Army Col. Sean Ryan, the spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, spoke to Pentagon reporters about progress being made against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. He spoke via satellite from Baghdad.
“In Iraq, operations continue to secure areas across the country, as Iraq security forces locate, identify and destroying ISIS remnants,” Ryan said. “Last week alone, … operations across Iraq have resulted in the arrest of more than 50 suspected terrorists and the removal of 500 pounds of improvised explosive devices.”
Progress in Iraq’s Anbar Province
Iraqi forces are moving in Anbar province, in the Hamrin Mountains and Samarra. Reconstruction efforts are ongoing with roads reopening in the north. Iraqi engineers “cleaned the main road between Salahuddin and Samarra of IEDs, making travel safer between the two cities,” he said.
In the Baghdad area, the ISF established central service coordination cells, a program designed to use military resources to enable local communities to restore basic infrastructure and services. “Initial efforts by the coordination cells include trash collection, road openings, maintenance of water facilities,” Ryan said.
Syrian Democratic Forces are preparing for the final assault on ISIS in the Middle Euphrates River Valley. The SDF is reinforcing checkpoints and refining blocking positions ahead of clearance operations in Hajin, Ryan said.
Military Operations, Reconstruction in Syria
In Syria, too, reconstruction efforts go hand in hand with military operations. “In Raqqa, the internal security forces have destroyed more than 30 caches containing 500 pounds of explosives discovered during the clearance operations in the past weeks,” the colonel said.
ISIS remains a concern in both countries, the colonel said. “Make no mistake: The coalition is not talking victory or taking our foot off the gas in working with our partners,” he said.
Defeating ISIS, he said, will require a long-term effort.
“We cannot emphasize enough that the threat of losing the gains we have made is real, especially if we are not able to give the people a viable alternative to the ISIS problem,” Ryan said. “We continue to call on the international community to step up and ensure that conditions that gave rise to ISIS no longer exist in both Syria and Iraq.”
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(UNITED NATIONS) — The Islamic State extremist group has up to 30,000 members roughly equally distributed between Syria and Iraq and its global network poses a rising threat — as does al-Qaeda, which is much stronger in places, a United Nations report says.
The report by U.N. experts circulated Monday said that despite the defeat of IS in Iraq and most of Syria, it is likely that a reduced “covert version” of the militant group’s “core” will survive in both countries, with significant affiliated supporters in Afghanistan, Libya, Southeast Asia and West Africa.
The experts said al-Qaeda’s global network also “continues to show resilience,” with its affiliates and allies much stronger than IS in some spots, including Somalia, Yemen, South Asia and Africa’s Sahel region.
Al-Qaeda’s leaders in Iran “have grown more prominent” and have been working with the extremist group’s top leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, “projecting his authority more effectively than he could previously” including on events in Syria, the experts said.
The report to the Security Council by experts monitoring sanctions against IS and al-Qaeda said the estimate of the current total IS membership in Iraq and Syria came from governments it did not identify. The estimate of between 20,000 and 30,000 members includes “a significant component of the many thousands of active foreign terrorist fighters,” it said.
While many IS fighters, planners and commanders have been killed in fighting, and many other fighters and supporters have left the immediate conflict zone, the experts said many still remain in the two countries — some engaged militarily “and others hiding out in sympathetic communities and urban areas.”
IS fighters swept into Iraq in the summer of 2014, taking control of nearly a third of the country. At the height of the group’s power its self-proclaimed caliphate stretched from the edges of Aleppo in Syria to just north of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
With its physical caliphate largely destroyed, the Islamic State movement is transforming from a “proto-state” to a covert “terrorist” network, “a process that is most advanced in Iraq” because it still controls pockets in Syria, the report said.
The experts said the discipline imposed by IS remains intact and IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “remains in authority” despite reports that he was injured.
“It is just more delegated than before, by necessity, to the wider network outside the conflict zone,” the experts said.
The flow of foreign fighters to IS in Syria and Iraq has come to a halt, they said, but “the reverse flow, although slower than expected, remains a serious challenge.”
While the rate of terrorist attacks has fallen in Europe, the experts said some governments “assess that the underlying drivers of terrorism are all present and perhaps more acute than ever before.” This suggests that any reduction in attacks is likely to be temporary until IS recovers and reorganizes and al-Qaeda “increases its international terrorist activity or other organizations emerge in the terrorist arena,” they said.
The experts looked at the threats posed by IS and al-Qaeda by region:
—ARABIAN PENINSULA: Al-Qaida’s leaders recognize Yemen “as a venue for guerrilla-style attacks and a hub for regional operations.” Yemen’s lack of a strong central government “has provided a fertile environment for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.” Its strength inside Yemen is estimated at between 6,000 and 7,000, compared with only 250 to 500 IS members in the conflict-wracked country.
—NORTH AFRICA: Despite the loss to IS of the Libyan city of Sirte and continued airstrikes, the extremist group “still has the capacity to launch significant attacks within Libya and across the border, reverting to asymmetric tactics and improvised explosive devises.” Estimates of IS members vary between 3,000 and 4,000, dispersed across Libya. Up to 1,000 fighters in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula have pledged allegiance to IS leader al-Baghdadi. Al-Qaeda is also continuing a resurgence in Libya.
—WEST AFRICA: An al-Qaeda-affiliated coalition has increased attacks on French, U.S., U.N. and other international interests in the Sahel. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb has urged attacks on French private companies. The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara is active mostly at the Mali-Niger border and has less of a footprint. “Member states assess that terrorists are taking advantage of territorial control and ethnic conflicts to radicalize populations.”
—EAST AFRICA: The al-Shabab extremist group in Somalia, an al-Qaeda affiliate, “remains the dominant terrorist group” in that country, with improvised explosive devices “its weapon of choice.” Despite sustained military action against al-Shabab, “the group has enhanced its capabilities as it retains its influence and appeal.” Member states said IS in Somalia “is fragile and operationally weak,” but “it still presents a threat” because the country remains a focus for possible future operations.
—EUROPE: During the first six months of 2018, “the threat in Europe remained high” but “the tempo of attacks and disrupted plots was lower than during the same period in 2017.” Much activity involved individuals with no prior security records or deemed low risk. IS used the media to urge sympathizers in Europe to conduct attacks in their home countries. Member states expressed concern that returnees could disseminate knowledge and skills related to making drones, explosive devices and car bombs.
—CENTRAL AND SOUTH ASIA: According to an unidentified U.N. member state, IS poses an immediate threat in the region but al-Qaida is the “intellectually stronger group” and poses a longer-term threat. Some leaders of the al-Qaida “core,” including al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden’s son, Hamza, are reported to be in Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas. IS continues to relocate some key operatives to Afghanistan. One unidentified government reported newly arrived IS fighters from Algeria, France, Russia, Tunisia and central Asian states.
—SOUTHEAST ASIA: Despite last year’s heavy losses in the Philippines, IS affiliates in the country “are cash rich and growing in membership.” Intermediaries facilitated financial transfers from the IS “core” to Philippines affiliates and arranged bomb-making and firearms training for recruits from Indonesia at camps in the Philippines. Attacks in Indonesia by an IS-linked network using families as suicide bombers could become “a troubling precedent.”
Boy, 11, Hacks into Replica U.S. Vote Website in Minutes
(Reuters) – An 11-year-old boy managed to hack into a replica of Florida’s election results website in 10 minutes and change names and tallies during a hackers convention, organizers said, stoking concerns about security ahead of nationwide votes.
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The boy was the quickest of 35 children, ages 6 to 17, who all eventually hacked into copies of the websites of six swing states during the three-day Def Con security convention over the weekend, the event said on Twitter on Tuesday.
The event was meant to test the strength of U.S. election infrastructure and details of the vulnerabilities would be passed onto the states, it added.
The National Association of Secretaries of State – who are responsible for tallying votes – said it welcomed the convention’s efforts. But it said the actual systems used by states would have additional protections.
“It would be extremely difficult to replicate these systems since many states utilize unique networks and custom-built databases with new and updated security protocols,” the association said.
The hacking demonstration came as concerns swirl about election system vulnerabilities before mid-term state and federal elections.
U.S President Donald Trump’s national security team warned two weeks ago that Russia had launched “pervasive” efforts to interfere in the November polls.
Participants at the convention changed party names and added as many as 12 billion votes to candidates, the event said.
“Candidate names were changed to ‘Bob Da Builder’ and ‘Richard Nixon’s head’,” the convention tweeted.
The convention linked to what it said was the Twitter account of the winning boy – named there as Emmett Brewer from Austin, Texas.
A screenshot posted on the account showed he had managed to change the name of the winning candidate on the replica Florida website to his own and gave himself billions of votes.
The convention’s “Voting Village” also aimed to expose security issues in other systems such as digital poll books and memory-card readers.
***
Mark Earley, the elections supervisor in Leon County who is a cybersecurity liaison between state and local officials, questioned how outsiders could obtain the security protocols used by Florida if they weren’t already behind the system’s firewalls. He said that all this “hacking noise” and “misinformation plays into the hands of the folks who are trying to undermine democracy.”
Jeff Kosseff, a lawyer and assistant professor at the United States Naval Academy Cyber Studies Department, said states are struggling with election security threats. He said they should work with outsiders in order to see if there are flaws in their systems.
“All states should look at this as a wake-up call,” Kosseff said. “What were the shortcomings identified and how they can fix it. I don’t think it should be an adversarial.”
C’mon, Why this Continued Problem with Catholic Priests?
List of ‘misconduct’ over the last 7 decades.
HARRISBURG — The Office of Attorney General issued the following statement in response to a news conference today by the Diocese of Harrisburg.
“It is long past due for the Diocese of Harrisburg to make public the names of predator priests within the Catholic Church,” said Joe Grace, spokesman for Attorney General Shapiro. “Their proclamations today only come after intense public pressure and in the face of the imminent release of the Grand Jury report exposing decades of child abuse and cover up.”
“Per last week’s Supreme Court Order, this month the Office of Attorney General will publish an honest and comprehensive accounting of widespread sexual abuse by more than 300 priests in six Pennsylvania dioceses.”
“To this point, the Diocese of Harrisburg has been adverse to transparency and has not been cooperative. A now public opinion by the judge supervising the Grand Jury last year made it clear they sought to end the investigation entirely.”
“The true test of the Diocese’s commitment to victims of abuse and reforms within the Church will be their actions following the release of the report. Attorney General Shapiro has consistently called for the elimination of the criminal statute of limitations and reforms to the civil statute to give all victims the opportunity to obtain justice in a court of law.”
HARRISBURG, Pa. (Reuters) – Decades of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania will come under public scrutiny for the first time on Tuesday with the release of a long-delayed report on a grand jury investigation led by the state’s attorney general.
Hundreds of pages long, the report will reveal the findings of one of the most expansive probes into clerical sexual abuse since an expose of widespread abuse and systematic efforts to cover it up rocked the Archdiocese of Boston nearly two decades ago.
The Pennsylvania report will cover 70 years of abuse of children by 300 Roman Catholic priests and how the church sought to cover up the accusations. It follows a nearly two-year-long investigation by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro.
Some of those accused have tried to stop the release of the report, saying it would unfairly damage their reputations, but prosecutors, abuse advocates and news organizations pushed for its release. Last month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court allowed the report to go ahead, but with at least some names redacted.
It ordered the report be released by 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) on Tuesday.
In anticipation of the release, Harrisburg’s bishop earlier this month released the names of more than 70 clergy members and seminarians accused of sexually abusing children since the 1940s. The names of the diocese bishops who supervised them, he promised, would be removed from diocesan buildings and “any position of honor” throughout central Pennsylvania.
But at the time, Shapiro said in a statement that the Diocese of Harrisburg had failed to cooperate and “sought to end the investigation entirely.”
Since the Boston abuse scandal first erupted in the 1990s, fresh accusations involving American clerics have sporadically surfaced, further tarnishing the church’s public image.
Theodore McCarrick, a former archbishop of Washington, resigned in disgrace as a cardinal last month after accusations that he abused a 16-year-old boy decades ago resurfaced.
In recent months, Pope Francis has accepted a flurry of resignations as church sex abuse scandals have erupted from Chile to Argentina.
The dioceses included in the Pennsylvania report, initiated in 2016 under then-Attorney General Kathleen Kane, are Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Scranton, Erie and Greensburg.
The state’s two other dioceses were the subjects of past grand jury investigations – the Philadelphia Archdiocese in 2005 and the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown in 2016.
Senator Menendez Hires Qatar Lobbyist?
Primer: It is Qatar that received the Taliban commanders previously in prison at Gitmo under Obama. It is Qatar that presently has a Taliban diplomatic post as the United States is in talks for some kind of peace in Afghanistan. It is al Thani whose son graduated from West Point. It is Qatar that many of the Gulf nations are at odds with due to Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and jihad networks. It is Qatar that hosts a major U.S. military base, al Udeid.
The Trump administration hopes to restore a degree of normalcy to Qatar’s relationship with its neighbors after Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt instigated a month’s long blockade and embargo against the Gulf sheikhdom in June. Both Qatar and the UAE have spent millions of dollars in recent years on rival lobbying campaigns, according to a review of lobbying records.
So, what about Senator Menendez? Well….
Senator Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) hired a longtime aide and lobbyist for the Qatari government to chair his reelection campaign, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Friday.
Michael Soliman has lobbied Menendez, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, and other lawmakers on behalf of the Qatari government since 2015.
While the arrangement is strictly legal, ethics experts told the Inquirer that it might constitute a conflict of interest.
“There is a blurring of lines between responsibility to the candidate and responsibility to their client,” said Meredith McGehee of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit watchdog in Washington. “Very little of that is a responsibility to the public.”
In a statement to the Inquirer, Soliman said his lobbying work had “always been fully transparent, above board and properly disclosed.” After receiving inquiries from other publications, Soliman said that “out of an overabundance of caution,” he would not “directly or indirectly lobby the senator or his staff on behalf of any client for the duration of the campaign.”
Menendez was indicted on corruption charges in 2015 in connection with his relationship to a wealthy Florida doctor who procured lavish gifts and vacations for the lawmaker in exchange for help navigating regulatory obstacles in his health-care business. Menendez was ultimately acquitted in January by a hung jury that found he did not perform any “official acts” for material benefit. But the Senate Ethics Committee reprimanded Menendez, writing that he “risked undermining the public’s confidence in the Senate,” in an April letter sent after the Department of Justice had dropped all charges.
CommentsMenendez has paid Soliman’s consulting firm $105,000 since 2015, but a spokesman for his campaign denied any allegations of impropriety.
Soliman has been a “trusted political advisor to the Senator for more than a decade, but neither he, nor any lobbyist, has influenced how the Senator speaks to representatives of any government in advocating for the foreign policy and national security interests of both the United States and our allies,” said Steve Sandberg, a spokesperson for the Menendez campaign.
Part of Michael’s resume includes:
Strategic advisor to Congressman-elect Josh Gottheimer’s successful campaign against a 14 year incumbent
Lead strategist for U.S. Senator Cory Booker’s successful 2014 Senate campaign
Served as Senator Robert Menendez’s State Director and New Jersey Chief of Staff since 2007
Managed Senator Menendez’s successful re-election campaign in 2012
District Director for U.S. Congressman Steve Rothman
Advised the campaigns of the late Senator Frank Lautenberg, former Governor Jon Corzine, and Congressman Bill Pascrell
Worked on campaigns of various Democratic officials, including Mayor Glenn Cunningham of Jersey City and State Senator Bob Gordon
Frequent guest lecturer at academic institutions including St. Peter’s University and the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics
Appeared on the PolitickerNJ Power List for the past 9 years
Selected as an influencer by Campaigns & Elections Magazine
St. Peter’s University, Political Science (BA)
Bloustein School at Rutgers University (MPP)
Mercury, a high-stakes public strategy firm, continues to expand nationwide and across the globe, most recently through the addition of offices in London and Mexico City. In addition to Soliman, Mercury’s New Jersey office is led by DuHaime, Chris Christie’s top political adviser. Mo Butler, who served as chief of staff in New Jersey to U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, joined the firm.
Google Wont Stop Following You, Regardless of Settings
Even when you opt out. Even when you change the settings. Even without your knowledge. Next question that needs an answer…who is Google selling the data to?
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google wants to know where you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to.
An Associated Press investigation found that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you’ve used a privacy setting that says it will prevent Google from doing so.
Computer-science researchers at Princeton confirmed these findings at the AP’s request.
For the most part, Google is upfront about asking permission to use your location information. An app like Google Maps will remind you to allow access to location if you use it for navigating. If you agree to let it record your location over time, Google Maps will display that history for you in a “timeline” that maps out your daily movements.
** In case you missed Tucker Carlson’s segment on Google:
Storing your minute-by-minute travels carries privacy risks. So Google will let you “pause” a setting called Location History.
Google says that prevents the company from remembering where you’ve been. Its support page states: “You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.”
But this isn’t true. Even with Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking.
For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones note your location. So can searches that have nothing to do with location.
The privacy issue affects some two billion users of devices that run Google’s Android operating software and hundreds of millions of worldwide iPhone users who rely on Google for maps or search.
Storing location data in violation of a user’s preferences is wrong, said Jonathan Mayer, a Princeton computer scientist and former chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commission’s enforcement bureau. A researcher from Mayer’s lab confirmed the AP’s findings on multiple Android devices; the AP conducted its own tests on several iPhones and found the same behavior.
“If you’re going to allow users to turn off something called ‘Location History,’ then all the places where you maintain location history should be turned off,” Mayer said.
Google says it is being perfectly clear.
“There are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve people’s experience, including: Location History, Web and App Activity, and through device-level Location Services,” Google said in a statement to the AP. “We provide clear descriptions of these tools, and robust controls so people can turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time.”
To stop Google from saving these location markers, the company says, users can turn off another setting, though it doesn’t specifically reference location information. Called “Web and App Activity,” that setting stores a variety of information from Google apps and websites to your Google account.
When paused, it will prevent activity on any device from being saved to your account. But leaving “Web & App Activity” on and turning “Location History” off only prevents Google from adding your movements to the “timeline,” its visualization of your daily travels. It does not stop Google’s collection of other location markers.
You can see these stored location markers on a page in your Google account at myactivity.google.com. It’s possible, though laborious, to delete them.
To demonstrate how powerful these other markers can be, the AP created a visual map of the movements of Princeton postdoctoral researcher Gunes Acar, who carried an Android phone with Location history off and shared a record of his Google account.
The map includes Acar’s train commute on two trips to New York and visits to the High Line park, Chelsea Market, Hell’s Kitchen, Central Park and Harlem.
Huge tech companies are under increasing scrutiny over their data practices, following a series of privacy scandals at Facebook and new data-privacy rules recently adopted by the European Union.
Critics say Google’s insistence on tracking its users’ locations stems from its drive to boost advertising revenue.
“They build advertising information out of data,” said Peter Lenz, the senior geospatial analyst at Dstillery, a rival advertising technology company. “More data for them presumably means more profit.”
The AP learned of the issue from K. Shankari, a graduate researcher at UC Berkeley who studies the commuting patterns of volunteers in order to help urban planners. She noticed that her Android phone prompted her to rate a shopping trip to Kohl’s, even though she had turned Location History off.
“I am not opposed to background location tracking in principle,” she said. “It just really bothers me that it is not explicitly stated.”
Google offers a more accurate description of how Location History works in a popup when you pause the setting on your Google account webpage . It notes that “some location data may be saved as part of your activity on other Google services, like Search and Maps.”
There’s another obscure notice if you turn off and re-activate the “Web & App Activity” setting. It notes that the setting “saves the things you do on Google sites, apps, and services … and associated information, like location.”
The warnings offered when you turn Location History off via Android and iPhone device settings are more difficult to interpret.
Since 2014, Google has let advertisers track the effectiveness of online ads at driving foot traffic , a feature that Google has said relies on user location histories.