Dealing with the rise of homegrown terrorism has prompted governments to take novel approaches in combating such threats. The U.K. government, for example, has recently pushed for schools to teach children as young as four about the dangers of violent extremism. One counter-radicalization strategy adopted by the U.K. government is Prevent, which has been used effectively in British secondary schools. Prevent has in the past been viewed with suspicion, however, particularly by British Muslim communities, as Prevent funding has previously been tied directly to the number of Muslim schools in an area. What Australia can learn from the British example is ensuring that certain communities do not feel alienated. Instead, any attempts at education should focus on the problem of radicalization as a whole.

Libyan officials report that they have recently apprehended several members of a Libyan Muslim extremist militia planning to ship chemical weapons to anti-Assad rebels in Syria. Colonel Mansour al-Mazini of the Libya army said that the Islamists had been caught with a container of mustard gas. The gas was confiscated by Libyan soldiers.

Muslims in Russia, who belong to Turkic ethnic groups (this includes the largest Muslim group in Russia, the Tatars), practice moderate Sunni Islam of the Hanafite school. Russian Muslims living in the Caucasus Mountains practice Sunni Islam of the Shafiite school. A large number of Russian Muslims also follow Sufi orders — Naqshbandi, Qadiri, and others. The radicalization of some Russian Muslims began in the early 1990s with Saudi-financed madrassas where radical and fundamentalist strands of Islam were taught, and where Islamist militants were trained, and with Saudi-financed radical preachers spreading “true Islam.” The madrassas were closed in 2000, and the fundamentalist preachers ordered out of the country, but by then enough Russian Muslims were already radicalized.

At least ninety people have been killed in three weekend attacks over the weekend by Islamist group Boko Haram. The attacks took place in northeast Nigeria, the area where the group attacks have killed thousands of people since 2009. This past weekend’s attacks cap three weeks in which the Islamist militants killed more than 400 people. Since last May, the Nigerian government has placed three states in the region — Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe — under a state of emergency in an effort to defeat the Islamic insurgency, but to little effect. The Nigerian military campaign has been criticized by military experts, who say the military has adopted an approach which is too passive to be effective against nimble insurgents. The quality of the troops and their commanders is low, resulting in guard being left unstaffed, slow response – at times several hours — to reports of attacks and calls for help, and soldiers abandoning their posts and running away in the face of the attacks.

Marburg hemorrhagic fever is a severe and potentially fatal disease in humans first recognized in 1967. It is caused by an RNA virus of the Filoviridae family and is understood to be endemic to Africa. The Marburg virus is classified as a Category A bioterrorism agent by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and in 2006 was determined by DHS to be a material threat to national security and public health. There are currently no treatments for Marburg virus infection beyond supportive care. Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Sarepta Therapeutics, a developer of innovative RNA-based therapeutics, announced positive safety results from a Phase I multiple ascending dose study of AVI-7288 in healthy volunteers. AVI-7288 is the company’s lead drug candidate for the treatment of Marburg virus infection.

The federally funded national consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), located at University of Maryland, has developed its Global Terrorism Database (GTD), the largest database of its kind. It includes more than 113,000 identified cases of terrorism around the globe – among themmore than 52,000 bombings, 14,400 assassinations, and 5,600 kidnappings – and provides available  information on the date, location, weapons used, nature of target, number of casualties, and name of the group or individual responsible for each incident.

Since the beginning of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, U.S. Special Operation forces have fought against Chechen jihadists based in Pakistan’s tribal areas and fighting alongside Taliban and al-Qaeda militants. Veterans of U.S. Special Forces say that Chechen fighters were more determined and ferocious than other Islamists. Some scholars dispute these reports, pointing out that there were no Chechen among militants captured in Afghanistan, but rather Russian-speaking Uzbeks and Tajiks. Other scholars say that the fact that there were no captured Chechen militants is indication that they are zealots who fight to the death rather than let themselves be captured.

Threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction do not seem as imminent today as they did after the 9/11 attacks, but Jill Hruby, vice president of International, Homeland, and Nuclear Security at Sandia Labs, says that scientists, industry, and universities working on technological solutions to national security challenges must anticipate what could come next. Speaking at AAAS annual meeting, Hruby said that in an environment of lower public interest — due, in part, to the success of early efforts to combat terrorism that resulted in fewer major incidents in recent years — continued collaboration between national security laboratories, academia, and industry is needed.

A new study from HIS Jane reports that the number of attacks by non-state armed groups around the world has rapidly increased in just five years. In 2009, 7,217 terrorist and insurgent attacks were recorded by open sources. In 2013, that number increased by more than 150 percent, to 18,524. The study’s author says that the epicenter of 2013 activity was in the Middle East, with significant pockets of violence radiating out to neighboring regions in Africa and South Asia. The top 3 most active non-state armed groups in 2013 were Barisan Revolusi Nasional (Thailand), the Taliban, and Islami Chhatra Shibir (Bangladesh).