• Countering radicalization

    Dealing with the rise of homegrown terrorism has prompted governments to take novel approaches in combating such threats. The U.K. government, for example, has recently pushed for schools to teach children as young as four about the dangers of violent extremism. One counter-radicalization strategy adopted by the U.K. government is Prevent, which has been used effectively in British secondary schools. Prevent has in the past been viewed with suspicion, however, particularly by British Muslim communities, as Prevent funding has previously been tied directly to the number of Muslim schools in an area. What Australia can learn from the British example is ensuring that certain communities do not feel alienated. Instead, any attempts at education should focus on the problem of radicalization as a whole.

  • Terrorism

    In its most daring – and logistically demanding –military operation in about a year, Israeli naval commandos earlier yesterday (Wednesday) intercepted an Iranian arms ship in the Red Sea, more than 900 miles from Israeli shores. The ship was carrying dozens of Syria-manufactured M-302 medium-range missiles from Iran to Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. The M-302 missile would have dramatically increased the capabilities of militant organizations in Gaza. It carries a warhead of 150 kg and has a range of about 300km.

  • Chemical weapons

    Libyan officials report that they have recently apprehended several members of a Libyan Muslim extremist militia planning to ship chemical weapons to anti-Assad rebels in Syria. Colonel Mansour al-Mazini of the Libya army said that the Islamists had been caught with a container of mustard gas. The gas was confiscated by Libyan soldiers.

  • Terrorism

    An Egyptian earlier today (Tuesday) banned all activities of Hamas, a Palestinian offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas has been in control of the Gaza Strip since summer 2007. In December, the Egyptian government declared the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist group, freezing its assets, making membership in the group a crime, and banning all its political activities. The Egyptian military, now holding effective power in Egypt, has always regarded Hamas as a security threat, accusing the group of supporting Islamist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula and Islamists radicals inside Egypt.

  • Terrorism

    Muslims in Russia, who belong to Turkic ethnic groups (this includes the largest Muslim group in Russia, the Tatars), practice moderate Sunni Islam of the Hanafite school. Russian Muslims living in the Caucasus Mountains practice Sunni Islam of the Shafiite school. A large number of Russian Muslims also follow Sufi orders — Naqshbandi, Qadiri, and others. The radicalization of some Russian Muslims began in the early 1990s with Saudi-financed madrassas where radical and fundamentalist strands of Islam were taught, and where Islamist militants were trained, and with Saudi-financed radical preachers spreading “true Islam.” The madrassas were closed in 2000, and the fundamentalist preachers ordered out of the country, but by then enough Russian Muslims were already radicalized.

  • Infrastructure protection

    In 2013, U.S. critical infrastructure companies reported about 260 cyberattacks on their facilities to the federal government. Of these attacks, 59 percent occurred in the energy sector. A new report proposes that energy companies should create an industry-led organization to deflect cyber threats to the electric grid. Modeled after the nuclear industry’s Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, the proposed organization, to be called the Institute for Electric Grid Cybersecurity, would oversee all the energy industry players that could compromise the electric grid if they came under a cyberattack.

  • Terrorism

    At least ninety people have been killed in three weekend attacks over the weekend by Islamist group Boko Haram. The attacks took place in northeast Nigeria, the area where the group attacks have killed thousands of people since 2009. This past weekend’s attacks cap three weeks in which the Islamist militants killed more than 400 people. Since last May, the Nigerian government has placed three states in the region — Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe — under a state of emergency in an effort to defeat the Islamic insurgency, but to little effect. The Nigerian military campaign has been criticized by military experts, who say the military has adopted an approach which is too passive to be effective against nimble insurgents. The quality of the troops and their commanders is low, resulting in guard being left unstaffed, slow response – at times several hours — to reports of attacks and calls for help, and soldiers abandoning their posts and running away in the face of the attacks.

  • Movies

    The amateurish anti-Islamic movie “Innocence of Muslims” triggered a wave of violence in the Middle East and North Africa when it was released in 2012. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco accepted the copyright claim of an actress who said she was duped into appearing in the movie, and ordered Google to remove a trailer for it from YouTube. Google complied, but said it would fight the decision.

  • Bioterrorism

    Marburg hemorrhagic fever is a severe and potentially fatal disease in humans first recognized in 1967. It is caused by an RNA virus of the Filoviridae family and is understood to be endemic to Africa. The Marburg virus is classified as a Category A bioterrorism agent by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and in 2006 was determined by DHS to be a material threat to national security and public health. There are currently no treatments for Marburg virus infection beyond supportive care. Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Sarepta Therapeutics, a developer of innovative RNA-based therapeutics, announced positive safety results from a Phase I multiple ascending dose study of AVI-7288 in healthy volunteers. AVI-7288 is the company’s lead drug candidate for the treatment of Marburg virus infection.

  • Syria

    Hezbollah, after initially denying that any of its forces were attacks Monday night, earlier today (Wednesday) admitted that Israel carried out an airstrike targeting the militia’s positions in Lebanon near the border with Syria. Hezbollah’s statement said the air strike caused damage but no casualties. A senior Israeli security official told reporters that the missiles destroyed in the attack could carry warheads heavier and more dangerous than almost all of the tens of thousands of missiles and rockets Hezbollah now has in its arsenal.

  • Terrorism

    The federally funded national consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), located at University of Maryland, has developed its Global Terrorism Database (GTD), the largest database of its kind. It includes more than 113,000 identified cases of terrorism around the globe – among themmore than 52,000 bombings, 14,400 assassinations, and 5,600 kidnappings – and provides available  information on the date, location, weapons used, nature of target, number of casualties, and name of the group or individual responsible for each incident.

     

  • Syria

    For the second time this year. Israeli jets attacked targets on the border between Lebanon and Syria on Monday night as part of an ongoing campaign to prevent the transfer of advanced weapon systems from the Syrian military to Hezbollah. In 2013, the Israel Air Force (IAF) attacked military bases and arms depots inside Syria on six occasions — 30 January, 3 May, 5 May, 5 July, 18 October, and 30 October. The first attack in 2014 took place on 26 January. The previous seven air strikes were on targets inside Syria, but last Sunday attack was on Syrian military convoys just inside Lebanon, in Hezbollah-controlled areas near the Lebanon-Syria border.

  • Terrorism

    Since the beginning of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, U.S. Special Operation forces have fought against Chechen jihadists based in Pakistan’s tribal areas and fighting alongside Taliban and al-Qaeda militants. Veterans of U.S. Special Forces say that Chechen fighters were more determined and ferocious than other Islamists. Some scholars dispute these reports, pointing out that there were no Chechen among militants captured in Afghanistan, but rather Russian-speaking Uzbeks and Tajiks. Other scholars say that the fact that there were no captured Chechen militants is indication that they are zealots who fight to the death rather than let themselves be captured.

  • Terrorism

    DHS has alerted airlines flying to the United States to the possibility that terrorists might try to bring explosives n board in their shoes. The airlines were told that there were no specific plots, and that the information was based on information collected in the United States and abroad that bomb makers affiliated with terrorist groups were working on a shoe-bomb design. Hiding explosives in shoes is not new. In December 2001, passengers aboard an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami prevented a U.K. citizen, Richard Reid, from detonating explosives hidden in his sneakers.

  • Threat reduction

    Threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction do not seem as imminent today as they did after the 9/11 attacks, but Jill Hruby, vice president of International, Homeland, and Nuclear Security at Sandia Labs, says that scientists, industry, and universities working on technological solutions to national security challenges must anticipate what could come next. Speaking at AAAS annual meeting, Hruby said that in an environment of lower public interest — due, in part, to the success of early efforts to combat terrorism that resulted in fewer major incidents in recent years — continued collaboration between national security laboratories, academia, and industry is needed.

  • Immigration

    The Obama administration has relaxed the rules for would-be asylum-seekers, refugees, and individuals who want to come to the United States or remain in the country despite their classification as having provided “limited material support” to terrorists or terrorist organizations.DHS says that rigorous s security and background checks will still be applied to asylum seekers, including those already in the United States, but officials will take into consideration“routine commercial transactions or routine social transactions,” Arab Spring-related anti-regime activities, and more. Current rules already allow exemptions for providing medical care to terrorists or acting under duress.As of 2011, 4,400 immigration cases are on hold as a result of the old terrorism-related inadmissibility rules.

  • Terrorism

    A new study from HIS Jane reports that the number of attacks by non-state armed groups around the world has rapidly increased in just five years. In 2009, 7,217 terrorist and insurgent attacks were recorded by open sources. In 2013, that number increased by more than 150 percent, to 18,524. The study’s author says that the epicenter of 2013 activity was in the Middle East, with significant pockets of violence radiating out to neighboring regions in Africa and South Asia. The top 3 most active non-state armed groups in 2013 were Barisan Revolusi Nasional (Thailand), the Taliban, and Islami Chhatra Shibir (Bangladesh).

  • Banking

    Today (Monday) Cuba’s bank in the United States, Buffalo-based M&T Bank, will stop accepting Cuba’s deposits. The bank will close Cuba’s accounts on 1 March 2014. One result will be that travel between Cuba and the United States will become more difficult because banking services are necessary for issuing travel visas. Cuba’s diplomatic mission in Washington, D.C., and the Cuban Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York have been unable to find an American bank to handle the country’s U.S.-based accounts.

  • Infrastructure protection

    There are about 45,000 substations in the United States, but far fewer high-voltage substations like the one attacked last April in Metcalf. California. Americans could see what the loss of just one important power substation can have when, in 2003, a failure in one such substation knocked out power to fifty million people in the United States and Canada for days. Illinois-based IDT says that since Biblical times, the method of thick-walled fortifications to halt manned and artillery attacks remains the best technology for protecting lives and important assets. The company says that its METALITH, a several-feet-thick prefabricated steel barrier structure filled with sand, would offer the best protection to vulnerable power substations. “While most of the electrical industry has been focused on the threat of cyber-terrorism, the San Jose [Metcalf is near San Jose] attack points to the need for physical protection of strategic power grid assets as well,” says Tom Carlton, IDT’s CEO.

  • Surveillance

    Mohamed Mohamud, a Somali immigrant and former Oregon State University student, was convicted last year of attempting to detonate a bomb in 2010 near Portland’s Christmas holiday tree-lighting ceremony at Pioneer Courthouse Square. His lawyers are questioning the legality of evidence used against him. Attorneys for Mohamud are claiming that the evidence used was obtained without a warrant and should have been barred by the court.