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Changing security landscape
Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Russia, China, and Iran have successfully exploited or stretched U.S. thresholds for war in order to further their strategic goals and undermine U.S. interests. The United States will have to address the problems of foreign intervention and threats short of war if it is to prevent further erosion of its global influence by its competitors, RAND researchers say.
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ISIS
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Thursday said that ISIS fighters have used the northern Syrian city of Manbij as a base to plan attacks against the West. U.S. Special Forces have joined Kurdish fighters in surrounding the militants’ stronghold. Manbij has earned the name “Little London” because of the many Britons who have made it their homes after joining ISIS.
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European security
A new report states that a U.K. decision to leave the EU would be as significant a shift in U.K. national strategy, as the decision in the late 1960s to withdraw from bases East of Suez and,. As a result, the decision to leave the EU would necessitate a new Strategic Defense and Security Review (SDSR).
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Biometrics
Pulling a poker face means betraying no visible emotion, so that opponents cannot tell what you are really thinking. But a Tel Aviv startup’s face-profiling technology recently proved fairly accurate at predicting which four players were most likely to beat out forty-six other contenders in an amateur poker tournament. The company say that its technology, which analyzes faces shown in photos and videos and classifies them according to fifteen parameters predictive of personality traits and types, can help identify terrorists.
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African security
When Muhammadu Buhari — a former general and, for a year-and-a-half in the early 1980s, the military ruler of Ngeria — was sworn in as Nigeria’s president on 29 May 2015, he promised to “stamp out” Boko Haram within twelve months. Security analysts note that despite some progress, he has failed to do so. Critics of Buhari say that while Boko Haram has been pushed back and has lost large swaths of territory it used to control, Buhari’s heavy-handed approach to unrest or dissent of any kind in Nigeria has created more problems.
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Counterterrorism
Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York) said on Thursday that Congress is set to approve a Homeland Security budget which would restore $600 million in anti-terror funding. The White House had proposed a budget with cuts to the anti-terror program. The proposed cuts involve reduction of the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI), which would be funded at $330 million for fiscal year 2017, after being funded at $600 million in 2016.
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European security
All countries across Europe are being urged to establish national “Firearms Focal Points” to collect, study, and share information about firearms and ballistics to help reduce the number of deaths and injuries caused by gun crime and terrorism. This is one of the key findings following a 15-month multi-agency research project which looked to analyze the prevalence of gun crime across Europe and, based on the findings, identify initiatives and interventions that could be further pursued and developed to tackle the problem.
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ISIS
Drawing from more than 140 recently declassified documents from the predecessors of the Islamic State, a new study shows that the group has been operating for years with remarkable continuity in its philosophy, methods, and goals, including the long-standing aspiration for creating a caliphate. The documents show that the leadership consciously designed the organization not just to fight, but also to build a state governed by the laws dictated by its strict Islamist ideology.
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African security
The British government told a court in London that claims from 40,000 Kenyans that they were beaten, raped, and mistreated during the British campaign against the Mau Mau rebellion cannot be fairly tried sixty years later. Responding to a lawsuit which opened at the high court in London this week, and which is expected to go on continue for more than a year, Guy Mansfield QC, representing the Foreign Office, said those accused of having inflicted the violence are now dead or untraceable.
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Terrorism
Manuel Navarrete Paniagua, the Head of the European Counter Terrorism Center at Europol, said that terrorist cells in the EU are probably stockpiling explosives for future attacks. Europol said it had foiled 211 terror plots in the last year, but that the threat of similar attacks on the scale of November 2015 Paris attacks and the March 2016 attacks in Brussels in March remained a concern.
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Terrorism
U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), after returning from a trip to the Middle East, last week shared his frank observation with an audience at George Washington University: “A worldwide terrorist exodus is underway, and we are woefully unprepared to deal with it,” he said. “We are not winning this war,” McCaul said. “Violent extremists are not on the run, as the president says. They are on the march.”
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Cultural terrorism
Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, a jihadist from Mali, has pleaded guilty to destroying ancient world-heritage Islamic sites in Mali. The destruction took place during the short 2012-2-13 reign of the Islamist Ansar Dine movement in break-away northern Mali, which the group called Azawad. Mahdi is he first person to face cultural destruction-related war crimes charges before the International Criminal Court (ICC).
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Terror & business
A joint study of terror’s impact on business travelers and business travel managers revealed surprising results, especially with regard to traveler fears and anxiety. Among other findings, the study found that 31 percent of business travelers worry that a reluctance to travel could hurt their career, and that 6 percent would not feel comfortable expressing their concerns to upper management.
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Terrorism
The Pentagon has said it killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour because he posed a danger to the United States. The Islamist militant chief was killed in a U.S. strike in Pakistan last week. President Obama called the death of Mansour “an important milestone,” and that the United States had “removed the leader of an organization that has continued to plot against and unleash attacks on American and coalition forces.”
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Syria
ISIS militants set off bombs that killed more than 140 people in the Syrian towns of Jableh and Tartous, in the Assad regime’s Alawite-controlled coastal heartland. The Alawite region on north-west Syria, from which the Assad family and most of Syria’s higher echelon hail, has so far escaped the worst of the fighting in Syria’s civil war.
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Tunnels
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip increasingly fear that the ongoing construction of Hamas tunnels in residential areas means that their lives will be in danger if a future war breaks out between the terrorist group and Israel. While Israel destroyed 32 terror tunnels during the 2014 war, Israeli officials have been warning for some time that Hamas has rebuilt much of its underground infrastructure.
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ISIS & chemical weapons
In the ace of sustained attacks by coalition forces, ISIS has moved its chemical weapons labs to densely populated residential areas in Mosul — and is testing homemade chlorine and mustard gas on its prisoners held in different facilities in and around the city. ISIS has been working in chemical weapons for a while, relying on the expertise of scientists who served in the chemical weapons complex of Saddam Hussein, but also on Europeans with chemical degrees from leading European universities.
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Terrorism
Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, a close aide and a possible successor to leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has called on the international followers of ISIS to carry out attacks on civilians during the holy month of Ramadan. He said that lone wolf attacks in the United States and Europe were “dearer to us than the biggest action by us” in Iraq and Syria. The message also contained references to recent military setbacks the group has suffered.
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Terrorism
ISIS, in a surprising move, has appealed to India’s Muslim minority, calling on them to avenge the deaths of Muslims killed during riots in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat. Only a handful of India’s 160 million Muslims have joined ISIS. Indian leaders has stressed that the reason is the strength of the country’s secular democracy.
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Aviation
An Egypt-led search has uncovered “wreckage” and “personal belongings of passengers.” “Egyptian aircraft and navy vessels have found personal belongings of passengers and parts of the wreckage 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of Alexandria,” Egyptian army spokesman Mohammed Samir in a statement published on Facebook. Thursday’s even is but the latest in a troubling series of aviation crises in Egypt this past year.
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The long view
Patriots’ Day: How Far-Right Groups Hijack History and Patriotic Symbols to Advance Their Cause, According to an Expert on Extremism
Extremist groups have attempted to change the meaning of freedom and liberty embedded in Patriots’ Day — a commemoration of the battles of Lexington and Concord – to serve their far-right rhetoric, recruitment, and radicalization. Understanding how patriotic symbols can be exploited offers important insights into how historical narratives may be manipulated, potentially leading to harmful consequences in American society.