Our picksLab-Leak Debate Just Got Even Messier | California Fights Fire with Fire | Playing Defense Is Totally Fine, and more
· The Lab-Leak Debate Just Got Even Messier
· Four Teens Charged for Conspiring to Attack High School on Columbine Massacre 25th Anniversary
· The Haqqanis Are the New Global Terror Threat
· Colombia Car Bomb in June Targeted U.S. Troops, Militants Say
· Neo-Nazis Are Still on Facebook. And They’re Making Money
· Safeguarding New York City Against Extreme Weather
· Playing Defense Is Totally Fine
· U.S. Military Eyes Prototype Mobile Nuclear Reactor in Idaho
· California Fights Fire with Fire to Protect Giant Sequoias
The Lab-Leak Debate Just Got Even Messier (Daniel Engber and Adam Federman, The Atlantic)
A new leaked document is stirring up another frenzy over the pandemic’s origins. What does it really tell us?
Four Teens Charged for Conspiring to Attack High School on Columbine Massacre 25th Anniversary (Nicole Acevedo, NBC News)
Four teenagers in Pennsylvania have been charged for conspiring to attack their high school on the 25th anniversary of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado that left 13 dead. Two 15-year-olds are being charged as adults while the other two teens are facing juvenile charges in their plan to attack Dunmore High School, outside Scranton, on April 20, 2024, according to Lackawanna County District Attorney Mark Powell. The teenagers charged as adults have been identified as Alyssa Kucharski and Zavier Lewis. Investigators said that Kucharski’s mother told police that her daughter was “obsessed with Columbine,” according to The Times-Tribune, which first reported the news on Friday. Powell said Kucharski and Lewis were charged as adults due to the seriousness of their actions and their “level of culpability” in the plot, the newspaper reported. The two teens charged as juveniles have not been identified. “While the investigation is ongoing, I want to assure the parents, students and staff at Dunmore High School that we do not believe there is any active threat at this time,” Powell said in a statement Friday. “We are relieved that this plot was uncovered before anyone was hurt and urge anyone who has information about potential threats of school violence to contact police immediately.
The Haqqanis Are the New Global Terror Threat (Melissa Skorka, Wall Street Journal)
The Haqqani network has evolved over the past half-century from a relatively small, tribal-based jihadist group into one of South Asia’s most significant U.S.- and U.N.-designated terrorist syndicates. As Afghanistan’s new Taliban government pushes for credibility abroad, the Haqqani network is the most powerful faction with which it must reckon. The Haqqani network could theoretically reform itself to gain international acceptance, but let’s not ignore reality: Paying lip service to Western conditions or red lines won’t change an entity this resourceful and ruthless.
