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Dutch police on lookout for three aging Baader-Meinhof gang members suspected in recent heists
Dutch police detectives are on the lookout for three aging German far-left militants who have disappeared decades ago but who have emerged as the main suspects in a series of recent robberies. Ernst-Volker Staub, 61, Burkhard Garweg, 47, and 57-year-old Daniela Klette are former members of the violent Red Army Faction (RAF) — also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang — a German militant group which terrorized Germany (then: West Germany) the 1970s and 1980s with a campaign of bombings, arson, kidnappings, and killings. The three militants are among a larger group of fugitives who have been on the run for three decades for membership of the Marxist RAF.
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U.K. government should consider extremism strategy: Parliamentary panel
The Joint Select Committee on Human Rights of the British Parliament said the government should reconsider its counter extremism strategy, use the existing extensive legal framework for dealing with people who promote violence, and introduce new legislation only if it can demonstrate a significant gap. The committee’s report concludes that while there is agreement that tackling terrorism is a priority, there is no agreement about how to combat extremism, particularly since the government is also under a duty to uphold the democratic and human rights which terrorists so often aim to extinguish.
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New tool keeps track of violent groups without having to geolocate the tweets
Researchers have developed new sentiment analysis algorithms which can monitor the social network Twitter in search of violent groups. The system analyzes both the messages these individuals share and how their relationships develop. The police and other law enforcement agencies could use the tool to detect critical points, threats, and areas with concentrations of potentially dangerous people.
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Ex-Treasury official: Hezbollah has turned Lebanese villages into missile silos
Hezbollah has embedded its rocket arsenal in villages across Lebanon, ensuring that any Israeli strike on the Iran-backed terrorist group’s military assets will lead to mass civilian casualties, a former Treasury official said on Monday. Hezbollah has turned the Shiite villages “into essentially missile silos,” Jonathan Schanzer said. “What you have is rockets placed under homes, schools, apartment buildings, etc., so when the Israelis need to try to strike these weapons before they’re launched, it will potentially lead to mass casualties.”
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Climate disasters increase risk of armed conflict in multi-ethnic countries
Climate disasters like heat-waves or droughts enhance the risk of armed conflicts in countries with high ethnic diversity, scientists found. Each conflict is certainly the result of a complex and specific mix of factors, but it turns out that the outbreak of violence in ethnically fractionalized countries is often linked to natural disasters that may fuel smoldering social tensions.
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Russian government hackers leaked DNC e-mails: Cybersecurity experts
Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, said on Sunday that Friday’s release by WikiLeaks of Democratic National Committee (DNC) internal e-mails was the work of Russian government hackers. The leak, Mook said, was part of an effort by President Vladimir Putin and people in his circle to weaken Clinton and increase the chances of a Donald Trump victory in November. Cybersecurity experts support Mook’s claims.
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Report: Next war with Hezbollah could cause “thousands of civilian deaths” in Israel
Israeli officials believe that a future war with Hezbollah, with its advanced Iranian-supplied rocket arsenal, could lead to “thousands of civilian deaths,” according to a new study. Hezbollah is now believed by Israel to possess about 150,000 rockets, which exceeds the combined arsenals of all non-U.S. NATO countries and is ten times larger than its arsenal before the 2006 war.
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Do think-tanks matter? Expert says “think again”
A recently published study found that public sector workers judged studies and reports generated by scholars affiliated with universities to be more credible than reports or studies purported to be from a think-tank or advocacy group.
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There is no manual on how to defeat ISIS – “we’re writing it”: John Kerry
Speaking Thursday at the opening of a 3-day meeting in Washington, D.C. of thirty countries currently engaged in fighting ISIS, Secretary of States Joh Kerry said, “We are engaged in an historic effort. Nothing like this coalition has ever before been assembled. And we’re not following a manual on antiterrorist coalition-building, we’re writing it.”
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Brazil's police arrest 10 ISIS sympathizers suspected of Olympics terror plot
With two weeks to go to the opening of the Olympic Games in Brazil, the Brazilian police have arrested ten alleged ISIS sympathizers in the states of São Paulo and Parana on suspicion of planning acts of terrorism during the games. Two other suspects are still at large. Brazil’s intelligence agency ABIN has worked with foreign intelligence services to provide the information that led to the arrests.
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Nice terrorist had accomplices, was planning the attack for a year
Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the truck driver who killed eighty-five people in Nice on Bastille Day, had accomplices – and he had been planning his attack for months, the prosecutor leading the investigation said. Prosecutor Francois Molins said five suspects were facing terrorism charges for their alleged roles in helping the driver.
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Baton Rouge gunman was a member of black “sovereign citizen” group
Gavin Long, the 29-year old former Marine who on Saturday killed three Baton Rouge police officers, was a member of a black antigovernment sovereign citizen group whose members believe they are indigenous to the United States and beyond the reach of the federal government. Members of the Washitaw Nation believe that they are descendants of black people who occupied the North American continent tens of thousands of years before white Europeans arrived, and, therefore, they fall outside federal authority.
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Indonesian security forces kill country's most wanted Islamist militant
Abu Wardah Santoso, Indonesia’s most wanted Islamist militant, was killed in a shootout with security forces. Santoso, who was the leader of the East Indonesia Mujahideen militant group which, in 2014, claimed allegiance to ISIS, had eluded capture for more than five years.
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Updated 2015 Global Terrorism Database release
The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) has released an update to its Global Terrorism Database (GTD), an open-source database including information on terrorist attacks that took place around the world between 1970 and 2015. Among the findings: The total number of terrorist attacks and total deaths due to terrorist attacks worldwide decreased by 12 percent in 2015, compared to 2014. This was largely due to fewer attacks and deaths in Iraq, Pakistan, and Nigeria. This represents the first decline in total terrorist attacks and deaths worldwide since 2009.
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DHS S&T awards $3.66 million for privacy-enhancing technology R&D
DHS S&T has announced the award of three contracts totaling $3.66 million to fund the research and development of privacy-enhancing technologies that better defend personally identifying information and protect privacy in cyber space.
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More headlines
The long view
Preventing Another 'Jan. 6' Starts by Changing How Elections Are Certified, Experts Say
The 2024 presidential election may be a rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, but preventing a repeat of Jan. 6, 2021 — when false claims of a stolen election promoted by Donald Trump and his allies led to an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol —will be top of mind this election year. Research finds broad support among public for nonpartisan certification commissions.
States Rush to Combat AI Threat to Elections
This year’s presidential election will be the first since generative AI became widely available. That’s raising fears that millions of voters could be deceived by a barrage of political deepfakes. Congress has done little to address the issue, but states are moving aggressively to respond — though questions remain about how effective any new measures to combat AI-created disinformation will be.
Chinese Government Hackers Targeted Critics of China, U.S. Businesses and Politicians
An indictment was unsealed Monday charging seven nationals of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and conspiracy to commit wire fraud for their involvement in a PRC-based hacking group that spent approximately 14 years targeting U.S. and foreign critics, businesses, and political officials in furtherance of the PRC’s economic espionage and foreign intelligence objectives.
European Arms Imports Nearly Double, U.S. and French Exports Rise, and Russian Exports Fall Sharply
States in Europe almost doubled their imports of major arms (+94 per cent) between 2014–18 and 2019–23. The United States increased its arms exports by 17 per cent between 2014–18 and 2019–23, while Russia’s arms exports halved. Russia was for the first time the third largest arms exporter, falling just behind France.
LNG Exports Have Had No Impact on Domestic Energy Costs: Analysis
U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG) exports have not had any sustained and significant direct impact on U.S. natural gas prices and have, in fact, spurred production and productivity gains, which contribute to downward pressure on domestic prices.
Don’t Buy Moscow’s Shameless Campaign Tying Biden to Its Terrorist Attack
Russia has offered many different explanations to the ISIS-K’s 22 March 2024 terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, but the most recent explanation offered by Russia is the most audacious yet: Russia now charges that the Ukrainian energy company Burisma financed the attack. Burisma is at the center of an effort by a congressional committee to impeach President Biden, but the case has all but collapsed. Hunter Stoll writes that Russia’s disinformation and propaganda apparatus appears to be searching for ways to keep Burisma in the news ahead of the U.S. presidential election.