Security - Global

cnn.com - April 21, 2019

What we're covering here

What’s happening: The death toll from a wave of bombings across Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday increased to 290 on Monday as authorities arrested 24 people in connection with the attacks.

Who carried out the attacks: No group has yet claimed responsibility and the police investigation is ongoing. A government minister described the coordinated bombings as a "brand new type of terrorism," after a decade of relative calm in Sri Lanka.

Warning over other attacks: Late Sunday, authorities disposed of a six-foot pipe bomb near Bandarayanake International Airport in Colombo. On Monday, Sri Lankan authorities found 87 detonators at a private terminal of the Central Bus Stand-in Colombo. Separately, the US State Department is warning that “terrorist groups continue plotting possible attacks in Sri Lanka.”

CLICK HERE - CNN - LIVE Updates: Sri Lanka Bombings

A smashed window is seen in one of the stores inside a shopping mall after looting in Maracaibo. Photograph: Isaac Urrutia/Reuters

theguardian.com - by Tom Phillips - March 26, 2019

. . . Maracaibo’s “madness” began on the night of 10 March – three days after a catastrophic blackout plunged almost the entire nation into darkness. But it had been long in the making thanks to years of economic and political neglect.

The 1.6 million residents of Maracaibo – an oil capital once celebrated as Latin America’s answer to Houston – complained of shortages of water, electricity and fuel and a worsening public transport system even before Venezuela’s crisis began to accelerate in 2016, with the onset of hyperinflation.

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Protesters demonstrate against rising costs of living they blame on high taxes near the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris on Dec. 8, 2018.  Sameer Al-Doumy/ AFP/Getty Images

chicagotribune.com - apnews.com - by ELAINE GANLEY and JOHN LEICESTER - December 8, 2018

The rumble of armored police trucks and the hiss of tear gas filled central Paris on Saturday, as French riot police fought to contain thousands of yellow-vested protesters venting their anger against the government in a movement that has grown more violent by the week . . . 

. . . Amid the melee, President Emmanuel Macron remained invisible and silent, as he has for the four weeks of a movement that started as a protest against a gas tax hike and metamorphosed into a rebellion against high taxes and eroding living standards . . .

. . . Macron on Wednesday agreed to abandon the fuel tax hike, which aimed to wean France off fossil fuels and uphold the Paris climate agreement. Many economists and scientists say higher fuel taxes are essential to save the planet from worsening climate change, but that stance hasn't defused the anger among France's working class.

Robert Ashley, Lieutenant General, U.S. Army - Director, Defense Intelligence Agency - March 6, 2018

dia.mil - March 6, 2018

The United States faces an increasingly complex array of challenges to its national security.  The military environment has shifted from the existence of the United States as the single power able to dominate challengers and to deter aggression through conventional means to one in which foreign militaries are emerging with near-peer and, in some areas, peer capabilities.  Adversaries have studied the American way of conflict and have developed, and will continue to develop, capabilities to mitigate or upend longstanding U.S. military dominance in all warfighting domains—terrestrial, maritime, air, space, and cyber—raising the complexity of the threat environment and risk to the United States.

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