• Ohio Chemical Spill Draws Focus on Railroad Dangers

    By Alistair Walsh

    The U.S. has one of the most extensive rail networks in the world, but diminishing safety standards puts people and the environment at risk. The latest accident has drawn sharp focus onto the safety standards of the highly profitable freight rail industry and its prolific lobbying against regulation.

  • The Train Derailment in Ohio Was a Disaster Waiting to Happen

    By John McCracken

    The derailment of a freight train filled with volatile chemicals in rural Ohio earlier this month captured the headlines, but researchers and chemical spill experts say it’s a situation that plays out far too often across the country. Trains carry hazardous chemicals everyday. They’re also dangerously unregulated.

  • U.S.-Mexico Border Encounters Decline After Increased Migrant Expulsions

    By Aline Barros

    The number of migrant encounters at the United States-Mexico border dropped nearly 40% — from a record of about 252,000 in December 2022 to about 156,000 in January — according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. CBP credits the decrease to a parole program that began on January 5 for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

  • Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2022

    The number of U.S. mass killings linked to extremism over the past decade was at least three times higher than the total from any other 10-year period since the 1970s, according to a new report. “It is not an exaggeration to say that we live in an age of extremist mass killings,” the report says.

  • Arizona’s Top Prosecutor Concealed Records Debunking Election Fraud Claims

    Following the 2020 election, the Arizona attorney general’s office conducted its own through investigation, and confirmed that Joe Biden had won the state, debunking Donald Trump’s false accusations. But Mark Brnovich, the attorney general, was by then running in the GOP primary for the Senate. In an effort to court primary voters, Brnovich refused to release his office report, and “began to flirt with claims of election fraud instead,” Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Isaac Stanley-Becker write.

  • Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology

    By Robert Wihtol

    Forget the “Malacca dilemma,” that is, how China protects the narrow strait linking the Indian and Pacific oceans, which is the conduit for around 60% of China’s oil imports. These days, Chris Miller writes in his new book, China’s leaders are more concerned about a blockade “measured in bytes rather than barrels.”

  • Violent Extremists Are Not Lone Wolves – Dispelling This Myth Could Help Reduce Violence

    By Alexander Hinton

    After decades of research on numerous attacks that have left scores dead, we have learned that extremists are almost always part of a pack, not lone wolves. But the myth of the lone wolf shooter remains tenacious, reappearing in media coverage after almost every mass shooting or act of far-right extremist violence. Because this myth misdirects people from the actual causes of extremist violence, it impedes society’s ability to prevent attacks.

  • China’s Militarization of Meteorological Balloons

    By Tilla Hoja, Albert Zhang, and Masaaki Yatsuzuka

    Beijing’s spy balloon is a clear example of an emerging technology developed for military and intelligence operations but that crucially evolved out of civilian and scientific programs. China’s balloon-technology programs contain sober lessons about Beijing’s incremental acquisition of foreign intellectual property and its technology partnerships with Western research institutions.

  • Spy Balloon Reveals China’s ‘Near Space’ Military Program

    By Natalie Liu

    Chinese spy balloon drifting across the United States this month was a demonstration of a little-noticed program which has been discussed in China’s state-controlled media for more than a decade in articles extolling its potential military applications.

  • One Year After: How Putin Got Germany Wrong

    By Liana Fix and Caroline Kapp

    Vladimir Putin has made many strategic mistakes, but one misjudgment stands out: Germany. Putin considered Germany too dependent on Russian energy, too weak militarily, and too business-minded to mount any significant resistance to his war. He was wrong. Germany, once dangerously dependent on Russian energy, has defied Russian expectations in its reaction to war in Ukraine.

  • Train Derailments Get More Headlines, but Truck Crashes Involving Hazardous Chemicals Are More Frequent and Deadly in U.S.

    By Michael F. Gorman

    Highway crash of hazmat-carrying trucks do not draw national attention the way train derailments do, or trigger a flood of calls for more trucking regulation like the U.S. is seeing for train regulation. Truck crashes tend to be local and less dramatic than a pile of derailed train cars on fire, even if they’re deadlier. Federal data shows that rail has had far fewer incidents, deaths and damage when moving hazardous materials in the U.S. than trucks.

  • 5 Key Takeaways from State of Antisemitism in America Report 2022

    For too many American Jews, being Jewish no longer feels as safe as it once did. And the younger those American Jews are, the more they experience that threat firsthand.

  • South Korea: Support for Nukes Is on the Rise

    By Julian Ryall

    Over three-quarters of South Koreans believe a nuclear deterrent offers the best defense for their country amid growing security threats from North Korea and China.

  • Train Cars Which Derailed in Ohio Were Labeled Non-Hazardous

    By John McCracken

    Nearly two weeks after a train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in rural Ohio, questions still linger about the lasting effects of the incident and the speed at which residents were returned to their homes. What we do know is that the train cars were marked as non-hazardous, and thus officials weren’t notified that the train would be crossing through the state.

  • Is China’s Huawei a Threat to U.S. National Security?

    By Noah Berman, Lindsay Maizland, and Andrew Chatzky

    The Chinese telecommunications company, a world leader in 5G technology and smartphones, faces accusations that the Chinese intelligence services can use – and have used — its 5G infrastructure for espionage. The U.S. and other Western countries have effectively banned Huawei from building their 5G networks, but it remains popular in low-income countries. The outcome of the struggle could shape the world’s tech landscape for years to come.