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: Psychological assessment of Russian president Vladimir Putin, leadership style implications of Putin’s personality profile, and Russian threat assessment with respect to U.S. national security.

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Summary: Iraq has joined Iran in offering key moral and financial support to Syria, undermining a central U.S. foreign policy objective in the Middle East and raising fresh concerns that Iraq is drifting further into Iran’s sphere of influence. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on October 9, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a letter to Pope Benedict XVI thanking him for opposing Florida pastor Terry Jones’s threat to burn the Quran and calling for cooperation against secularism.

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Summary: As Egyptians take to the streets to call for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, some analysts caution about the prospect of protests in Egypt spreading across the Arab world, with popular revolt erupting in Middle Eastern countries such as Yemen, Jordan, Syria, and even Saudi Arabia, with grave implications for regional stability and U.S. national security interests. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 31, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that U.S. Special Forces working with Afghan commandos clashed with Afghan troops manning a snow-covered outpost and called in an airstrike, killing four Afghan soldiers in a case of mistaken identity. Separately, an Afghan interpreter killed two U.S. service members at a combat outpost and U.S. soldiers shot and killed an Afghan imam when his car approached a convoy.

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Summary: Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a bold show of strength in Lebanon, vowing before thousands of Hezbollah supporters in Beirut that U.S. and Israeli power in the Middle East will soon be eclipsed. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on October 13, 2009, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Summary: There were many domestic reasons voters handed an American-backed coalition a victory over a Hezbollah-led coalition in Lebanese parliamentary elections, but political analysts also attribute it in part to President Barack Obama’s campaign of outreach to the Arab and Muslim world.

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Summary: More than 2 million Iraqis have fled the kidnappings, car bombings, and killings that have racked their homeland since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The United States has admitted more than 16,000 Iraqi refugees in the past two years and expects to more than double that number by the end of 2009. A coalition of advocates, including Refugees International, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the Baltimore-based Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, is calling on the United States to nearly triple the money it spends on the displaced Iraqis while allowing the entry of as many as 105,000 in 2009 — a sevenfold increase over current admissions.

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Summary: Iran praised the Iraqi Cabinet for approving a U.S-Iraq status-of-forces agreement. … Michael Hanna, an analyst at the Century Foundation in New York, said a continuing but finite presence of U.S. troops in Iraq could benefit Iran because it provides “retaliatory options” as Tehran pursues a nuclear program opposed by the West.

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Summary: Shiite clerics have warned the Iraqi government not to sign a security pact that would keep U.S. troops in Iraq until 2012, as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki studied what U.S. officials described as the final draft of the U.S.-Iraq status-of-forces agreement. … Referring to President-elect Barack Obama, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota said she was “extremely grateful that we have an African-American who has won this year,” calling Obama’s victory “a tremendous signal we sent.”

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Summary: U.S. president-elect Barack Obama faces major foreign policy challenges. Summary of intertwined issues Barack Obama inherits from George W. Bush.

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