Philip Hammond, Britain’s foreign minister, has said that Russia’s real goal in Syria was to carve out an Alawite mini-state in Syria for its ally President Bashar al-Assad. Hammond said this was the reason why Russia’s massive bombing raids have targeted the Syrian opposition forces instead of fighting ISIS. Hammond’s comments offered a rare insight into the Western assessment of the Kremlin’s objectives for Syria.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) yesterday announced what the agency described as a “significant enforcement activity,” including arrests targeting Lebanese Hezbollah’s External Security Organization Business Affairs Component (BAC), which is involved in international criminal activities such as drug trafficking and drug proceeds money laundering. These proceeds are used to purchase weapons for Hezbollah for its activities in Syria.

Colombia’s president Juan Manuel Santos said in an interview that he would like the United States to remove the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Marxist rebel group, which had fought successive Colombian governments since the early 1960s, from the U.S. list of terrorist organizations. He also said he would ask the U.S. authorities to suspend drug warrants against FARC commanders if a deal is finally signed to bring to an end the country’s five-decade civil war.

Violence and attacks against civilian populations in northeastern Nigeria and its neighboring countries have forced more than one million children out of school, UNICEF said on Tuesday. The number of children missing out on their education due to the conflict adds to the estimated eleven million children of primary school age who were already out of school in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger before the onset of the crisis. Across Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger, over 2,000 schools remain closed due to attacks by Islamist group Boko Haram and the military campaign conducted against it — some of these schools for more than a year — and hundreds have been attacked, looted, or set on fire.

DHS has told five countries – France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Greece – that they have until Monday, 1 February, to fix a security flaw – DHS described it as a “crucial loopholes”— in their passport stems. If they fail to do so, they will be removed from the Visa Waiver program. The move will affect millions of European citizens.

A 15-year old Briton and a 19-year old Australian were arrested for plotting to fill a kangaroo with explosives, paint an ISIS flag on its flank, then set it loose next to a group of police officers in order to kill as many of them as possible. The explosive kangaroo was part of a larger series of terror attacks the two, and four co-conspirators, were planning to launch in Melbourne during the 25 April 2015 commemorative services for Anzac Day, held to mark a century since the 1915 Gallipoli landings.

Arizona rancher Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, 55, one of the armed antigovernment protesters occupying a remote federal facility in eastern Oregon, has been killed in a shootout with the FBI and state police. The group’s leader, Nevada rancher Ammon Bundy, and five other men were arrested. Those arrested were charged with conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties through the use of force, intimidation, or threats.

University of Calgary postdoctoral scholar Ryan Williams never imagined his religious studies degrees would one day lead him to jail. But it turns out prisons provide an important site for learning about the gravest concerns around radicalization and how society can better respond. Williams and two colleagues spent 260 days in two maximum security institutions in the United Kingdom and conducted sixty interviews with staff and 100 with prisoners — some of them convicted for terrorism – better to understand the differences between prison environments that support human growth and those that damage well-being and character. Williams’s studies on prisoners convicted of terrorism open new perspectives on security, marginalization, and society.

Europe is currently facing the most significant terrorist threat in over ten years. The Paris attacks on 13 November 2015 indicate a shift toward a clear international dimension of Islamic State to carry out special forces-style attacks in the international environment. This and the growing number of foreign fighters are posing new challenges for EU Member States. Europol says that more attacks in the EU may happen in the future. Therefore, there is a great need within the European Union to strengthen our response to terror, to suspected terrorist networks and foreign fighters, and have an improved strategic understanding of threats.