• Ricin vaccine shows promise in pilot study

    Ricin is a highly lethal toxin derived from the seeds of the castor oil plant. A dose of purified ricin powder the size of a few grains of table salt can kill an adult. Due to its toxicity and the ubiquity of source material, it’s considered a leading bioterrorism threat. A recent study at the Tulane National Primate Research Center showed for the first time that an experimental vaccine could completely protect nonhuman primates exposed to deadly ricin toxin, a potential bioterrorism agent.

  • ISIS chief al-Baghdadi either “critically wounded” or killed in Saturday air strike: Iraqi sources

    Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), was “critically wounded” early Saturday when a U.S. air strike hit two ISIS targets in the town of al-Qaim in western Iraq. The attacks early Saturday morning included an air attack on a 10-car convoy on the outskirts of the border town of al-Qaim, and a combined air attack and ground assault on a house in al-Qaim where ISIS leaders were meeting at the time. Three senior ISIS figures were confirmed killed: Abdur Rahman al-Athaee, also known as Abu Sajar, a senior aide to ISIS leader who was particularly close to al-Baghdadi; Adnan Latif al-Suweidi, the overall leader of Anbar province; and Bashar al-Muhandi, ISIS’s leader in the Euphrates valley.

  • FBI: Lawmakers should mandate surveillance “backdoors” in apps, operating systems

    FBI director James Comey said that the agency was pushing lawmakers to mandate surveillance functions in apps, operating systems, and networks, arguing that privacy and encryption prevent or disrupt some of the agency’s investigations. According to Comey, new privacy features implemented by Google and Apple in the wake of the Snowden revelations, automatically encrypt user communication and data, making it difficult for law enforcement to gather evidence and connect links among suspected criminals and terrorists.

  • U.S. strike kills Khorasan Group’s chief bomb-maker

    U.S. airstrikes in Syria overnight successfully hit a group of al-Qaeda-affiliated militants, killing the group’s top bomb-maker. David Drugeon, a French Islamist militant, was killed along with other Khorasan Group members near Saramada, a town eighteen miles northeast of Idlib in Syria’s northwest. Drugeon escaped an earlier U.S. airstrike, on 22 September, which was aimed to take him out. The innovative Drudgeon was designing bombs made out of clothing dipped in explosive solution and explosives concealed in personal electronics. In July, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) banned cell phones without electronic charge from airplane cabins in response to the intelligence coming in about Drudgeon’s designs, much of it fragmentary.

  • U.S. drone strike kills leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP)

    Two leading al-Qaeda terrorists — Shawki al-Badani, a leader of al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) who was designated “global terrorist” by the United States, and Nabil al-Dahab, a local leader of the armed group’s affiliate, Ansar al-Sharia — have been killed in a drone strike in central Yemen yesterday. They were killed in Yemen’s al-Bayda province.

  • Head of U.K. surveillance agency: U.S. tech companies have become terrorists' “networks of choice”

    The new director of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the U.K. intelligence organization responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance to the British government and armed forces, said that privacy has never been “an absolute right.” Robert Hannigan used his first public intervention since becoming head of Britain’s surveillance agency to charge U.S. technology companies of becoming “the command and control networks of choice” for terrorists.

  • Lebanese court sentences a cousin of Qatar’s foreign minister for funding terrorism

    Abdulaziz bin Khalifa al-Attiyah, the cousin of Qatar’s foreign minister and a former member of the Qatar Olympic Committee, was convicted in June in absentia by a Lebanese court of funding international terrorism. Al-Attiyah’s conviction is one of many events that ties members of the Qatari government to the funding of terrorism. The Qatari government itself has been funding Jihadists groups in the Middle East and North Africa in an effort to undermine and weaken to influence of moderate forces and governments in the region.

  • U.S. introduces new security measures to screen Western-passport travelers

    At least 3,000 of the 15,000 foreign fighters in Syria are from Australia and Europe. DHS has introduced new screening measures for travelers from Europe, Australia, and other allied nations due to concerns about the increasing number of Islamist militants who have fought in Syria and Iraq alongside the Islamic State (ISIS) and could travel freely to the United States using their Western passports.

  • European Muslims say they pay the price for the actions of extremists

    Many European Muslims feel that anti-Islamic sentiment is on the rise, partly due to recent violent videos of torture and beheadings by Islamic State (ISIS). At least 3,000 Europeans have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight in ISIS ranks, and European security services are worried that if they return home, some of them would use the skills they acquired in Iraq and Syria to perpetrate terrorist activities at home. In response, the public has been on high alert, ringing the alarm whenever a potential terrorist is spotted.

  • Tensions over Islam find their way to U.S. campuses

    University of Central Florida(UCF) professor Dr. Jonathan Matusitz is facing backlash from some groups which claim that his class on terrorism and communication is based on a biased view and a hatred of Islam. Students at the University of California-Berkeleybegan to protest the university’s selection of television personality Bill Maher as the mid-year commencement speaker on 20 December, describing his comments on Islam as racist, divisive, and offensive to many students. UCF says it stands behind Matusitz, and UC-Berkeley says Maher’s invitation stands.

  • Setback to U.S. Syria plan as Islamists evict anti-ISIS militia from stronghold

    One of the moderate rebel forces in Syria which the United States views as central to the formation of an effective ground force to fight ISIS is the Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF). Over the weekend, however, the SRF suffered a major defeat when the al-Qaeda-aligned Jabhat al-Nusra ousted it from its stronghold.

  • U.K. prepared to assist disillusioned Jihadists returning from Syria

    William Hague, former British foreign secretary, said that British jihadists returning to the United Kingdom from Syria and Iraq will be helped by the government as long as they have “good intentions.” Hague said that the U.K. authorities are prepared to assist people who come back to Britain after fighting in the Middle East as long as it can be established that they are not planning attacks in the United Kingdom.

  • World’s first counterterrorism “bank” to finance anti-extremism projects

    The world’s first counterterrorism “bank” will next year begin funding projects aiming to stop violent extremism in five of the most “at risk” countries. The Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF) was established in Switzerland last month, and it will soon be awarding grants of around $10-$30,000 to small-scale counter-radicalization programs in Mali, Pakistan, Nigeria, Morocco, and Bangladesh. The organization expects to be financing thousands of such programs over the next decade. Some of these projects appear to be replicating development work, but the new organization says that the difference is that these prospective projects will have security outcomes in mind, and that funding will specifically target areas of the world at risk of creating violent combatants, but where there are few resources to tackle the issues.

  • Microrockets fueled by water neutralize chemical and biological warfare agents

    With fears growing over chemical and biological weapons falling into the wrong hands, scientists are developing microrockets to fight back against these dangerous agents. Scientists point out that titanium dioxide is one of the most promising materials available for degrading chemical and biological warfare agents. It does not require harsh chemicals or result in toxic by-products. There is no way, however, actively to mix titanium dioxide in waterways, so scientists have been working on ways to propel titanium dioxide around to accelerate the decontamination process without the need for active stirring.

  • Foreigners from 80 countries are joining ISIS on “unprecedented scale”: UN

    A report by the UN Security Council has warned that foreign jihadists are swarming into Iraq and Syria on “an unprecedented scale” and from countries that had not previously contributed combatants to global terrorism. The report finds that 15,000 people have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside the Islamic State (ISIS) and other extremist groups. These volunteers come from more than eighty countries, the report states, “including a tail of countries that have not previously faced challenges relating to al-Qaeda.” ISIS is estimated to have more than $1 million in daily revenues from oil smuggling operations alone. It controls territory the size of Texas in Iraq and Syria, a territory which is home to between five and six million people, a population the size of Finland’s. The UN reports says that ISIS’s treasury also benefits from up to $45 million in money from kidnapping for ransom.