• Graham Says He's “1,000 Percent Confident” Russia, not Ukraine, Hacked DNC

    Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) on Tuesday said he’s “1,000 percent confident” Russia was responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) as part of an effort to interfere in the 2016 election. He dismissed the conspiracy theory, advanced by President Trump and some of his supporters, that Ukraine played a role in the breach.Graham said he thinks it’s “always wrong to say things that can’t be proven.”

  • Bolstering Florida’s Flood Resilience

    Researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science have received a $1,688,955 grant from the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM) for a pilot project to create a framework for their Watershed Planning Initiative. In 2017, Florida had 1.7 million flood insurance policies included in the Presidential Emergency Declaration. This is roughly 35 percent of all National Flood Insurance Program policies across the country and serves as an indicator of the impact of Hurricane Irma on the National Flood Insurance Program.

  • Lessons on Terrorism and Rehabilitation from the London Bridge Attack

    Can prison rehabilitation programs work, and is it sensible to try and rehabilitate seriously radicalized individuals convicted on terrorism charges? These are questions not just for the U.K., in the wake of the second London Bridge attack over the weekend, but for the entire world.

  • Californians Unwilling to Subsidize Wildfire Prevention: Poll

    With blazes raging across the state, smoke impacting the Bay Area and the largest power utility shutting off electricity to avoid ignitions, California is experiencing another devastating fire season. As state, federal and local officials try to figure out what policies to implement to address the state’s wildfire crisis, a new poll reveals where the public stands on regulations and other public policy measures to prevent wildfires.

  • The Surest Way to Lose to China Is to Disparage Expertise

    In the White House, university halls, and op-eds pages, experts are under siege. Oriana Skylar Mastro writes that President Trump calls them “terrible,” and so it is little surprise that most of the individuals driving his China policy are not China specialists, do not speak Mandarin, and have little in-country experience.

  • London Bridge Attack: I Told Ministers We Were Treating Terrorist Prisoners with Jaw-Dropping Naivety. Did They Listen?

    Usman Khan, a 28-year old terrorist who on Friday killed two people on the London Bridge before being killed by the police, served time in jail for “terrorist offenses” and was monitored by the British police. Ian Acheson, who, in 2016, at the request of then-Justice Minister Michael Gove, led a team of investigators who wrote a detailed and highly critical report about the way radicalized Islamist terrorists are managed in jail and after their release, writes: “What we found was so shockingly bad that I had to agree to the language in the original report being toned down. With hindsight, I’m not sure that was the right decision.”

  • The National Security Threat of Peddling Russian Disinformation

    The impeachment inquiry by the U.S. House Intelligence Committee has served as a forum for efforts by President Trump, Rudi Giuliani, and some GOP lawmakers to spread the lie fabricated by the Russian intelligence services that the interference in the 2016 U.S. election was not done by Russia to help Trump – but was carried out by Ukraine to Help Hillary Clinton! This Kremlin-fabricated canard has been thoroughly investigated by the U.S. intelligence community, and totally debunked. “Distrust is now being sown by American officials against the same government these officials purport to represent,” Cipher Brief writes.

  • Officials Confirm Santa Clarita Shooter Used a Ghost Gun

    The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department last week confirmed that the weapon used in the Santa Clarita, California, school shooting was a homemade, unserialized pistol, otherwise known as a ghost gun. more and more homemade, unserialized weapons are popping up at crime scenes across California. Ghost guns provide a host of challenges for law enforcement. Chief among them is that they enable minors or those with criminal records to acquire firearms without having to go through a background check or create a trail of paperwork surrounding a gun purchase.

  • The Icebreaker Gap Doesn’t Mean America is Losing in the Arctic

    A warming Arctic is potentially creating a colder regional security environment. Exchanges of whiskey and schnapps may have been sufficient for the Canadians and Danes, as they have done over the disputed Hans Island — but may not be enough as new contentious issues emerge. Paul C. Avey writes that there are growing worries that a region long characterized by international cooperation will no longer enjoy that exceptional status.

  • Report: DHS Lacked Technology to Track Separated Migrant Families

    The Department of Homeland Security lacked a technology system to efficiently track separated migrant families during the execution of the zero tolerance immigration policy in 2018, a report released Wednesday by the agency’s inspector general found.

  • DHS OIG’ Report on Family Separation: Summary

    In a report titled DHS Lacked Technology Needed to Successfully Account for Separated Migrant Families, the Inspector General of DHS say that “U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) adopted various ad hoc methods to record and track family separations, but these methods led to widespread errors.” The IG adds: “These conditions persisted because CBP did not address its known IT deficiencies adequately before implementing Zero Tolerance in May 2018. DHS also did not provide adequate guidance to personnel responsible for executing the Zero Tolerance Policy.”

  • Port Neches Plant Rocked by Multiple Explosions, Was Declared High Priority Violator by EPA

    The Southeast Texas chemical manufacturing plant, owned by Houston-based Texas Petroleum Chemical Group, has a long history of environmental violations and been out of compliance with federal clean air laws for years.

  • Are We Entering a New Era of Far-Right Terrorism?

    The newly released U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence specifically highlighted the problem of increasing terrorist attacks perpetrated by individual who are not affiliated with any organization and who are motivated by white nationalist propaganda readily available online. “Policymakers and practitioners need to find new and creative ways to undermine far-right ideology, breaking down its conspiracy theories and severing its ability to recruit new followers, including amongst returning servicemembers,” Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware write.

  • Survey of 18 European Countries: Hardcore Anti-Semitic Attitudes Remain Pervasive

    About one in four Europeans polled harbor pernicious and pervasive attitudes toward Jews, according to a new global survey on anti-Semitism commissioned by ADL (the Anti-Defamation League). While anti-Semitic attitudes held mostly steady in Western Europe, the poll found hateful notions about Jews are rising in Eastern and Central European countries polled.

  • Antisemitism Unbound

    On Monday, 25 November, the U.K. Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, published an article in The Times in which he describes Jeremy Corbin, the leader of the Labour Party – parliamentary election will be held 12 December – as “unfit for office” because of his inability, or unwillingness, to tackle the growing problem of anti-Semitism in the Party’s ranks. Today, 27 November, The Times’s editorial commented on the urgent and unprecedented intervention by the Chief Rabbi. This intervention “is the result of the Labour leader’s inability to comprehend his culpability for an institutional problem,” The Times writes.