• Boko Haram sending fighters to help ISIS in Libya: U.S.

    U.S. officials said on Friday that there is evidence that Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamists are sending fighters to join ISIS in Libya. This is only the latest manifestation of the growing cooperation between the two groups. Nigeria has been asking the United States for military gear, including aircraft, to fight Boko Haram. Congress, however, has restricted the sale of U.S. military equipment to Nigeria because of rampant corruption in the Nigerian armed forces and government, and because the Nigerian military has been engaged in systematic violations of basic human rights of Nigerian civilians.

  • Mapping Louisiana’s water flow interactions to preserve state’s fresh water

    As part of an effort to preserve Louisiana’s fresh water resources, RTI International worked with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to develop two online tools, released today, that offer a first-of-their-kind look at how Louisiana’s waters interact with each other. These tools will help fishermen, oystermen, planners, decision makers, and all Louisianans understand the state’s unique water flow patterns.

  • Saudi government officials supported 9/11 hijackers: John Lehman

    John F Lehman, who sat on the 9/11 Commission from 2003 to 2004 which investigated the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has said that Saudi government officials supported the hijackers. There was an “awful lot of circumstantial evidence” implicating several employees in the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Lehman claimed. “There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government,” he said. “Our report should never have been read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia.”

  • Copenhagen’s bar owners ask government to prevent local Muslims from imposing “Sharia zone”

    Bar owners in the Nørrebro suburb of Copenhagen say they are being harassed by Muslim youth activists in the area, many of them immigrants, who are trying to impose a “Sharia zone” in the neighborhood. The bar owners have asked for government help. The bar owners say they have received demands for money, and that stones have been thrown through the bars’ windows.

  • Leaders of Colombia ELN rebel groups investigated for 16,000 war crimes

    The office of Colombia’s attorney general said it was investigating five top leaders of the country’s ELN guerrilla group for nearly 16,000 war crimes and crimes against humanity. The allegations come amid heightened tensions between the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the government. The ELN is a sister organization of the much larger FARC, both Marxist guerrilla movements which bhave been operating in the mountainous jungles of southern Colombia since the early 1960s.

  • Post-conflict reconciliation led to societal healing, but worsened psychological health

    Civil wars divide nations along social, economic, and political lines, often pitting neighbors against each other. In the aftermath of civil wars, many countries undertake truth and reconciliation efforts to restore social cohesion, but little has been known about whether these programs reach their intended goals. A new study suggests reconciliation programs promote societal healing, but that these gains come at the cost of reduced psychological health, worsening depression, anxiety, and trauma.

  • Number of suspected terrorist entering Germany as refugees doubles

    The German federal police agency, the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), said it is investigating the possible arrival of forty Islamist militants among more than 1.1 million refugees who have entered the country during since the beginning of 2015. The BKA said it had received 369 reports of possible extremists and found that forty of the cases required more investigation. This is an increase relative to numbers the BKA released in January, when eighteen investigations were found to be warranted after 213 warnings had been received.

  • Italian police cannot unlock Bari terrorist iPhone

    The Italian security services have been unable to unlock the Apple iPhone 6 plus of a suspect member of a terrorist ring in the city of Bari. Analysts say the development will likely result in another stand-off between Apple and a government fighting terrorism, similar to the stand-off between Apple and the U.S. government over the iPhone used by the San Bernardino terrorists.

  • Raccoon brings down grid, cutting power to 40,000 Seattle homes

    A raccoon broke into a Seattle, Washington power substation on Wednesday morning and single-handedly (some suggest: single-pawedly) brought down the electrical grid, cutting power to more about 40,000 homes. The raccoon did not stay inside the substation for long, but still managed to cause thirteen separate system outages.

  • Leader of Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party hanged for 1971 war crimes

    Motiur Rahman Nizami, the leader of Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, was hanged at a prison in the capital, Dhaka, on Tuesday. Last week the nation’s highest court dismissed his final appeal of the death sentence, imposed on him for atrocities committed by him and his followers during the 1971 war between the majority if the Bangladeshi population, which favored independence from Pakistan, and the Pakistani military. The Islamist Jamaat movement supported the continuation of Pakistani rule over Bangladesh, and fought along the Pakistani military in an effort to suppress the pro-independence rebellion.

  • CBP MSC vehicle contracts to Telephonic appear problematic

    According to federal government documents, problematic contract inconsistencies predominate in yet another CBP surveillance technology program. The CBP contract in question calls for the production of Multiple Surveillance Capability (MSC) vehicles. Unfortunately, the unintended consequences of these documented problematic delays in the CBP and Office of Technology Innovation and Assessment (OTIA) acquisition process with Telephonics MSC vehicle contracts have serious ramifications. Equally troubling is that CBP MSC contract delays from 2010 to 2015 mirror SBInet delays from 2006 to 2011. These contract delays with Telephonics MSC vehicles, a surveillance technology already in place in other countries, continues to create a U.S.-Mexican border far less secure or safe than it should or has to be.

  • France sets up deradicalization centers, unveils comprehensive counterterrorism plan

    France plans to set up a deradicalization centers in several cities and towns to help the authorities identify would-be Islamist extremists and reach out to them in order to prevent them from joining jihadist groups. The establishment of the “reinsertion and citizenship centers” in each of the country’s regions is a central element of a comprehensive, 80-point plan to counter home-grown terrorism. The plan was unveiled on Monday.

  • Osama bin Laden's son calls on Syrian Islamist groups to unite “to free Palestine”

    Hamza bin Laden, Osama bi Laden’s son, has called on jihadists in Syria to unite, saying that fight for spreading the jihadists’ message in Syria is but a prologue to “liberating Palestine.” “The Islamic umma (nation) should focus on jihad in al-Sham (Syria) … and unite the ranks of mujahideen there,” Hamza bin Laden said in an audio message posted online.

  • ISIS manufacturing chemical weapons: UN watchdog

    A team of investigators at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said that there is “worrying” evidence ISIS is making its own chemical weapons. An OPCW team of investigators said they had found evidence of the use of homemade sulphur mustard in attacks in Syria and Iraq.

  • Protecting Texas electrical grid key to preserving national security

    Protecting America’s most vulnerable asset – our electric power grid – starts with Texas, according to a new study. “As Texas goes, so goes our national security,” says the study’s author. “Outside of California and the Beltway, Texas is arguably the most important state for defense readiness.” Hardening the state’s electric power grid should be top priority.