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Jihad: Islamic State reverse engineering training lab plan driverless car bombs in the West

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ISIS has created training videos to teach millions of aspiring muslims who dream of becoming'heroic' mujahideens how they can turn cats into self-driving bomb machines and create missiles from shells to shoot down passenger planes โ€“ and all from basic materials that can be acquired and purchased anywhere. Put this into perspective: the EU has deliberately sent navy ships to import 1.3 million muslims from the coast of Libya and Turkey of which a massive majority support and endorse jihad according to polls, to now walk the streets all across Europe. In addition, the EU has rewarded Turkey for their willing participation in infiltrating jihad into Syria and Europe by promising to offer them 3bn euros and quicker EU-entry rather than penalizing Turkey. Obama has opened the door to over 100,000 of the same jihad aspiring muslims per year to walk American streets, hating Americans, aspiring for their death and destruction. Meanwhile both the Obama administration ( 46.6 billion for fiscal 2015) and the EU memberstates (over 3.3bn euros in 2010) have been selling military equipment and weapons to muslim countries which are then quickly funneled by these governments to their jihad'heroes' around the world fighting for Allah.


WIRED Awake: 10 must-read articles for 28 March (Wired UK)

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Today, Facebook has apologised for a Safety Check error that led to people around the world being texted in the wake of the Sunday's bombing in Lahore, Japan's Hitomi X-ray satellite has lost communication with Earth, Microsoft has issued a formal explanation for the actions of its short-lived machine learning chatbot, Tay, and more. Get WIRED Awake sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning by 8am. Click here to sign up to the WIRED Awake newsletter. In the wake of a suicide bombing that left at least 69 people dead in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Sunday, Facebook has apologised for an error in its Safety Check disaster response system that saw people around the world being asked to check in as safe (The Guardian). Users in areas as geographically diverse as Australia, Egypt and Belgium received text messages asking if they'd been affected by the explosion, without any information on where the incident had occurred.


Does violence on screen make society more violent?

BBC News

Moviemakers excel at recreating violence and gore on screen. But Will Self asks if we should view fictional violence with more caution. When I was younger I equated viewing such things (and viewing actors performing sexual acts) with some sort of liberty - an existential freedom to be the virile fellow I felt myself to be, and a universal freedom to witness human expression in all its polymorphous perversity. But with age - and possibly, I concede, declining virility - I began to see that pornography entailed the exploitation of vulnerable and mostly young people, while the depictions of violence which bedizen our ubiquitous screens aren't victimless crimes - no matter how enthusiastically those who stage them, may consent. A few years ago Stephen Pinker published a book in which he set out to show that the venerable Dr Pangloss (a character in Voltaire's Candide) was in fact completely right - we are living in the best of possible worlds, while every day, and in every way, things can only get better.


Obama says U.S. drone strikes killed civilians 'that shouldn't have been'

PBS NewsHour

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a conference at Buenos Aires' Town Hall, March 23, 2016. WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama acknowledged Friday that "civilians were killed that shouldn't have been" in past U.S. drone strikes, but said the administration is now "very cautious" about striking where women or children are present. Obama was asked at a news conference about an increase in the number of people targeted in drone strikes against extremists in Libya, Syria, Somalia and elsewhere. "In the past, there was legitimate criticism that the legal architecture around the use of drone strikes wasn't as precise as it should have been," Obama said. "There's no doubt that civilians were killed that shouldn't have been."


Obama describes nightmare scenario of terrorists' nuclear drones at Washington summit

The Japan Times

NEW YORK โ€“ Terrorists flying drones to spread highly radioactive material over a civilian area: That's part of the nightmare scenario President Barack Obama urged world leaders to consider as they debated better ways of controlling nuclear material. With the aid of apocalyptic fake newscasts, Obama told the group of 50 heads of state and foreign ministers in Washington Friday to imagine that a terrorist group had bought isotopes through brokers on the so-called dark Web. One shipment was picked up in transit by radiation monitors, but others were thought to be still on the move. The terrorists were believed to be planning to use a drone to distribute the material. Would authorities react in time?


Obama acknowledges civilian deaths by U.S. drone strikes

The Japan Times

WASHINGTON โ€“ President Barack Obama acknowledged Friday that "civilians were killed that shouldn't have been" in past U.S. drone strikes, but said the administration is now "very cautious" about striking where women or children are present. Obama was asked at a news conference about an increase in the number of people targeted in drone strikes against extremists in Libya, Syria, Somalia and elsewhere. "In the past, there was legitimate criticism that the legal architecture around the use of drone strikes wasn't as precise as it should have been," Obama said. "There's no doubt that civilians were killed that shouldn't have been." He added that over the last several years, the administration has worked to prevent civilian deaths.


U.S. drone strike targets senior al-Shabab leader in Somalia

The Japan Times

WASHINGTON โ€“ The United States has conducted another drone strike in Somalia, targeting a senior al-Shabab leader thought to have been plotting attacks against Americans in Mogadishu, the Pentagon said Friday. The announcement came shortly before President Barack Obama offered detailed remarks about America's controversial drone program, saying some criticism of it had been "legitimate," and acknowledging there was "no doubt" the unmanned aircraft have killed innocent people in the past. Thursday's strike was conducted in cooperation with Somali officials and targeted Hassan Ali Dhoore, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said. The Pentagon said it was still assessing whether Dhoore had been killed. A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the strike targeted a vehicle Dhoore was riding in with two other al-Qaida-aligned al-Shabab members.


People in refugee camps are starting to see a bot for therapy

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X2AIX2AI founders Eugene Bann (left) and Michiel Rauws (right) intrigue school children with Karim's automatic responses at Jusoor school, located within a Syrian refugee community in Al Marj, Lebanon. According to the UN, over 3 million Syrian refugees are now in neighboring Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, with millions more displaced within Syria. To help with this crisis, artificial intelligence startup X2AI is in the middle of a two week stay in Beirut, Lebanon, where it's piloting the use of artificial intelligence as a psychotherapy treatment for refugees. Partnering with Singularity University and the Field Innovation Team, X2AI is pitching the psychotherapy bot (named Karim) to aid workers and refugee communities. X2AIX2AI founder and CTO Eugene Bann watches on as a student from Jusoor school has a conversation with Karim in Arabic, and his first interaction with an AI.


STRIKE AGAINST TERROR US drone hit 'most likely' killed al-Shabab chief

FOX News

A U.S. drone strike in Somalia "most likely" killed Hassan Ali Dhoore, a senior leader of the terror group al-Shabab who had planned attacks that killed three Americans overseas, a U.S. official confirmed to Fox News Friday. Dhoore was riding in a vehicle with two other al-Shabab members Thursday evening when the strike took place about 20 miles south of Jilib in southern Somalia, according to a senior U.S. defense official. The Pentagon had been watching him off and on for a long time, the senior official adds, saying the Somali government was involved in sharing information that led to this strike. U.S. officials say Dhoore helped facilitate a deadly Christmas Day 2014 attack at a Somali airport and a March 2015 attack at the Maka Al-Mukarramah Hotel, both in Mogadishu. U.S. citizens were among those killed in the two attacks, the officials said.


Obama acknowledges civilian deaths by US drones

U.S. News

President Barack Obama is acknowledging that "civilians have been killed that shouldn't have been" in past U.S. drone strikes, but says the administration is now "very cautious" about taking strikes where women or children are present. Asked at a news conference about an increase in the number of people targeted in several drone strikes against extremist targets in Libya, Syria and Somalia, Obama said the "legal architecture" around the use of drone strikes in the past hasn't been precise. But in the last several years, he says, the administration has worked hard to prevent civilian deaths. He says the U.S. has to take responsibility when it is not acting appropriately. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.