• Canada’s intelligence agency halts intelligence sharing with international partners

    Canada’s Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the country electronic signals intelligence agency, said it has stopped sharing intelligence with several close international partners after disclosing it had illegally collected the communication metadata of Canadian citizens in the process of eavesdropping on foreign communications. In a report to parliament last Thursday, CSE said the breach was unintentional, and that it had been discovered internally in 2013.

  • Boko Haram attacks force more than 1 million children from school in northeastern Nigeria

    Violence and attacks against civilian populations in northeastern Nigeria and its neighboring countries have forced more than one million children out of school, UNICEF said on Tuesday. The number of children missing out on their education due to the conflict adds to the estimated eleven million children of primary school age who were already out of school in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger before the onset of the crisis. Across Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger, over 2,000 schools remain closed due to attacks by Islamist group Boko Haram and the military campaign conducted against it — some of these schools for more than a year — and hundreds have been attacked, looted, or set on fire.

  • Boko Haram burns children to death in attack on Nigerian village

    Boko Haram Islamist extremists have burned children to death in an attack on the Nigerian village of Dalori Saturday evening. In all, sixty-five people died in the attack. The militants set the buildings on fire, and as the fire spread, they shot people who were attempting to escape the flames.

  • Five European countries face removal from Visa Waiver program

    DHS has told five countries – France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Greece – that they have until Monday, 1 February, to fix a security flaw – DHS described it as a “crucial loopholes”— in their passport stems. If they fail to do so, they will be removed from the Visa Waiver program. The move will affect millions of European citizens.

  • U.S. mulling “decisive military action” against ISIS in Libya

    Four years after the toppling of Col. Muammar Qaddafi, he United States is mulling new military campaign in Libya to help stabilize the country. Peter Cook, a Pentagon spokesman, on Wednesday said officials are currently “looking at military options” to stop the Islamic State militant group from making further gains in the North African country.

  • Explosive kangaroo part of teenagers' Melbourne terror plot

    A 15-year old Briton and a 19-year old Australian were arrested for plotting to fill a kangaroo with explosives, paint an ISIS flag on its flank, then set it loose next to a group of police officers in order to kill as many of them as possible. The explosive kangaroo was part of a larger series of terror attacks the two, and four co-conspirators, were planning to launch in Melbourne during the 25 April 2015 commemorative services for Anzac Day, held to mark a century since the 1915 Gallipoli landings.

  • French justice minister resigns over law stripping terrorists of citizenship

    Christiane Taubira, the French justice minister, has resigned from the government ahead of a debate over proposed laws which would strip citizenship from convicted terrorists. Taubira, one of few black women in the higher reaches of French politics and a committed left-winger, has not hidden her opposition to the changes to the citizenship laws.

  • Oregon militia member killed, others arrested after standoff with police

    Arizona rancher Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, 55, one of the armed antigovernment protesters occupying a remote federal facility in eastern Oregon, has been killed in a shootout with the FBI and state police. The group’s leader, Nevada rancher Ammon Bundy, and five other men were arrested. Those arrested were charged with conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties through the use of force, intimidation, or threats.

  • Syrian children conscripted into combat, dying on battlefields: UNICEF

    Children under 15 conscripted into combat roles with others killed or maimed in attacks that have destroyed thousands of schools, the UN said. The Middle East regional director of UNICEF also said that water was being used as a weapon of war. Last summer, the Assad regime cut the water supply to the 2.1 million people of Aleppo more than forty times in an effort to weaken the rebel-supporting Sunni population of the city. The practice had just started again.

  • Scholar goes to prison to study religious radicalization

    University of Calgary postdoctoral scholar Ryan Williams never imagined his religious studies degrees would one day lead him to jail. But it turns out prisons provide an important site for learning about the gravest concerns around radicalization and how society can better respond. Williams and two colleagues spent 260 days in two maximum security institutions in the United Kingdom and conducted sixty interviews with staff and 100 with prisoners — some of them convicted for terrorism – better to understand the differences between prison environments that support human growth and those that damage well-being and character. Williams’s studies on prisoners convicted of terrorism open new perspectives on security, marginalization, and society.

  • French police thwarted another Paris terror attack: Interior minister

    France’s interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Islamic terrorists planned to attack another concert in Paris and carry out a mass killing in the city streets. Cazeneuve revealed the information while defending the government’s decision to continue for there more months the state of emergency imposed after the 13 November attacks.

  • Europol bolsters EU’s counterterrorism capabilities

    Europe is currently facing the most significant terrorist threat in over ten years. The Paris attacks on 13 November 2015 indicate a shift toward a clear international dimension of Islamic State to carry out special forces-style attacks in the international environment. This and the growing number of foreign fighters are posing new challenges for EU Member States. Europol says that more attacks in the EU may happen in the future. Therefore, there is a great need within the European Union to strengthen our response to terror, to suspected terrorist networks and foreign fighters, and have an improved strategic understanding of threats.

  • ISIS should be kicked off the open Web: Google official

    Jared Cohen, director at Google Ideas and an advisor to the heads of parent company Alphabet Google, said ISIS should be kicked off the open Web. He noted that the Islamist group is always going to be in a position to use some aspects of the Internet, such as anonymized browsing through Tor and the uncatalogued dark Web, but it should be chased away from the open Web.

  • Young women’s warning to other women: Don’t be fooled by ISIS

    A young woman who converted to Islam after being drawn to ISIS on social media has publicly warned other girls about how the jihadist group uses social media to reach vulnerable individuals such as herself. Her mother called the national hotline and the French police was able to intervene before the two women left for Syria. The young woman has since joined other youngest girls in France’s deradicalization program.

  • FBI investigates Kent State professor for ISIS connection

    Julio Pino, an associate history professor at Kent State University, is currently under FBI and DHS investigation, which includes interviews with faculty members and students. Informed sources say that Pino has allegedly tried to recruit students to join ISIS.