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Master the Skill of Spies, Investigators and Journalists to Better Your Business – OODA Training Event

What if you could land new clients, build relationships with investors and partners, and develop new contacts simply by asking more, and saying less? Add the art of inquiring to your skills repertoire from a journalist-turned-corporate investigator, who has leveraged the potent act of asking, and listening, to turn strangers into sources and contacts into…
OODA Video: A Practitioner’s View of the Cyber Threat

OODA principals Matt Devost and Bob Gourley pioneered the discipline of cyber threat intelligence. Bob was the first director of intelligence for the Department of Defense’s first cyber command, the Joint Task Force for Computer Network Defense, where he created processes for intelligence support to operational missions. Matt Devost conceptualized the use of open source…
OODA Network Interview: Chitra Sivanandam

Chitra Sivanandam followed her dual love of Art and Science to forge an amazing career. Read how she applied her Mission Centric approach throughout. “You can only enable technology to do a small portion of our communications. At the end of the day, it’s the human dynamic and person-to-person trust that is needed to solve…
OODA Video: The Technologies of AI Security and Ethics

This video provides succinct context on technology companies fielding solutions to help address key concerns in the area of AI security and AI ethics. We produced this presentation for OODA members based on our own continuous market research that includes tracking VC investment and engaging with the community via AI related events but also our…
OODA Network Interview: Dr. Gaurav Banga

Dr. Guarav Banga assumed he would become a Professor and spend his life in Academia. Read about how his one year sabbatical to Silicon Valley in the late 1990’s changed his life and led to an explosive career on the leading edge of technology trends.
OODA Video: Your Data Strategy in a Hybrid Cloud Environment

The agility and improved mission support associated with the widespread move to cloud computing has made this megatrend one of the most positive forces in IT today. Some of the greatest benefits to enterprises come with the ability to smartly mix public and private clouds in hybrid cloud environments. However, optimizing the use of multiple…
What is our China Cyber Indictment Endgame?

In February 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) issued indictments against four Chinese individuals suspected in conducting the 2017 intrusion into Equifax, a global information solutions company that organizes, assimilates, and analyzes data on consumers and businesses worldwide. The personal data of approximately 145 million U.S. citizens was stolen in the breach. The four…
OODA Video: When Artificial Intelligence Goes Wrong

For many organizations, the pacing factor in the deployment of Artificial Intelligence solutions is not the functionality of the AI, but problems in mitigating the issues caused when AI goes wrong. In this video for OODA members we provide a succinct introduction to key issues of AI in a way that will help you optimize…
OODA Network Interview: Dr. Christopher Ahlberg, CEO of Recorded Future

This post is based on an interview with Dr. Christopher Ahlberg, CEO and Co-Founder of Recorded Future. It is part of our series of interviews of OODA Network members. Our objective with these interviews is to provide actionable information of interest to the community, including insights that can help with your own career progression. We…
The Future of Enterprise IoT

The phrase Internet of Things (IoT) is a useful way to force thoughts on the new architecture emerging around embedded computing and ubiquitous communications. IoT devices are with us now and are proliferating at home, in our cars, on trains, planes, cities, buildings are factories. There are many design choices we all need to make…
Quick Hits from the 2020 Verizon Data Breach Report

The annual Verizon Data Breach Report has become a reliable and consistent source of cybersecurity attack trends over the past several years. Verizon has just released this year’s report with the largest number of contributing organizations ever. Here is OODA’s hot take.
Cyberwar Was Coming: A Reflection on the 25 Year Old Thesis that Predicted a Generation of Cyberconflict

“You’ve got to read what this kid is writing out of his basement at the University of Vermont…” – recently retired CIA officer to intelligence and military colleagues in 1994. A candid 25 year retrospective on a thesis that launched a tremendous amount of dialogue and action on the issues of information warfare, cyberterrorism, and…
CISA and FBI Release List of Top 10 Routinely Exploited Vulnerabilities

A list of the top 10 routinely exploited vulnerabilities has been provided in a new joint alert distributed via the U.S. CERT website. This alert was issued by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the broader US Government to provide technical guidance for security professionals in both…
The Intelligence Workstation of the Future

The Intelligence Workstation of the Future will empower analysts in new ways, combining the most modern analytical and visualization tools with enterprise security and governance technologies. This post explores this workstation, leading to actionable recommendations that organizations can put in place now to bring this concept to reality sooner vice later.
The Future of Enterprise Mobile Computing

Smartphones ushered in a wave of mobile computing that has swept over every industry and just about every business in the economy. And with smartphone market penetration among individual users in the US reaching 90% it is clearly a platform that will endure for years. But where will this trend take us next? This special…

Briefs

Russian jet crashes carrying Ukrainian PoWs – Moscow

A Russian Ilyushin-76 military transport plane has crashed in the southern Belgorod region near the Ukrainian border. Russia’s defence ministry said the plane was carrying 65 captured Ukrainian military personnel for a planned prisoner exchange. However, Ukraine’s general staff said the plane was transporting missiles for Russia’s S-300 air defence systems and made no mention…
Thailand: Reformist leader Pita overcomes first court hurdle

Pita Limjaroenrat, leader of Thailand’s Move Forward party, has won a trial and will be re-instated as an MP. Pita and his party had won the most votes in a significant election last year but faced legal challenges that supporters saw as attempts to end his political career. Pita had been suspended as an MP…
Amazon’s French Warehouses Fined Over Employee Surveillance

France’s data protection agency, CNIL, has fined Amazon’s French warehouses unit €32 million ($34.9 million) for implementing an “excessively intrusive” surveillance system to monitor employee performance. The CNIL found that Amazon France Logistique used data from scanners to monitor workers, even down to the second. Scanners would alert management to inactivity exceeding 10 minutes or…
PoC Code Published for Just-Disclosed Fortra GoAnywhere Vulnerability

Proof-of-concept (PoC) code targeting a critical vulnerability in Fortra’s GoAnywhere MFT (managed file transfer) product was published one day after the vendor’s advisory came out. The issue, tracked as CVE-2024-0204, is described as an authentication bypass flaw that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to create an administrator user for the application, via the administration portal.…
Cybercrime’s Silent Operator: The Unraveling of VexTrio’s Malicious Network Empire

VexTrio, a large and complex malicious traffic direction system (TDS) organization, has been tracked by Infoblox for nearly two years. The organization has over 60 affiliates that divert traffic into VexTrio, while it also operates its own TDS network. Each affiliate has its own TDS network, with some sending details to VexTrio and others using…
Major US, UK Water Companies Hit by Ransomware

Two major water companies, Veolia North America in the United States and Southern Water in the United Kingdom, have been targeted in ransomware attacks that resulted in data breaches. In the Veolia attack, the Municipal Water division was hit, leading the company to take down targeted backend systems and servers, disrupting online bill payment systems.…
2024 Cybersecurity Predictions: AI, IoT, EVs And More

As we turn the page on another year, it’s a great time to review what we’re likely to see in cybersecurity in 2024. From a high-level view, many things will remain the same—ransomware and data leakage will persist as the key concerns—but new technologies and threat vectors will ensure that security programs continue to be…
Tech execs say a type of AI that can outdo humans is coming, but have no idea what it looks like

Executives at some of the world’s leading artificial intelligence labs are expecting a form of AI on a par with — or even exceeding — human intelligence to arrive sometime shortly. But what it will eventually look like and how it will be applied remain a mystery. Leaders from the likes of OpenAI, Cohere, Google’s…
Myths Holding Smaller Manufacturers Back From Adopting Automation

For years, small and midsize manufacturers (SMM) have seen automation as out of reach. Between budget constraints, limited expertise and the perception that robots are only for the big players, many SMMs assume automation isn’t a viable option for them. However, today’s reality paints a different story. Advancements in robotics and modular automation platforms have…
Nvidia Alum Snags Funding for Startup That Fixes Broken AI

RagaAI has secured funding to develop a tool that aims to diagnose and fix flaws with artificial intelligence systems, responding to an increasing emphasis on safety and reliability during the AI boom. The startup founded by Gaurav Agarwal, an alumnus of chipmakers Nvidia Corp. and Texas Instruments Inc., has come out of stealth-mode to close…
Why Every Modern Leader Is Now A Chief AI Officer

AI is no longer just a technological tool. It’s a significant societal influencer, reshaping the way we work, communicate and interact. As it becomes increasingly accessible, its transformative power is being recognized by organizations worldwide, leading to the introduction of a new leadership role: the Chief AI Officer. However, the evolution of AI impacts every…
Israel, Czech Republic Reinforce Cyber Partnership Amid Hamas War

The director general of the Israel National Cyber Directorate singed a memorandum with the Czech Republic National Cyber and Information Security Agency to formally improve the cybersecurity relationship between the two countries. The two countries met to discuss threats in cyberspace, including those caused by the Gaza conflict, along with related cybersecurity challenges. Israel’s Gaby…
Turkey’s parliament set to vote on Sweden’s NATO bid this week

The Turkish parliament is set to debate Sweden’s NATO membership bid with a vote expected this week. The debate in the Grand National Assembly is due to take place on Tuesday, with a vote likely in the same day, or on Thursday. Turkey’s ratification of Sweden’s membership bid would leave Hungary as the last holdout…
Civilians killed in missile strikes on Kyiv and Kharkiv

Six people were killed and dozens wounded in the Russian missile attacks targeting Kyiv and Kharkiv in Ukraine, according to officials. Residential buildings were hit early on Tuesday in Kharkiv, leading 5 people killed and 42 injured. The city mayor reported a block of flats were destroyed and rescuers were looking through the rubble for…
IDF says 24 soldiers killed in Gaza in one day

The Israel army reports that 24 of its soldiers were killed in Gaza on Monday, which would be the deadliest day for its forces since the beginning of their ground operation. The 24 soldiers include 21 reservists who died in an explosion likely caused by mines that Israel forces placed in two buildings to demolish…
North Korea’s ScarCruft Attackers Gear Up to Target Cybersecurity Pros

ScarCruft is the North Korea-sponsored advanced persistent threat group and it is gearing up to target cybersecurity researchers and other members of the threat intelligence community in future attacks. The future attacks are likely a bid to steal nonpublic threat intel and improve its operational playbook. The analysis by SentinelLabs shows ScarCruft targeting media organizations…
Microsoft Falls Victim to Russia-Backed ‘Midnight Blizzard’ Cyberattack

Microsoft’s corporate systems were compromised in late November by the same Russian attacker behind the 2020 SolarWinds Orion software cyberattack. The Russian nation-state actor is known to Microsoft threat researchers as Midnight Blizzard. The breach was not detected until January 12. The actor used a simple password-spray attack to access a test account. The attack…
Terraform Labs files for bankruptcy protection in the U.S.

Terraform Labs, the company behind the stablecoin Terra, which collapsed and roiled cryptocurrency markets in 2022, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States, according to court papers filed on Sunday. Singapore-based Terraform Labs, in a filing with the bankruptcy court in Delaware, listed assets and liabilities in the range of $100-$500 million. Terraform…
New MIT CSAIL study suggests that AI won’t steal as many jobs expected

Will AI automate human jobs, and — if so — which jobs and when? That’s the trio of questions a new research study from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), out this morning, tries to answer. There’s been many attempts to extrapolate out and project how the AI technologies of today, like large language models,…
OpenAI’s Sam Altman in talks with Middle East backers over chip venture

Sam Altman is in discussions with Middle Eastern investors and chip fabricators including TSMC about launching a new chip venture, as the OpenAI chief executive seeks to satisfy his company’s growing need for semiconductors while reducing its reliance on Nvidia. Altman has spoken to some of the wealthiest investors in the region about funding the…
Google DeepMind Scientists in Talks to Leave and Form AI Startup

A pair of scientists at Google DeepMind, the Alphabet Inc. artificial intelligence division, have been talking with investors about forming an AI startup in Paris, according to people familiar with the conversations. The team has held discussions with potential investors about a financing round that may exceed $220 million — a large sum, even for…
Blockchain, the tech behind bitcoin, may have found its ‘killer use case’ by keeping AI in check

Blockchain could be used to prevent bias in the data that artificial intelligence models are being trained on — and that could be a “killer use case” for the technology, executives told CNBC. One of the concerns about the AI models — the kind that underpin applications like ChatGPT — is that the data they…
Egypt’s El-Sisi says Cairo will not Allow Any Threat to Somalia

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has said Cairo stands shoulder to shoulder with Somalia and has slammed Ethiopia’s agreement with Somaliland to obtain access to the sea and establish a marine force base. Somaliland, a region strategically located by the Gulf of Aden, broke away from Somalia in 1991 as the country collapsed into a…
Netanyahu Rejects Hamas Deal to End War, Release Captives

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected a proposal by Hamas to end the war and release captives in exchange for withdrawing Israeli forces, releasing prisoners and accepting the armed group’s governance of Gaza. Netanyahu earlier repeated his opposition to an independent Palestinian state, insisting he would not compromise on “full Israeli security control over…
U.S. and European Officials Push for Gaza Aid to Pass Through an Israeli Port

American, British, and European officials are pressuring Israel to let aid for Gaza transit through the Israeli port of Ashdod to help alleviate a metastasizing humanitarian crisis. Israel allows limited amounts of aid into the enclave through two border points, one in Israel and the other in Egypt, but those deliveries have been bogged down…
As U.S. and Militias Engage, White House Worries About a Tipping Point

The number of attacks on American troops in the Middle East increases the risk of deaths, a red line that could lead to a wider war. The latest attack on American troops in the region over the weekend resulted in no deaths, but President Biden and his advisers worry that it is only a matter…
Attackers can Steal NTLM Password Hashes via Calendar Invites

A recently patched vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook (CVE-2023-35636) that can be used by attackers to steal users’ NTLM v2 hashes can be exploited by adding two headers to an email carrying a specially crafted file, security researcher Dolev Taler has shared on Friday. NTLM v2 is used by Microsoft Windows to authenticate users to remote…
Jaw-Dropping New Hack Turns your Phone Screen into Covert Spy Camera

In a new study published in Science Advances, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have revealed how hackers can turn your smartphone into a spying device. Light sensors, used to adjust screen brightness, are capable of covertly capturing user interactions thanks to a newly developed computational imaging algorithm.…
Poorly Secured PostgreSQL, MySQL Servers Targeted By Ransomware Bot

Users exposing poorly secured PostgreSQL and MySQL servers online are in danger of getting their databases wiped by a ransomware bot, Border0 researchers are warning. The attackers ask for a small sum to return / not publish the data, but those who pay will not get their data back, as the bot takes only a…
OpenAI announces first partnership with a university

OpenAI on Thursday announced its first partnership with a higher education institution. Starting in February, Arizona State University will have full access to ChatGPT Enterprise and plans to use it for coursework, tutoring, research and more. The partnership has been in the works for at least six months, when ASU Chief Information Officer Lev Gonick first…
AI-enabled Valkyrie drone teases future of US Air Force fleet

The testing of sophisticated software aboard an XQ-58A Valkyrie drone will influence how the U.S. Air Force develops and deploys autonomous technology in the near future, according to a service official. The Kratos-made UAV flew a three-hour sortie in July near Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, relying for the first time on artificial intelligence algorithms.…
$2 Billion Self-Hack Highlights DeFi’s Slow Crisis Reaction Problem

Decentralized finance has a control problem it must solve if it is to become the economic force supporters believe — and opponents fear — that it can become. And fear they do. In March, Deloitte wrote that in DeFi “traditional financial services face a potentially existential moment that may challenge traditional business models,” adding that it “represents…
NASA’s robotic, self-assembling structures could be the next phase of space construction

Bad news if you want to move to the moon or Mars: housing is a little hard to come by. Fortunately, NASA (as always) is thinking ahead, and has just shown off a self-assembling robotic structure that might just be a crucial part of moving off-planet. Published today in Science Robotics, the paper from NASA Ames…
Mark Zuckerberg’s new goal is creating artificial general intelligence

OpenAI’s stated mission is to create this artificial general intelligence, or AGI. Demis Hassabis, the leader of Google’s AI efforts, has the same goal. Now, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is entering the race. While he doesn’t have a timeline for when AGI will be reached, or even an exact definition for it, he wants to…
US Gov Publishes Cybersecurity Guidance for Water and Wastewater Utilities

The US government, through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), FBI, and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has published new guidance to help organizations in the water and wastewater (WWS) sector enhance their cyber resilience and incident response capabilities. The guidance outlines federal roles, resources, and responsibilities involved in incident response throughout the lifecycle. The…
VF Corp Says Data Breach Resulting From Ransomware Attack Impacts 35 Million

Apparel and footwear brands owner VF Corporation disclosed that personal information of approximately 35.5 million customers was stolen in a ransomware attack in December 2023. The Denver-based company, which owns popular brands such as Dickies, The North Face, Smartwool, Timberland, and Vans, previously announced the ransomware attack, revealing that certain systems were taken offline. VF…
US Charges Russian Involved in 2013 Hacking of Neiman Marcus, Michaels

The US Justice Department has announced charges against two Russian nationals, Aleksey Timofeyevich Stroganov and Tim Stigal, accusing them of cybercriminal activities, including Stroganov’s alleged involvement in the 2013 hacking of retailers Michaels and Neiman Marcus. Stroganov and his accomplices are accused of hacking into companies and individuals’ computers to steal personal information, including credit…
Critical Vulnerabilities Found in Open Source AI/ML Platforms

Over the past month, security researchers on the Huntr bug bounty platform for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have identified multiple severe vulnerabilities in popular AI/ML solutions such as MLflow, ClearML, and Hugging Face. The most severe of these are four critical vulnerabilities in MLflow, a platform for streamlining ML development. These include…
North Korea Touts ‘Underwater Nuclear Weapons System’, Blasts US Drills

North Korea has tested a nuclear-capable underwater attack drone in response to joint naval exercises involving South Korea, the United States and Japan, state media say. The allies announced the drills after Pyongyang said on Sunday that it had tested a new solid-fuel missile fitted with a hypersonic warhead. Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have…
‘Credibility at Stake’: Why did Iran Strike Inside Pakistan amid Gaza War?

In just two days this week, Iran launched missiles – first into Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region and Syria, and then into Pakistan – in attacks that could further inflame tensions in a region on edge. These rapid attacks by Iran on three different neighbors have sparked concerns of a regional escalation and triggered questions over…
War Is on the Agenda in Davos, but the Focus Is Elsewhere

The leaders and executives gathering at the World Economic Forum are overwhelmingly focused on artificial intelligence and populist politics rather than the current two wars happening. Gaza and Ukraine have made daily appearances on the public agenda in Davos, however, they were not able to hold the collective attention of the gathering. Everyone wants to…
What Might Happen Next in the Genocide Case Against Israel

Last week, the International Court of Justice heard initial arguments in the case brought by South Africa, which accuses Israel of “acts and omissions” that are “genocidal in character” against Palestinians in Gaza. South Africa cited the scale of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which has killed roughly one in every 100 residents of the…
DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman warns AI is a ‘fundamentally labor replacing’ tool over the long term

DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman is a heavyweight in the AI space. The Oxford dropout worked as a negotiator for the United Nations and the Dutch government early in his career, but then pivoted to AI and founded DeepMind in 2010 alongside Demis Hassabis and Shane Legg. The machine learning lab grew like a weed under Suleyman,…
BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF Is First to Cross $1 Billion Threshold in Inflows

BlackRock Inc.’s Bitcoin exchange-traded fund passed $1 billion in investor inflows, making it the first in the group of nine new ETFs directly holding the cryptocurrency to surpass the milestone since the funds started trading last week. Investors deposited $371 million in the fund on Wednesday, pushing IBIT past the milestone, data compiled by Bloomberg…
The latest AI gadget frenzy wants to do away with phones

AI-washing has reached consumer tech. Dozens of internet-connected devices are now described as powered by artificial intelligence. But amid the AI grills and mattress toppers, the gadget attracting most attention is a smartphone replacement that looks like a Playmobil toy. The R1 is an AI “pocket companion” that costs $199 and claims to have sold…
BMW taps humanoid startup Figure to take on Tesla’s robot

Robotics startup Figure said it has signed a partnership with BMW Manufacturing to deploy its humanoid robots in the car maker’s facility in the U.S., as more companies turn to human-like robots to take on certain physical tasks. This marks the first commercial deal Figure has signed since it was founded in 2022. While the…
Google Deepmind AI makes breakthrough in one of hardest tests for artificial intelligence

Google Deepmind says that a new artificial intelligence system has made a major breakthrough in one of the most difficult tests for AI. The company says that it has created a new AI system that can solve geometry problems at the level of the very top high-school students. Geometry is one of the oldest branches…
Nearly 7K WordPress Sites Compromised by Balada Injector

Approximately 6,700 WordPress websites have been infected with the Balada injector malware, after using a Popup Builder plug-in with a cross-site vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-6000. The Balada injector campaign has been running since 2017 and is an operation that has compromised over a million WordPress sites in the last six years. In the attack, a…
Adversaries exploit trends, target popular GenAI apps

In 2023, ChatGPT was the most popular generative AI application, accounting for 7% of all enterprise usage. Netskope expects the number of users accessing AI apps int he enterprise to continue to rise moderately, however there is also an emerging population of power users who are steadily growing their use of generative AI apps. While…
Pakistan launches retaliatory strikes into Iran, killing nine people

Pakistan has launched missile strikes into Iran after Iran carried out strikes in Pakistan late on Tuesday. The retaliatory strikes hit “terrorist hideouts” in Iran’s south-eastern Sistan-Baluchestan province, according to Pakistan. The strikes killed nine people. The reciprocal air strikes came as tensions in the Middle East are high with several ongoing and overlapping crises.…
Russia’s Lavrov rejects US proposal to resume nuclear arms talks

Russia’s top diplomat has rejected a proposal to resume dialogue on nuclear arms control from the United States. Sergey Lavrov said the discussion would be impossible while Washington provides military support to Ukraine. Lavrov accused the West of fueling global security risks by encouraging Ukraine to increase strikes on Russian territory. Lavrov also warned that…
Somalia rejects mediation with Ethiopia gov’t over Somaliland port deal

Somalia said on Thursday there was no room for mediation in the dispute with Ethiopia unless Addis Ababa cancelled a deal with the breakaway region of Somaliland. Ethiopia reached a memorandum of understanding with Somaliland on January 1 that gives it access to the sea, escalating tensions in the Horn of Africa. The comment regarding…
OpenAI’s Sam Altman says human-level AI is coming but will change world much less than we think

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says concerns that artificial intelligence will one day become so powerful that it will dramatically reshape and disrupt the world are overblown. “It will change the world much less than we all think and it will change jobs much less than we all think,” Altman said at a conversation organized by Bloomberg…
A Flaw in Millions of Apple, AMD, and Qualcomm GPUs Could Expose AI Data

As more companies ramp up development of artificial intelligence systems, they are increasingly turning to graphics processing unit (GPU) chips for the computing power they need to run large language models (LLMs) and to crunch data quickly at massive scale. Between video game processing and AI, demand for GPUs has never been higher, and chipmakers…
TikTok Owner ByteDance Quietly Launched 4 Generative AI Apps Powered By OpenAI’s GPT

TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, has quietly launched four new generative AI apps for users outside of China, Forbes has learned. Dubbed Cici AI, Coze, ChitChop, and BagelBell, the apps were all launched in the past three months and collectively have millions of downloads. Cici AI, ChitChop, and Coze are bot creation platforms that let…
OpenAI Is Working With US Military on Cybersecurity Tools

OpenAI is working with the Pentagon on a number of projects including cybersecurity capabilities, a departure from the startup’s earlier ban on providing its artificial intelligence to militaries. The ChatGPT maker is developing tools with the US Defense Department on open-source cybersecurity software, and has had initial talks with the US government about methods to…
Bill Gates explains how AI will change our lives in 5 years

It’s no secret that Bill Gates is bullish on artificial intelligence, but he’s now predicting that the technology will be transformative for everyone within the next five years. The rise of AI has elicited fear that the technology will eliminate millions of jobs around the world. The International Monetary Fund this week reported that about 40%…
US set to re-designate Houthis as terror group

The United States is set to re-designate Yemen’s Houthi rebels as “global terrorists,” reversing a decision made in 2021. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will approve the move, citing ongoing attacks by the Iran-backed group on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. The re-designation will require US financial institutions to freeze Houthi funds, and its…
Antwerp drugs: Record seizures at Europe’s ‘cocaine capital’ port

Belgium seized a record 116 tonnes of cocaine at the port of Antwerp in 2023, marking a 5% increase from the previous year. However, it is estimated that only a small fraction of the drug is detected upon arrival, possibly as little as a tenth. The port city has become Europe’s main gateway for cocaine…
France’s Macron shifts to right on schools and birth rate

French President Emmanuel Macron has been criticized for a perceived shift to the right after a televised press conference in which he endorsed policies such as school uniforms, a crackdown on drugs gangs, and measures to boost France’s declining birth rate. Left-wing commentators expressed disappointment over his apparent departure from the political balance of recent…