Summary: On Friday night, November 13, 2015, eight militants wearing explosive belts and armed with assault rifles, shotguns, and hand grenades attacked six sites in Paris, killing at least 129 people and wounding more than 350, including about 100 seriously injured. The dead include many French citizens, three Chileans, two Belgians, two Mexicans, two Spaniards, two Portuguese, an American, and a Briton. ISIS has claimed responsibility for this mass-casualty commando-style terrorist swarm attack. Swarm attacks are high-risk, coordinated assaults sometimes directed against multiple targets or building complexes, using mobile groups to circumvent security measures, allowing attackers to inflict casualties, garner news coverage, and inflict considerable damage prior to the neutralization of the assailants.

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Summary: A leading specialist on al-Qaida, Noman Benotman, says Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian, is acting as interim operational leader of the terrorist organization pending the expected appointment of deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahiri as successor to Osama bin Laden. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on May 18, 2010, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, compiled from U.S. Department of Defense News Releases.

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Summary: The Obama administration has ramped up its secret war on terror groups with a new military targeting center to oversee the growing use of special operations strikes against suspected militants in hot spots around the world. The creation of the center comes as part of the administration’s increasing reliance on clandestine and covert action to hunt terror suspects. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 5, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that Dr. Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the 32-year-old Jordanian physician who struck the CIA’s Camp Chapman forward operating base in Khost province near the Afghan-Pakistan border on December 30, 2009 killing seven Central Intelligence Agency employees, matched the psychological profile of a specific type of suicide bomber.

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Summary: Pope Benedict XVI’s 2010 Christmas message … “Urbi et Orbi” … “To the City and to the World” … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 25, 2009, Aubrey Immelman featured Pope Benedict XVI’s 2009 Christmas message and posted the Immelman family’s 2009 Christmas greeting. In a rare second post for the date, Immelman reported separately that the terror alert level was raised when a Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, tried to light an explosive powder aboard a commercial jetliner before it landed in Detroit.

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Summary: The New York Times reports that confidential diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks offers a fresh sense of the pervasive nature of predatory corruption in Afghanistan, the overwhelming scale of the corruption, and the serious challenge it poses to American officials who have made shoring up support for the Afghan government a cornerstone of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, where bribery, extortion, and embezzlement are the norm. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 2, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that President Barack Obama held an uncertain hand in his high-stakes gamble in the fight against Islamic extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with weak partners in both countries, doubts about the speed of building up Afghan security forces, and allies reluctant to commit themselves wholeheartedly to the fight.

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Summary: Investigators believe the same al-Qaida-affiliated group responsible for the Christmas Day underwear bomb were behind the PETN-based devices hidden in packages sent from Yemen. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on October 30, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on her first official visit to Pakistan, faced sharp rebukes from Pakistani audiences brimming with resentment toward U.S. foreign policy, including one woman who accused the U.S. of conducting “executions without trial” in aerial drone strikes, equating it to terrorism.

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Summary: Gen. Colin Powell discusses foreign policy regarding Afghanistan with David Gregory on NBC Meet the Press. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on September 20, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party released a statement that characterized Gov. Tim Pawlenty as “moving closer and closer to Representative Michele Bachmann’s extreme right-wing ideology.”

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Summary: The Obama administration will allow Haitians who were in the United States illegally prior to the January 12, 2010 Haiti earthquake to remain in the country for 18 months under temporary protected status. Some critics oppose temporary protected status because of its potential to turn into a de facto backdoor to amnesty. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 15, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that British foreign secretary David Miliband said the phrase “war on terror” — though capturing the urgency of the situation immediately following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — is ultimately “misleading and mistaken,” because it gives the impression of a unified, transnational enemy, embodied in the figure of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

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Summary: The New York Times reports that in the midst of two unfinished major wars — Afghanistan and Iraq — the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 28, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that the Taliban, which had long operated its own shadow government in the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, had begun spreading north, encroaching on the capital city of Kabul.

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Summary: Pope Benedict XVI 2009 Christmas message … “Urbi et Orbi” … “To the City and to the World” … Immelman family 2008 Christmas greeting. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 25, 2008, Aubrey Immelman posted Pope Benedict XVI’s 2008 Christmas message, “Urbi et Orbi” [“To the City and to the World”] and sent out the Immelman family’s 2008 Christmas greeting.

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