Turkish media report that the terrorist who killed ten tourists in Istanbul entered the country as an asylum seeker from Syria. Most of the dead and wounded in the attack were German nationals. The Turkis police was able to identify the attacker quickly because his fingerprints were already stored in Turkey’s the refugee biometric database.

The U.S. Travel Association is urging DHS to address people who stay overstay the length of their approved visas before placing new restrictions on visa waiver programs that are designed to boost U.S. tourism. “We should not even begin to discuss further improvements to visa security without much-needed data from the Department of Homeland Security on visa overstays,” the association says.

Bahrain, Kuwait, and Sudan cut their ties with Iran, while the UAE downgraded its relations; a UN fact-finding mission has found evidence for the use sarin gas in Syria; ISIS launched a coordinated gun and suicide car bomb attack on the Sidra oil port on Libya’s Mediterranean coast.; Denmark and Sweden reintroduced border controls in an effort to stem the wave of refugees trying to enter the two countries.

The TSA is increasing the number of random checks of employees – of both airports and airlines — who hold badges which allow them to enter restricted area at airports; The Pentagon said that Charaffe al-Mouadan, a French national who had joined ISIS in Syria, was killed in a 24 December U.S. airstrike; The Norwegian government said that it is planning to ask the Norwegian parliament to change forty or so major and minor asylum laws in order to tighten the country’s asylum policy; Israel continues to plan for building in the E1 area of the West Bank — if the plan is implemented, it would, in effect, cut the West Bank in half, making the creation of a contiguous, viable Palestinian state impossible.

Muhammad Mahmood, 47, who is a U.S. citizen and who a runs a car repair shop in San Bernardino, California, speculated that the reason his two brothers, their wives, and their children — all of them British citizens – have been barred from entering the United States to visit Disneyland was that he prays at the same mosque where one of the San Bernardino shooters, Syed Farook, used to pray.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Monday that over a million irregular migrants and refugees arrived in Europe in 2015, mostly from Syria, Africa, and South Asia. With arrivals of 4,141 migrants or refugees landing in Greece on Monday, IOM reports total arrivals to Europe at roughly 1,005,504, with just 3 percent coming by land. The total is the highest migration flow since the Second World War.

U.S. border guards with the power to search holiday travelers will be stationed at British airports for the first time, as part of a plan being discussed by the two countries; The UN refugee agency released a report Friday that showed rocketing numbers of people having been displaced within their countries or living as refugees or asylum seekers during the first half of the year; in October and November, more than 10,000 unaccompanied minors crossed the border through Mexico, twice as many as the same months last year.

Israel and Turkey were once close allies, but the relationship between the two countries has cooled after the Islamist party of President Recep Tayeep Erdogan came to power in 2002, and he was elected president in 2003. The two countries have decided that the many challenges they face in common now justify the resumption of normal relationship, even if the two countries are deeply divided over the treatment of the Palestinians by Israel; Denmark is set to pass a law which would allow authorities to confiscate jewelry from refugees entering Denmark in order to pay for some of the refugee-related expenditures by the government; the new government in Argentina will reopen the investigation in to the mysterious death in January of a prosecutor who was about to charge former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner with covering up Iran’s involvement in the killing of eighty-five Argentinian Jews in 1994.

The world currently has more refugees and internally displaced persons than it has had since the Second World War. Many countries are reluctant to take refugees in. Security is a recent concern, but a major underlying reason is the perceived financial burden which would result from larger intake of refugees. But what, in reality, is the economic impact of these new arrivals? Since 2005, Sweden has taken in more refugees per capita than any other European country. A detailed study of the Swedish case shows that the acceptance of those refugees has resulted in a net fiscal redistribution from the non-refugee population to refugees corresponding to 1.0 percent of Swedish GDP – with four-fifths of the redistribution due to lower public per capita revenues from refugees. A clear takeaway from this research is that policies should focus on integrating refugees into the labor market as quickly as possible.