The Pentagon says that ISIS fighters are have been posing a growing threat to U.S. and Iraqi forces by using small commercial drones to carry improvised explosives devices (IEDs) or surveillance cameras. These drones are especially threatening because they can evade detection. The growing threat led the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Agency, the Pentagon’s office charged with keeping tab on and countering IEDs, to ask Congress for permission to reallocate $20 million to provide money for a counter-drone program.

ISIS has been using instant messenger apps Whatsapp and Telegram to advertise Yazidi women and girls as young as 12 for sale as sex slaves. These apps are also being used to share photos databases of women held by ISIS as sex slaves. ISIS uses the apps to distribute these of photographs to ISIS militants manning the group’s checkpoints so that these women can be identified if they try to escape ISIS-controlled territory. Telegram and Facebook-owned Whatsapp both use end-to-end encryption, preventing the two companies from accessing users’ communications.

Five police officers were killed, and seven officers and two civilians injured, on Thursday by 25-year old Micha Xavier Johnson, who opened fire on the officers during a protest march in Dallas. During a 3-hour standoff with the police, Johnson said he was not associated with any group or organization, and that his only purpose was to kill White people – especially White police officers. It was the deadliest attack on law enforcement officers since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson on Wednesday announced the Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Grant Program, with $10 million in available funds. DHS snotes that this is the first federal assistance program devoted exclusively to providing local communities with the resources to counter violent extremism in the homeland.

A French parliamentary committee said on Tuesday that potential terrorists can move too freely in the Schengen open-border area, and that EU member-states should more systematically flag up suspects on a shared police database. The committee also called for reforming France’s six intelligence services and recommended merging them into a single counterterrorism agency. The committee’s 300-page report focused on the debilitating effects of poor coordination among French police and intelligence services, and among the twenty-six European countries which are members of the Schengen agreement.

A judge ruled that veteran Irish republican Ivor Bell, 79, will stand trial for involvement in the 1972 murder of Jean McConville, a mother of ten children. Bell is charged with aiding and abetting the kidnapping, killing, and secret burial of the widow. The case against Bell could be brought as a result of the content of tapes police secured from an oral history archive collated by Boston College in the United States.

In the wake of the deadliest terrorist attack in Iraq since 2003, Iraq’s prime minister Haider al-Abadi has instructed all the country’s security forces – the federal and local police and the army — to stop using fake bomb detectors at the hundreds of security checkpoints across the country. A British businessman, James McCormick, purchased thousands of the novelty golf ball finders for $19.95 each, repackaged them, and then sold them to Iraq and other nations as advanced hand-held bomb detectors. McCormick charged $40,000 for each of the repackaged golf-ball finders.

Iraqi officials say that the death toll from Saturday’s massive ISIS suicide bombing near two busy shopping malls in Baghdad now stands at 175. The number is going to rise, as more bodies are being recovered from the destroyed and burned-down buildings. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered the bolstering of security measures in Baghdad and other cities. These measures include the withdrawal of a fake hand-held bomb-detection device which has been used at Iraqi security checkpoints.

In an escalation of violence in Saudi Arabia, suicide bombers on Monday killed four Saudi security forces in an attack outside the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, one of the two holiest sites in Islam. The bombing outside the Medina mosque was one of a series of attacks in Saudi Arabia on Monday. The bombings reflected ISIS strategy of targeting of Shia Muslims and U.S. interests, as well as attacking targets important to Sunni regimes which ISIS regard as corrupt.. Experts note, though, that the attack on or near one of the holiest sites in Islam is a significant escalation in ISIS campaign.