• Kenya’s efforts to counter al- Shabaab faulted as heavy-handed

    As Somali-based al-Shabaab loses ground in its home country to international forces backed by the United States, the United Nations, and the African Union, it has increased its attacks in Kenya, specifically, attacks on Christians who live in towns near Kenya’s border with Somalia. To counter al-Shabaab’s operations in Kenyan security forces have begun to launch attacks on suspected terrorists in Kenya. Human rights groups have documented assassinations and disappearances of terrorism suspects by Kenya’s counterterrorism units. Such raids only act as a recruitment tool for al-Shabaab, say analysts.

  • Insurance firms, developers face uncertainty now that TRIA has expired

    Insurance firms and commercial property developers are uncertain about how the commercial real estate industry will react now that the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) has expired. Many commercial property developers relied on TRIA to fulfill their loan requirements. Analysts predict real estate projects and construction jobs in Maryland, for example, will be affected by the failure to extend TRIA.

  • Expanding mission, budget cuts, retirements at root of current Secret Service problems

    A series of recent security lapses at the White House may be attributed to an expansion of U.S. Secret Service duties ordered by Congress and the White House during the George W. Bush administration, according to a new DHS review of the agency. Officials familiar with the agency’s administrative inner-workings also note that budget cuts forced the agency to ration services while simultaneously dealing with a wave of early retirements from seasoned staff members.

  • Terrorists use human trafficking to generate revenue, demoralize adversaries, fill the ranks

    Counterterrorism initiatives tend to target drug trafficking rings operated by militant groups as a way to cut the funding of terror operations. Terror groups, however, including the Islamic State (ISIS) and Boko Haram, have always diversified their revenue stream by relying on the sale of women and children from captured villages to fund their operations. Analysts say that counterterrorism officials must begin to pay attention to human trafficking schemes, because in addition to generating revenue, human trafficking helps terror groups demoralize their enemies and supply fighting power.

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  • Kenya’s harsh new security laws put hundreds of thousands of refugees at risk

    Kenya has passed a controversial amendment to the country’s existing security laws, days after heated debates led to brawling on the floor of the Kenyan Parliament. Despite the fracas, the bill was passed with only minor changes, to the dismay of observers at home and abroad. Domestic and international attention has mainly focused on the impact the bill would have on the period of detention without charge, the tapping of communications without court consent, the erosion of media freedom and the limitations placed upon the right to protest. But the world has paid less attention to the severe implications the new amendments have for refugees in Africa’s second-largest refugee-hosting country.

  • Assessing U.K. government’s 10-year effort to tackle online extremism

    Following increased scrutiny of Prevent, the U.K. government’s counter-extremism strategy, Quilliam, a London-based counter-extremism think tank, released a White Paper which assesses the successes and failures of Prevent in its 10-year history, and makes recommendations for its improvement to deal with the current nature of the threat. The paper responds to the report from the Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee and adds to the debate surrounding the 2014 Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill.

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  • Libya’s nominal government calls for international help in fighting blaze at Al Sidra oil tank farm, port

    Libya has issued a call to foreign firefighters to come to Libya to help fight a massive blaze at the country’s largest oil port, started by rocket fire from an Islamist militia attack. The barrage of rockets, launched by members of Libya Dawn, a coalition of Islamist and Misratan militias which is now in control of the capital Tripoli, set ablaze one of the giant storage tanks at Al Sidra on Thursday. The blaze has since spread through the tank farms, igniting seven of the nineteen storage tanks and sending flames and smoke hundreds of feet into the sky. To make sure the tank farm is destroyed, the Libyan Dawn authorities ordered local fire departments not to assist in extinguishing the fires, prompting the internationally recognized government, now situated in Tobruk, to issue a call for foreign fire fighters to come to Libya to help fight the spreading fire.

  • One million curies of radioactive material safely recovered

    Experts at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) helped the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Off-Site Source Recovery Project (OSRP) recover more than one million curies of radioactive sources since 1999. LANL says that the accomplishment represents a major milestone in protecting our nation and the world from material that could be used in “dirty bombs” by terrorists. “Taking disused, unwanted and, in limited cases, abandoned nuclear materials out of harm’s reach supports the Laboratory’s mission of reducing global nuclear danger,” said Terry Wallace, principal associate director for global security at Los Alamos.

  • Insurance industry rattled by Congress's failure to reauthorize terrorism insurance backstop

    Major commercial insurers and lenders serving the real estate, tourism, and construction sectors were surprised by Congress’s failure to reauthorize the federal government’s terrorism insurance backstop,or at least extend it into 2015, when the new Congress can then reach a consensus. The Terrorism Risk Insurance Act(TRIA) was established in November 2002 as a federal backstop to protect insurers in the event an act of terrorism results in losses above $100 million. It has been extended and reauthorized twice. The insurance industry had hoped that TRIA would be renewed for another six years. The bill — the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2014 — was passed by the House, but Senate Republicans and Democrats remained in disagreement through the end of the legislative session.

  • Obama signs five cybersecurity measures into law

    Last week President Barack Obama signed five cybersecurity-related pieces of legislation, including an update to the Federal Information Security Management Act(FISMA) — now called the Federal Information Security Modernization Act — the law which governs federal government IT security. Other cyber legislation the president signed includes the Homeland Security Workforce Assessment Act, the Cybersecurity Workforce Assessment Act, the National Cybersecurity Protection Act (NCPA), and the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act.

  • Australians ponder whether Sydney siege could have been predicted and prevented

    Authorities and security experts in Australia believe that better monitoring of Man Haron Monis’ activities, not counterterrorism measures, could have prevented the armed siege last week when Monis held seventeen people hostage at a Sydney cafe, killing two of them before police shot him dead. Lone wolf terrorists are unlikely to catch the attention of counterterrorism agencies because they bypass the sophisticated planning deployed by most terrorist groups. Popular counterterrorism strategies, including communications surveillance, could do little to predict the actions of a lone wolf terrorist. “The attack package is a very low-grade effort,” says one expert. “You don’t tell anyone about it, and that makes it very difficult for intelligence agencies to pick these people up.”

  • Fear of terrorism increases basal (resting) heart rate, risk of death

    A new study of over 17,000 Israelis has found that long-term exposure to the threat of terrorism can elevate people’s resting heart rates and increase their risk of dying. This is the first statistics-based study, and the largest of its kind, which indicates that fear induced by consistent exposure to the threat of terror can lead to negative health consequences and increase the risk of mortality. “We found that fear of terrorism and existential anxiety may disrupt the control processes using acetylcholine, causing a chronic accelerated heart rate. Together with inflammation, these changes are associated with increased risk of heart attack and stroke,” one of the researchers said.

  • Washington State seeks better responses to landslides

    The March 2014 Oso landslide in Snohomish County, Washington State, killed forty-three people. A state commission, including experts in emergency management, land planning and development, geology, and hydrology, appointed by Washington state governor Jay Inslee to determine how better to avoid and respond to landslides released seventeen recommendations on last Monday.

  • FBI's investigation of 2001 anthrax attacks was flawed: GAO

    In a report released Friday, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) says the FBI relied on flawed scientific methods to investigate the 2001 anthrax attacks which killed five people and sent seventeen others to hospitals. The report raises questions about the FBI’s firm conclusion that it was Army biodefense specialist Bruce Ivins was responsible – or solely responsible – for the attacks.

  • U.S. general, John Kerry begin to refer to ISIL as DAESH after regional allies’ request

    Lieutenant General James Terry, the general who leads U.S. operations against Islamic State in Iraq, said U.S. partners in the war against the jihadist group had asked that American officials use the name DAESH, the acronym for the group’s name in Arabic (al-Dawla al-Islamyia fil Iraq wa’al Sham), rather than the group’s other monikers – ISIS, ISIL, and Islamic State — because they worried these other names would legitimize the group’s ambitions. Secretary of state John Kerry has already modified his terminology in recent weeks, using DAESH sixteen times and ISIL only twice during remarks to NATO officials in Belgium.