terrorism
Zelensky condemns Russian drone strike that killed five on passenger train
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has condemned as terrorism a Russian drone attack on a crowded passenger train that local officials say killed at least five people and injured several others. More than 200 people were on the train, officials said, when one of the carriages was hit by a drone and two other drones exploded nearby, in Ukraine's north-eastern Kharkiv region on Tuesday. Zelensky said 18 people were in the carriage at the time and there was no military justification in targeting civilians. Russia has not commented on the strike, but it has intensified drone and missile attacks on Ukraine's energy and transport infrastructure during the harshest winter in years. Elsewhere in Ukraine, the southern port city of Odesa was hit by dozens of drones and officials said three people were killed and dozens more wounded.
- Asia > Russia (0.58)
- North America > United States (0.50)
- Europe > Ukraine > Kharkiv Oblast > Kharkiv (0.28)
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- Government > Military (0.92)
- Government > Regional Government > Europe Government > Ukraine Government (0.56)
- Africa > Malawi (0.14)
- North America > United States > California (0.04)
- Europe > France (0.04)
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- Africa > Malawi (0.14)
- North America > United States > California (0.04)
- Europe > France (0.04)
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Mechanistic Interpretability with SAEs: Probing Religion, Violence, and Geography in Large Language Models
Simbeck, Katharina, Mahran, Mariam
Despite growing research on bias in large language models (LLMs), most work has focused on gender and race, with little attention to religious identity. This paper explores how religion is internally represented in LLMs and how it intersects with concepts of violence and geography. Using mechanistic interpretability and Sparse Autoencoders (SAEs) via the Neuronpedia API, we analyze latent feature activations across five models. We measure overlap between religion- and violence-related prompts and probe semantic patterns in activation contexts. While all five religions show comparable internal cohesion, Islam is more frequently linked to features associated with violent language. In contrast, geographic associations largely reflect real-world religious demographics, revealing how models embed both factual distributions and cultural stereotypes. These findings highlight the value of structural analysis in auditing not just outputs but also internal representations that shape model behavior.
- North America > United States > New York > New York County > New York City (0.28)
- North America > United States > Minnesota > Hennepin County > Minneapolis (0.14)
- Asia > Middle East > Palestine > Gaza Strip > Gaza Governorate > Gaza (0.14)
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Predicting the descent into extremism and terrorism
Lane, R. O., Holmes, W. J., Taylor, C. J., State-Davey, H. M., Wragge, A. J.
This paper proposes an approach for automatically analysing and tracking statements in material gathered online and detecting whether the authors of the statements are likely to be involved in extremism or terrorism. The proposed system comprises: online collation of statements that are then encoded in a form amenable to machine learning (ML), an ML component to classify the encoded text, a tracker, and a visualisation system for analysis of results. The detection and tracking concept has been tested using quotes made by terrorists, extremists, campaigners, and politicians, obtained from wikiquote.org. A set of features was extracted for each quote using the state-of-the-art Universal Sentence Encoder (Cer et al. 2018), which produces 512-dimensional vectors. The data were used to train and test a support vector machine (SVM) classifier using 10-fold cross-validation. The system was able to correctly detect intentions and attitudes associated with extremism 81% of the time and terrorism 97% of the time, using a dataset of 839 quotes. This accuracy was higher than that which was achieved for a simple baseline system based on n-gram text features. Tracking techniques were also used to perform a temporal analysis of the data, with each quote considered to be a noisy measurement of a person's state of mind. It was demonstrated that the tracking algorithms were able to detect both trends over time and sharp changes in attitude that could be attributed to major events.
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- Europe > United Kingdom (0.14)
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- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Machine Learning > Statistical Learning > Support Vector Machines (1.00)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Machine Learning > Performance Analysis > Accuracy (1.00)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Machine Learning > Neural Networks (1.00)
The top 3 factors heightening the risk of terror attacks on the homeland
As a former military intelligence officer, serving in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), I tracked foreign threats to the U.S. homeland, identifying adversaries' plans, intentions and capabilities that could harm Americans. I predicted Russia's invasion of Ukraine more than a year before it took place. In March, in my Fox News Digital article titled "Ignore FBI director's urgent warning about terrorist threats at our own peril," I predicted terrorist attacks striking inside the U.S. homeland, the kind that took place on New Year's Day in New Orleans and in Las Vegas. Here are the top three reasons why we will likely face more terrorism in America this year. This time, it will be something we haven't seen before.
- Europe > Ukraine (0.36)
- Asia > Russia (0.36)
- North America > United States > Louisiana > Orleans Parish > New Orleans (0.28)
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Behavioural Analytics: Mathematics of the Mind
Lane, Richard, State-Davey, Hannah, Taylor, Claire, Holmes, Wendy, Boon, Rachel, Round, Mark
Behavioural analytics provides insights into individual and crowd behaviour, enabling analysis of what previously happened and predictions for how people may be likely to act in the future. In defence and security, this analysis allows organisations to achieve tactical and strategic advantage through influence campaigns, a key counterpart to physical activities. Before action can be taken, online and real-world behaviour must be analysed to determine the level of threat. Huge data volumes mean that automated processes are required to attain an accurate understanding of risk. We describe the mathematical basis of technologies to analyse quotes in multiple languages. These include a Bayesian network to understand behavioural factors, state estimation algorithms for time series analysis, and machine learning algorithms for classification. We present results from studies of quotes in English, French, and Arabic, from anti-violence campaigners, politicians, extremists, and terrorists. The algorithms correctly identify extreme statements; and analysis at individual, group, and population levels detects both trends over time and sharp changes attributed to major geopolitical events. Group analysis shows that additional population characteristics can be determined, such as polarisation over particular issues and large-scale shifts in attitude. Finally, MP voting behaviour and statements from publicly-available records are analysed to determine the level of correlation between what people say and what they do.
- Europe > France (0.28)
- Europe > United Kingdom > England > Greater London > London (0.06)
- Asia > Middle East > Iraq (0.04)
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- Government > Regional Government > Europe Government (1.00)
- Law Enforcement & Public Safety > Terrorism (0.92)
- Health & Medicine (0.89)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Machine Learning > Statistical Learning (1.00)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Machine Learning > Learning Graphical Models > Directed Networks > Bayesian Learning (1.00)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Representation & Reasoning > Uncertainty > Bayesian Inference (0.89)
Iran spouts 'propaganda' from UN podium, calls on Middle East to unite behind Tehran
In an address to the 79th United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian claimed to be the one playing peacemaker in the Middle East and, in a juxtaposition, accused Israel of supporting terrorism. Pezeshkian called on the U.N. to "examine" modern history and said, "Iran has never initiated a war. It has only defended itself heroically against external aggression, causing the aggressors to regret their actions," Pezeshkian said, adding that Iran does not "occupy" territory or exploit resources for other countries. "It has repeatedly offered various proposals to its neighbors and international fora aimed at establishing lasting peace and stability," he said. "We have emphasized the importance of unity in the region and establishing a strong region." Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian walks, on the sidelines of the 79th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 24, 2024.
- Asia > Middle East > Iran > Tehran Province > Tehran (0.42)
- Asia > Middle East > Israel (0.32)
- Europe > Middle East (0.29)
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- Government > Military (1.00)
- Government > Regional Government > Asia Government > Middle East Government > Iran Government (0.73)
Dismantle the knowledge systems that enable genocide
When a book titled Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction, written by the British professor and historian Charles Townshend, was found by police near the pro-Palestine student encampment at Columbia University, it was held up by New York Police Department (NYPD) Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry as evidence of some kind of foreign, radicalising influence on student activism. Apparently, for Daughtry, reading a book on terrorism is evidence of radicalisation. Knowing about terrorism makes you at risk of committing terrorism. Finding a book near a student encampment confirms that pro-Palestine solidarity is linked to terrorism. What Daughtry was arguably trying to do was darken Palestine activism on college campuses across the United States with the association of terrorism.
- North America > United States > New York (0.25)
- Asia > Middle East > Israel (0.15)
- Asia > Middle East > Palestine > Gaza Strip > Gaza Governorate > Gaza (0.06)
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3 American troops killed, 25 injured in attack on Jordan base near Syria border
Fox News reporter Stephanie Bennett has more on the rising tension in the Middle East on'Fox News Live.' Three U.S. service members were killed and 25 others were injured in a drone attack on an outpost in northeast Jordan near the Syria border, U.S. Central Command confirmed on Sunday. "On Jan. 28, three U.S. service members were killed and 25 injured from a one-way attack UAS that impacted at a base in northeast Jordan, near the Syria border. As a matter of respect for the families and in accordance with DoD policy, the identities of the servicemembers will be withheld until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified," CENTCOM said. "Updates will be provided as they become available," it added. The White House says President Biden was briefed Sunday morning by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer about the attack, which marked a significant escalation in the Middle East as the first time American troops have been killed by enemy fire in the region since the Israel-Hamas war began.
- Asia > Middle East > Syria (0.89)
- Asia > Middle East > Jordan (0.88)
- Europe > Middle East (0.48)
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- Government > Regional Government > North America Government > United States Government (1.00)
- Government > Military (1.00)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Robots > Autonomous Vehicles > Drones (0.39)
- Information Technology > Communications > Social Media (0.33)