Environmental security

Opec faces a mortal threat from electric cars

Global demand for crude oil will rise by 18m barrels a day (b/d) to 110m by 2040. The cartel has shaved its long-term forecast slightly by 1m b/d, but this is in part due to weaker economic growth.

One is tempted to compare this myopia to the reflexive certainties of the 16th Century papacy, even as Erasmus published in Praise of Folly, and Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg’s Castle Church.

The 407-page report swats aside electric vehicles with impatience. The fleet of cars in the world will rise from 1bn to 2.1bn over the next 25 years – topping 400m in China – and 94pc will still run on petrol and diesel.

War on terror

Syrian Army destroys Daesh chemical weapons workshop in Lattakia

The Syrian army's special forces destroyed a chemical weapons workshop of the ISIL terrorists in the province of Lattakia. 

The Syrian troops also seized a large number of equipment used for making chemical weapons, medical equipment and medicine, with raw materials which carried made-in-Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia lables. 

"The equipment seized in this region shows that the terrorists intended to launch chemical and biological attacks in a bid to accuse the Syrian government of using such weapons," an unnamed Syrian army field commander told the Arabic-language media outlets. 

Earlier today, informed sources announced that the Syrian Army and the country's popular forces continued to advance in the Northern part of Lattakia province and pushed back the militant groups form more strategic heights. 

Grand corruption

Chinese official cries as he admits taking $17M in bribes

A former top official for China’s prosperous southern city of Guangzhou wept in court as he confessed to taking $17 million in bribes, the court said Friday. 

The Nanning Intermediate People’s Court said in a written statement that Wan Qingliang raised no objection to the corruption charge and showed remorse when he stood trial. 

The court will announce the verdict on a later date it didn’t specify. 

It said Wan took the bribes from 15 companies and individuals from 2000 to 2014, when he served in various government positions in Guangdong.

Nuclear security

For the first time, declassified documents reveal United States’ nuclear weapons strategy

Every so often, declassified information will make its way into the public realm and shed an incredible amount of light on what the U.S. government was up to back in the day. The National Security Archive’s recent release of the United States’ Cold War Nuclear Target List is one such instance.

Just a few days ago, the National Security Archive disclosed to the public a boatload of new information detailing the ins and outs of the United States’ nuclear weapons strategy back at the height of the Cold War.  Originally put together in 1956 by the Strategic Air Command (SAC), the 800 page document lists out which cities were targeted for complete destruction. In addition to non-surprising entries like Moscow and Leningrad, the document reveals that the United States was also targeting cities outside of the USSR, including locations within China and Germany.

Weather security

High winds on way as country braces for ‘weather bomb’

In Scotland, high winds will also batter much of the country this weekend, prompting numerous alerts to be issued.

Drivers have been told to expect delays and diversions as Storm Eva barrels in from the Atlantic.

A yellow “be aware” warning was issued by the Met Office for the Dumfries and Galloway and Borders regions with heavy rain forecast.

The Met Office said rain would reach southern parts of Scotland during the early hours of Boxing Day and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency has also issued dozens of flood warnings, many of them in Tayside.

Nuclear security

EXCLUSIVE: Nuclear expert raises terror fears over Britain's huge plutonium stockpile

According to official figures more than 126 tonnes of civil plutonium was being held in the UK as of December 2014, with just 3-4 kg of the substance needed to power a nuclear weapon.

The world's largest store of the radioactive substance is held in Britain after successive governments accumulated plutonium from the 1950s onwards when it was widely believed to be a miracle replacement energy source for oil, coal and gas.

But attempts to use plutonium - among the world's most toxic substances - as a fuel have routinely been abandoned with Britain's experimental nuclear power plants now closed following a lack of success.

Freemasonry

Italian masonic leader Licio Gelli dies aged 96

Licio Gelli was the grandmaster of a notorious masonic group, Propaganda Two (P2), which included prominent Italian politicians and military figures.

P2 was exposed in 1981 and accused of conspiring with right-wing extremists and the mafia to undermine governments.

Gelli was born in 1919 and first became involved in politics as part of the fascist movement of Benito Mussolini.

He later volunteered to fight for Gen Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War, and went on to join neo-fascist parties.

He joined the freemasons in the 1960s and founded the P2 lodge in 1970. A list of alleged members was later discovered by Italian police - and included one Silvio Berlusconi, the future prime minister.

Nuclear security

7 more nuclear waste "hot spots" found in St. Louis suburb

Three-hundred residents of North St. Louis County crowded into a local gym, anxious about what they would hear. Soil near the local creek was contaminated by improperly stored nuclear weapons waste in the 1960's and 70's, and people have been getting sick.

The Army Corps of Engineers was there to deliver the latest test results."Seven additional parcels have been identified," one official announced.

The seven new "hot spots," areas of low level nuclear contamination, were discovered as crews tested the creek this summer. The new sites include four commercial properties and three homes. Add in the five sites already slated for clean up, and that's 12 places in the area with contamination.

Public safety

Dirty bomb response units cut as terror threat rises

Britain’s capacity to cope with the aftermath of a “dirty bomb” attack is to be slashed by a third next week, The Times has learnt.

Twenty-two fire service squads able to decontaminate chemical or radioactive attack sites are to be decommissioned by New Year’s Eve. The move will leave 43 incident response units (IRUs) operating in England, after the rest were deemed “surplus to requirements” in a government review.

Public safety

U.S. oversight of risky pathogen research could be better, draft report concludes

Just a “small subset” of studies that manipulate dangerous pathogens to give them new abilities pose potentially grave risks to the public, an expert advisory group to the U.S. government concludes in a new draft report released today. But the current patchwork of U.S. policies aimed at regulating such risky experiments “is not sufficient,” and “may require supplementation,” the report concludes. And it says there are still some so-called gain of function (GOF) experiments that may never justify the risk.

CBRN attack threat

The CIA provides details on NBC/CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear) attacks

Al-Qa’ida and associated extremist groups have a wide variety of potential agents and delivery means to choose from for chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) attacks. Al-Qa’ida’s end goal is the use of CBRN to cause mass casualties; however, most attacks by the group—and especially by associated extremists—probably will be small scale, incorporating relatively crude delivery means and easily produced or obtained chemicals, toxins, or radiological substances. The success of any al-Qa’ida attack and the number of ensuing casualties would depend on many factors, including the technical expertise of those involved, but most scenarios could cause panic and disruption.

Biosecurity

Synthetic Biology’s Defence Dollars: Signals and Perceptions

Synthetic biology is swimming in defense dollars. The most recent figures available on US trends in synthetic biology research funding indicate that two thirds of the $200 million invested in 2014 came from the Department of Defense or its research agency DARPA. While many scientists see military money as just another source of funding on par with NIH or NSF funding—after all, the majority of the funds are for basic science without security classification and publication restrictions—there are good reasons not to brush it off. One of these is the perception of the field to outsiders.

Terror threat

Islamic State consolidation in Libya part of regional strategy aimed at alleviating pressure on 'caliphate'

The Islamic State has suddenly accelerated its efforts in December to expand its presence in Libya. IHS assesses that this attempt is part of the group's regional strategy aimed at alleviating pressure on the 'caliphate' in Syria and Iraq.

The Libyan National Army (LNA), led by General Haftar, started an offensive in Ajdabiya on 11 December with the objective of expelling the Islamic State and other jihadist groups from the city. The group is not fully in control of Ajdabiya but since October it has gradually expanded its presence there, carrying out a series of improvised explosive device (IED) attacks against security targets and a series of assassinations targeting individuals affiliated with the LNA and civil society figures.

Drones

Tokyo police use flying net to capture illicit UAVs

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is using multicopters equipped with large nets to catch in mid-air unauthorised unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that may threaten public safety, a video posted by the NowThisFuture popular science media organisation demonstrated.

The video posted on the organisation's Facebook page shows a six-rotored UAV, similar to an MK Hexacopter, of the Tokyo police dragging a large net beneath it. The police UAV is flown over the flight path of the illicit UAV, capturing it in the net before returning it to the ground.

As noted by NowThisFuture, this innovation has been developed in response to a number of recent incidents in which small, remotely controlled (RC) aircraft have breached security around national landmarks and other sensitive sites. Specifically, the video referenced incursions over the prime minister's office and Imperial Palace, as well as an incident in April in which a UAV carrying radioactive soil from near the Fukushima nuclear power station was landed onto the prime minister's roof.

Chemical security

A Call for Proof on Syria-Sarin Attack

We believe that this odd lack of a formal “Intelligence Assessment” is explained by the fact that our former colleagues did not believe the evidence justified your charges and that, accordingly, they resisted pressure to “fix the intelligence around the policy,” as was done to “justify” the attack on Iraq.

Intelligence analysts were telling us privately (and we told the President in our Memorandum of Sept. 6, 2013) that, contrary to what you claimed, “the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was not responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21.”

This principled dissent from these analysts apparently led the White House to create a new art form, a “Government Assessment,” to convey claims that the government in Damascus was behind the sarin attack. It was equally odd that the newly minted genre of report offered not one item of verifiable evidence.

Encryption

Senate Intel chair: 'It's time' for encryption legislation

Congress must enact a law that would require companies to decrypt data upon government request, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) argued Thursday in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

“Criminals in the U.S. have been using this technology for years to cover their tracks,” Burr said. “The time has come for Congress and technology companies to discuss how encryption — encoding messages to protect their content — is enabling murderers, pedophiles, drug dealers and, increasingly, terrorists.”

The recent terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., have reignited the debate over encryption. Lawmakers and investigators have said they believe the people behind those incidents likely used encrypted platforms to help hide their plans.

Weapons trafficking

Busted! CIA reveals Hillary and Obama armed ISIS

The Obama administration pursued a policy in Libya back in 2011 that ultimately allowed guns to walk into the hands of jihadists linked to the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) and al-Qaeda (AQ) in Syria, according to a former CIA officer who co-authored a report on behalf of the Citizen’s Commission on Benghazi (CCB), detailing the gun running scheme.

Clare Lopez, a former CIA officer and the primary author of CCB’s interim report, titled How America Switched Sides in the War on Terror, speaking with Breitbart News.

National security law

Commentary: U.S. accusation over China's anti-terrorlegislation hypocritical, groundless

By throwing bricks over China's draft anti-terrorism law, Uncle Samhas once again defended its championship of "Master of Double Standards," reminding the planet that only the United States can steal a horse while others cannot even look over the hedge.

The draft, the latest attempt of China to address terrorism at home and help maintain world security, is by no means a "wicked legislation," as framed by Washington, to limit freedom of speech and invade privacy.

On the contrary, as Internet is frequently used by terrorists in planning and conducting attacks, some items in the law is completely reasonable and will not constitute a breach of citizens' privacy or freedom of speech.

International security

Montenegro Will Join NATO — and That Matters

There are six reasons Americans should feel good that Montenegro — a tiny state of little over 600,000 inhabitants with a military of about 2,000 — will become the 29th NATOally, as ratified by alliance foreign ministers earlier this month.

First, and most obvious: with tension between Russia and the West at center stage, NATO and Montenegro are denying Russia a veto over their policy. We are standing strong in the face of Russian intimidation. Last fall, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov declared NATO’s expansion to include Montenegro “a mistake, even a provocation” and an “irresponsible policy.” And after Russia invaded Ukraine, when Montenegrin Prime Minister Djukanovic visited Washington and took a public stand with the United States and European Union, Russian officials poured vitriol on him personally, while offering bribes for military access to Montenegro’s ports, providing financial and other support to opposition groups against NATOmembership, and imposing counter-sanctions on Montenegrin agricultural products. 

Healrh security

Doctors Warn Brazilian Women: ‘Don’t Get Pregnant’

An outbreak of Zika virus, a relatively new mosquito-transmitted infection, has caused substantial alarm in Brazil.

Since its appearance in spring of this year, thousands of people have become infected. Though the disease is annoying, it is not really dangerous, causing aches and fever and rash for a few days.

Zika, though, may be contributing to a much more substantial problem. Brazilian authorities are concerned that it is causing not just a self-limited disease but rather is profoundly affecting fetal development.