• Israeli strike unrelated to Syria’s chemical attack

    Israeli warplanes flying over Lebanon launched missiles at a Syrian regime airbase in the desert east of the city of Homs. Israel has attacked an Iranian command-and-control center at the airbase back in February. The attack on T-4, or Tiyas, was not related to the Saturday Syrian army chemical weapons attack against civilian neighborhood in the town of Douma. Rather, it is part of an on-going, intensifying Israeli campaign against the growing Iranian military presence in Syria.

  • Stealth: Terrorists use encryption, the Darknet, and cryptocurrencies

    Terrorists and extremists are increasingly moving their activities online – and areas of the web have become a safe haven for Islamic State to plot its next attacks, according to a report. The report shows how those planning to commit terrorist atrocities are using extremist networks on the Darknet to indoctrinate sympathizers, create a reservoir of propaganda, evade detection and fundraise. It calls for urgent action by government and the policing and security services to step up intelligence gathering and action to counter online extremist activity.

  • The Baader-Meinhof gang dissolved in 1998 – but some members are still on the run

    Future members of the Red Army Faction – aka the Baader-Meinhof gang — committed their first known attack on 2 April 1968, when two Frankfurt department stores were hit with arson. The RAF dissolved in 1998, but many questions are still unanswered. Three former members of the Red Army Faction are still on the run. A series of robberies in the late 1990s put the authorities back on their trail. These thefts served no apparent political goal: Their only purpose was to finance the fugitives’ lives on the run.

  • U.S. adds Pakistan's Milli Muslim League to terror list

    The United States has placed Pakistan’s Milli Muslim League (MML) political party on its list of foreign terrorist organizations for its alleged links to a militant group blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The State Department said in a statement on 2 April that it had designated Milli Muslim League (MML) as a foreign terrorist group because it was operating as fronts for Lashkar-e Taiba (LeT) which is also on the U.S. terrorist list.

  • European anti-Semitism: Trends to watch in 9 countries in 2018

    Anti-Semitism is once again a serious concern in Europe. Incidents are rising in several countries. Violent attacks, assaults and vandalism against the French Jewish community are making headlines nearly every day. Earlier this week, Jews in the United Kingdom took to the streets to protest deep-seated anti-Semitism in the Labor Party and the failure of political leaders on the left, including Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, to adequately address their concerns. ADL offers an assessment of the current situation in nine European countries.

  • #EnoughIsEnough: It is time to tackle anti-Semitism in the Labor Party

    Since Jeremy Corbyn was first named Labor party leader, in September 2015, there has been a growing focus on the problem of anti-Semitism in the party. Repeated cases of antisemitism from Labor Party members have not been dealt with quickly or effectively under Corbyn’s leadership and the Jewish community is now demanding action. On Monday last week, more than 1,000 members of the British Jewish community and its supporters protested in Parliament Square to tell the leader of the Labor party, Jeremy Corbyn, that Enough is Enough.

  • Restoring subways in the event of a bioterrorist attack

    Only a week after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, envelopes containing anthrax spores were sent to several media companies and two senators. As a result, twenty-two people were infected and five died. Since these incidents, the U.S. has increased its efforts on measures countering bioterrorism. That incident stemmed from spores sent to individuals and offices where the reach was somewhat contained. Imagine if the spores had been taken onto a mass transit platform — like the subway. A subway incident can bring a whole city to a halt, and the effects can last much longer in the form of lingering fear and mistrust.

  • Saudi Arabia will face 9/11-related lawsuits in U.S.

    A federal judge in New York has denied Saudi Arabia’s request to dismiss lawsuits claiming that Saudi Arabia materially assisted the 9/11 attackers. Saudi Arabia had enjoyed broad immunity from 9/11-related lawsuits in the United States, but that changed in 2016 when the U.S. Congress overrode a veto by President Barack Obama to allow such cases to proceed.

  • Active shooter drills may reshape how a generation of students views school

    Increasingly, schools are turning to active shooter drills and videos to prepare students and staff to face a gunman. As a sociologist who studies the social impacts of security strategies, I am concerned about the unintended ethical and political consequences of these exercises.

  • Deny and distort: A timeline of Russia's changing story on Skripal poisoning

    Since the poisoning of the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter on 4 March in England, Russian officials have been consistent about one thing: Moscow didn’t do it. Otherwise, they have offered a hodgepodge of theories, evasions, and refutations to parry British accusations that a Soviet-era nerve agent was likely used to poison Skripal and his daughter. British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson said on 19 March that Moscow was “not fooling anyone” with its “increasingly absurd” denials of culpability for use of the nerve agent on British soil. Vladimir Putin was trying to “conceal the needle of truth in a haystack of lies and obfuscation,” Johnson said.

  • Expelled Russian diplomats head home as U.K. mulls further poisoning response

    Twenty-three Russian diplomats who were ordered out of Britain in response to the poisoning of a former spy with a deadly nerve agent are leaving the Britain. In addition to expelling the Russian diplomats, Britain has suspended high-level bilateral contacts with Moscow and announced that British ministers and the royal family will not attend the soccer World Cup in Russia this summer.

  • French consulate worker in Israel arrested for Gaza gun-running

    Israel says it has detained a French consulate official suspected of smuggling weapons from the West Bank to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, using an embassy vehicle with diplomatic license plates. The Israeli police says the individual was motivated by money, not ideology. The Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, said Monday it had arrested a diplomatic official who was accused of smuggling weapons into Gaza.

  • Seeking clarity: Making gray-zone activity more black and white

    An emergent type of conflict in recent years has been coined “gray zone,” because it sits in a nebulous area between peace and conventional warfare. Gray-zone action is not openly declared or defined, it’s slower, and is prosecuted more subtly—using social, psychological, religious, information, cyber and other means to achieve physical or cognitive objectives with or without violence. The lack of clarity of intent—the grayness—makes it challenging to detect, characterize, and counter an enemy fighting this way. DARPA launches a new program called COMPASS, to develop software that would help clarify enemy intent by gauging an adversary’s responses to various stimuli.

  • Iran has at least 10 military bases in Syria

    Iran has a network of 10-13 military bases in Syria according to a new study. The study includes a map of Iranian bases, details of each base and an analysis of the strength of the main Shia militias operating in Syria. The bases have tens of thousands of troops from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC), as well as missiles and transfer facilities to support Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia.

  • Former Argentine president to stand trial for covering up terror attack on Jewish center

    Argentina’s former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will go to trial on charges that she participated in the cover-up of Iranian officials involved in the 1994 terror attack in a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. In a 26-page ruling by Judge Claudio Bonadio, the former president and eleven former government officials were ordered to stand trial and were accused of the cover-up and abuse of power. One of those officials is ex-foreign minister Hector Timerman.