• “We’re in It Alone”: Power Outages Leave Millions of Texans Desperate for Heat and Safety

    Millions of Texans suffered through Monday night without power as a massive winter blitz sent temperatures plunging, shuttered grocery stores and caused widespread outages. Texas residents said the storm — and ensuing partial collapse of the state’s power system — sapped what mental reserves they had left after eleven months of a global health crisis that has cost thousands of jobs and claimed more than 40,000 lives in the state.

  • UPDATES: More People Could Lose Electricity, Heat as Crisis Persists

    Energy experts, local leaders and residents said energy and state officials failed to properly prepare people for the mass outages coinciding with dangerous weather that’s already led to at least 10 deaths. Texas largely relies on natural gas — especially during times of high demand — to power the state. Experts say natural gas infrastructure, from pumping it out of the ground to the plants in city centers, was unprepared for the plunging temperatures brought by the winter storm.

  • U.S. Government to Stop Buying Chinese-Made Drones

    In its latest move to address national security threats posed by Chinese-made drones, the U.S. federal government’s purchasing agency no longer will purchase drones from Chinese manufacturers. China currently dominates the drone-manufacturing market. One Chinese company, DJI, which is the world’s largest drone maker, has a 76.8 percent share of the U.S. market.

  • Chinese Presence in U.S. Academic Institutions

    When talking about the intensifying U.S.-China competition, most people think of trade battles, tariffs, human-rights abuses in Xinjiang, the militarization of the South China Sea, China’s growing nuclear arsenal, and similar issues. In many ways, however, U.S. universities and research institutions are a more immediate battleground for the U.S.-China rivalry.

  • More Privacy When Using WhatsApp, Signal and Other Apps

    Cryptography experts have developed a privacy-protecting security software for mobile messaging services. The software addresses to problem created when service providers access the users’ contact lists.

  • Pelosi Announces 9/11-Style Independent Probe of 6 January Attack on the Capitol

    House speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced a probe into the breach of the U.S. Capitol by former President Donald Trump’s supporters on 6 January. Some Republicans have also expressed support for the idea.

  • 46,218 News Transcripts Show Ideologically Extreme Politicians Get More Airtime

    We research how changes in the media have shifted the incentives of elected officials and the considerations of voters, and what that means for American democracy. In recent work, we showed that extremely conservative and extremely liberal legislators receive far more airtime on cable and broadcast news than their moderate counterparts. Robust local news outlets once held legislators to account by covering whether they delivered for their districts. But as local news has declined, voters are turning to national media outlets for their political news. There, ideological outliers now set the tone of the debate, distorting perceptions of the important issues and warping Americans’ views of their political options.

  • French Companies Targeted by Russian Cyberattack between 2017 and 2020

    A broad Russian cyberattacks in France was carried out via French software Centreon, which serves large companies and government agencies. The cyberattack resembles Russia’s exploitation of vulnerabilities in SolarWinds to attacks American companies and government agencies. The scope of Russia’s cyberattack in France is still uncertain.

  • Biden Aims to Shut Down Guantanamo Prison before He Leaves Office

    The Biden administration announced on Friday that it was launching a formal review of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo in Cuba, as the president has indicated his aim is to shut down the facility before leaving office.

  • The Capitol Rioters Aren’t Like Other Extremists

    Following the 6 January storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters who were incited by him to attack Congress in order to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as the winner of the 3 November election, many were quick to assert that the rioters were members of extremist groups such as Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Boogaloo Boys, or white supremacists. Robert Pape and Keven Ruby, both from the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), write that the demographic, educational, and socio-economic profile of the rioters is much more disturbing: a close analysis of those arrested by the police “suggests a different and potentially far more dangerous problem: a new kind of violent mass movement in which more ‘normal’ Trump supporters—middle-class and, in many cases, middle-aged people without obvious ties to the far right—joined with extremists in an attempt to overturn a presidential election.” They add: “What’s clear is that the Capitol riot revealed a new force in American politics—not merely a mix of right-wing organizations, but a broader mass political movement that has violence at its core and draws strength even from places where Trump supporters are in the minority.”

  • Iran Increasing Enrichment Capacity at Underground Natanz Facility

    According to a confidential report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran has begun enriching uranium with a second cascade of IR-2 centrifuges. The 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, permits Iran to enrich uranium with first-generation IR-1 centrifuges. However, last December Iran told the IAEA that it had begun enriching uranium with the more efficient IR-2 centrifuges and that it would install three more IR-2 cascades.

  • Less Gun Violence among Children in States with More Gun Laws

    Gun violence among children is lower in states with more gun laws, according to a new study. The study examined youth gun and weapon carrying data from 2005 and 2017 across several states.

  • Biden Administration ‘Going after Violence’ in Crackdown on Domestic Terrorism

    White House and Pentagon officials are defending decisions to conduct in-depth reviews of the dangers posed by domestic extremists in the United States, pushing back against criticism that the measures will result in a so-called political litmus test. Nascent anger over the new efforts to look at domestic extremism in the wake of the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol building has been growing in recent days, touched off by a decision by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to order a military-wide stand-down to determine the scope of the problem.

  • Germany: Hate Speech, Threats against Politicians Rise

    Three weeks after a neo-Nazi was convicted of murdering regional governor Walter Lübcke. In answer to a parliamentary information request from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, the Interior Ministry reported that 1,534 crimes against politicians, party members or party property had been reported in 2020, a 9 percent increase on the year before.

  • The U.S.’s China Strategy Needs New Tools

    Chinese state capitalism caught U.S. policymakers flat-footed. While far from perfect, the “China model” is dramatically reshaping global industry through the concentrated power of economic tools like subsidies, market protection, forced technology transfer and economic espionage. .” Jordan Schneider and David Talbot write that “the toolbox they inherited from the Trump administration is a few drill bits short.” The fact is, “Trump’s China trade strategy failed,” and “Trump’s tariffs also didn’t achieve their domestic objectives.” The U.S. needs to implement a multifaceted strategy to combat Chinese coercion,” Schneider and Talbot write, highlighting the essential components of this new strategy.