• Pro-ISIS hackers issue threats to Facebook, Twitter founders

    Pro-ISIS hackers have released a video threatening the founders of Facebook and Twitter in retaliation for the two social media giants’ campaign to take down ISIS-related accounts. The threat was issued in a 25-minute video, uploaded on Tuesday to social networks by a group calling itself “Sons Caliphate Army” – which experts say is the latest “rebrand” of ISIS’s supporters online.

  • Partition of Syria could be “Plan B” if cease-fire, peace negotiations fail: Kerry

    Secretary of State John Kerry said he would support a partition of Syria – what he called “Plan B” – if the U.S.-Russian sponsored ceasefire, scheduled to start in the next few days, fails to materialize. Partition would also be an option, Kerry said, if a genuine shift to a transitional government does not take place in the next few months. Kerry’s words were the first time a senior American official publicly discussed the option of partitioning Syria, although experts have noted that the partition of the country by creating an Assad-controlled Alawite enclave in north-west Syria is Russia’s true goal in the conflict.

  • U.S. to fly armed drone attacks from a base in Sicily against ISIS in Libya

    Italy said it would allow armed U.S. drones to be based in an American base in Sicily so they would be within to launch attacks against ISIS militants in Libya and other northern Africa countries. The agreement was reached after years of negotiations, and against the backdrop of intensified ISIS activity in Libya and other African countries.

  • Obama to send last Gitmo relocation plan to Congress today

    Moving Guantánamo detainees to the mainland United States has been one of President Barack Obama’s main goals – and a major bone of contention with Congress. The issue has now become more pressing as the United States and Cuba are in the process of normalizing their relationships, and the Cubans want the detainees out of Gitmo as well. Obama will be sending a plan to Congress today (Tuesday), urging lawmakers to agree to move the detainees to locations in the United States – but the plan does not name the sites in the United States to which locations the administration wants to send the remaining detainees.

  • Understanding Islamic State: where does it come from and what does it want?

    Islamic State (IS) is an instance of a phenomenon that recurs in most religions, and certainly in all monotheistic religions. Every so often militant strains emerge, flourish temporarily, then vanish. They are then replaced by another militant strain whose own beginning is linked to a predecessor by nothing more profound than drawing from the same cultural pool as its predecessor. Whatever the future may hold, IS, like some apocalyptic Christian groups, has proved itself so tactically and strategically adept that it has obviously kicked any “end of days” can well down the road (roughly the same distance al-Qaeda kicked the re-establishment of the caliphate can). Further, much of the IS leadership consists of hard-headed former Iraqi Ba‘th military officers who, if they think about an apocalypse at all, probably treat it much as Hitler’s generals treated the purported musings of Nazi true believers — with a roll of their eyes. Foregrounding IS’s apocalyptic worldview enables us to disparage the group as irrational and even medieval — a dangerous thing to do. If the recent past has demonstrated one thing, it’s that IS thrives when its adversaries underestimate it.

  • Conflicting claims by Kurds, Turkish govt. over deadly Ankara bombing

    The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), a Kurdish militant group once linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers party (PKK), has claimed responsibility for the bombing in the Turkish capital of Ankara that killed twenty-eight people. The claim was made on the groups’ Web site. On Thursday, the Turkish government said the attack was carried out by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian Kurdish militia affiliated with the PKK. YPG has been supported by the United States and has made considerable gains in fighting ISIS in northern Syria.

  • New sensor rivals dogs in detecting explosives

    Dogs have been used for decades to sniff out explosives, but now a University of Rhode Island scientist and his team have come up with another way to detect bombs: sensors. The scientist has developed a sensor that can detect explosives commonly used by terrorists. One of these explosives is triacetone triperoxide, or TATP. Triacetone triperoxide has been used by terrorists worldwide, from the 2001 “shoe bomber” Richard Reid to the suicide bombers who attacked residents of Paris in November. The explosive is relatively easy to make with chemicals that can be bought at pharmacies and hardware stores, attracting little attention from authorities.

  • EUROPOL: 3,000-5,000 ISIS-trained jihadi fighters living in Europe

    EUROPOL director Rob Wainwright warned ISIS is planning more attacks in Europe. Europol estimates that there are between 3,000 and 5,000 international fighters who returned to Europe from Syria. “The growing number of foreign fighters is presenting EU countries with completely new challenges,” Wainwright said.

  • ISIS use of children, youth increasing at an unprecedented rate

    The Islamic State is mobilizing children and youth at an increasing and unprecedented rate. The authors of a new report from the Center for Combatting Terrorism present preliminary findings from a new database in which they recorded and analyzed child and youth “martyrs” eulogized by the Islamic State between January 2015 and January 2016. The data suggests that the number of child and youth militants far exceeds current estimates.

  • In 1981 Bernie Sanders wrote Margaret Thatcher in support of IRA prisoners

    Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, wrote to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1981 to ask her to “‘stop the abuse, humiliation and degrading treatment” of Irish prisoners who were on hunger strike in a Northern Ireland jail. At the time Sanders was the mayor of Burlington, Vermont.

  • Sanctions boost foreign military more than they hurt economy

    The available evidence indicates that economic sanctions are not effective tools for achieving specific policy goals in foreign nations, according to new research. The researchers argue that increased military spending caused by economic sanctions counterbalances the adverse impact of the sanctions – and points to Iran as a case study in how this can happen.

  • Apple refuses to comply with court order to help FBI investigate San Bernardino terrorists

    Apple’s encryption technology has placed the company at the heart t of the privacy vs national security debate, as the company said it would defy a court order which requires to company to help investigate the San Bernardino attack by helping the FBI crack the code of an iPhone , Syed Rizwan Farook, one of terrorists, used. The U.S. government, stunned by Apple’s refusal to help in investigating a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, persuaded a court to issue on order compelling Apple to cooperate in the investigation.

  • Video of Belgian nuclear official found in home of Paris attack suspects

    Belgian security agencies confirm that video footage of a high-level Belgian nuclear official was found in a home searched for possible connection of its occupants to the 13 November Paris terrorist attacks. Belgian prosecutors refused to offer any more details of the video, its target, and who took it “for obvious security reasons.”

  • ISIS may get its hands on “highly dangerous” nuclear material stolen in Iraq

    Iraqi security agencies are searching for “highly dangerous” radioactive material stolen last year.  Experts are worried that the material could fall into the hands of ISIS. The material – Ir-192 — is designated a Category 2 radioactive by the IAEA, and it could be used to build a “dirty bomb,” which combines nuclear material with conventional explosives to contaminate an area with radiation.

  • ISIS used mustard gas in Iraq: UN watchdog

    A source at the UN chemical weapons watchdog, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said that in 2015 ISIS attacked Kurdish forces in Iraq with mustard gas. It was the first documented use of chemical weapons in the country since Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians in 1998.