U.S. of Paris Accord, will take 3 Years However

Posted on June 1, 2017June 1, 2017 by Denise Simon

Topline: The Paris Accord is a BAD deal for Americans, and the President’s action today is keeping his campaign promise to put American workers first. The Accord was negotiated poorly by the Obama Administration and signed out of desperation. It frontloads costs on the American people to the detriment of our economy and job growth while extracting meaningless commitments from the world’s top global emitters, like China. The U.S. is already leading the world in energy production and doesn’t need a bad deal that will harm American workers.

UNDERMINES U.S. Competitiveness and Jobs

 According to a study by NERA Consulting, meeting the Obama Administration’s requirements in the Paris Accord would cost the U.S. economy nearly $3 trillion over the next several decades.

 By 2040, our economy would lose 6.5 million industrial sector jobs – including 3.1 million manufacturing sector jobs

 It would effectively decapitate our coal industry, which now supplies about one-third of our electric power

The deal was negotiated BADLY, and extracts meaningless commitments from the world’s top polluters

 The Obama-negotiated Accord imposes unrealistic targets on the U.S. for reducing our carbon emissions, while giving countries like China a free pass for years to come.

 Under the Accord, China will actually increase emissions until 2030

The U.S. is ALREADY a Clean Energy and Oil & Gas Energy Leader; we can reduce our emissions and continue to produce American energy without the Paris Accord

 America has already reduced its carbon-dioxide emissions dramatically.

 Since 2006, CO2 emissions have declined by 12 percent, and are expected to continue to decline.

 According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the U.S. is the leader in oil & gas production.

The agreement funds a UN Climate Slush Fund underwritten by American taxpayers

 President Obama committed $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund – which is about 30 percent of the initial funding – without authorization from Congress

 With $20 trillion in debt, the U.S. taxpayers should not be paying to subsidize other countries’ energy needs.

The deal also accomplishes LITTLE for the climate

 According to researchers at MIT, if all member nations met their obligations, the impact on the climate would be negligible. The impacts have been estimated to be likely to reduce global temperature rise by less than .2 degrees Celsius in 2100.

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The Legal and Economic Case Against the Paris Climate Treaty

Canceling U.S. Participation Protects Competitiveness and the Constitution

President Trump should keep his two-part campaign promise to cancel U.S. participation in the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments to United Nations global warming programs. The Paris Agreement is a costly and ineffectual solution to the alleged climate crisis. It is also plainly a treaty, despite President Obama’s attempt to implement it without the Senate’s advice and consent. Failure to withdraw from the agreement would entrench a constitutionally damaging precedent, set President Trump’s domestic and foreign policies in conflict, and ensure decades of diplomatic blowback.

For those and other reasons, the Paris Agreement imperils both America’s economic future and capacity for self-government.

The Paris Agreement and the 1992 treaty it purports to modify, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, both contain provisions for withdrawal. Concerns about diplomatic blowback if President Trump withdraws from the Agreement or submits it for the Senate’s advice and consent actually confirm the wisdom of exercising one of those options. The Paris Agreement is designed to institutionalize a running campaign of diplomatic blowback unless the U.S. submits to ever-tightening constraints, ratcheting up every five years. If Trump withdraws, any diplomatic blowback would largely be a muted one-off event, without the economic, political, and security costs that staying in the Paris Agreement entails.

To safeguard America’s economic future and capacity for self-government, President Trump should pull out of the Paris Agreement. There are several options for doing so, which are discussed in this paper. Regardless of which option Trump selects, his administration should make the case for withdrawal based on the following key points:

The Paris Climate Agreement is a treaty by virtue of its costs and risks, ambition compared to predecessor climate treaties, dependence on subsequent legislation by Congress, intent to affect state laws, U.S. historic practice with regard to multilateral environmental agreements, and other common-sense criteria.

In America’s constitutional system, treaties must obtain the advice and consent of the Senate before the United States may lawfully join them. President Obama deemed the Paris Agreement to not be a treaty in order to evade constitutional review, which the Agreement almost certainly would not have survived.

Allowing Obama’s climate coup to stand will set a dangerous precedent that will undermine one of the Constitution’s important checks and balances. It will allow a future president to adopt any treaty he and foreign elites want, without Senate ratification, just by deeming it “not a treaty.”

The Agreement endangers America’s capacity for self-government. It empowers one administration to make legislative commitments for decades to come, without congressional authorization, and regardless of the outcome of future elections. It would also make U.S. energy policies increasingly unaccountable to voters, and increasingly beholden to the demands of foreign leaders, U.N. bureaucrats, and international pressure groups.

The United States cannot comply with the Paris Agreement and pursue a pro-growth energy agenda. Affordable, plentiful, reliable energy is the lifeblood of modern economic life. Yet, the Paris Agreement’s central goal is to make fossil fuels, America’s most plentiful and affordable energy source, more expensive across the board. Implementing the agreement’s progressively more restrictive five-year emission-reduction pledges—called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—would destroy U.S. manufacturing’s energy price edge.

The Agreement entails more cost and risk than the country is willing to bear. A majority of states have sued to overturn the Obama Environmental Protection Agency’s end-run around Congress, the Clean Power Plan, which is also the centerpiece of the U.S. NDC under the Paris Agreement. Yet, the CPP is only a start. All of Obama’s adopted and proposed climate policies would only achieve about 51 percent of just the first NDC, and the Paris Agreement requires parties to promise more “ambitious” NDCs every five years.

The Agreement has no democratic legitimacy. President Obama kept mum about climate change during the 2012 elections. Only after being reelected did he unveil a climate agenda featuring an EPA-redesigned electric power system and the most “ambitious” climate agreement in history.

Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement is a humanitarian imperative. The Agreement will produce no detectable climate benefits. Instead, it will divert trillions of dollars from productive investments that would advance global welfare to political uses. Worse, the Agreement’s mid-century emission-reduction goals cannot be achieved without drastically reducing energy-poor countries’ current access to affordable energy from fossil fuels.

For all the foregoing reasons, President Trump should stick to his campaign promises to end America’s participation in the Paris Climate Agreement and stop payments to the U.N. Green Climate Fund.

Toronto Uni. Report on Russian Information Warfare

Posted on May 25, 2017May 25, 2017 by Denise Simon

The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, Canada focusing on advanced research and development at the intersection of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), human rights, and global security. The Citizen Lab’s ongoing research network includes the Cyber Stewards Network, OpenNet Initiative, OpenNet Eurasia, Opennet.Asia. The Citizen Lab was a founding partner of the Information Warfare Monitor (2002-2012).

Russian spies may have backed email phishing campaign in effort to spread disinformation

218 email accounts across 39 countries targeted, report by University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab finds

New evidence of a global espionage campaign involving email phishing attacks and leaked falsified documents emerged on Thursday, with clues suggesting the Russian government might have been involved.

The targets spanned government, industry, military and civil society groups, each with ties to Russia or Russian interests, a report by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab suggests.

Although there is no definitive proof of Russia’s involvement in the attacks, there is “overlap” with previously reported Russian espionage activities — in particular, the work of a Russia-backed hacking group known as APT-28, or Fancy Bear.

Notably, Citizen Lab’s researchers say “an identical approach” to the phishing campaign described in their report was used in a March 2016 attack targeting Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

“While we have no ‘smoking gun’ that provides definitive proof linking what we discovered to a particular government agency … our report nonetheless provides clear evidence of overlap with what has been publicly reported by numerous industry and government reports about Russian cyberespionage,” wrote Citizen Lab director Ron Deibert in a blog post.

U.S. reporter’s documents leaked, manipulated

The report focuses in part on what the authors have termed “tainted leaks,” leaks of stolen documents that are largely authentic but have been manipulated in certain parts to achieve a particular goal — in this case, a political one.

In the incident Citizen Lab examined, documents obtained through a phishing operation in October 2016 that targeted the email account of U.S. journalist David Satter were selectively modified in an apparent attempt to discredit Satter and his work and then posted online. Satter has reported on Russia for decades and was expelled from the country in December 2013.

In unpacking that particular leak, Citizen Lab then identified a further 218 unique email accounts spanning 39 countries that had been targeted using the same phishing method used to fool Satter.

The accounts belong to members of governments — including “a former Russian prime minister, members of cabinets from Europe and Eurasia, ambassadors, high-ranking military officers, CEOs of energy companies” — but also members of civil society organizations, such as academics, activists, journalists and employees with non-governmental organizations that have been critical of the Russian government or investigated its activities.

The scope of the targets, the report says, “suggests a well-resourced actor, such as a nation state.”

Fancy Bear

U.S. intelligence officials believe Russian-backed groups conducted a series of cyberespionage campaigns throughout 2015 and 2016 in an attempt to interfere with and potentially sway the outcome of last year’s presidential election.

One group in particular was mentioned frequently in coverage of the attacks: APT-28, sometimes referred to by the nickname Fancy Bear. It is believed that the group is backed by a nation state, if not a nation state itself — namely, Russia.

While Citizen Lab’s researchers could not make a “conclusive technical link” between their findings and Fancy Bear, they identified a number of similarities with the group’s prior attacks.

For example, some of the domain names used in the campaign Citizen Lab studied bear a striking similarity to a Fancy Bear linked phishing operation identified by the cybersecurity research firm Mandiant last year. There are also similarities with the methods used to break into the email account of Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta — suggesting, at the very least, two separate actors are sharing the same code.

Tainted Leaks

Civil society groups are particularly rich targets for cyberespionage campaigns, as they tend to lack the resources of larger or better funded organizations to deal with digital attacks. Of note, the researchers say that 21 per cent of those targeted in the campaign they studied were activists, academics, journalists, and NGOs — the second-largest set after government targets.

“Many of the civil society targets seem to have been singled out for the perception that their actions could pose a threat to the Putin regime,” the report said.

In Satter’s case, leaked documents were selectively modified in such a way that the majority remained authentic, but misinformation was seeded throughout, in an attempt to lend legitimacy to otherwise false information. The researchers compared Satter’s case with that of a prior attack on the grant-making organization Open Society Foundations (OSF).

For example, one document was modified “to make Satter appear to be paying Russian journalists and anti-corruption activists to write stories critical of the Russian government,” the report said.

In the OSF case, modifications were made to documents detailing a budget and funding strategies to make it appear as if the U.S.-based group was sponsoring Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption.

Earlier this month, falsified documents appeared in a trove of documents taken from staff on French President Emmanuel Macron’s election campaign.

Described as “fakes in a forest of facts,” the report concludes that such tainted leaks “test the limits of how media, citizen journalism, and social media users handle fact checking and the amplification of enticing but questionable information.”

However, University of Toronto political science professor Seva Gunitsky says the practice of tainting leaks with false information could ultimately backfire.

“If they actually discover something politically damaging in a future phishing attack, it will be hard to credibly claim it was a real find,” he said. “Of course, if the overall goal is just to sow informational chaos, tainted leaks are a good way of doing that.”

Brits Stop Sharing Intelligence with U.S. Due to Leaks

Posted on May 25, 2017May 25, 2017 by Denise Simon

Didsbury Mosque, where the Abedi family worshiped. Credit – Associated Press.

“And other loose ends reported from the investigation include German magazine, Focus, which “reported that British police informed their German counterparts that Abedi had received paramilitary training in Syria,” AP writes. “It also said he passed through Duesseldorf airport four days before the concert attack. Citing unnamed federal security sources, Focus reported that Salman Abedi twice flew from a German airport in recent years and wasn’t on any international watch list…Focus reported that German authorities are now trying to determine whether Abedi had contact with Islamic extremists in Germany before flying to Manchester last week. It says he previously flew from Frankfurt to Britain in 2015.”

(Another item of note in the text below, the Didsbury mosque, is part of the global network of the Muslim Brotherhood)

The British government operated an “open door” policy that allowed Libyan exiles and British-Libyan citizens to join the 2011 uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi even though some had been subject to counter-terrorism control orders, Middle East Eye can reveal.

Several former rebel fighters now back in the UK told MEE that they had been able to travel to Libya with “no questions asked” as authorities continued to investigate the background of a British-Libyan suicide bomber who killed 22 people in Monday’s attack in Manchester. More here.

UK police find ‘significant’ evidence; May slams US on leaks

MANCHESTER, England (AP) — Home searches across Manchester and beyond have uncovered important items in a fast-moving investigation into the concert bombing that left 22 people dead, Manchester’s police chief said Thursday as a diplomatic spat escalated over U.S. leaks about the investigation to the media.

Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Ian Hopkins told reporters the eight suspects detained so far are “significant” arrests, and “initial searches of premises have revealed items that we believe are very important to the investigation.”

A retired intelligence officer says any move by the United Kingdom to stop intelligence information sharing with the United States would be “suicidal.” Bob Ayers tells the AP the UK receives more information from the US than it provides. (May 25)

He did not elaborate, but those arrests around the northwestern English city include Ismail Abedi, the brother of 22-year-old Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi. The bomber’s father Ramadan Abedi and another brother Hashim have been detained in Libya.

As police raced to uncover the network that may have helped Abedi attack an Ariana Grande concert on Monday night, furious British officials blamed U.S. authorities Thursday for leaking details of the investigation to the media.

One British official told The Associated Press that police in Manchester have stopped sharing information about their bombing investigation with the U.S. until they get a guarantee that there will be no more leaks to the media. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said she would discuss the leaks with President Donald Trump at a NATO summit. Upon her arrival in Brussels, May said the U.S.-British defense and security partnership is built on trust.

But she said “part of that trust is knowing that intelligence can be shared confidently.”

British officials are particularly angry that photos detailing evidence about the bomb were published in The New York Times, although it’s not clear that the paper obtained the photos from U.S. officials.

British security services are also upset that Abedi’s name was apparently leaked by U.S. officials while British police were withholding it — and while raids were underway in Manchester and in Libya, where the bomber’s father lives.

Hopkins, the Manchester police chief, said the leaks had “caused much distress for families that are already suffering terribly with their loss.”

Trump on Thursday pledged to “get to the bottom” of leaks of sensitive information, calling the leaks “deeply troubling.” He said he is asking the Justice Department and other agencies to “launch a complete review of this matter.”

The New York Times defended its publication of crime-scene photographs, saying its coverage had been “both comprehensive and responsible.”

“The images and information presented were neither graphic nor disrespectful of victims, and consistent with the common line of reporting on weapons used in horrific crimes,” the paper said.

May said the national threat level from terrorism remains at critical — the highest level, meaning that another attack may be imminent. Hun dreds of soldiers have replaced police protecting high-profile sites including Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament in London.

“The public should remain vigilant,” May said.

Around the country, many people fell silent and bowed their heads at 11 a.m. for a minute in tribute to the bombing victims.

In Manchester’s St. Ann’s Square, where a sea of floral tributes grows by the hour, a crowd sang “Don’t Look Back in Anger” — a song by the Manchester band Oasis.

Queen Elizabeth II visited Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital on Thursday to talk to some of the victims, their families and medical staff.

“It’s dreadful. Very wicked, to target that sort of thing,” the 91-year-old monarch told 14-year-old Evie Mills and her parents.

Fifteen-year-old Millie Robson, wearing an Ariana Grande T-shirt, told the queen she had won VIP tickets to the pop star’s concert. She was leaving concert when the blast struck, remembering an intense ringing but not entirely aware that she was bleeding badly from her legs.

She credited her dad’s quick action in picking her up and tying off her wounds to stem the bleeding.

“I have a few like holes in my legs and stuff and I have a bit of a cut, and my arm and just a bit here, but compared to other people I’m quite lucky really,” she said.

In addition to those killed, 116 people received medical treatment at Manchester hospitals for wounds from the blast. The National Health Service said 75 people had been hospitalized.

In Berlin, former U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel sent a message of solidarity to the Manchester bombing victims.

“(This is) a reminder that there is great danger and terrorism and people who would do great harm to others just because they’re different,” Obama said.

Investigators are chasing Abedi’s potential links with jihadi militants in Manchester, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. The bomber himself died in the attack.

France’s interior minister says Abedi was believed to have travelled to Syria, and U.S. Rep. Mike McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he was part of “a cell of ISIS-inspired terrorists.”

Investigators are trying to find whether Abedi knew several Manchester-based jihadis, including Libyan man Abdalraouf Abdallah, who was jailed in the U.K. for terror offenses, and Raphael Hostey, an IS recruiter killed in Syria.

Investigators are also looking into the Abedi family’s ties in Libya. Abedi’s father Ramadan was allegedly a member of the al-Qaida-backed Libyan Isl amic Fighting group in the 1990s — a claim he denies.

Manchester is home to one of Britain’s largest Libyan communities. Mohammed Fadl, a community leader, said the Abedi family is well known, but Salman did not attend many gatherings.

“Very few people in the community here were close to him and therefore Salman’s fanaticism wasn’t something the community was aware of,” he told the AP.

He said he had heard that Salman’s father took his son’s passport away amid concerns about his close ties to alleged extre mists and criminals.

Authorities are investigating whether Abedi could have been stopped, after Libyan community members in Manchester reported concerns about his views.

Akram Ramadan said Salman Abedi had been banned from Manchester’s Didsbury Mosque, one of the largest in the city.

“There was a sermon about anti-Daesh (IS) and he stood up and started calling the Imam — ’You are talking bollocks,’” Ramadan said. “And he gave a good stare, a threatening stare into the Imam’s eyes … he was banned.”

Fadl, the community leader, disputed that account and the bomber’s father insisted Wednesday in an interview with the AP that Salman had no links to militants, saying “we don’t believe in killing innocents.”

Abedi had been in Libya in the weeks before the attack, and German magazine Focus, citing unnamed federal security source, reported that he passed through Duesseldorf airport four days before the bombing.

A German security official told the AP on Thursday the report was accurate, speaking on condition of a nonymity because the information hadn’t been cleared for public release.

On the artistic front, Grande cancelled concerts that were to take place Thursday and Friday in London, and in several other sites in Europe. Next week’s premiere of the film “The Mummy” in London was also canceled.

Germany’s Secret Bundeswehr

Posted on May 24, 2017May 24, 2017 by Denise Simon

The secret German army, with soldiers from other countries has a variety of duties. There is a growing concern in Europe, but what about NATO? That question goes to President Trump. The secret is, no one is talking about it openly, further there was no real reason given on why VP Pence travel to meet top NATO officials to calm the nerves regarding the viability of NATO due to President Trump. Article 5 remains a large question with European leaders.

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The original Bundeswehr has a scandalous history. Nazi Veterans Created Illegal Army

First, there will be cyber soldiers

The German military (Bundeswehr) on Wednesday is launching a brand new “cyber army” to fight against digital attacks on networks and weapons systems. But some are concerned about how this new unit might engage in cyber assaults itself.

Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen will announce the new unit in Bonn on Wednesday afternoon. The ministry wants to deploy around 13,500 soldiers and civilian workers by 2021 to protect the Bundeswehr’s networks and weapons systems, but the unit must also be capable of launching their own attacks against hackers.

The Chief of Staff of the new cyber army is Lieutenant-General Ludwig Leinhos, who is an expert in electronic warfare.

Cyber attacks are a growing concern in Germany, with the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) reporting last year that the government’s computer networks are hit by around 20 highly specialized attacks per day.

German intelligence agencies and the BSI last year began work on setting up their own special cyber response teams.

According to broadcaster N-tv, the Bundeswehr’s new cyber soldiers will be on equal ranking with their colleagues in the army, air force and marines – and their new beret colour will be grey.

Parliamentary ombudsman for the Bundeswehr, Hans-Peter Bartels (SPD), warned that the new cyber unit should be kept under parliamentary control, though, as part of their work would entail launching cyber attacks of their own.

Bartels told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung on Wednesday that the cyber army must seek permission from the Bundestag (German parliament) before launching such assaults.

“Every offensive measure of our constitutionally enshrined parliamentary army needs to have the explicit mandate of the Bundestag,” Bartels said, adding that this policy goes for not only military assaults, but also virtual attacks on the data network of an adversary.

Bartels stressed that the cyber army was desperately needed to protect the Bundeswehr’s computer and weapons systems. But he also criticized the fact that the new unit is only now being created.

“Germany is not a pioneer here,” he said. “One can already learn from the experiences of other countries, like the USA or Israel.”

Second, the conventional forces

Germany is to increase the size of its armed forces amid growing concerns over the security of Europe.

Troop numbers in the Bundeswehr will be raised to almost 200,000 over the next seven years, under new plans announced on Wednesday.

The move comes days after Mike Pence, the US vice-president, called on Nato’s European members to increase military spending.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly demanded Europe pay more towards the cost of its own defence.

The move also comes amid growing concern in European capitals over Mr Trumps’ commitment to Nato, after he described the alliance as “obsolete”.

Under the new plans, Germany will recruit 20,000 more troops by 2025, bringing its total service personnel to 198,000.

That is slightly more than the British armed forces’ current strength of 196,410.

In a statement announcing the plans, Ursula von der Leyen, the defence minister, said: “The Bundeswehr has rarely been as necessary as it is now.

“Whether it is the fight against Isil terrorism, the stabilization of Mali, continuing support of Afghanistan, operations against migrant smugglers in the Mediterranean or with our increased Nato presence in the Baltics.”

The announcement came as Germany deployed tanks and hundreds troops to Lithuania as part of a Nato force to deter Russian aggression.

During the Cold War, West Germany was considered the first line of defence against a Soviet invasion and at its height the Bundeswehr had 500,000 active service personnel.

But in the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification defence spending dropped sharply.

Germany ended conscription in 2011 and troop numbers fell to an all-time low of 166,500 in June last year.

Cold War historians described West Germany’s army as “perhaps the best in the world”.

But in more recent years it has been better known for embarrassing equipment shortages that saw soldiers forces to use broomsticks instead of guns on Nato exercises, and use ordinary Mercedes vans to stand in for armoured personnel carriers.

The German air force was forced to ground half of its ageing Tornado fighters last year over maintenance issues, including six that are deployed on reconaissance missions against Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) in Syria.

There are growing calls for Europe to do more to secure its own defence after Mr Trump described Nato as “obsolete” in an interview in January, and earlier this month Angela Merkel’s government was forced to take the unusual step of denying that it is interested in becoming a nuclear power.

Mr Trump has repeatedly accused Nato’s European members of not paying enough towards the cost of their defence and during the US presidential campaign Mr Trump warned the US may not necessarily come to the aid of Nato allies if they are attacked.

German Bundeswehr Soldiers of the ‘battalion of armored infantryman’ called ‘Panzergrenadierbataillon 122’ sit on a wrecker called ‘Bueffel’ during vehicles wait to be loaded onto a train in Grafenwoehr, Germany, 31 January 2017, before being deployed as part of a NATO force in Lithuania Credit: LUKAS BARTH/EPA

Mr Pence sought to reassure jittery European allies in a speech at Nato headquarters in Brussels on Monday in which he said the US’ “commitment to Nato is clear”. But he demanded “real progress” in increased European defence spending.

Ms von der Leyen has been attempting to reverse the decline of Germany’s armed forces, and already announced a smaller increase in troop numbers last year. Those targets were revised upwards with Wednesday’s announcement.

It is estimated the increases will cost Germany between around €900m (£760m) a year. But the amount is still far short of the extra €25.4bn Germany would have to spend on defence each year to meet Nato’s annual target of 2 per cent of GDP.

The UK is one of only five Nato members to meet the target at present, along with the US, Greece, Estonia and Poland.

Despite boasting the largest economy in Europe, Germany lags far behind, spending only 1.19 per cent of its GDP on defence in 2016.

Manchester Bomb Suspect, Got Training with AQ in Libya

Posted on May 23, 2017May 23, 2017 by Denise Simon

Sure Salmen Abedi was on the watch list of intelligence professionals and law enforcement. Why, his parents reported him. The family immigrated from Libya to the UK where Abedi was born in England.

Abedi was born in Manchester — the second youngest of four children. His parents fled Libya during Moammar Khadafy’s regime, first moving to London in 1994 before settling in Manchester. Police raided an address in the southern Manchester neighborhood Tuesday and detonated a controlled explosion. More here from NYDailyNews.

Salman Abedi was identified as the Manchester suicide bomber on Tuesday. Handout

MANCHESTER, England — Salman Abedi, the 22-year-old British man believed to have killed 22 people in a suicide-bomb attack, had ties to al Qaeda and had received terrorist training abroad, a U.S. intelligence official told NBC News on Tuesday as the United Kingdom raised its terrorist threat level to the highest category.

The U.S. intelligence official, who has direct knowledge of the investigation, said Abedi, whose family is of Libyan descent, was identified by a bank card found in his pocket at the scene of the explosion after an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena. The identification was confirmed by facial recognition technology, the official said.

Abedi had traveled to Libya within the last 12 months, one of multiple countries he had visited, the official said. While he had “clear ties to al Qaeda,” the official said, Abedi could have had connections to other groups.

Members of his own family had even informed on him in the past, telling British authorities that he was dangerous, according to the intelligence official.

*** ISIS claimed responsibility publishing the notion that he was a foot soldier, but that is not so true. He was more connected to al Qaeda, yet the terror operations are for the most part the same.

A spokesman for the University of Salford in Manchester told NBC News that Abedi enrolled there to study business management in September 2015. He re-enrolled last September, but he hadn’t attended classes for several months, the spokesman said.

ISIS has claimed credit for the deadly attack, but so far neither British nor U.S. authorities have been able to link Abedi to the fanatical Islamic organization, which has inspired other lethal terrorist attacks in Europe.

Abedi, however, was known to British police and intelligence services, government sources told NBC News.

Abedi was from the Whalley Range area of Manchester, a town with a long history, dating back to the 1830’s. In 2011, the most recent census report showed the town had a population of 20,000. There are 42 mosques in the Manchester area. Does that seem rather excessive for the size of the population?