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German Domestic Intelligence: Heightened Terror Risk
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency says the danger of a terror attack in the country is “higher than it has been for a long time.” It cited the October 7 Hamas attacks and the subsequent Israel-Hamas war as factors.
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Stop Venezuela's Aggression - Before It Creates a War in the Americas
As a ploy to distract from his country’s domestic collapse, Venezuela’s dictator Nicolas Maduro - following the Putin and Hamas play-book - is suddenly demanding that neighboring Guyana “surrender” 2/3 of its territory - the entire western region called Essequibo - to him.
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Argentina: Can Milei’s “Radical, Untested” Ideas Supplant Peronist Clientelism?
As an antisystem candidate and now president-elect, Javier Milei, who will become Argentina’s news president on 10 December, is not a singular phenomenon in Latin America. Dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy was key to catapulting Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. Milei, however, has significantly less political experience than either of them, and his proposals are a more radical break from the past than what even most political outsiders propose.
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International Partnership Focuses on Insider Threats
Insider threats can take many forms. They are real, and if not identified, they can be costly and damaging.
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Bioengineered Potato Plant Detects Gamma Radiation
A researcher in the University of Tennessee Herbert College of Agriculture has developed a potato plant that can detect gamma radiation, providing reliable indications of harmful radiation levels without complex monitoring technologies. The natural radiation sensor is affordable, too.
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Global Shipping Rattled After Houthis Seize Israeli Vessels
Since Houthis seized a ship owned by an Israeli businessman last week in the Red Sea, global shipping has been taking stock of potentially rising risks.
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The Path to Peace in Gaza Lies in Defeating Hamas
Israel cannot continue living with a Hamas-controlled Gaza. The untenability of having Hamas on Israel’s border has long been clear. However, to dismantle and disarm the group was always going to involve grievous civilian bloodshed and the inflaming of anti-Israeli opinion—a prohibitive proposition for Israel prior to 7 October. Yet now Israel finds itself facing this task anyway, which is a reminder to the world that tolerating the intolerable—even grudgingly, because the alternatives are too difficult—is never sustainable in the long term. This was demonstrated on 7 October.
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Can the Democracy Europe Has Cultivated Endure?
The modern concept of democracy originated in Europe and, from ancient Athens to 21st-century Brussels, governments have sought to ensure that elections are free and secret, state power is shared, and fundamental rights are guaranteed. But the continent is not immune to the anti-democratic developments across the world.
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How Do Reasonable People Disagree?
U.S. politics is heavily polarized. This is often regarded as a product of irrationality: People can be tribal, are influenced by their peers, and often get information from very different, sometimes inaccurate sources. Tribalism and misinformation are real enough. But what if people are often acting rationally as well, even in the process of arriving at very different views? A study explains how political differences can result from a process of “rational polarization.”
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Crowdsourced Fact-Checking Fights Misinformation in Taiwan
As journalists and professional fact-checkers struggle to keep up with the deluge of misinformation online, fact-checking sites that rely on loosely coordinated contributions from volunteers, such as Wikipedia, can help fill the gaps, Cornell research finds.
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Gaza War: How Representative Is Hamas of Ordinary Palestinians?
The catastrophic Hamas attack on October 7, which has led to the deaths of so many Palestinian civilians in Gaza in Israel’s response to the Hamas attack, has eliminated any pretense of legitimacy that Hamas may ever have had in the eyes of most of the world. Indeed, the days of Hamas may be over. But this will only increase the urgency of finding a long-term solution for Palestine, something that seems further away than ever.
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Regional Security Analysts Say Africa at Risk of Drone Terrorism
African terrorist groups are using global affiliations to acquire and modify drones for their own needs. Though the drones are not yet being used to launch attacks, the growing use of drones by terrorist groups is only a question of time, and analysts worry that in the long run, they could change the balance of power with governments.
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Japan Military Aid Expands Southeast Asia Footprint
A new security assistance scheme is allowing Japan to expand its role in helping smaller countries like the Philippines cope with China’s military ambitions.
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EFF to Supreme Court: Fifth Amendment Protects People from Being Forced to Enter or Hand Over Cell Phone Passcodes to the Police
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) last week asked the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling undermining Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination and find that constitutional safeguards prevent police from forcing people to provide or use passcodes for their cell phones so officers can access the tremendous amount of private information on phones.
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“Rogue” Security Officers Pose a Threat to Life and Public Safety
Halo Solutions, a British security and safety technology firm helps stamp out fraudulent security guards at events and gigs. The issue of qualified and certified security officers becomes even more important now, ads the U.K. is about to mandate robust public security measures at public events.
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More headlines
The long view
Improving the Security of Soft Targets and Crowded Places
Attacks on soft targets and crowded places (ST-CPs) represent a significant challenge. How can prevention, protection, and response and recovery investments reduce the risk of casualties from attacks on ST-CPs?
Canada’s Biosecurity Scandal: The Risks of Foreign Interference in Life Sciences
In July 2019, world-renowned biological researchers Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng were quietly walked out of the Canadian government’s National Microbiology Lab (NML). The original allegation against them was that Qiu had authorized a shipment to China of some of the deadliest viruses on the planet, including Ebola and Nipah. Then the story seemed to go away—until now.
Don’t Buy Moscow’s Shameless Campaign Tying Biden to Its Terrorist Attack
Russia has offered many different explanations to the ISIS-K’s 22 March 2024 terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, but the most recent explanation offered by Russia is the most audacious yet: Russia now charges that the Ukrainian energy company Burisma financed the attack. Burisma is at the center of an effort by a congressional committee to impeach President Biden, but the case has all but collapsed. Hunter Stoll writes that Russia’s disinformation and propaganda apparatus appears to be searching for ways to keep Burisma in the news ahead of the U.S. presidential election.
West Reliant on Russian Nuclear Fuel Amid Decarbonization Push
A new report and research from a British defense research group has found that many Western nations are still reliant on Russian nuclear fuel to power their reactors, despite efforts to sever economic ties with the Kremlin following its February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
‘Fake News’ Legislation Risks Doing More Harm Than Good Amid a Record Number of Elections in 2024
“Fake news” legislation that governments around the world have written in recent years to combat mis- and disinformation does little to protect journalistic freedom. Rather, it can create a greater risk of harm. That’s the main finding of a review I helped conduct of legislation either considered or passed over the past several years related to fake news and mis- and disinformation.
Video Games Might Matter for Terrorist Financing
Every day, billions of dollars flow across international borders among millions of people on a public online market, with functionally no government oversight or regulation. The market? Virtual currency and digital assets in video games. Moshe Klein writes that “as terrorists seek new methods of conducting financial activity, governments must remain one step ahead and consider how they can proactively investigate and close extant avenues for terrorist financing.”