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The Houthis: Four Things You Will Want to Know About the Yemeni Militia Targeted by U.K. and U.S. Military Strikes
The Houthis’ leadership has been drawn from the Houthi tribe, which is part of one of the three major tribal confederations in Yemen: the Hashid, the Madhaj and the Bakil. The Houthis are part of the Bakil confederation, the largest tribal group in Yemen. As the UK and US launch military strikes on the Yemeni group, after a spate of attacks by the Iran-backed militia on Red Sea shipping, here’s four things that you need to know about them.
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Houthi Attacks: What Happens Next?
The longer the Gaza War goes on the greater the concern that it will escalate into something much larger. The most dramatic escalation has been with the Houthis in Yemen. The threat their actions pose to international shipping led to US and UK strikes early on Friday morning. As the dust settles on these strikes and the Houthis threaten retaliation, has this brought us closer to a wider war?
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Kibbutz Farmers Defy Death and Ruin with Robotic Greenhous
Two Gaza-area farms join with agricultural robotics startup to restart and upgrade their operations despite having suffered personal loss and injury.
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Texas Regulators Limit Oil and Gas Disposal Wells in Bid to Reduce Earthquakes in West Texas
Injecting saltwater back into the ground “is likely contributing to recent seismic activity,” the Railroad Commission of Texas has said.
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Texas Regulators Limit Oil and Gas Disposal Wells in Bid to Reduce Earthquakes in West Texas
Injecting saltwater back into the ground “is likely contributing to recent seismic activity,” the Railroad Commission of Texas has said.
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How Houthi Attacks in the Red Sea Threaten Global Shipping
Houthi attacks against commercial ships in the Red Sea have upended global shipping. The disruptions could soon ripple through the global economy.
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Ethiopia and Somalia: Conflict Intensifies Over Port Deal
Ethiopia’s agreement with breakaway region Somaliland, seeking port access in exchange for potential sovereignty recognition, could cause upheaval in the Horn of Africa. Somalia views it as an attack on its sovereignty.
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2023’s Billion-Dollar Disasters List Shattered the U.S. Record with 28 Big Weather and Climate Disasters Amid Earth’s Hottest Year on Record
The U.S. set an unwelcome record for weather and climate disasters in 2023, with 28 disasters that exceeded more than US$1 billion in damage each. While it wasn’t the most expensive year overall – the costliest years included multiple hurricane strikes – it had the highest number of billion-dollar storms, floods, droughts and fires of any year since counting began in 1980, with six more than any other year, accounting for inflation.
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Extreme Weather Cost $80 Billion in 2023. The True Price Is Far Higher.
The U.S. saw 25 billion-dollar weather disasters in 2023 — more than ever before. 2024 could be worse. Congress has long punted on reforming FEMA and the nation’s disaster relief policy, but it’s only a matter of time before there’s a disaster bad enough that legislators feel pressure to act. That catastrophe didn’t arrive in in 2023, but it is surely coming.
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Identifying Types of Cyberattacks That Manipulate Behavior of AI Systems
AI systems can malfunction when exposed to untrustworthy data – what is called “adversarial machine learning” — and attackers are exploiting this issue. New guidance documents the types of these attacks, along with mitigation approaches. No foolproof method exists as yet for protecting AI from misdirection, and AI developers and users should be wary of any who claim otherwise.
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The True Dangers of Long Trains
Trains are getting longer. Rail companies had recently adopted a moneymaking strategy to move cargo faster than ever, with fewer workers, on trains that are consistently longer than at any time in history. Railroads are getting richer, but these “monster trains” are jumping off of tracks across America and regulators are doing little to curb the risk.
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Australia Should Learn from Canada and Take a Truly Global Approach to Critical Minerals
Canada and Australia are key players in the global supply chain for critical minerals. Simultaneously the top two nations for receiving minerals investment and for providing minerals investment, they are perfectly placed to use critical minerals to facilitate the global energy transition, foster innovation and build their security capabilities.
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Vietnam Isn’t North Korea—and 50 Years of Australian Aid Has Helped
How have Australia and Vietnam, two countries with extremely different political systems, built such a successful partnership? It was done through long-term investment across all the tools of statecraft—including diplomacy, trade and defense—with development cooperation as a key element. This enabled a progression from battlefield enemy to major economic and development partner in a surprisingly short period.
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Congress Bans Pentagon from Using Chinese Port Logistics Platform
The U.S. Congress has passed legislation that would ban the Pentagon from using any seaport in the world that relies on a Chinese logistics platform known as LOGINK. LOGINK, by tracking cargo and ship movements, lets Beijing monitor America’s military supply chain, which relies on commercial ports.
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How Verified Accounts on X Thrive While Spreading Misinformation About the Israel-Hamas Conflict
With the gutting of content moderation initiatives at X, accounts with blue checks, once a sign of authenticity, are disseminating debunked claims and gaining more followers. Community Notes, X’s fact-checking system, hasn’t scaled sufficiently. “The blue check is flipped now. Instead of a sign of authenticity, it’s a sign of suspicion, at least for those of us who study this enough,” said one expert.
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The long view
Need for National Information Clearinghouse for Cybercrime Data, Categorization of Cybercrimes: Report
There is an acute need for the U.S. to address its lack of overall governance and coordination of cybercrime statistics. A new report recommends that relevant federal agencies create or designate a national information clearinghouse to draw information from multiple sources of cybercrime data and establish connections to assist in criminal investigations.
Trying to “Bring Back” Manufacturing Jobs Is a Fool’s Errand
Advocates of recent populist policies like to focus on the supposed demise of manufacturing that occurred after the 1970s, but that focus is misleading. The populists’ bleak economic narrative ignores the truth that the service sector has always been a major driver of America’s success, for decades, even more so than manufacturing. Trying to “bring back” manufacturing jobs, through harmful tariffs or other industrial policies, is destined to end badly for Americans. It makes about as much sense as trying to “bring back” all those farm jobs we had before the 1870s.
The Potential Impact of Seabed Mining on Critical Mineral Supply Chains and Global Geopolitics
The potential emergence of a seabed mining industry has important ramifications for the diversification of critical mineral supply chains, revenues for developing nations with substantial terrestrial mining sectors, and global geopolitics.
Are We Ready for a ‘DeepSeek for Bioweapons’?
Anthropic’s Claude 4 is a warning sign: AI that can help build bioweapons is coming, and could be widely available soon. Steven Adler writes that we need to be prepared for the consequences: “like a freely downloadable ‘DeepSeek for bioweapons,’ available across the internet, loadable to the computer of any amateur scientist who wishes to cause mass harm. With Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 having finally triggered this level of safety risk, the clock is now ticking.”