• Battelle shows smart technology for biodefense and hazard avoidance

    Battelle last week announced production of the next generation chemical and biological hazard sensor system, which the company says operates at a fraction of the cost of current technologies. The technology, known as the Resource Effective BioIdentification System (REBS), is a battery-powered system capable of autonomous use with operating costs of less than $1 per day per unit (the company notes that current system costs that can range from $500 - $3,000 per day) and assay costs of $0.04 per sample (compared to current systems at over $100 per sample).

  • New biodefense centers offer modernized approach, face criticism

    A new facility at Texas A&M University is one of three new biodefense centers created by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to revolutionize the way fatal viruses are countered in the event of an emergency. The $286-million lab features mobile clean rooms that can be detached and moved to form different production or testing systems as the need arises. Not everyone agrees that the design and capabilities of the new center would offer the best response to biothreats.

  • Teaching under siege in Nigeria gripped by fear of Boko Haram

    The world is waking up to Boko Haram. More than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped from the classes last month remain missing. A car bomb in Abuja on 1 May killed at least 19 people. Figures released by the International Crisis Group indicate that more than 4,000 people have been killed since the insurgency began. The war has displaced more than half a million inhabitants, ravaged the economy of an already impoverished region and put stress on relations between Muslims and Christians as well as among Muslims. Education has been singled out for violent attacks with lethal regularity since early 2012. No less than twenty schools have been burnt, and the attacks on schools and the killing of students and teachers has become a war strategy of Boko Haram.

  • Lawmakers urge NRC not to exempt shut-down nuclear plants from emergency, security regulations

    Lawmakers are urging the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to halt exemption of recently- shuttered nuclear power plants from emergency-planning and security regulations. The lawmakers are especially concerned about the nuclear waste which will continue to be stored on the grounds of shut-down nuclear plants, saying that the stored radioactive waste continues to be a security threat whether or not the plant itself is still operational.

  • Gerry Adams arrest: peace process in Northern Ireland can’t take much more pressure

    The arrest last week of Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams for questioning relating to the 1972 murder of Jean McConville threatens to undermine an established peace process in Northern Ireland, a process where the Rubicon has already been crossed, involving political sacrifice on all sides. Last December, following negotiations with all sides to the conflict, U.S. diplomat Richard Haass proposed a way to deal with outstanding issues in the peace process, a proposal which saw the past firmly on the agenda. The Adams arrest contradicts the Haass proposal, as it continues with the eclectic and incoherent approach to dealing with the open issues from a painful past. The Haass proposals may not be perfect, but experience from other countries shows that no perfect mechanism for dealing with the past exists. The key question now is not how to get to something better. It is a choice between Northern Ireland having a dedicated thought-through forum in which to contend with the past, or being forced to make do with political and legal institutions that were not designed to deal with it. The peace process has come too far, with both sides sacrifices to get this far. Its achievements should not be treated so carelessly.

  • Governments more likely to negotiate with terrorists as violence increases: study

    For decades, the hard line approach to national terrorism cases has called for governments not to negotiate with terrorists. This approach also asserted that terrorism is ineffective. A new study is proposing, however, that in certain cases the opposite may be true.“Instead of asking whether terrorism is effective, we should be concentrating on when and for what purpose is terrorism effective, especially since the empirical record shows that terrorism has both hurt and helped the causes of violent organizations that have employed the tactic,” the author writes.

  • Sinn Féin’s president Gerry Adams arrested over 1972 murder

    Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams was arrested on Wednesday for questioning about one of the most notorious IRA murders during the Troubles. Detectives in Antrim questioned Adams about the execution of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of 10 who was dragged from her west Belfast home in 1972, tortured, and shot in the back of the head. McConville was one of the “Disappeared” – IRA victims whose bodies were buried so they would never be found — and her body was not discovered until 2003. Adams’s arrest and questioning follows a ruling by a court in the United States which compelled Boston College to hand over to the Police Service of Northern Ireland recorded interviews with veteran IRA members about McConville’s murder.

  • Western intelligence: Assad plans to retain residual chemical weapons capability

    Israeli intelligence officials say the regime of President Bashar Assad in Syria may be concealing a small amount of the chemical weapons in its possession, while pretending that it is fully cooperating with the process to remove all chemical weapons from Syria. This assessment is similar to conclusions reached by the U.S. and U.K. intelligence communities in the past two weeks. The Israeli view is that the retention of chemicals by the Assad regime has to do with the ongoing fight against the rebels, and is not an indication that the regime is contemplating their use against Israel. A senior intelligence source also said that unlike the consensus in the intelligence community a year or two ago, the Israeli defense establishment no longer considers bringing down the regime in Damascus as necessarily positive for Israel.

  • Terrorism can be a successful strategy, but only when governments allow it to work

    Terrorism can be a successful strategy for rebel groups during civil war, but only when governments allow it to work, finds a new study. Responding to acts of terrorism with violence is more likely to prolong the conflict. If governments negotiate or use sound counterterrorism efforts, however, they stand a better chance of bringing about a peaceful resolution. The study analyzed civil conflict from 1989 to 2010 in Africa, which has seen a drastic rise in terrorism. Some forty-five of the 106 African rebel groups in the study carried out terrorist attacks.

  • Al-Qaeda tried to turn an Oregon ranch into a training camp

    U.S.-born Muslim convert Eva Hatley testified in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday, claiming that after opening her family’s Oregon ranch to local Muslims to teach them how to grow and can vegetables, the men turned her home into an al-Qaeda training camp. She said “carloads” of fellow Muslims she met through her mosque arrived at her 160-acre ranch in Bly in 1999.Hatley was testifying at the trial of Abu Hamza al-Masri.

  • Al Qaeda's chief bomb maker killed in U.S.-backed attack in Yemen

    Ibrahim al-Asiri, 32, al-Qaeda’s chief bomb-maker, is said to have been killed in a U.S.-supported, 2-day attack on al-Qaeda operation base in south Yemen on Sunday and Monday. The attack on the base included ground attacks by Yemeni special forces ferried to the theater in Russian-made helicopters piloted by U.S. Special Forces pilots, and drone strikes. Yemeni special forces, using intelligence provided by the United States, set up an ambush for al-Asiri and opened fire on a 4x4 vehicle believed to be carrying him. Samples were taken from the body believed to be that of al-Asiri, and DNA tests are now being conducted.

  • Public safety officials implement Boston bombing's lessons

    The use of improvised tourniquets to stop bleeding was considered not only old-fashioned, but potentially damaging. Yet, in the minutes following the Boston marathon bombing, people near the finish line used improvised tourniquets to stop the bleeding of dozens of those injured around them while waiting for medical crews to arrive. Security and public safety officials have used lessons learned from the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing to prepare for this year’s event, including providing police officers with tourniquets. Organizers of large public events are implementing other lessons from the 2013 attack.

  • Boston bombing spurred small, midsize businesses to buy terrorism insurance

    After the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, terrorism insurance, designed for large businesses, became a necessary business expense for many midsize and small firms. Some 160 companies near the Boston explosion submitted insurance claims for property damage or business losses and only 14 percent had coverage for terrorism. “The Marathon attack changed the calculus,” an insurance industry insider says. “It taught us terrorism is a risk to businesses of every scale and size.”

  • The Nigerian bus terminal attack: Public transport is a lucrative terror target

    During the morning rush hour on 14 April, a car bomb containing an estimated 500-800 pounds of explosives blew up at the Nyanya District bus station on the outskirts of Abuja, Nigeria. Terrorism experts from the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) say we should note the significance of the attack for the rest of the world and put the facts into a larger perspective. Looking at all attacks on public surface transportation systems worldwide since 1970, the Abuja bombing was the twelfth most lethal attack. When comparing similar attack methods, it was the ninth most lethal attack.

  • U.S. drone attacks kill at least 55 al-Qaeda militants in Yemen

    A series of U.S. drone strikes Sunday and Monday killed at least fifty-five al-Qaeda militants in Yemen. The operation focused on al-Qaeda operation basecamps in the rugged mountain of the central and southern provinces of Yemen. Yemeni government sources to say that the first series of attacks, carried out on Sunday, killed three prominent al-Qaeda operatives. Al-Qaeda made gains in Yemen during the chaos which accompanied the 2011 popular uprising against then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was driven from power a year later. In the last two years, the United States and the new Yemeni government have escalated the fight against the Islamist militants.