Homeland defense is the first priority of U.S. Northern Command, Navy Adm. William E. Gortney told members of the House Armed Services Committee last Thursday. Gortney named ISIS and whatever form it takes in the future, and transnational organized criminals who move drugs, people, weapons and anything else that will turn a profit as the most dangerous and likely threats to the nation.

British security agencies will have to destroy fingerprints and DNA of forty-five terror suspects because the police retained the biometric samples longer than the law allows. The law does allow the police to keep biometric information of terrorism suspects indefinitely, but certain paperwork must be completed within a certain period of time to allow that, and if the paperwork is not completed, the samples must be destroyed. A new report reveals that Britain holds biometric information and materials on nearly 8,000 suspects.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump said that one reason the U.S. war against ISIS is “ineffective” is that “We’re fighting a very politically correct war.” Exactly what Trump is suggesting doing is not clear, but it is significant that Trump recently acknowledged that the U.S.“is bound by laws and treaties” and that as president he would “not order a military officer to disobey the law.” Instead, he said he would “seek [the] advice” of military and other officials. This is good news, and something all the candidates – and their critics – ought to embrace, as applying the law of war in the twenty-first century is much more complicated than many think. Words do matter, and where the nation’s security is concerned, no words can be more important..

Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, Malaysia’s deputy prime minister, said Malaysia had foiled a plot by ISIS to kidnap government leaders, including the country’s prime minister. Hamidi to say that jihadists attempted to kidnap him and two other Malaysian officials — including the prime minister Najib Razak and the defense minister, Hishammuddin Hussein.

Strikes by U.S. drone ad manned aircraft has killed 150 al-Shabaab fighters in Somalia, the Pentagon said on Monday. The strikes were conducted on Saturday against the Raso Camp, 120 miles north of Mogadishu, where the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist group built a training facility.

A new report evaluates the economic losses to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey to date and into the future. The report concludes that the cost of conflict to Syria is an estimated $275 billion in lost growth opportunities. If the conflict continues to 2020, the cost of conflict to Syria will be $1.3 trillion.

Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has discovered a terrorist weapons cache in a forest park in Northern Ireland. Police have been warning for a whole that dissidents republicans were planning to ramp up violence in the run-up to the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising against British rule in Dublin.

Hiroute Guebre Sellassie, UN envoy to the Sahel region in Africa, said last week that up to forty-one million young people in the Sahel have nothing hut a bleak future to look to, pushing them to migrate and making them susceptible to radicalization. She said that young people under age 25 in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger “face hopelessness.” She noted that 44 percent of children in the Sahel lack access to primary education and only 36 percent of the population can read or write.

Russian and Syrian government forces appear to have deliberately and systematically targeted hospitals and other medical facilities over the last three months to pave the way for ground forces to advance on northern Aleppo, an examination of airstrikes by Amnesty International has found. Even as Syria’s fragile ceasefire deal was being hammered out, Syrian government forces and their allies intensified their attacks on medical facilities.