• White supremacist propaganda on U.S. college campuses on the rise

    White supremacist groups continued to escalate their propaganda campaign targeting U.S. college campuses, with incidents increasing by 77 percent during the 2017-2018 academic year, according to new data released today by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). “The alt-right segment of the white supremacist movement remains a driving force behind this activity,” says the ADL’s Center on Extremism.

  • Novichok: the deadly story behind the nerve agent

    Earlier this week, in the town of Salisbury, England, two people were poisoned accidentally by traces of the nerve agent Novichok, which Russian intelligence operatives used on 4 March 2018 in an attempt to assassinate former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, along with his daughter Yulia. Alastair Hay’s article was written on 20 March 2018. Why do these lethal chemical agents exist at all?

  • Greenpeace France crashes drone at French nuclear plant

    Greenpeace France said Tuesday it had flown the drone – remotely piloted by one of its activists – over Bugey nuclear plant near Lyon, France. The pilot then crashed the Superman-shaped drone against the wall of the facility’s spent-fuel pool building. This is not the first stunt by the environmental group at a French nuclear plant. The groups says it aims to expose the vulnerabilities of nuclear plants to terrorist attacks and accidents.

  • Israel develops technologies to fight devastating fire kites

    In the past three months, hundreds of fire kites and flaming helium balloons – some with explosives attached – have been launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel, causing hundreds of fires, often several a day, that have burned thousands of acres (nearly seven square miles of land) on the Israeli side of the border. More than half of that land has been in nature reserves. Israeli researchers have developed two new technologies to fight the kite and balloon attacks.

  • Intrusion Technologies, Louroe Electronics integrate threat detection t technologies

    Most of the casualties in an active shooter attack are killed or injured in the first three minutes. On average, responders arrive and engage the attackers in 4–11 minutes. Intrusion Technologies says that the its AIMS platform, using Louroe’s Digifact-A microphone, detects and activates 360° protective systems in less than four seconds, stopping the would-be assailant before tragedy strikes.

  • Israel transfers aid to thousands of Syrian refugees across the border

    Israel has transferred tons of aid to thousands of refugees escaping cities in southwestern Syria that have been bombed by the Assad regime and its Russian allies in recent weeks. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, some 120,000 people have fled the Deraa region with tens of thousands escaping to Syria’s border with Jordan and thousands of others heading to the border with Israel.

  • U.S. reportedly withholding funding for new UN counterterrorism office

    The United States is withholding $2 million in promised funding for the United Nations Counterterrorism Office in the latest move by the White House to push for reform of the world body, media reports say. The funding cut was made over a decision by the UN counterterrorism chief, a former Russian diplomat, to close part of a conference the office is holding this week to nongovernmental interest groups, media quoted U.S. officials and UN diplomats as saying.

  • New data shows U.S. hate crimes continued to rise in 2017

    We have collected new police data from 2017, ahead of the FBI totals, which cover crimes only up to 2016, and performed the first analysis of that year’s hate crimes, with a particular emphasis on the 10 largest U.S. cities. Our investigation found that hate crime totals for the 10 largest cities rose for four straight years to the highest level in a decade. Within these data are intriguing signs about the timing and direction of this bigotry. We may also be on the threshold of a new era in crime: Russia’s broad interference in the 2016 U.S. election is well documented – but what is also notable about Russian interference was their focus on sowing racial discord. There appears to be a correlation between the rise in targeted racially divisive social media ads and a near contemporaneous rise in hate crime.

  • Israel deploys tracking system to fight incendiary balloons and kites

    Israel’s famed military prowess has come up against a decidedly low-tech adversary, the humble party balloon, and found itself thwarted. Over the past few weeks, the residents of the Gaza Strip have let loose a barrage of colorful kites with burning tails as well as festive balloons, sometimes condoms, with fuel-soaked strips of cloth. They land inside Israeli territory, often starting serious fires. Israel has now deployed a system to track balloons and kites carrying burning material across the border.

  • German police find large quantities of castor seeds in bioweapon suspect’s apartment

    German police investigators have found more than 3,000 castor bean seeds in the Cologne apartment of a 29-year old Tunisian, who was arrested last week for making a biological weapon. The quantity of castor seeds was much larger than initially thought. Castor beans are used in making the toxin ricin. The suspect, who is married to a German woman, had been under police surveillance for contacts with Islamist extremists.

  • A first: Israeli air strike kills dozens of pro-Assad Iraqi fighters in Syria

    Israel has not commented on background-only briefing by a senior U.S. official, who said that Israeli air-strike early Monday morning killed 52 Assad regime-allied troops eastern Syria. What is notable about the attack is its location — the town of al Hari in Deir Ezzor, near the border with Iraq, hundreds of miles from Israel – and the fact that among those killed were 22 members of Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Iraqi Shia militia.

  • Synthetic biology could be misused to create new weapons

    Synthetic biology expands the possibilities for creating new weapons — including making existing bacteria and viruses more harmful — while decreasing the time required to engineer such organisms, concludes a new report by the National Academies of Sciences. Although some malicious applications of synthetic biology may not seem plausible right now, they could become achievable with future advances.

  • Pakistan Taliban chief killed in U.S. air strike

    Mullah Fazullah, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, has been killed in a U.S. air strike in Afghanistan, an Afghanistan military official has said. Fazlullah was Pakistan’s most-wanted militant. He ordered the 2014 attack which killed 132 children, and the 2012 shooting of schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, who was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

  • Police carry out more raids in Cologne, Germany, after biological weapon arrest

    Police in the German city of Cologne on Friday searched several empty apartments in a high-rise, following the Tuesday discovery of the highly toxic substance ricin in one of the apartments. On Thursday, police charged a 29-year-old Tunisian man with producing a biological weapon and for “preparing a serious act of violence against the state.”

  • Los Alamos lab designated “No Drone Zone,” deploys counter-drone systems

    Loa Alamos National Laboratory, in collaboration with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), has deployed a system to counter all unauthorized unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) over its restricted airspace and an additional FAA designated “No Drone Zone.” The Counter-UAS program at Los Alamos will be the blueprint for future programs at three other NNSA sites. Systems are planned for the Pantex Plant in Texas, the Y-12 facility in Tennessee, and the National Nuclear Security Site in Nevada.