For the first time, a self-identified member of the militant movement known as antifa has been implicated in a fatal shooting and is reportedly under investigation in the killing of a supporter of President Donald Trump on Saturday in Portland, Oregon. If Reinoehl is implicated in the case, it would mark the first time in recent years that an antifa supporter has been charged with homicide, said Brian Levin, an expert on terrorism and extremist movements. Gary LaFree, a University of Maryland criminologist, says “We’re getting these situations where people with opposing perspectives are going in as volunteers” to enforce their views in violent ways, while the police “are not exactly sure what to do in this circumstance,” he said. “I think it’s going to be inevitable if you keep having situations like this, things are going to get out of hand.”

On Saturday, a follower of antifa allegedly shot and killed Aaron Danielson, a member of the far-right group Patriot Prayer. Experts on terrorism and extremist movements note that if the charges against the alleged shooter are proven, then, as far as can be ascertained, this will be the first killing by an antifa follower. The important question is whether the killing is a one-off, or whether it signifies something deeper and more menacing. Gary LaFree, a University of Maryland criminologist, said: “We’re getting these situations where people with opposing perspectives are going in as volunteers” to enforce their views in violent ways. “I think it’s going to be inevitable if you keep having situations like this, things are going to get out of hand.”

A court in Britain on Thursday sentenced Hashem Abedi, the younger brother of the suicide bomber who set off an explosion on 22 May 2017 at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, to a minimum of 55 years in jail. Among the 22 killed were seven children, the youngest aged eight. The blast injured 237 people while hundreds more were reported to have suffered from psychological trauma.

In the last four years, violence linked to white supremacy has eclipsed jihadi violence as the predominant form of terrorism in the United States, the Brookings Institution’s Dan Byman writes. “U.S. bureaucracies are slowly moving forward despite discouragement or indifference from on high,” he writes, noting that DHS has elevated the importance of white supremacist violence, and that the State Department has designated the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), an ultranationalist white supremacist group, as a terrorist organization — the first time the State Department ever designated a white supremacist group as such. What might a new administration do to more effectively target white supremacist violence? Byman highlight seven areas in which the new administration may want to take action

Since the onset of the pandemic, theories – or, rather, conspiracy theories – and no-evidence assertions argued that the coronavirus was intentionally engineered by Chinese scientists as a potential bioweapon, despite the consensus of scientists and intelligence experts that the virus’s genetics indicate that it is most likely a zoonotic pathogen. The scientists relied on a Finding Engineering-Linked Indicators (FELIX) analysis to reach their conclusion, but there are other detection tools – trouble is, these other tools may be used to engineer viruses for bioattacks.

Two years after a pan-European military initiative was first proposed to help tackle the Sahel’s Islamist insurgency, the Takuba task force is finally becoming reality, as its first troops arrive amid the coronavirus pandemic, political turmoil and spreading unrest.

The FBI has opened more than 300 domestic terrorism investigations since late May and arrested nearly 100 people in Portland, Oregon, a focal point of the George Floyd protests, a top federal prosecutor said on Tuesday. The investigations are conducted by a recently formed Justice Department task force on “antigovernment extremists.” Last year, FBI Director Christopher Wray said most of the bureau’s domestic terrorism cases are linked to white supremacy, but the when lawmakers pressed Erin Nealy Cox, co-director of the task force, why the Justice Department “has stopped tracking white supremacist incidents as a separate category of domestic terrorism,” Cox said she did not know.

Terrorist attacks often feature the use of homemade explosives. For the police and security forces to be able to take appropriate precautions and assess the damage after an attack, they need access to the right kind of tools. Researchers have now developed a sophisticated risk-analysis system to help prevent such attacks. At the same time, the software-based system assists with the forensic investigation of such incidents.

The response to COVID-19 has exposed a world that is largely unprepared to deal with emerging and novel biothreats, whether the outbreak is natural or intentional. The Global Health Security Network brought together two biosecurity experts to discuss how current projects to improve global health security can adapt during the pandemic and what changes the world needs to make to improve biosafety and biosecurity.