Our picksPentagon’s New UFO Office | Practicing Asteroid Deflection | Saving Colorado River Water, and more

Published 26 November 2021

·  California, Arizona and Nevada in Talks on New Plan to Save Colorado River Water

·  Pentagon Creates New Office to Probe UFO Reports

·  EUROPOL Creates Unit to Monitor Jihadist Content Online

·  Emergency Watershed Protection

·  NASA Is Practicing Asteroid Deflection. You Know, Just in Case

·  Why Do Governments Reveal Cyber Intrusions?

·  France Doubles Down on Countering Foreign Interference Ahead of Key Elections

·  Inflation Tarnation! Inside the Supply-Chain Snafu That Could Wreck Your Holiday Plans

California, Arizona and Nevada in Talks on New Plan to Save Colorado River Water  (Ian James, Los Angeles Times)
Two and a half years after signing a deal aimed at averting a damaging crisis along the Colorado River, water officials from California, Arizona and Nevada are discussing plans to take even less water from the shrinking river and leave it in Lake Mead in an effort to prevent the reservoir from falling to dangerously low levels.
Representatives of water agencies from the three states said they are firming up the details of a deal that would leave an additional 500,000 acre-feet of water in the reservoir next year, and the same amount again in 2023—about double the quantity of water used annually by Las Vegas and the rest of southern Nevada.
For California, the deal would mean participating in water reductions prior to Lake Mead reaching levels that would otherwise trigger mandatory cuts.

Pentagon Creates New Office to Probe UFO Reports  ( AFP / Phys.org)
The Pentagon is creating a new office to investigate unidentified flying objects amid concerns that after broad probes it cannot explain mysterious sightings near highly sensitive military areas.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, working with the US director of national intelligence, ordered the new investigatory body to be established in the US Defense Department’s intelligence and security office, the Pentagon said late Tuesday.

EUROPOL Creates Unit to Monitor Jihadist Content Online (EUROPOLU)
Terrorism is a constant threat to societies all over the world and terrorists’ use of the internet and social media has increased enormously in recent years. Jihadist groups, in particular, have demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of how social networks operate and have launched well-organised, concerted social media campaigns to recruit followers. These campaigns promote or glorify acts of terrorism and violent extremism and have led to viral online content in the past.
As a response to this, in 2015 the Justice and Home Affairs Council mandated Europol to create the EU Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU), as part of the wider EU Internet Forum, to reduce the impact of internet content promoting terrorism or violent extremism.