• Senators supporting Iran nuclear deal urging greater transparency in reporting on Iran’s nuclear program

    Senator Gary Peters ((D-Michigan) on Friday led fourteen of his colleagues in sending a letter to President Barack Obama urging the administration to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to encourage additional transparency when reporting on Iran’s nuclear program.

  • Turkish military seizes power in Turkey

    The Turkish military announced a few hours ago (Friday afternoon, EST) that it has seized power, and that the government of President Tayyip Erdogan, in power since 2003, has been deposed. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, however, said in a hastily arranged press conference that while it was not clear who was in chare in Turkey, he was confident the attempted coup would be put down. There is no information about Erdogan and his whereabouts, but the Turkish sister channel of CNN said he was “safe” in an unknown location. The military has declared martial law in the country, imposed a 10:00 p.m. (Turkey time) curfew, and placed soldiers in the offices of all TV stations and major newspapers.

  • At least 84 killed, more than 200 injured, by a terrorist driving a truck into 14 July crowd

    At least eighty-four people were killed Thursday when a 31-year old Tunisian plowed into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France. He accelerated, and continued to drive for about 1.5 miles, running over people who crowded the boulevard. More than 200 were injured, some of them are in critical condition. Police shot and killed the driver, Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who had a residency permit to live and work in France.

  • The perpetrator: Unstable loner with a history of petty crimes, interest in “girls and salsa”

    The driver of the truck was identified as Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian, who had a residency permit to live and work in France. He was a divorced father of three, and neighbors said he had become depressed after the breakdown of his marriage. The neighbors said that Bouhlele was not particularly interested in religion, adding that he preferred girls and salsa.

  • France has a long history of violence and terrorism

    France has a long history of violence carried out by different groups with different ideologies and goals. Until the rise of Islamist terrorism in the last twenty years, most of the violent and terrorist acts in the post-World War Two era belonged to three categories: Separatist movements; terrorism related to the Algerian War; and terrorism by various groups in the Middle East and North Africa.

  • Austrian court sentences an Islamist hate preacher to 20 years in prison

    A criminal court in Graz, Austria, on Wednesday sentenced an Islamist hate preacher, who has adopted the name Ebu Tejma, to twenty years in prison — the harshest sentence so far for convicted Islamists in Austria. He was sentenced on one count of membership in a terrorist organization and one of promoting terrorist activities.

  • How did classified information get into those Hillary Clinton e-mails?

    FBI director James Comey publicly rebuked Hillary Clinton for being “extremely careless” in handling classified information while she was secretary of state. Were the secretary of state and her aides careless with such information? And how can they maintain that they did not knowingly mishandle classified information? To answer these questions, we need to understand two facts about the classification of information and its transmission. First, the determination of what information is classified is subjective, meaning that reasonable people can disagree about the relative sensitivity of particular information. In fact, different agencies disagree about issues like this all the time. Second, Clinton has not shared classified documents, and this is not something she is accused of. It is extremely difficult to share a classified document electronically over e-mail, because most government agencies, including the State Department, maintain separate systems precisely to make it all but impossible to electronically pass information between classified and unclassified systems. This is partly why Clinton and her aides say so assuredly that they did not knowingly e-mail classified materials. The issue is thus whether she and her aides should have known that matters discussed in e-mails were classified or sensitive.

  • A faction of Colombian FARC rebel group rejects peace deal, refuses to disarm

    The Armando Rios First Front, a unit of Colombia’s FARC rebel group, has said it will not disarm or demobilize, as it is required to do under the peace deal reached between the FARC and the government of Colombia. The deal, which ends the 52-year guerrilla war between the FARC and successive Colombian governments, was signed in Havana, Cuba, three weeks ago. The announcement by the First Front is the first public sign of opposition to the from within the rebel ranks. Colombian government sources said that other FARC factions could also reject the peace agreement, and that if enough of them did so, it would throw the peace process into doubt.

  • 10 years after Second Lebanon War, Israel concerned next round will be far worse

    On the ten-year anniversary of the beginning of the Second Lebanon War, Israeli officials continued to warn that any future conflict with Hezbollah will result in unprecedented damage to the group. A senior IDF official said that the difference between the next war and 2006 “will be the difference between an operation and a war. 2006 was an operation, and we didn’t use all of our power. Next time it won’t just be planes flying around. … We will use all of our power to destroy Hezbollah militarily.”

  • ISIS prepares followers for end of caliphate

    In the face of an ever-more-effective campaign by the U.S.-led coalition — a campaign which has substantialy reduced the size of the ISIS-controlled areas in Iraq and Syria; decimated ISIS’s oil-production and distribution infrastructure; killed many senior commanders and operatives; and, with the help of Turkey, choked off the flow of foreign fighters to replenish the organization’s dwindling ranks – ISIS leaders have begun to prepare followers of the Islamist organization for the fall of the ISIS-established caliphate.

  • ISIS boasts killing 5,200 people during the month of Ramadan

    ISIS has boasted that its Islamist fighters have killed 5,200 people in “military operations” during the holy month of Ramadan. An infographic in the group’s Arabic-language weekly magazine al-Naba, ISIS lists fourteen terrorist attacks group followers carried out in Europe, the United States, Asia, Africa, Syria, and Iraq. ISIS claims the victims include nearly 2,000 Shiites, 1,000 Kurds, 600 Syrian Alawites, and 300 Christians.

  • New Border Patrol chief faces uphill battle to reform agency

    As the first outsider appointed to run the Border Patrol in its 92-year history, former FBI official Mark Morgan starts his new job this week as chief with a target on his back. The selection of Morgan, a career FBI official, to run the 20,000-strong force sends a clear message: The Border Patrol has a culture problem that needs to be fixed. But with just seven months left in the Obama administration, the question remains whether Morgan can right an agency in turmoil or whether his appointment is merely symbolic.

  • How to stay anonymous online

    Anonymity networks protect people living under repressive regimes from surveillance of their Internet use. But the recent discovery of vulnerabilities in the most popular of these networks — Tor — has prompted computer scientists to try to come up with more secure anonymity schemes. These scientists have developed a new anonymity scheme that provides strong security guarantees but uses bandwidth much more efficiently than its predecessors, making it possible for network to protect users’ anonymity if all but one of its servers are compromised.

  • U.S. terror victims file suit against Facebook for failing to block Palestinian incitement

    The families of five Americans recently killed or injured by Palestinian terrorists have filed a lawsuit against Facebook for allowing the terrorist group Hamas to incite violence on its network. The plaintiffs are seeking $1 billion in punitive damages under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows American citizens who are victims of overseas terrorist attacks to sue in U.S. federal courts.

  • ISIS's finances have been damaged, but U.K. can do more

    In their report on ISIS’s finances, MPs on the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee say ISIS faces an increasingly desperate struggle to raise money. The so-called “richest terrorist group” may have generated more money than any other terrorist organizations but it also incurs unprecedented costs.