Germany’s intelligence services thwarted a 2016 Islamic State attack. A German couple traveled to Syria to try to send teams of militants back to Germany. The woman, a German convert to Islam, tried to recruit women in northern Germany to marry IS members so that they could be granted permission to enter Germany. One of the women she contacted was an informer for the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, and she alerted authorities.

People often say that they never forget a face, but for some people, this claim might actually be true. So-called super recognizers are said to possess exceptional face recognition abilities, often remembering the faces of those they have only briefly encountered or haven’t seen for many years. Their unique skills have even caught the attention of policing and security organizations, who have begun using super recognizers to match photographs of suspects or missing persons to blurry CCTV footage. But recent research shows that the methods used to identify super recognizers are limited, and that the people recruited for this work might not always be as super as initially thought.

The United States Senate has unanimously passed a bipartisan bill that would enact sanctions on those who use civilians as human shields as a tactic of war, including terror groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, and ISIS. The bill, called the Sanctioning the Use of Civilians as Defenseless Shields Act, was co-sponsored by 50 other senators.

Terror attacks have helped drive up the number of hate crimes in England and Wales with spikes in the aftermath of incidents, Home Office official figures published today show. The number of offenses recorded by police jumped following the terror attack by Khalid Masood at Westminster last year. Hate crime incidents continued to rise in May and June after terrorists attacked the Manchester Arena and London Bridge. The increases reflect a trend which has been evident for some years.

In acts of terrorism, vehicles have been deployed as killing machines. These incidents involved human operators, but another sinister possibility looms: a vehicle cyber hack intended to cause human harm. While this kind of terrorist attack has not yet occurred, in the realm of security research, it’s been demonstrated how hackers could gain control over car systems like the brakes, steering and engine.

In 2016 DARPA launched the Insect Allies project, budgeting $45 million over four years to transform agricultural pests into vectors that can transfer protective genes into plants within one growing season. Scientists are concerned that such technology might be used for nefarious purposes. In a recent Science article, the scientists note the profound implications of releasing a horizontal environmental genetic alteration agent – implications that touch on regulatory, economic, biological, security, and societal issues.

The United Kingdom is set to proscribe the Iranian-backed, Lebanese-based terror organization Hezbollah in its entirety. The U.K. outlawed Hezbollah’s “military wing” as a terrorist entity in 2008, but the “political wing” of the organization is not currently restricted.

The United States has once again named Iran as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, accusing it of fueling conflicts and undermining governments throughout the Middle East. An annual survey on global terrorism, released by the State Department on 19 September, said Iran and its proxies are responsible for intensifying multiple conflicts and undermining U.S. interests in the region.

The United States has sought to combat security threats in Africa – whether terrorism or, in a previous era, communism – principally by providing security sector assistance (SSA) to partner governments on the continent. Two new studies suggest that U.S.-provided SSA in Africa has largely failed to achieve its goals.