• Global persecution of Christians more extreme than ever before: Report

    Religious fundamentalism is sweeping the globe, according to figures released the other day as part of the Open Doors 2016 World Watch List. Systematic religious cleansing is widespread across Africa and the Middle East. Every year well over 100 million Christians are persecuted because of their beliefs. Open Doors reports that North Korea remains the worst place to be a Christian while Iraq (2) has replaced Somalia (7) as the second most dangerous place to be a Christian. Eritrea, now nicknamed the “North Korea of Africa” due to high levels of dictatorial paranoia, follows at number three. Afghanistan (4), Syria (5), and Pakistan (6) are the next most difficult places for Christians.

  • Ash Carter unveils a broader, more robust campaign to defeat ISIS

    Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that 2016 will be the year the American-led coalition attacks ISIS in its strongholds of Raqqa and Mosul, in what may be the Obama administration’s last chance to inflict a lasting defeat on the Islamist group. In a speech on Wednesday, Carter said that he had “big arrows” pointing at the Syrian and Iraqi cities that constitute Isis’s “center of gravity.” The campaign against ISIS will expand beyond these countries, Carter said, indicating that the drone campaigns conducted against militants in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan will target the militant group in other countries, most likely in north and west Africa.

  • 7 killed in ISIS suicide bombings, shootings in Indonesian capital

    ISIS has claimed responsibility for a deadly attack in Jakarta earlier this morning (Thursday). Indonesian authorities say that the five ISIS attackers were helped by the local Jemaah Islamiyah group. Jemaah Islamiyah was behind a 2009 explosions at two Jakarta hotels that killed seven people, and the 2002 bombings at a Bali nightclub which killed 202 people, mainly foreign tourists. Jemaah Islamiyah is similar to ISIS in that it aims to establish an Islamic “caliphate” in south-east Asian countries including Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

  • Family of ISIS victim sues Twitter for enabling terrorism

    The family of Lloyd “Carl” Fields Jr., who was killed last year in an attack in Amman, the capital of Jordan in an ISIS shooting, is suing Twitter, claiming the network has not done enough about the spread of the group’s deadly reach. The complaint claims that the shooting might never have happened had Twitter not existed.

  • U.K. bail procedure to be changed to prevent jihadists from leaving country while on bail

    Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to oversee a shakeup of police bail procedures after a counterterrorism chief said the procedures were “weak and “toothless” and allowed jihadists to act with impunity. The weaknesses in the current bail system were highlighted by the revelations that Siddhartha Dhar, the Londoner suspected of being Isil’s new ‘Jihadi John’, was able to leave the United Kingdom without any problem while on bail despite being told to surrender his passport. Under current law, the police are powerless to escort a released suspect home to seize their passport because of bail regulations and human rights laws.

  • Suicide bomber kills 15 outside polio clinic in Quetta, Pakistan

    The Taliban’s violent campaign against bringing Western medicine to children in Pakistan, a campaign which focused primarily on disrupting the efforts of the Pakistani government and international NGOs to fight polio, continues. Earlier today (Wednesday), a suicide bomber has killed at least fifteen people, most of them police, outside a polio eradication center in the city of Quetta in western Pakistan.

  • Istanbul terrorist was a Syrian asylum seeker

    Turkish media report that the terrorist who killed ten tourists in Istanbul entered the country as an asylum seeker from Syria. Most of the dead and wounded in the attack were German nationals. The Turkis police was able to identify the attacker quickly because his fingerprints were already stored in Turkey’s the refugee biometric database.

  • Travel association to DHS: Tell Congress about visa overstays before tourism is restricted

    The U.S. Travel Association is urging DHS to address people who stay overstay the length of their approved visas before placing new restrictions on visa waiver programs that are designed to boost U.S. tourism. “We should not even begin to discuss further improvements to visa security without much-needed data from the Department of Homeland Security on visa overstays,” the association says.

  • Israel’ security agencies take gloves off in dealing with Jewish terrorists

    The killing last summer of a Palestinian family by Jewish fanatics forced the Israeli security agencies to rethink their approach to the growing threat of violence posed by Jewish religious radicals. These religious extremists, raised in Israeli settlements built in the occupied Palestinian territories, are small in number, but they enjoy the tacit support of many settlers, and, as importantly, the blessings of a few extremist but influential rabbis. The Israeli security services have decided to take the gloves off, and subject Jewish extremists to enhanced interrogation techniques which, until now, have been used only on Palestinian terrorism suspects. The more robust interrogations have yielded important results.

  • ISIS instructs Western followers on how to avoid detection by police

    ISIS is a sophisticated terrorist organization, as its savvy use of social media shows. Its sophistication shows in other ways as well: It has issued instructions to its followers in the West, who are plotting terrorist attacks against Western targets, advising them how to avoid detection by intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

  • ISIS follower shoots Philadelphia police officer

    A man who shot a Philadelphia policeman while he was sitting in his squad car and wounded him, was inspired by ISIS. Edward Archer used a stolen gun to fire eleven shots at Jesse Hartnett in – but Hartman, despite being wounded, was able to get out of the car and return fire, hitting the gunman three times.

  • Religious beliefs may promote interfaith cooperation, rather than violence

    From the Christian Crusades to the Paris attacks, countless conflicts and acts of violence have been claimed to be the result of differing religious beliefs. These faith-based opinions are thought to motivate aggressive behavior because of how they encourage group loyalty or spin ideologies that devalue the lives of non-believers. However, just published research reveals the opposite: religious beliefs might instead promote interfaith cooperation.

  • Administration tries to harness Silicon Valley’s talent for fight against ISIS

    Senior administration intelligence officials are meeting today (Friday) with Silicon Valley’s major technology firms — companies including Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft, YouTube , LinkedIn, Dropbox, and others — in an effort to recruit them and their technological know-how in the fight against radicalization and terrorism.

  • New York City settles Muslim surveillance lawsuits

    The NYPD has been agreed not to conduct surveillance based on religion, race, and ethnicity after charges that it had illegally monitoring Muslims in New York City. The city has agreed to settle two civil rights lawsuits for illegally monitoring its Muslim community following the September 11 attacks. As part of the settlement, in which the city does not admit to any wrongdoings, the city will appoint a civilian to monitor the NYPD’s counterterrorism unit.

  • Ryan examining congressional authorization of war against ISIS

    House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) has instructed the House majority leader and the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to begin discussions with House members about whether a measure which would authorize war against ISIS would be likely to be supported by a majority of House members. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), and many other Republicans in Congress, question the need for such a measure.