ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Nation join UK, Germany and Netherlands in warning citizens of "imminent threat" in Libyan city due to Mali conflict. France and Australia have become the latest nation to warn its citizens against staying in the Libyan city of Benghazi in response to a "specific, imminent threat to Westerners", linked to French action in Mali. Friday's announcement comes after similar warnings from Britain, Germany and the Netherlands. A statement from Australia's department of foreign affairs said: "We are aware of a specific, imminent threat to Westerners in Benghazi. "All Australians in Benghazi should leave immediately ... There is a risk of retaliatory attacks against Western targets in Libya following the French intervention in the conflict in Mali in January 2013." The decision comes a day after a British warning caused Libya to announce there was "no new intelligence" to justify such concerns in the eastern city. "We are now aware

Figure 1. Gulf Stream velocities one week ago: Thursday 17 January 2013 Figure 2. Gulf Stream velocities two weeks ago: Thursday 10 January 2013 Figure 3. Gulf Stream velocities three weeks ago: Thursday 3 January 2013 Figure 4. Gulf Stream velocities four weeks ago: Thursday 27 December 2012

— Pulsars — tiny spinning stars, heavier than the sun and smaller than a city — have puzzled scientists since they were discovered in 1967. Now, new observations by an international team, including University of Vermont astrophysicist Joanna Rankin, make these bizarre stars even more puzzling. The scientists identified a pulsar that is able to dramatically change the way in which it shines. In just a few seconds, the star can quiet its radio waves while at the same time it makes its X-ray emissions much brighter. The research “challenges all proposed pulsar emission theories,” the team writes in the Jan. 25 edition of the journal Science and reopens a decades-old debate about how these stars work. Unexpected X-rays Like the universe’s most powerful lighthouses, pulsars shine beams of radio waves and other radiation for trillions of miles. As these highly magnetized neutron stars rapidly rotate, a pair of beams sweeps by, appearing as flashes or pulses in telescopes on Earth. Using

 Washington State University researchers have lengthened their list of environmental toxicants that can negatively affect as many as three generations of an exposed animal's offspring. Writing in the online journal PLOS ONE, scientists led by molecular biologist Michael Skinner document reproductive disease and obesity in the descendants of rats exposed to the plasticizer bisephenol-A, or BPA, as well DEHP and DBP, plastic compounds known as phthalates. In a separate article in the journalReproductive Toxicology, they report the first observation of cross-generation disease from a widely used hydrocarbon mixture the military refers to as JP8. Both studies are the first of their kind to see obesity stemming from the process of "epigenetic transgenerational inheritance." While the animals are inheriting traits conveyed by their parents' DNA sequences, they are also having epigenetic inheritance with some genes turned on and off. Skinner's lab in the past year

By Scott Stewart Vice President of Analysis The recent jihadist attack on the Tigantourine natural gas facility near In Amenas, Algeria, and the subsequent hostage situation there have prompted some knee-jerk discussions among media punditry. From these discussions came the belief that the incident was spectacular, sophisticated and above all unprecedented. A closer examination shows quite the opposite. Indeed, very little of the incident was without precedent. Mokhtar Belmokhtar , who orchestrated the attack, has employed similar tactics and a similar scale of force before, and frequently he has deployed forces far from his group's core territory in northern Mali. Large-scale raids, often meant to take hostages, have been conducted across far expanses of the Sahel. What was unprecedented was the target. Energy and extraction sites have been attacked in the past, but never before was an Algerian natural gas facility selected for such an assault. A closer look at the operation also

Obama Is al-Qaeda's No. 1 Recruiter In early January, the Washington Post and other news sources reported a major escalation in drone strikes being carried out by the Obama Administration in Pakistan, with some observing that President Obama thinks he has found a way to conduct warfare against America’s enemies without endangering U.S. troops on the ground. In truth, what Obama has done, with his unprecedented application of drone missile strikes, has been to vastly accelerate recruitment to al-Qaeda and related organizations—more than they could ever have done on their own. Obama’s fascination with the means of raining down terror and death from the air, with minimal risk to ground forces, is hardly something new. Since the dawn of the use of air power in World War I, utopian war planners have been obsessed with the idea of perfecting a means of killing the enemy without the grinding brutality of trench warfare (as in the First World War), or of having to risk “boots on the grou

Don't Let the Administration Continue the Coverup! Jan. 20, 2013 (EIRNS)—On the eve of hearings in both the House and Senate this coming week, in which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will finally appear to testify on the circumstances surrounding the events of Sept. 11, 2012 in Benghazi, Libya, the Obama Administration continues to obfuscate and intentionally mislead, in an attempt to extend its ongoing coverup and prevent the truth from being revealed about who is ultimately responsible for the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Representatives of Executive Intelligence Review were informed this week, during the course of meetings conducted with the offices of members of the Foreign Affairs Committee, that the State Department had sent Patrick Kennedy to Capitol Hill to conduct a staff briefing on Benghazi which one can assume was intended as a preparatory background briefing to shape the content of next week's hearings. The content of the briefing was report

Egypt In the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution, the world will be watching very keenly to see what character the new government adopts. Recent trends suggest that Islamism, as opposed to secularism, is preferred by the majority in Egypt. Presently, nominally-Islamist Egyptian leaders are making a concerted effort to curry favour among secularists by moderating their views, but as their position stabilizes, a more aggressively Islamic government may form, which could complicate relations with Israel and cause significant unease throughout the United States and Western Europe. Syria As rebel forces in Syria have gained and held ever-growing swaths of territory in their struggle against the Assad regime, government's retaliations have become increasingly intense. Eyewitness reports from escaped refugees suggest an aggressive terror campaign on the part of the Assad regime, targeting adults and children alike with brutal violence and torture. If this pattern were to continue and