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Post by Admin on Feb 10, 2016 19:34:22 GMT
For years, terrorists groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS) and Al Qaeda have used social media sites including Twitter and Facebook, to spread extremist messages, recruit followers, and call on sympathizers in the West to commit acts of violence at home. A study by the Brookings Institution estimated that from September through December 2014, at least 46,000 Twitter accounts were used by ISIS supporters, though not all were active at the same time. But Twitter is now vowing to crack down on such radical messages. The company announced Friday that it had suspended 125,000 Twitter accounts associated with extremism since the middle of 2015, making it the first time it has publicized the number of accounts it has suspended, according to New York Times.
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Post by Admin on Mar 10, 2016 19:25:40 GMT
An Islamic State detainee currently in American custody at a temporary detention facility in Erbil, Iraq, is a specialist in chemical weapons whom American military officials are questioning about the militant Sunni group’s plans to use the banned substances in Iraq and Syria, defense officials said. The detainee was identified by officials as Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, a chemical and biological weapons expert who once worked for Saddam Hussein’s Military Industrialization Authority. Mr. al-Afari, described by the military as a “significant” Islamic State operative who was captured a month ago by commandos in an elite American Special Operations force, has, under interrogation, provided his captors with details about how the group had weaponized mustard gas into powdered form and loaded it into artillery shells, the officials said.
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Post by Admin on Mar 18, 2016 19:33:24 GMT
A 26-year-old man fighting with the Islamic State group gave himself up to Iraqi Kurdish forces in northern Iraq on Monday and when asked, said he is a Palestinian from the United States. His driving license, posted on social media, had Alexandria, Virginia, as his home address and though U.S. authorities have yet to confirm whether he is an American citizen, the incident marked a rare voluntary surrender in Iraq of a militant fighting with the extremist group. The IS fighter had been “lurking near the peshmerga lines” since late Sunday night, according to Maj. Gen. Feisal Helkani of the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces who play a key role — along with the Iraqi military and Shiite militia forces — in battling the IS extremists.
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Post by Admin on Mar 22, 2016 19:27:34 GMT
Tuesday’s terror attacks at transit hubs in Brussels prompted some Senate Democrats to push for a package that would tighten airport security measures, Politico reported. Some of the measures in the package included tougher vetting processes for aviation workers and improved screening for Transportation Security Administration officers. “We’re going to learn more about what happened in the coming days,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, who announced the measures, said. “When we do, it’s going to be critically important that we look again at the safety and security of our transit systems to ensure this type of attack doesn’t occur on American soil.”
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Post by Admin on Mar 23, 2016 19:24:02 GMT
Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested Friday in Brussels, was connected to the terror plot executed Tuesday, according to a senior Belgian official. His fingerprints were found in an apartment in Brussels during a raid last week, when officers also found the type of detonators that may have been used in the attack today. Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders had previously said Abdeslam was preparing for future attacks.
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