• Police foil possible terror truck attack outside Washington, D.C.

    A Maryland man has been arrested for an Islamic State-inspired terror plot to run down pedestrians with a stolen truck. Federal prosecutors will argue in a court appearance Tuesday that 28-year-old Rondell Henry should remain in detention pending trial.

  • Foiled terrorist plot targeted Colombia's president

    The Colombian government said that armed groups were plotting an attack against President Ivan Duque. The attorney general said the alleged scheme involved “a high-precision weapon.” The Colombian authorities are investigating the militant plan to target Duque during a scheduled meeting with indigenous communities on Tuesday.

  • Hate incidents are underreported. Now, there’s an app for that

    Despite the FBI recording an all-time high in hate-motivated incidents in 2017 (the most recent year’s statistics available) the number is likely much higher. Low reporting from victims to police and inconsistent reporting from police to federal authorities have created a massive gap in how we understand hate in America. Researchers from the University of Utah want to fill that gap with an app.

  • U.S. designates Iran's Revolutionary Guards as “foreign terrorist organization”

    The United States has designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) a foreign terrorist organization. The U.S. currently designates some sixty groups around the world as foreign terrorist organizations, but none of them is a state-run military like the IRGC.

  • Countering violent extremism (CVE): Which programs work, and why

    As countries around the world develop countering violent extremism (CVE) programs to prevent homegrown terrorism, there is a dearth of understanding about what types of such programs exist and which approaches are most effective.

  • If we want students to feel safe at school, we can’t encourage teachers to spot potential extremists

    Governments have been reaching into schools to try to nip violent extremism in the bud for some time. The Obama administration announced a Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program in 2014. Programs like these have also been introduced without adequate evidence for their effectiveness. Delivering a program that hasn’t been properly evaluated could make the underlying issues worse. It could ultimately increase youth vulnerabilities (rather than resilience) to radicalization, and other antisocial behaviors.

  • Germany to strip citizenship from dual nationals joining terrorist groups

    Germany will change its citizenship law to allow dual nationals to lose their citizenship if they fight for a foreign terrorist militia. The new law, approved Wednesday by the cabinet, will not be applied retroactively and will not apply to minors.

  • Polymers help minimize fuel explosions and fires from accidents and terrorist acts

    When an act of terrorism or a vehicle or industrial accident ignites fuel, the resulting fire or explosion can be devastating. On Tuesday, scientists described how lengthy but microscopic chains of polymers could be added to fuel to significantly reduce the damage from these terrifying incidents without impacting performance.

  • Back to the future: The return of violent far-right terrorism in the age of lone wolves

    Five years ago, when U.S. law enforcement agencies were asked to identify the most serious violent extremist threats they faced in their respective jurisdictions, they cited far-right, anti-government extremists; followed by Salafi-Jihadi inspired extremist violence; radical environmentalists; and, racist, violent extremism. Terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman writes that “given the rise of violent white nationalism and far-right extremism, and the power of twenty-first-century communications platforms, the threat is evolving rapidly.”

  • Pox on everybody’s house

    It was not so long ago that a NIH scientist stumbled across smallpox vials in a cold-storage room — and it was not during a time of increased concern for synthetic biology. Pandora Report notes that from CRISPR babies to garage DIY biohacking kits, it seems like the last few years have been inundated with synbio conversations.

  • UN Security Council unanimously passes binding terror financing resolution

    The UN Security Council voted to impose sanctions on countries which finance terror groups. The issue of terror financing has been partially addressed before, but Thursday resolution is the first comprehensive measure of its kind.

  • Austria investigates ties between NZ terrorist and Austrian populist, far-right movement

    Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Wednesday that the Austrian security services were investigating possible connections between Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch terrorist, and the Austrian Identitarian Movement, a far-right, racist, anti-immigration party on the fringes of Austrian politics.

  • Why the next terror manifesto could be even harder to track

    Just before his shooting spree at two Christchurch, New Zealand mosques, the alleged mass murderer posted a hate-filled manifesto on several file-sharing sites. Soon, the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence on platforms and decentralized tools like IPFS will mean that the online hate landscape will change. Combating online extremism in the future may be less about “meme wars” and user-banning, or “de-platforming,” and could instead look like the attack-and-defend, cat-and-mouse technical one-upsmanship that has defined the cybersecurity industry since the 1980s. No matter what technical challenges come up, one fact never changes: The world will always need more good, smart people working to counter hate than there are promoting it.

  • Recaptured Italian former militant Battisti admits 1970s murders

    Former communist militant Cesare Battisti has admitted four murders carried out in the 1970s, during Italy’s so-called “Years of Lead,” weeks after being jailed in Italy for the killings that were part of a failed bid to spark a far-left revolution.

  • Assessing the risk of violence by extremists

    A new directory has been assembled from frameworks that have been developed in recent years to assess aspects of extremist violence, a term used to encompass terrorist violence that is framed by ideology and targeted violence that is framed by idiosyncratic beliefs. A new CREST report published today provides detail on several frameworks that are used to assess risks of extremist violence.