On Sunday, the White House announced Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder and leader of the Islamic State, had been killed in a U.S.-led operation in Syria over the weekend. The death of al-Baghdadi will have significant implications for the infamous terrorist group, as both the Trump administration and many counterterrorism experts insist.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has created a “Disaster Resilience Framework” to support analysis of federal opportunities to facilitate and promote resilience to natural hazards. Recognizing the gravity of the effect of natural disasters on the American people and the fiscal exposure it creates, this Framework provides a set of high-level principles to help those who have responsibility for oversight and management of federal efforts to consider actions they might take to increase resilience to natural hazards.
The National Security Agency (NSA) and the United Kingdom National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) have released a joint advisory (available below) on advanced persistent threat (APT) group Turla – widely reported to be Russian. The advisory provides an update to NCSC’s January 2018 report on Turla’s use of the malicious Neuron, Nautilus, and Snake tools to steal sensitive data.
On Sunday, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) announced it may have to perform another round of public safety power shutoffs (PSPSs) later this week due to forecasted extreme weather and dry conditions.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released its outlook for the coming winter season, in which it anticipates warmer-than-average temperatures for much of the U.S. and wetter-than-average conditions in the northern U.S. The outlook also forecasts some improvement to the drought currently being experienced in the Southeast, which developed rapidly during the summer and early fall. With the record-setting cold temperatures from last year perhaps still in the minds of those who experienced them, NOAA notes that no part of the U.S.
As of this morning, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) reports tropical storm warnings are in effect for portions of the northern Gulf Coast, which on Friday are expected to begin experiencing the effects of a tropical storm that is predicted to form over the southwestern Gulf of Mexico later today. Among its key messages, the NHC advises that storm surge inundation of up to five feet is possible along the Florida Gulf Coast from Indian Pass to Clearwater. The system is also expected to bring tropical storm force and heavy rainfall.
The White House has confirmed that Ibrahim al-Asiri, al Qa’ida’s master bombmaker, has been killed. It was widely suspected beginning in August 2018 that Al-Asiri was dead, but until now there had not been official confirmation of his death. In its announcement, the White House said he had been killed two years ago in a counterterrorism operation in Yemen. Al-Asiri was known for having perfected miniaturized bombs with little to no metal content, making them difficult for screening processes to detect.
On Friday, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan resigned from his post, which he had been in for six months following the departure of Kirstjen Nielsen in April. Before assuming the acting secretary role McAleenan was the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In the acting secretary role, much of his time continued to be dedicated to border security, noting some of his accomplishments in that aspect of the job in his departing announcement. President Trump indicated he will announce a new acting secretary sometime this week.
Peter Gaynor, who is President Trump’s nominee to lead FEMA and is currently serving as acting administrator, has written an article for Homeland Security Today encouraging communities to get involved in preparing for disasters. Echoing the messaging of his predecessor Brock Long, Gaynor expresses that FEMA’s focus needs to be on building the capacity of local, state, tribal, and territorial governments, enabling them to manage smaller disasters so that the federal government can address larger and potentially catastrophic events.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has unveiled the “U.S. Landslide Inventory Map,” a new web-based tool that seeks to identify areas that could be at higher risk for future landslides. Existing digital data on landslide occurrence are held by a range of federal, state, and local government agencies, and until now no central point of access has been available.
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