• 40 al-Qaeda terrorists dead after failed experiment with plague weapon

    40 al-Qaeda members died after being exposed to the plague during a biological weapons test; test took place in cave hideouts in Tizi Ouzou province, 150 kilometres east of the Algerian capital Algiers

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  • ETA targets Spanish high-speed rail

    After assassinating a high official involved in building the high-speed rail connecting three Basque cities to Madrid, ETA, the Basque separatists group, warns it will use terror to stop the project

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  • The Gaza campaign
    UAV war over Gaza

    In no other conflict have UAVs been integrated more deeply into both surveillance and attack missions as they have during the Gaza war; how does a UAV-based war look to a UAV operator on the ground?

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  • Gaza news flash
    Israel kills Hamas's No. 3 leader

    An Israel Air Force strike kills Hamas’s interior minister Said Siam and the head of Hamas security apparatus, Salah Abu Shreh

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  • U.K. military employs hovering droids in Afghanistan

    Hovering petrol-powered prowler patrols to check Afghan ambush alleys so soldiers do not have to; device may be used by law enforcement in urban areas — and future systems may carry weapons

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  • The Gaza campaign: News analysis // Ben Frankel
    Growing rift among Israeli leaders about war's end-game

    The Israeli military campaign in Gaza has so far been a success — if brutal success — by any objective measure of war: relative destruction and the number of dead and injured on both sides; Hamas, though, is not going to raise the white flag of surrender regardless of these objective measures; Israelis debate on how to end a war with an adversary that does not sign surrender agreements; we should watch carefully, because the war we see in Gaza shows us the future of armed conflict

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  • Software analyzes news reports to identify terrorists

    Rice University researchers develop artificial intelligence-based computer program which can scan news reports quickly to identify which terrorist group is behind a terrorist attack being covered in the reports

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  • The Gaza campaign: Analysis // Ben Frankel
    Back to Ben Gurion? Israel at the gates of Gaza

    The strategy Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak is pursuing in Gaza harks back to an earlier Israeli approach — the unalloyed realism of David Ben Gurion; this approach has served Israel well; alternative approaches have not

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  • The cyber security agenda of the new administration

    U.S. national leaders do grasp the importance of network security and information assurance — but seeing the problem is not the same thing as solving it

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  • The Gaza campaign -- the air war
    Gaza campaign highlights strength, limitations of air power

    Israel’s air war over Gaza is impressive: astonishingly accurate intelligence, continuously updated by a fleet of UAVs; aerial-platform-acquired intelligence instantly overlaid on existing human intelligence; improved ISR systems shorten sensor-to-shooter loop; small infantry units to communicate directly with available aircraft to request rapid fire against a target

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  • NYPD considers jamming cell phones during terror attack

    In the U.K. they jam cell phones in the area around the location of a terrorist attack to prevent terrorists from remotely detonating additional bombs; during the Mumbai attacks, the handlers of the terrorists which killed 170 people used cell phones to micromanage the attack; NYPD wants to be able to jam cell phone during a terrorist incident

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  • Trend
    FBI: U.S. facing "cybergeddon"

    FBI experts say that cyber attacks pose the greatest threat to the United States after nuclear war and weapons of mass destruction — and these attacks are increasingly hard to prevent

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  • The Gaza campaign -- Analysis // Ben Frankel
    Gaza civilians suffer as a result of Hamas's tactics -- and Israel's

    Israeli drew many lessons from its inconclusive 2006 war in Lebanon; one of the more important ones is that Israel had been too restrained, too careful about distinguishing between Hezbollah and the state of Lebanon (i.e., civilian population and institutions) — with the result being too many Israeli soldiers dead and an inconclusive end to the fighting; whether the different, more ruthless tactics used in Gaza will succeed remains to be seen

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  • The Gaza campaign -- Analysis // Ben Frankel
    Back to Ben Gurion? Israel at the gates of Gaza

    The strategy Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak is pursuing in Gaza harks back to an earlier Israeli approach — the unalloyed realism of David Ben Gurion; this approach has served Israel well; alternative approaches have not

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  • The Gaza campaign -- battle innovations
    Israel uses new ISR systems, ordnance

    Advocates of air power were humbled in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, but they hope to be vindicated in the Israel-Hamas conflict; Israel uses new ISR systems which shrink the sensor-to-shooter loop, and new bunker-busting ordnance

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  • Analysis
    Follow the money: The value of tracking terrorist financing

    Mounting terrorist operations is cheap, but maintaining a terrorist network is expensive; disrupting the money flow to a terrorist organization is thus an important preventive tool; it is also a valuable intelligence-gathering tool

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  • Bush administration meticulous about power handoff

    The transfer of power from the Bush administration to the Obama administration will be the first handoff since 9/11; the Bush administration is taking unprecedented measures to make sure the incoming administration is ready from day one

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  • Graham, Talent: U.S. should do more to prevent terrorist attack

    The leaders of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism say that the incoming administration must do more, much more, to prevent a terrorist attack on the United States

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  • Northrop Grumman unveils the X-47B

    The large UAV — it has a 62-ft. wingspan and weighs around 45,000 pounds at takeoff — is the U.S. military’s principal vanguard for a potential new age of stealthy, autonomous combat aircraft

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  • India to establish federal agency to fight terrorism

    Stung by the last in a series of deadly terrorist attacks, the Indian government will set up a new agency dedicated to combating terrorism; critics charge the budget and manpower of the new agency will likely be insufficient to the task

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