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Security - Global

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This working group is focused on discussions about global security.

The mission of this working group is to focus on discussions about global security.

Members

JAB455s jbk1712 Kathy Gilbeaux mdmcdonald Tjivekumba Kandjii

Email address for group

security-global@m.resiliencesystem.org

LIVE Updates: Sri Lanka Bombings

           

cnn.com - April 21, 2019

What we're covering here

What’s happening: The death toll from a wave of bombings across Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday increased to 290 on Monday as authorities arrested 24 people in connection with the attacks.

Who carried out the attacks: No group has yet claimed responsibility and the police investigation is ongoing. A government minister described the coordinated bombings as a "brand new type of terrorism," after a decade of relative calm in Sri Lanka.

Warning over other attacks: Late Sunday, authorities disposed of a six-foot pipe bomb near Bandarayanake International Airport in Colombo. On Monday, Sri Lankan authorities found 87 detonators at a private terminal of the Central Bus Stand-in Colombo. Separately, the US State Department is warning that “terrorist groups continue plotting possible attacks in Sri Lanka.”

CLICK HERE - CNN - LIVE Updates: Sri Lanka Bombings

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How Climate Change Is Fuelling the U.S. Border Crisis

           

Outside the small village of Chicua, in the western highlands, in an area affected by extreme-weather events, Ilda Gonzales looks after her daughter.

newyorker.com - by Jonathan Blitzer - Photography by Mauricio Lima - April 3, 2019

. . . In most of the western highlands, the question is no longer whether someone will emigrate but when. “Extreme poverty may be the primary reason people leave,” Edwin Castellanos, a climate scientist at the Universidad del Valle, told me. “But climate change is intensifying all the existing factors” . . . Farming, Castellanos has said, is “a trial-and-error exercise for the modification of the conditions of sowing and harvesting times in the face of a variable environment.” Climate change is outpacing the ability of growers to adapt.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

 

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'Horror, fear, despair': Venezuela's oil capital shattered by 'tsunami' of violent looting

           

A smashed window is seen in one of the stores inside a shopping mall after looting in Maracaibo. Photograph: Isaac Urrutia/Reuters

theguardian.com - by Tom Phillips - March 26, 2019

. . . Maracaibo’s “madness” began on the night of 10 March – three days after a catastrophic blackout plunged almost the entire nation into darkness. But it had been long in the making thanks to years of economic and political neglect.

The 1.6 million residents of Maracaibo – an oil capital once celebrated as Latin America’s answer to Houston – complained of shortages of water, electricity and fuel and a worsening public transport system even before Venezuela’s crisis began to accelerate in 2016, with the onset of hyperinflation.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

 

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U.S. Intelligence Chiefs Break with Trump on Many Threats to the U.S.

           

FBI Director Christopher Wray; CIA Director Gina Haspel and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats arrive with other U.S. intelligence community officials to testify before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on "worldwide threats" on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., January 29, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

CLICK HERE - STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD - WORLDWIDE THREAT ASSESSMENT of the US INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY - January 29, 2019 (42 page .PDF report)

reuters.com - by Patricia Zengerle, Doina Chiacu - January 29, 2019

China and Russia pose the biggest risks to the United States, and are more aligned than they have been in decades as they target the 2020 presidential election and American institutions to expand their global reach, U.S. intelligence officials told senators on Tuesday.

The spy chiefs broke with President Donald Trump in their assessments of the threats posed by North Korea, Iran and Syria. But they outlined a clear and imminent danger from China, whose practices in trade and technology anger the U.S. president.

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Rioting Engulfs Paris as Anger Grows Over High Taxes

           

Protesters demonstrate against rising costs of living they blame on high taxes near the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris on Dec. 8, 2018.  Sameer Al-Doumy/ AFP/Getty Images

chicagotribune.com - apnews.com - by ELAINE GANLEY and JOHN LEICESTER - December 8, 2018

The rumble of armored police trucks and the hiss of tear gas filled central Paris on Saturday, as French riot police fought to contain thousands of yellow-vested protesters venting their anger against the government in a movement that has grown more violent by the week . . . 

. . . Amid the melee, President Emmanuel Macron remained invisible and silent, as he has for the four weeks of a movement that started as a protest against a gas tax hike and metamorphosed into a rebellion against high taxes and eroding living standards . . .

. . . Macron on Wednesday agreed to abandon the fuel tax hike, which aimed to wean France off fossil fuels and uphold the Paris climate agreement. Many economists and scientists say higher fuel taxes are essential to save the planet from worsening climate change, but that stance hasn't defused the anger among France's working class.

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Here’s the Science Behind the Brexit Vote and Trump’s Rise

           

Illustration by Thomas Pullin

CLICK HERE - FULL TEXT AND SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION - Differences Between Tight and Loose Cultures: A 33-Nation Study (6 page .PDF file)

My research shows that when people feel threatened they want ‘tighter’ social norms, with profound consequences for politics

theguardian.com - by Michele Gelfand - September 17, 2018

What is the essential dividing line between human beings around the world? . . . 

 . . . My research across hundreds of communities suggests that the fundamental driver of difference is not ideological, financial or geographical – it’s cultural. Behaviour, it turns out, depends a lot on whether the culture in which we live is a “tight” or “loose” one.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

CLICK HERE - Differences Between Tight and Loose Cultures: A 33-Nation Study

 

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U.S. - Defense Intelligence Agency - Statement for the Record: Worldwide Threat Assessment - March 6, 2018

           

Robert Ashley, Lieutenant General, U.S. Army - Director, Defense Intelligence Agency - March 6, 2018

dia.mil - March 6, 2018

The United States faces an increasingly complex array of challenges to its national security.  The military environment has shifted from the existence of the United States as the single power able to dominate challengers and to deter aggression through conventional means to one in which foreign militaries are emerging with near-peer and, in some areas, peer capabilities.  Adversaries have studied the American way of conflict and have developed, and will continue to develop, capabilities to mitigate or upend longstanding U.S. military dominance in all warfighting domains—terrestrial, maritime, air, space, and cyber—raising the complexity of the threat environment and risk to the United States.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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Pentagon Says China Military 'Likely Training for Strikes' on U.S. Targets

           

A B-6K strategic bomber aircraft of the Chinese Air Force is seen before the China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, October 25, 2016. REUTERS/Stringer

CLICK HERE - U.S. - Defense Intelligence Agency - Statement for the Record: Worldwide Threat Assessment - March 6, 2018

reuters.com - by Idrees Ali - August 16, 2018

China’s military has expanded its bomber operations in recent years while “likely training for strikes” against the United States and its allies, a Pentagon report released on Thursday said.

The assessment, which comes at a time of heightened U.S.-China tensions over trade, was contained in an annual report that highlighted China’s efforts to increase its global influence, with defense spending that the Pentagon estimates exceeded $190 billion in 2017.

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Russian Hackers Accessed US Electric Utilities' Control Rooms

           

Hackers working for Russia compromised power companies' networks, giving them the ability to cause blackouts, federal officials warn.  Getty Images

Hackers could have caused blackouts, federal officials tell the Wall Street Journal.

cnet.com - by Steven Musil - July 24, 2018

Hackers working for Russia were able to gain access to the control rooms of US electric utilities last year, allowing them to cause blackouts, federal officials tell the Wall Street Journal.

The hackers -- working for a state-sponsored group previously identified as Dragonfly or Energetic Bear -- broke into utilities' isolated networks by hacking networks belonging to third-party vendors that had relationships with the power companies, the Department of Homeland Security said in a press briefing on Monday.

Officials said the campaign had claimed "hundreds of victims" and is likely continuing, the Journal reported.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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FBI Warns Russians Hacked Hundreds of Thousands of Routers

           

FILE PHOTO: A man types on a computer keyboard in front of the displayed cyber code in this illustration picture taken on March 1, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration

CLICK HERE - FBI Statement - FOREIGN CYBER ACTORS TARGET HOME AND OFFICE ROUTERS AND NETWORKED DEVICES WORLDWIDE

reuters.com - by Joseph Menn, Sarah N. Lynch - May 25, 2018

The FBI warned on Friday that Russian computer hackers had compromised hundreds of thousands of home and office routers and could collect user information or shut down network traffic.

The U.S. law enforcement agency urged the owners of many brands of routers to turn them off and on again and download updates from the manufacturer to protect themselves. . .

. . . Infections were detected in more than 50 countries, though the primary target for further actions was probably Ukraine, the site of many recent infections and a longtime cyberwarfare battleground.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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