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Some Chicago Gunshot Victims Don’t Trust Ambulances
Survivors are choosing to transport themselves to the hospital instead of waiting for emergency services. Experts say the Chicago Fire Department isn’t doing everything it can to improve slow response times.
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Trump’s Pardons and Purges Revive Old Question: Who Counts as a Terrorist?
The president’s sweeping clemency for Capitol rioters and his administration’s ongoing removal of career national security specialists foretell a permissive new climate for extremist movements, say current and former officials and researchers.
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Perfect Storm: Megafires Set the Stage for Debris Flows
Storms now pounding Southern California are raising the specter of more danger for residents — debris flows in areas already reeling from devastating fires. Flows pose bigger threat than typical mudslides.
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Spyware Is Spreading Far Beyond Its National-Security Role
Spyware is increasingly exploited by criminals or used to suppress civil liberties, and this proliferation is in part due to weak regulation.
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The U.K. Demands for Apple to Break Encryption Is an Emergency for Us All
The United Kingdom is demanding that Apple create an encryption backdoor to give the government access to end-to-end encrypted data in iCloud. Encryption is one of the best ways we have to reclaim our privacy and security in a digital world filled with cyberattacks and security breaches, and there’s no way to weaken it in order to only provide access to the “good guys.”
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Response to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Article on Iran’s Short Timeline to a Bomb
Iran can build a crude nuclear weapon too quickly, in about six months, after a decision to do so, but the regime risks being detected early after its decision to do so and all along its subsequent pathway to a bomb. That time is more than sufficient for a devastating military response by Israel, hopefully supported by the United States and other allies.
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Memory-Holing Jan. 6: What Happens When You Try to Make History Vanish?
The Trump administration’s decision to delete a DOJ database of cases against Capitol riot defendants places those who seek to preserve the historical record in direct opposition to their own government.
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How Russia Neutralized Ukraine’s Tactical Nuclear Weapons
When Ukraine declared its independence from the U.S.S.R in August 1991., Kyiv came into possession of the third largest nuclear weapons stockpile in the world, after the Soviet Union and the United States.Anestimated 2,800-4,200 tactical nuclear weapons were relinquished to Russia in a move that may have changed the course of history.
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FBI Agents Sue DOJ, Allege Retaliation Over Jan. 6 Cases
FBI agents involved in the Jan. 6 Capital riot investigations have filed lawsuits against the Justice Department, challenging its efforts to survey and identify personnel who participated in high-profile inquiries such as the riot and handling of classified documents at Mar-a-logo.
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Southport Attacks: Why the U.K. Needs a Unified Approach to All Violent Attacks on the Public
The conviction of Axel Rudakubana for the murder of three young girls in Southport has prompted many questions about how the UK handles violence without a clear ideological motive. This case has also shown up the confusion in this area, and made clear the need for a basic reframing of how we understand murderous violence against the public today.
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Strengthening School Violence Prevention
Violence by K-12 students is disturbingly common. Ensuring that schools have effective ways to identify and prevent such incidents is becoming increasingly important. Expanding intervention options and supporting K-12 school efforts in Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management (BTAM) would help.
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Tommy Robinson: Five Things to Know
Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is a former soccer hooligan who, around 2009, adopted the name Tommy Robinson. In 2009, he founded the English Defense League (EDL), an anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant organization. The EDL’s anti-immigrant views, mostly directed at Muslims, mobilized Britons and attracted support from xenophobic groups in the U.S.
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What’s Going on at the FBI?
The Trump administration has launched a broad political purge of the FBI, aiming to remove senior officials and field agents who are regarded as insufficiently loyal to President Trump. In addition to forcing the retirement of senior bureau leaders, the FBI’s interim leadership is now trying to identify agents and other personnel who had worked on the Jan. 6 investigations. Benjamin Wittes writes that “A lot of people at the bureau—leadership and street agents, analysts and staff alike—are flirting with heroism right now” by engaging in conscientious objection: they “are upholding the law, which is closely aligned with their own oaths and the FBI’s culture, and the rule of law itself.”
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Most Violent Crime Rates Have Fallen ack to Pre-Pandemic Levels: Report
The number of homicides across the United States declined by 16% in 2024, continuing a recent downward trajectory. Crime is expected be a major focus for state lawmakers and the Trump administration.
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Turns Out Neither. New Research Finds Mayors on Both Sides Mixed in Implementing Effective Policies.
Many Republican political candidates and leaders accused their Democratic counterparts of being soft on crime during the run-up to the 2024 elections. Concerns over the safety of the nation’s cities has been a longstanding —and potent —political issue. But how much influence do elected officials actually have over crime rates?
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More headlines
The long view
Are We Ready for a ‘DeepSeek for Bioweapons’?
Anthropic’s Claude 4 is a warning sign: AI that can help build bioweapons is coming, and could be widely available soon. Steven Adler writes that we need to be prepared for the consequences: “like a freely downloadable ‘DeepSeek for bioweapons,’ available across the internet, loadable to the computer of any amateur scientist who wishes to cause mass harm. With Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 having finally triggered this level of safety risk, the clock is now ticking.”
“The Federal Government Is Gone”: Under Trump, the Fight Against Extremist Violence Is Left Up to the States
By Hannah Allam
As President Donald Trump guts the main federal office dedicated to preventing terrorism, states say they’re left to take the lead in spotlighting threats. Some state efforts are robust, others are fledgling, and yet other states are still formalizing strategies for addressing extremism. With the federal government largely retreating from focusing on extremist dangers, prevention advocates say the threat of violent extremism is likely to increase.
Luigi Mangione and the Making of a ‘Terrorist’
Discretion is crucial to the American tradition of criminal law, Jacob Ware and Ania Zolyniak write, noting that “lawmakers enact broader statutes to empower prosecutors to pursue justice while entrusting that they will stay within the confines of their authority and screen out the inevitable “absurd” cases that may arise.” Discretion is also vital to maintaining the legitimacy of the legal system. In the prosecution’s case against Luigi Mangione, they charge, “That discretion was abused.”
Autonomous Weapon Systems: No Human-in-the-Loop Required, and Other Myths Dispelled
“The United States has a strong policy on autonomy in weapon systems that simultaneously enables their development and deployment and ensures they could be used in an effective manner, meaning the systems work as intended, with the same minimal risk of accidents or errors that all weapon systems have,” Michael Horowitz writes.
Ukraine Drone Strikes on Russian Airbase Reveal Any Country Is Vulnerable to the Same Kind of Attack
By Michael A. Lewis
Air defense systems are built on the assumption that threats come from above and from beyond national borders. But Ukraine’s coordinated drone strike on 1 June on five airbases deep inside Russian territory exposed what happens when states are attacked from below and from within. In low-level airspace, visibility drops, responsibility fragments, and detection tools lose their edge. Drones arrive unannounced, response times lag, coordination breaks.
Shots to the Dome—Why We Can’t Model US Missile Defense on Israel’s “Iron Dome”
By Justin Logan
Starting an arms race where the costs are stacked against you at a time when debt-to-GDP is approaching an all-time high seems reckless. All in all, the idea behind Golden Dome is still quite undercooked.