US and Taliban agree to reduce violence in step toward peace

Afghanistan

2020-02-15 / www.ft.com

Washington aims for truce that could lead to withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

The Trump administration has reached initial agreement with the Taliban to reduce violence in Afghanistan for seven days as a prelude to signing a peace deal before the ...

John Bolton book intensifies calls for witnesses in Trump impeachment trial

impeachment

2020-01-28 / www.ft.com

Democrats have stepped up calls to allow witnesses in the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump after the publication of an account by his former top aide John Bolton that challenges the US president's defence.
Mr Bolton, the former national ...

Soleimani Was More Valuable in Politics Than in War

Iran

2020-01-08 / www.foreignaffairs.com

The Islamic Republic of Iran has suffered a loss with the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, its most prominent military general. The nature and dimensions of that injury, however, are not a simple function of Soleimani's high-profile regional role. The Quds ...

How to Stop Libya’s Collapse

Libya

2020-01-07 / www.foreignaffairs.com

In April 2019, Khalifa Haftar, the militia commander whose forces control much of eastern Libya, began an assault on the capital, Tripoli, in an effort to topple the country's internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA). But instead of a ...

Iran 'revenge' could come in the form of cyber-attacks, experts warn

Cybersecurity

2020-01-06 / www.theguardian.com

The US assassination of Qassem Suleimani has increased the likelihood that a decade of cyber-hostilities between the US and Iran could escalate into true cyberwarfare, security experts have warned.
And with tensions mounting and Iran threatening "severe revenge" over the ...

France Weighs Its Love of Liberty in Fight Against Coronavirus

Pandemic

2020-04-17 / www.nytimes.com

The French are cautiously considering digital tracking, which has proved effective in Asia. But can a country that so prizes personal freedom and privacy ever accept it?

As France sought clues last month on how to tame the coronavirus, experts looked ...

Airbus reaches deal to settle corruption probes

Industry

2020-01-28 / www.ft.com

Airbus has agreed to settle a bribery and corruption probe with regulators in the UK, France and the US, in a move that could see the aerospace group pay billions of dollars in penalties.
Airbus said it has reached an ...

Crypto scam offers modern twist on classic pyramid fraud

cybercrime

2019-12-19 / www.ft.com

 Bulgarian entrepreneur accused of helping to trick millions of investors.

It was billed as an exciting new cryptocurrency that would one day become more popular than bitcoin and turn myriad small investors into multimillionaires. But OneCoin, launched by a Bulgarian entrepreneur ...

Algorithms drive online discrimination, academic warns

Social Media

2019-12-12 / www.ft.com

Sandra Wachter says AI uses sensitive personal traits to target or exclude people in ads.

Existing laws are failing to protect the public from discrimination by algorithms that influence decision-making on everything from employment to housing, according to new research from ...

Theresa May's big golden goodbyes bill

UK

2019-08-05 / www.politico.eu

LONDON - British taxpayers paid out hundreds of thousands of pounds in golden goodbyes during the chaotic Theresa May premiership - including to Boris Johnson and many of his new top team.
Almost £850,000 was paid out to ministers who ...

It's Called Artificial Intelligence—but What Is Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence

2020-05-19 / www.wired.com

Elizabeth Spelke, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard, has spent her career testing the world’s most sophisticated learning system—the mind of a baby.

Gurgling infants might seem like no match ...

Alabama High School Student Names NASA's Mars Helicopter

Aerospace

2020-04-29 / www.nasa.gov

Destined to become the first aircraft to attempt powered flight on another planet, NASA's Mars Helicopter officially has received a new name: Ingenuity.
Vaneeza Rupani, a junior at Tuscaloosa County ...

Study analyzes contamination in drug manufacturing plants

Medical Research

2020-04-27 / www.mit.edu

Report offers guidelines to help prevent viruses from tainting biopharmaceutical drugs.

Over the past few decades, there have been a handful of incidents in which manufacturing processes for making protein drugs became contaminated with viruses at manufacturing plants. These were all ...

Boris Johnson feels increasing heat over UK 5G role for Huawei

National Security

2020-01-28 / www.ft.com

Lawmakers in Washington and London have ratcheted up the pressure on Boris Johnson to stop China's Huawei from supplying kit for the UK's fifth-generation mobile phone network.
But the prime minister's national security council is on Tuesday expected to grant ...

Computer vision: teaching machines to see the world like us

Artificial Intelligence

2019-05-17 / www.raconteur.net

Building computers with enough intelligence to perform tasks that are as complex as those carried out by the human body is difficult; obviously it is. As we now strive to bring the advantages of computer vision to modern IT systems, ...

Dark ops: Isis, the far-right and the gamification of terror

gamified terrorism

2020-02-14 / www.ft.com

Adding game-playing elements to situations that are not games - a concept called gamification - is a wonderful thing. Getting lost in an imagined world where reality isn't more than a simulation, a thought experiment, can be oddly comforting.
But ...

Government Continues Turning a Blind Eye to Radical Islamist Grant Recipients

USA

2020-01-22 / www.investigativeproject.org

The federal government knows a lot of troubling things about two prominent American Islamist organizations. Curiously, the same federal government continues to seek out partnerships with those same radical organizations and even awards them taxpayer-funded grant money.
Last summer, the ...

Islamic State Has a Major Opportunity in Libya

Libya

2020-01-20 / www.investigativeproject.org

"Several thousand ISIS fighters have left Idlib in Syria through the northern border and have ended up in Libya," Jordan's King Abdullah recently warned. "That is something that we in the region but also our ...

Is ISIS gaining ‘serious’ ground in Afghanistan? Russia says yes. The US says no.

Foreign Fighters

2018-03-27 / www.militarytimes.com

Over the last two months, Afghan security forces and U.S. targeting has eliminated more than 140 ISIS-Khorasan fighters. And while the pressure on ISIS-K coincides with pressure to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table with the Afghan government, officials ...

Escape from Isil : Syrian prisons and safe houses overrun with fleeing jihadists (Part 2)

ISIS

2017-12-03 / www.telegraph.co.uk

The messages from Syria ping on Aghiad al-Kheder’s phone all through the day and night. Sometimes it can be overwhelming, but he knows he cannot afford to ignore a single one.

“Yes, no, no, I don’t recognise this one,” Mr Kheder ...