OUR PICKSCapitol Police Needs More Resources | Extremist Groups Are Going Local |Post-Flood Disasters, and more
··Security Training Group Asks Musk to Rid Twitter of Antisemitism
Antisemitic content could endanger lives
··Shocking New Details Blow Up Conspiracy Theories about Paul Pelosi Attack
Facts debunk conspiracy theories spread by the right
··U.S. Capitol Police Say Political Climate Requires More Resources to Keep Lawmakers Safe
Lawmakers under growing threat
··Extremist Groups Are Going Local to Disrupt the Midterms
Extremists have replaced their nationwide election intimidation strategy with local efforts focused on neighborhood ballot boxes
··Diseases Explode after Extreme Flooding and Other Climate Disasters
Post-disaster effects are often much more deadly than the initial catastrophe
··Kansas Native Sentenced to 20 Years for Training Islamic State Women’s Brigade
A mother of 12 trained scores of women and girls
Security Training Group Asks Musk to Rid Twitter of Antisemitism (Nico Grant, New York Times)
The nonprofit organization Secure Community Network, which provides safety consulting and training for Jewish facilities across North America, wrote a letter on Monday to Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, imploring him to clamp down on antisemitic content that could endanger lives. “Twitter has an antisemitism problem — with hashtags such as #holohoax [Holocaust Hoax] and #killthejews abounding on the site,” Michael Masters, the group’s national director and chief executive, wrote in the letter. The group is made up of many former law enforcement officials, including Mr. Masters, who was the chief of staff at the Chicago Police Department. It gave Mr. Musk five recommendations to improve Twitter and the safety of Jewish people, including hiring and training moderators to identify antisemitic content, removing it from the platform and closing user accounts that promote violent extremism. Officials at the nonprofit say they have observed a swell of online posts expressing hate toward or conspiracy theories about Jewish people in the last few years. The organization touches 90 percent of the 7.2 million Jews across North America, Mr. Masters said, providing security training and coordination to synagogues, Hillel groups and other Jewish facilities.
Shocking New Details Blow Up Conspiracy Theories about Paul Pelosi Attack (Los Angeles Times)
More details emerged Monday after the Department of Justice filed federal kidnapping and assault charges against David DePape, the man accused in the attack last week against Paul Pelosi, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband.
U.S. Capitol Police Say Political Climate Requires More Resources to Keep Lawmakers Safe (Emily Brooks, The Hill)
Following the attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) husband Paul Pelosi, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said that more resources are necessary to provide security for lawmakers due to the contentious political climate.
Extremist Groups Are Going Local to Disrupt the Midterms (Jennifer A. Kingson, Axios)
As Election Day draws near, mayors and police chiefs across the country are getting a new warning: Extremists have jettisoned their nationwide election intimidation strategy in favor of local efforts focused on neighborhood ballot boxes.
Diseases Explode after Extreme Flooding and Other Climate Disasters (Erin Biba, Scientific American)
More than four months after devastating monsoon floods began in Pakistan, at least 1,500 people have died, and the waters that inundated nearly the entire country have yet to recede. This ongoing emergency is causing illness and communicable disease to spread, and these effects are likely to be much more deadly than the initial catastrophe. “The public health risks are worse, and the death toll could be much higher,” says Richard Brennan, regional emergency director for the eastern Mediterranean
Kansas Native Sentenced to 20 Years for Training Islamic State Women’s Brigade (Aruna Viswanatha, Wall Street Journal)
Allison Fluke-Ekren was sentenced Tuesday to 20 years in prison for working with Islamic State after an emotional court hearing that explored how a mother of 12, who grew up on a Kansas farm, came to run a women’s brigade for the murderous terrorist group in Syria. “Even terrorists are telling her she is too extreme,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Raj Parekh said, describing how Fluke-Ekren worked with several terrorist groups and trained over 100 women and girls for Islamic State on using assault rifles, grenades and suicide belts in 2017. He laid out how she aspired to commit an attack at a shopping mall or college in the U.S. and moved her children through war zones for a decade. She “brainwashed young girls and trained them to kill,” Mr. Parekh said. Fluke-Ekren pleaded guilty in June to her work for Islamic State, in one of the first cases to detail an American woman’s extensive operational role in the terrorist group. She also admitted to helping another terrorist group review U.S. government documents seized by one of her ex-husbands from the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. On Tuesday, one of her daughters told the court about abuse she said she faced at her mother’s hands while they lived in Syria—and described how her mother married her off to an Islamic State fighter when she was 13, soon after her father, the emir of the group’s snipers in Syria, had been killed.