the Nigerian army’s ineffectiveness, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger told Nigeria that they would join the war against the Islamists – including conducting operations inside Nigeria. The military operations by the three countries have pushed Boko Haram out of many areas it used to control – but in retaliation, Boko Haram has intensified its attacks on Nigeria’s three neighbors.

On Tuesday morning, Druze on the Golan Heights attacked an Israeli military ambulance carrying two wounded Syrian rebels to a hospital in Israel, killing one of the wounded rebels. Israeli Druze – and the Druze on the Golan Heights – want Israel to help their fellow Druze in Syria, who until recently had been loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, but Israel’s tacit understanding with the Sunni rebels, including the Islamist Nusra Front, indicates that Israel supports those groups in Syria which are supported by the major Sunni states in the region. There used to be a time when Israel allied itself with countries and groups on the geographic, ethnic, and religious periphery of the Middle East – what David Ben Gurion called the Periphery Alliance – but times have changed, and Israel now is seeking a modus vivendi with the region’s Sunni powers. The Druze may be paying the price of this change in Israel’s strategy.

The Pentagon said that a U.S. drone strike in northern Iraq on 15 June killed Ali Awni al-Harzi, a Tunisian Islamic State operative who was involved in the 11 September 2012 Benghazi attack. Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said al-Harzi was killed in Mosul. A video taken the night of the attack in Benghazi showed him at the consulate, making him a person of interest, U.S. authorities said.

Peacefulness in Europe has reached an historic high while the Middle East is spiraling into deepening violence, according to figures outlined in the 2015 Global Peace Index, unveiled last week. The latest Global Peace Index reveals an increasingly divided world: many countries achieve historic levels of peace, while strife-torn nations continue to degrade into violence. The impact of violence on the global economy reached US$14.3 trillion or 13.4 percent of global GDP in the last year, equivalent to the combined economies of Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Almost 1 percent of the world’s population is now refugees or internally displaced (IDPs), the highest level since 1945, and numbers are expected to increase.