Counterterrorism
Saudi Arabia put 81 people to death on Saturday, marking the country's largest number of single-day executions in decades, new reports say. Some of those executed were convicted of aiding terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, the Islamic State, or Yemen's Houthi rebels and…
Iran’s brazen ballistic missile attack on Erbil in the early hours of Sunday is a further chilling reminder of the continued vulnerability of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, seen as easy prey by its large and aggressive neighbors, Turkey and Iran. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)…
Military & Defense
The communist Chinese government is engaged in its largest nuclear weapons expansion in history, according to the top U.S. intelligence official this week. In her opening remarks before the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence (DNI)…
Russia on Saturday gave a stern warning to the United States, alerting the country that any convoys carrying weapons into Ukraine will be considered "legitimate targets." "We warned the United States that pumping Ukraine with weapons from a number of countries…
Cybersecurity
As #OpRussia continued with some hackers declaring that they were going to release fewer details about their exploits, the public-facing side of the campaign focused on battling disinformation expanded to reach more Russians with the facts about the invasion of…
The German subsidiary of the Russian energy company Rosneft has reported a hacker attack, die Welt newspaper reported on Sunday, citing the country's BSI cybersecurity watchdog. The paper said the BSI had offered support to overcome the problem, which occurred on Friday…
Counterintelligence & Espionage
A Russian spy chief is said to have been placed under house arrest in a sign that President Putin is seeking to blame the security services for the stalled invasion of Ukraine. Sergey Beseda, head of the FSB’s foreign intelligence branch, was arrested with Anatoly Bolyukh…
The Iranian news agency Tasnim reported Saturday night that the security directorate in the west of the country arrested a "spy cell that worked for Israel." The network acted to "recruit rioters, with the aim of sending sabotage operations inside Iran." The report from Iran comes…
Transnational Organized Crime
One man was detained in Poland suspected of raping a 19-year-old refugee he’d lured with offers of shelter after she fled war-torn Ukraine. Another was overheard promising work and a room to a 16-year-old girl before authorities intervened. Another case inside a refugee camp…
A boat carrying around two dozen migrants capsized in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya on Saturday, with at least 19 people missing and presumed dead, authorities said. Libya’s coast guard said that a group of 23 migrants — both Egyptians and Syrians…