• Displaced Nigerians reluctant to return to areas cleared of Boko Haram’s militants

    The return of tens of thousands of Nigerians to their homes in north-east Nigeria – homes from which they escaped as a result of Boko Haram insurgency — been delayed by persistent fears that the Islamist terrorist group has not been defeated, proclamations to the contrary by the Nigerian military notwithstanding. In any event, many villages have been destroyed either by Boko Haram or by the heavy-handed Nigerian military, so many of the displaced Nigerians have no homes to which to return. Boko Haram may have been weakened by the military campaign, but it is still capable of launching deadly attacks, as was underlined on Monday when twin suicide bombings killed two people at a university in Maiduguri. The city is the provincial capital of Nigeria’s north-east Borno state, the epicenter of Boko Harams seven-year campaign to create a regional Islamic caliphate.

  • Pakistan promises nuclear retaliation if India invades

    Pakistani officials have threatened to use nuclear weapons if India invaded Pakistan, after India’s new army chief revealed that India had secret military plans for attacking its neighbor in the event of a crisis. Pakistani officials said that Pakistan would take all necessary measures to defend itself should India implement long-rumored “cold-start” plans to attack Pakistani territory in the event of events such as a major terrorist incident. The comments by the Pakistani officials come two weeks after Bipin Rawat, the new head of the Indian army, acknowledged the existence of “cold start” contingency plan. The cold-start strategy calls for an instant response to crises, including attacks by militants launched from Pakistani soil, and would entail Indian troops entering Pakistan and occupying positions along the border before Islamabad could prepare.

     

     

     

  • Victim of fake news on Facebook sues social media giant for defamation

    On 10 September 2015, Chancelor Angela Merkel visited a Syrian refugee center in Berlin, and an 18-year old Syrian, Anas Modamani, who had been in Germany for only a few weeks, took a selfie with her. A news agency photographer took a picture of the two – and the picture went viral. The picture was quickly picked up by far-right activists and groups in hate-fueled social media posts that evolved into “fake news” stories spread on Facebook, accusing Anas of terrorism and attempted murder. He is now suing the social media company in what legal experts consider a landmark case, claiming damages for Facebook’s alleged inability to remove the defamatory and distressing posts.

  • Manchester United appoints a full-time counterterrorism manager

    Manchester United, one of the U.K. top soccer clubs, has announced the creation of a new position: a full-time counter-terrorism manager. It is understood the role will be filled by a former inspector from Greater Manchester police’s specialist search unit. ManU’s final match of last season against Bournemouth was called off after a bomb scare after a device – which was proven to be fake — was found in a toilet after the two teams finished warming up. The game was played four days after the FA Cup final.

  • German police targets suspected far-right extremists

    German police have arrested two people after a series of raids against members of the far-right suspected plotting attacks on refugees, Jews, and police officers. Several of those detained were considered close to the so-called Reichsbürger (Citizens of the Reich) movement, an extremist group — resembling the U.S. Sovereign Citizen movement — whose members reject the very legitimacy of the German state. The main suspect is a 62-year-old self-proclaimed Celtic druid, who had posed calls for violence against Muslims and Jews.

     

  • NATO troops arrive in Lithuania

    The first contingent of German and Belgian troops arrived in Lithuania on Tuesday, the first step in a NATO move to reinforce the alliance eastern flank in an effort to deter a militarily aggressive Russia.A group of German officers landed in the Baltic state’s capital Vilnius to coordinate the deployment of a 1,200-strong battalion, which will include forces from several NATO members. Earlier in the day, some 30 Belgian troops arrived at another airport in western Lithuania, while a ship carrying logistical equipment docked at the Baltic Sea port of Klaipeda.

  • U.K. Parliament was not told of Trident missile test failure before voting to extend program

    A missile test of Britain’s Trident nuclear missile ended in failure off the coast of Florida last June. The missile was not carrying a nuclear warhead. The missile veered toward the U.S. coast, but the trajectory was part of an automatic self-destruct sequence. The missile diverted into the ocean — an automatic procedure when missile electronics detect an anomaly. A month after the test, the U.K. parliament approved the renewal of Trident program at a cost of £40 billion. House of Commons members, unaware of the failure, voted by 472 votes to 117 in favor of renewal.

  • EU countering Russian disinformation efforts ahead of important European elections

    he EU is intensifying its efforts to counter Russia’s disinformation and propaganda campaign, in order to prevent a repeat in Europe of what Russia successfully accomplished in the U.S. in 2016: Helping elect Donald Trump’s the Kremlin’s favored candidate. European officials have been expressing growing fears that Vladimir Putin will seek to influence elections across Europe the he did in the United States. With national elections next year in Germany, France, and the Netherlands in the coming months, extra resources have been made available to the EU’s East Stratcom taskforce, which is seeking to counter Russian attempts to influence votes through misinformation and propaganda. The funding is available over the next six months and comes from a shuffling of the current total budget of the EU’s external action service (EEAS). Senior MEPs say that Russia’s success in helping elect Trump will only encourage similar political interference campaigns on the continent.

  • Mexico leaves under-border drug tunnels unfilled, allowing drug cartels to use them again

    Mexico has so far failed fully to seal up border tunnels dug by drug smugglers, and these open tunnels pose a security risk to the United States by presenting an “open invitation” for cartels to dig new tunnels, according to officials in the United States. The United States has filled and sealed drug tunnels since 2007, after the Los Angeles Times reported that the tunnels were being left unfilled because of CBP’s budget constraints. The Mexican government said it lack the money completely to fill and seal every tunnel. Some of the tunnels are elaborate, outfitted with ventilation and rail systems to whisk contraband hundreds of yards under the border. Because of budgetary considerations, the Mexican government has been sealing only the tunnel openings – but these sealed opening are left unguarded, and the drug cartels had no trouble removing the sealing material and using the tunnels again.

  • Eastern Mosul liberated from ISIS’s grip

    Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Iraqi forces have liberated the eastern half of Mosul from ISIS. “I call on those heroes to move quickly to liberate the remaining part of Nineveh province, especially the right side, which is the western side of the city,” Abadi said. Mosul is divided by the Tigris River, and the city Iraq’s second-largest city. “The Iraqi and Peshmerga security forces fought through an elaborate defense formed over the past two years to not only keep the Iraqi security forces out, but the residents of Mosul captive,” said a statement from US Central Command Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve

  • Russia, Turkey, and Iran unveil Syria cease-fire plan

    Russia, Turkey, and Iran agreed Tuesday on the outlines of a plan to reinforce a cease-fire in Syria, making the three most important outside players in the conflict as guarantors to a peace process. The deal, reached after two days of talks in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, drew Iran into an alliance with Russia and Turkey over ways to secure a settlement. The deal called for a cease-fire enforcement mechanism jointly monitored by the three states – which also committed themselves jointly to fight the Islamic State and Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate. Observers noted that the deal would test Russia’s new role as a lead regional power broker.

  • U.S. military cooperation with Russia in Syria would be illegal: Expert

    The White House said Monday that the administration would be open to military cooperation with Russia to fight Islamic State – but the move would run afoul of current law. A provision of the National Defense Authorization Act, first passed by Congress late in 2014 and renewed since then, strictly limits the Pentagon’s ability to work with Russia. The law was passed in response to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its continued involvement in the Ukrainian civil war

  • Drawing Israel’s borders in the absence of a peace agreement

    In its annual strategic survey, the Institute for National Security Studies, Israel’s leading security think tank, has published a plan to redraw the map of the West Bank in an effort to consolidate major settlements and prevent the spread of others. The plan was presented earlier this month to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. The plan calls for the government to allow construction in West Bank settlement blocs and Jerusalem – while, at the same time, halt construction in the 90 percent of the territory outside the major settlement blocks. The authors of the plan argued that negotiations with the Palestinians are unlikely to lead to a final-status agreement any time soon, and with negotiations deadlocked, they warn, Israel is drifting toward a single binational state with the Palestinians, which threatens its democratic and possibly Jewish identity.

  • Terrorists winning digital arms race

    Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol, said Tuesday that terrorist groups have embraced a huge number of digital tools to recruit members and plan terrorist attacks, placing them a step ahead of security services trying to combat them. Twitter removed about 250,000 accounts connected with ISIS in one year, but the terrorist group uses ninety other social media platforms, Wainwright noted. Terrorist groups have begun to live-stream their attacks, and they are using the Internet to launch “innovative crowdfunding” campaigns, he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. “The technology is advanced,” Wainwright added. “They know what to do, and they know how to use it.”