Iron DomeIsrael Says Hamas Was Using Bombed AP Building to Jam Iron Dome Published 9 June 2021 Israel on Tuesday gave specific justification for carrying out an airstrike that destroyed Jala Tower, a Gaza high-rise building which housed the Associated Press (AP) news agency and Al Jazeera, a Qatari television network. Israel had warned people

Search & rescueTeaching Drones to Hear Screams from Catastrophe Victims Published 9 June 2021 In a disaster, time is of the essence when searching for potential victims who may be difficult to find. Unmanned aerial vehicles make the perfect platform for state-of-the-art technology allowing emergency crews to find those in need and provide situational awareness

Internet securityBroad Swath of the Web Knocked Offline by Outage Published 8 June 2021 A broad swath of the World Wide Web has been knocked offline by an outage at edge cloud CDN specialist Fastly. The company runs an “edge cloud,” which is designed to speed up loading times for websites, protect them from denial-of-service

Internet securityFastly Global Internet Outage: Why Did So Many Sites Go Down — and What Is a CDN, Anyway? By Paul Haskell-Dowland Published 8 June 2021 If you were having difficulty accessing your favorite website on Tuesday time, you’re not alone. A jaw-dropping number of major websites around the globe suddenly became unavailable with no

ImmigrantsSupreme Court: Migrants Temporarily in US Ineligible for Permanent Residency By Ken Bredemeier Published 8 June 2021 The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that 400,000 immigrants from 12 countries living in the United States for humanitarian reasons are not eligible to become permanent residents. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court, said that U.S.

Nuclear weaponsIAEA Warns on North Korea and Iran Published 8 June 2021 IAEA Director Rafael Grossi issued dire warnings, saying Pyongyang may be reprocessing plutonium and that Iran’s lack of compliance is hurting prospects for salvaging the JCPOA (the 2015 nuclear deal). Pyongyang has continued to pursue its nuclear ambitions since that time and detonated

BOOKSHELF: Assassination handbookA History of Political Murder Published 8 June 2021 Michael Burleigh explores the many facets of political assassination, explaining why it is more frequent in certain types of society than others and asking whether assassination can either bring about change or prevent it, and whether, like a contagious disease, political murder can be catching.

InfrastructureEnvisioning Safer Cities with Artificial Intelligence Published 8 June 2021 Over the past several decades, artificial intelligence has advanced tremendously, and today it promises new opportunities for more accurate healthcare, enhanced national security and more effective education, researchers say. But what about civil engineering and city planning? How do increased computing power and machine learning

Texas electric gridAnalysis: The Texas Electric Grid and the Improvements that Didn’t Come By Ross Ramsey Published 8 June 2021 After the deadly and expensive electrical outages during a winter freeze in February, Texas lawmakers passed major bills aiming to make such disasters less likely in the future. But there’s still a lot to do. After

Climate & securityIncreasing Pace, Intensity of Climate Hazards to Compound Security Threats: Report Published 8 June 2021 The other day the Expert Group of the International Military Council on Climate and Security (IMCCS) released its second annual World Climate and Security Report, which warns of the compound security threats posed by the convergence of climate