• U.S. to designate Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization

    Russia and China have recently touted their progress in developing hypersonic vehicles, which fly much faster than the speed of sound, which is 767 mph. Hypersonic missiles are rocket-boosted to high altitude and may be launched from land, sea or air. Over the past 60 years, U.S. interest in hypersonic vehicles has waxed and waned. Now it seems the U.S. is back in the hypersonic effort in a serious way.

  • Sri Lankan terrorists: An example of family-affiliated terrorism

    A researcher recently published a book, Family Terror Networks, which addresses the phenomenon of family-linked terrorism, offering insight into the terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka, which killed nearly 300 people and injured more than 500 others and included attackers and cell members from several family terror networks, including two sets of brothers, as well as a husband and wife.

  • Ending the myth of the poor terrorist

    The jihadists who carried out the Easter massacre in Sri Lanka were educated members of their country’s elite, a background that’s closer to the terrorist norm than the exception, Claude Berrebi and Owen Engel write in The Tablet. Researchers have been demonstrating for years that most terrorism is committed by individuals who are, on average, wealthier and better educated than the median level in their respective society.

  • FBI thwarts terrorist plot in Los Angeles

    The FBI Monday said the agency had foiled a domestic terror plot by an American military veteran, who was aiming to attack “multiple targets” in Southern California, including Huntington Beach, the port of Long Beach, and the Santa Monica Pier. The suspect, identified as 26-year old Mark Steven Domingo of Reseda, California, is a recent convert to Islam. He said he was planning the attack in retribution for the attacks on mosques in New Zealand.

  • Islamic State leader: Next chapter in IS’s campaign will be “war of attrition”

    Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is showing his face for the first time in five years, appearing on a video posted to the internet Monday by the terror group. Baghdadi acknowledges the fall of the last IS-held territory in Baghuz, Syria, and describes the terror group’s fight now as a “battle of attrition.”

  • Sri Lanka bans face veils in wake of Easter terror attacks

    Women in Sri Lanka will no longer be able to cover their faces under new emergency regulations which came into effect Monday. Sri Lanka issued the ban as part of a series of emergency measures enacted in the wake of the Easter Sunday suicide attacks.

  • Sri Lanka: Militant leader killed in Easter bombings

    Sri Lankan Islamic militant leader Zahran Hashim was apparently killed in one of the suicide attacks on Easter, President Maithripala Sirisena said on Friday. Police are now hunting for 140 people with suspected “Islamic State” ties.

  • Islamist gunmen kill polio vaccinator in Pakistan

    In Pakistan, a Islamist gunmen on Thursday shot dead a female polio vaccinator and wounded another. Conservative Islamic clerics – and the Taliban — have long been suspicious of the polio vaccine, claiming it is a Western plot to harm or sterilize Muslim children. The Pakistani authorities also arrested ten men in the provincial capital Peshawar for spreading unfounded rumors through fake social media videos that a polio vaccine had led to fainting and vomiting. In recent years, anti-vaccination agitators have killed dozens of people in Pakistan, one of three countries in the world — along with Afghanistan and Nigeria — where wild polio virus is still endemic.

  • New Zealand, France leading an effort to ban terrorists from social media

    New Zealand and France will host a meeting with technology companies and world leaders to develop a strategy to block terrorists from social media. The meeting comes in the wake of the March shootings at two mosques in Christchurch.

  • White supremacists use social media aid, abet terror

    Before carrying out mass shooting attacks in Pittsburgh and New Zealand, white supremacist terrorists Robert Bowers and Brenton Tarrant frequented fringe social networking sites which, according to a new study, serve as echo chambers for the most virulent forms of anti-Semitism and racism, and active recruiting grounds for potential terrorists.

  • IS claims responsibility for deadly Sri Lanka blasts

    The Islamic State group said Tuesday, without providing evidence, that it was responsible for a series of blasts in Sri Lanka that killed more than 300 people and injured hundreds of others on Easter Sunday. Also Tuesday, Sri Lanka’s state minister of defense told parliament that those who carried out the attacks did so in retaliation for attacks at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand last month.

  • Sri Lanka attacks: government’s social media ban may hide the truth about what is happening

    Sri Lanka has temporarily banned social media and messaging apps in the wake of the coordinated Easter Sunday attacks on churches and hotels across the country, which killed at least 290 people. The ban is ostensibly to stop the spread of misinformation – but in Sri Lanka Facebook and social media platforms generally have created a positive space for public conversation that did not exist before. Shutting down social media, leaving its citizens reliant on state messaging and a weak and beaten down form of journalism, the government now risks preventing Sri Lankans from finding out the truth about what is happening in their fragile and delicately balanced country.

  • Nearly 300 killed, 500 injured in Easter Sunday attacks on churches, hotels in Sri Lanka

    In the worst wave of terrorist violence in Sri Lanka in ten years, a series of blasts on Sunday have hit churches and hotels in and near the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo. The nearly simultaneous blasts targeted churches during Easter services and hotels frequented by foreign guests. Sri Lankan officials said 290 people, including at least 27 foreigners, had been killed in the blasts in Colombo and elsewhere. More than 500 more have been injured.

  • Sri Lanka attacks among the deadliest terrorist attacks since 9/11

    The Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka – nearly 300 killed and more than 500 injured — places the bombings on a par with other high-casualty terrorist atrocities since September 11, the single deadliest terrorist attack in history, in which 2,977 people were killed.

  • The first lone-wolf terrorist

    Muharem Kurbegovic is considered the first “lone-wolf” terrorist. He was born in Sarajevo in 1943 and immigrated to the United States in 1967 to pursue a career in engineering. In 1973 he launched a series of bombing in and around Los Angeles. What especially alarmed the authorities was his interest in building chemical weapons, including nerve-gas munitions, to use in his planned attacks: