U.S. Steps Up Its Attacks on ISIS

ERBIL, Iraq — The United States and its allies have sharply increased their airstrikes against the sprawling oil fields that the Islamic State controls in eastern Syria in an effort to disrupt one of the terrorist group’s main sources of revenue, American officials said this week. For months, the United States has been frustrated by the Islamic State’s ability to keep producing and exporting oil — what Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter recently called “a critical pillar of the financial infrastructure” of the group — which generates about $40 million a month, or nearly $500 million a year, according to Treasury Department estimates. While the American-led air campaign has conducted periodicLt. Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the head of that campaign, headquartered in Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, said in an interview last week that allied warplanes are intensifying attacks on a series of fixed sites such as oil-production facilities, bomb-making factories and other so-called critical nodes that support the Islamic State’s war effort. The revamped plan for attacking the oil-production sites comes after weeks of intense study of eight major fields — Omar, Tanak, El Isbah, Sijan, Jafra, Azraq, Barghooth and Abu Hardan — to determine how to inflict more financial pain on the Islamic State, American officials said. Instead of putting the group’s oil-production capability out of action for days, the new goal is to knock out specific installations for six months to a year, the officials said. This involves targeting fuel oil separators and elements of pumping stations at sites in Islamic State-controlled areas of Deir el-Zour, a city on the Euphrates River near the eastern border with Iraq. At the same time, the United States shifted some of its surveillance and reconnaissance planes from bases in the Persian Gulf to Incirlik air base in Turkey, a much shorter flight to Syria to allow planes to spend more time lingering over their targets. The new operation is called Tidal Wave II, named after Operation Tidal Wave, the World War II campaign to hit Romania’s oil industry and thus hurt Nazi Germany. Lt. Gen. Sean B. MacFarland, who in September became the commander of the international coalition’s effort in Iraq and Syria, came up with the name. Much of the initial targeting was done in South Carolina at Shaw Air Force Base, which has become a leading symbol of the military’s ability to carry out global operations from afar. One of the main objectives for the scores of analysts and planners at the air base has been to attack its ability to produce and sell oil. In the air campaign’s first three months, for instance, allied warplanes damaged or destroyed more than two dozen smaller mobile refineries and about twice as many collection points where drivers dump their crude oil to be hauled to refineries. airstrikes against oil refineries and other production facilities in eastern Syria that the group controls, the organization’s engineers have been able to quickly repair damage, and keep the oil flowing, American officials said. The Obama administration has also balked at attacking the Islamic State’s fleet of tanker trucks — its main distribution network — fearing civilian casualties. But now the administration has decided to increase the attacks and focus on inflicting damage that takes longer to fix or requires specially ordered parts, American officials said.The first evidence of the new strategy came on Oct. 21, when B-1 bombers and other allied warplanes hit 26 targets in the Omar oil field, one of the two largest oil-production sites in all of Syria. American military analysts estimate the Omar field generates $1.7 million to $5.1 million per month for the Islamic State. French warplanes struck another oil field nearby earlier this week.The goal of the operation over the next several weeks is to cripple eight major oil fields, about two-thirds of the refineries and other oil-production sites controlled by the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL. “We intend to shut it all down,” Col. Steven H. Warren, a military spokesman in Baghdad, said in an email on Thursday. More broadly, the intensified targeting of one of the militant group’s major financing sources is part of the Obama administration’s effort to accelerate the pace of the anti-Islamic State campaign. The campaign against the militant group also includes helping Kurdish fighters retake the Iraqi border town of Sinjar, and sending some 50 Special Operations troops to assist opposition fighters in eastern Syria as well as the air campaign. Lt. Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the head of that campaign, headquartered in Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, said in an interview last week that allied warplanes are intensifying attacks on a series of fixed sites such as oil-production facilities, bomb-making factories and other so-called critical nodes that support the Islamic State’s war effort. The revamped plan for attacking the oil-production sites comes after weeks of intense study of eight major fields — Omar, Tanak, El Isbah, Sijan, Jafra, Azraq, Barghooth and Abu Hardan — to determine how to inflict more financial pain on the Islamic State, American officials said. Instead of putting the group’s oil-production capability out of action for days, the new goal is to knock out specific installations for six months to a year, the officials said. This involves targeting fuel oil separators and elements of pumping stations at sites in Islamic State-controlled areas of Deir el-Zour, a city on the Euphrates River near the eastern border with Iraq. At the same time, the United States shifted some of its surveillance and reconnaissance planes from bases in the Persian Gulf to Incirlik air base in Turkey, a much shorter flight to Syria to allow planes to spend more time lingering over their targets. The new operation is called Tidal Wave II, named after Operation Tidal Wave, the World War II campaign to hit Romania’s oil industry and thus hurt Nazi Germany. Lt. Gen. Sean B. MacFarland, who in September became the commander of the international coalition’s effort in Iraq and Syria, came up with the name. Much of the initial targeting was done in South Carolina at Shaw Air Force Base, which has become a leading symbol of the military’s ability to carry out global operations from afar. One of the main objectives for the scores of analysts and planners at the air base has been to attack its ability to produce and sell oil. In the air campaign’s first three months, for instance, allied warplanes damaged or destroyed more than two dozen smaller mobile refineries and about twice as many collection points where drivers dump their crude oil to be hauled to refineries. Now that targeting is being intensified. “The art we had of building target sets and doing deep studies on adversaries, in some cases was a lost art,” General Brown said. “What targets are we not striking that we could go strike? How do we bring all the intelligence together?” On the Oct. 21 mission, American aircraft struck Islamic State-controlled oil refineries, command and control centers, and transportation infrastructure in the Omar oil field, which produced about 30,000 barrels a day when it was fully functioning. More recently, the field produced about a third of that or less, analysts said. “It was very specific targets that would result in long-term incapacitation of their ability to sell oil, to get it out of the ground and transport it,” Maj. Michael Filanowski, a military operations officer, told reporters in Baghdad after the strike. The French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said on Tuesday that his nation’s warplanes had attacked more oil targets in the same region. It was France’s fourth wave of strikes in Syria since President François Hollande decided in September to join the campaign there against the Islamic State, and the second in as many days. American commanders cautioned that it may take some time to gauge the impact of the new targeting, given the financial reserves the militant group has built up. Unlike measuring the immediate impact of bombing tanks or soldiers, “it might be longer to feel the effect of oil fields,” General Brown said.

US evaporated 'Jihadi John' off the face of the earth

The drone strike that wiped out ISIS executioner “Jihadi John” in Syria was controlled from an Air Force base deep in the Nevada desert in an operation months in the making, it was revealed Friday. “This guy was a human animal, and killing him is probably making the world a better place,” military spokesman US Army Col. Steven Warren said Friday. Authorities are “99.9 percent sure” ISIS madman Mohammed Emwazi, 27, died during the US drone strike, which kicked off just before midnight local time on Thursday, a US official told The Post. Three aerial vehicles — including a British drone and two MQ-9 Reaper drones owned by the US — had been following Emwazi for most of the day as he met with various people around the city, sources said. At 11:40 p.m., drone operators stationed thousands of miles away at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada were given the green light as Emwazi got into a car at the Islamic courts in Raqqa, the Telegraph reported. The operators released two Hellfire missiles, blowing the vehicle to bits. “We didn’t strike until we ID’d him coming out of the building and getting into the vehicle,” the U.S. official said. “We had a strong confirmation on who was getting in the vehicle and photographic evidence that the car evaporated.” Authorities had been monitoring Emwazi for a few days as he visited family in Raqqa and spent time at an Islamic State media operations center, officials said. The sudden attack, which lasted just a matter of seconds, took place near a clock tower in the city’s center that has been the site of numerous ISIS executions, an anti-ISIS activist group in Raqqa said. Three burned-out vehicles remained at the site on Friday, according to the group, which calls itself Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently. “We know for a fact that the weapons system hit its intended target, and that the personnel who were on the receiving end of that weapons system were in fact killed,” Warren said, adding that the Pentagon is “reasonably certain” Emwazi perished in the strike.He was in a car with his “best friend,” who also died, Warren added. While the strike was “fairly routine,” Warren said it was significant because Emwazi, who has beheaded American and British hostages in gruesome videos, was an “ISIL [ISIS] celebrity” and a public face of the barbaric terrorist group. “There is a significant blow to [the group’s] prestige,” he said. Secretary of State John Kerry, appearing at a news conference in Tunis, Tunisia, issued the group a stern warning. “We are still assessing the results of this strike, but the terrorists associated with Daesh [ISIS] need to know this: Your days are numbered, and you will be defeated,” he said. “There is no future, no path forward for Daesh, which does not lead ultimately to its elimination, to its destruction.” British Prime Minister David Cameron staunchly defended the attack, saying it was “an act of self-defense” and “the right thing to do.” “We have been working with the United States literally around the clock to track him down,” Cameron said. “This was a combined effort, and the contribution of both our countries was essential. Emwazi is a barbaric murderer.” “He was ISIL’s lead executioner, and let us never forget that he killed many, many Muslims, too.” he added.White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said President Obama had been briefed on the attack, and the families of Emwazi’s victims had been notified before it was made public. “The fact that we were even able to conduct this airstrike, I think, is some indication that we are serious about applying pressure to ISIL leaders and to using that intelligence to do that,” he said. He called Emwazi, “a threat not just to the region but to countries around the world.” Clad in a black mask and wielding a knife, the ISIS executioner shocked the world when he beheaded American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff in a pair of grisly videos that were spread through social media. He also executed British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, along with Japanese journalist Kenji Goto. His first video, titled “A Message to America,” was released in August 2014. In that video, Foley read a statement to the camera, then Emwazi took over, going on an anti-American rant before threatening to kill Sotloff. Emwazi, who got the nickname “John the Beatle” for his British accent, grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in West London and graduated from college with a degree in computer programming. He had been on a list of potential terror suspects since 2009, when he went to Tanzania, and later traveled to Syria in 2012, where he is believed to have joined up with ISIS.ISIS extremists are now on edge in Raqqa, a Syrian city where the buzz of drones hovering above has become commonplace. “There is great fear among them. So many senior ISIS members have been killed,” one activist told The Times of London. “They are trying their best to avoid it but they cannot. They are so surprised.” “ISIS has issued so many directives,” the source added. “They banned their people from using the main road and said only use the secondary roads. They ordered ISIS VIPs not to drive high-tech or luxury cars.” Warren said that the operation against Emwazi was one of several launched against the group’s leaders in recent months. He added that the US has killed one mid- to upper-level leader every two days since May. The Ramadhan Foundation, a Muslim organization in the UK, cheered Emwazi’s demise, calling him “evil.” “The killing of Mohammed Emwazi in Syria is a significant moment in the fight to get justice for David Haines, Alan Henning and all the victims of this evil man,” Mohammed Shafiq, the group’s executive director said, according to CNN. Meanwhile, Turkish authorities said they detained a man believed to be Aine Lesley Davis, 30, one Emwazi’s terrorist associates.

Google Self-Driving Car Just Got Pulled Over By The Cops For Driving Too Slow

We would have loved to see the dash cam footage of this traffic cop's reaction as he pulls over a little white car on one of his rounds only to discover that... it has no driver! Maybe this officer forgot that Google's self-driving cars are being tested on the roads of Mountain View. Apparently, he pulled over the vehicle because it was going too slow. Google took the whole incident in stride. A photo of the enounter even showed up on the Internet. The Google Self-Driving Car Project shared the snapshot on a Google+ post, explaining that they capped the speed limit of their self-driving cars at only 25 mph for safety reasons. It was previously reported that the driverless cars were also being programmed to be safer around children. And although we're pretty sure that Google's parent company, Alphabet, can afford to cough up the fine for a traffic ticket, it turns out, no ticket was issued in this instance.

Migrant crisis: No EU-Africa grand bargain

Surely some of the first rules of wooing are: if you're going to do it, do it properly. Don't insult the object of your desire with promises you both know you can't keep. If you lack the cash for that magnificent bunch of fragrant roses, resist the temptation to brandish a fraying fake bouquet instead. There has to be a better alternative, and you're unlikely to get a positive response. And as for trying to bully or force someone into partnership with you - a little tip: it's unlikely to go down well. In this respect, the EU makes a lousy suitor. After reeling in panic and reacting in slow motion to the - to an extent predicted - dramatic surge this year in refugees and other migrants arriving, the EU is now trying a more comprehensive, strategic approach. It includes an attempt to persuade (woo/push) the migrants' countries of origin, or the transit countries, to: stop them leaving in the first place take them back, if they are deemed to be an economic migrant or failed asylum seeker. Migration to Europe explained in graphics Spanish method The EU also plans to send cash and other aid "over there", in the hope of dissuading more refugees and others from wanting to reach Europe, risking their lives.A rather similar formula worked for Spain several years ago when it was the main EU arrival point for people smugglers' boats. Bilateral deals with Morocco and Mauritania significantly reduced the arrival of "pateras", as Spaniards nicknamed those boats. But Spain came under fire from aid organisations (NGOs) at the time for trying to make African countries the "gatekeepers of Europe". The NGOs also raised concerns about possible human rights abuses against would-be migrants blocked at the border. They complained that the bilateral agreements, sorely lacking in transparency, smacked more of backroom deals. Similar concerns are now being directed at the EU as a whole. African scepticism This week, the EU hosted a summit in Malta with African nations, in the hope of coming to an "understanding" on slowing the flow of migrants to Europe. But, in addition to NGO concerns (such as the risk of groups linked to human rights abuses, like the Eritrean security forces, siphoning off money allocated to stop migrants), African leaders widely dismissed EU offers of cash and other aid, as far too little to tackle the root causes of migration. As flowers go, the extra aid package doesn't even make the gaudy plastic category. The EU offered €3.6bn ($3.9bn; £2.5bn) to improve life in a number of African countries. This in addition to the €20bn it already gives in aid to Africa. Somalia's distinctly unimpressed Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke put it to the BBC that Africa needed investment, not charity, to improve its economies. The same as the US, the EU or anywhere else in the world, he said. Persuasion fails In fact, EU countries couldn't even muster the pledged extra cash. It's a promise they seem unable or unwilling to keep. The European Commission says it will put in €1.8bn and wants the rest of the new fund made up by individual European nations. So far they've coughed up less than €80m. The EU was also unable to persuade/charm - some say bully - African countries into automatically receiving deported migrants back. Instead, in the written summit conclusions, the EU was forced to emphasise "voluntary repatriations". That prompted obvious questions about the bloc's declared aim of "speeding up the return" of economic migrants and other failed asylum seekers - a key part of its plan to tackle the migrant crisis. In short: the summit was not a resounding success. And a number of European newspapers were critical of the EU even trying to make a deal. Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung says the EU's offer of money to reduce the refugee numbers from Africa could open the EU to accusations of "showing its real values by co-operating with unjust regimes". Turkey's strong hand Similar objections are raised when it comes to EU attempts to strike a deal with Turkey - now the main departure point for refugees and other migrants crossing to Europe. EU leaders are planning a Turkey summit before the end of the year, but - as German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pointed out - "Ankara holds the cards". And diplomats worry that Ankara will demand an extravagant bouquet in terms of money and political concessions - such as lifting visa restrictions, and accelerating Turkey's EU membership bid - in exchange for help on migration. And again, critics challenge the EU for courting Turkey at all - a country with an imperious president and dismal human rights record. Border fences There are also those who say the EU's focus is far too fixed on creating "Fortress Europe", on keeping people out and not on introducing legal ways for them to come to over. Because come they will. The European Commission expects about three million refugees and other migrants to arrive in Europe by 2017. Clearly, whatever the EU does during this crisis, it will come under fire from some quarter or another. All too often, it comes up against itself - a behemoth of 28 nations, struggling to work together. Even the quota system - accepted (reluctantly) by most EU countries - to share out more equally the asylum seekers in Europe is an unmitigated flop so far. Agreed number of people to be relocated: 160,000. People moved to date: 147. Cross-border co-operation is disintegrating as barbed wire goes up and borders slam shut across Europe: in Slovenia, Hungary, Austria, Sweden, Norway… Even Germany is toughening border regulations. In stark contrast to the warm welcome given to hundreds or thousands earlier this autumn, Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany's hugely popular finance minister, has begun to mutter darkly about a migrant "avalanche" engulfing his country. There's little evidence of the EU - more of each country for itself. That prompted the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, to warn that Schengen, the EU agreement allowing passport-free travel across much of Europe, risks collapse. Yet it is one of the EU's proudest achievements. You could argue Schengen has already wilted and died.

Responding to Climate Change

The first rule in managing any crisis is: If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. In order to manage climate change, we have to reduce its primary cause, the greenhouse gas emissions that are making the problem worse by the day. Mr. Koonin correctly asserts that adaptation to our new climate reality is critically important. However, it’s not enough, not nearly enough. There’s no plausible scenario whereby we can adapt our way out of huge disruption to our way of life. We must continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, too. Impacts from climate change are so broad and complex that all of our policy and technology ingenuity must be brought to bear. Any agreement from the Paris talks is another step, but it is certainly not the end. Continued foot-dragging and obstruction on reduction efforts will further endanger our way of life. We have to continue, and accelerate, reduction of greenhouse gases.

Apple is Shutting Down Beats Music

When Apple AAPL -2.90% buys a company, chances are, the acquisition (or the employees) will be swallowed up, never to be seen again. Apple announced on Thursday that it would shut down Beats Music, a move that comes less than six months after the premiere of Apple Music. All Beats Music subscriptions will be canceled on Nov. 30, but those who move to Apple Music will quickly discover that the $10-a-month streaming alternative incorporates many of Beats’ features. While the death of Beats Music (Beats’ consumer electronics business will live on) may upset some users, it’s perhaps no surprise. In fact, one could argue that it’s surprising that it took Apple this long to shutter the service. Apple bought Beats last year for $3 billion in large part for the technology behind its streaming-music service. Unlike so many recent acquisitions, Apple let Beats Music live on instead of its more typical strategy of immediately shutting down acquisitions after incorporating their technology into its own products. Since 2013, Apple has made nearly three dozen mostly small acquisitions or acquihires, a tactic in which it will acquire a company’s employees but not the firm itself. It usually keeps quiet about them, although Beats is an exception to that rule because of its size. Usually, Apple will neither confirm nor deny that it has made an acquisition or acquihire, saying only that it will, from time to time buy startups. While its canned statement does little to satisfy those who want more details, nearly all of the companies that have been bought by Apple have confirmed it through their LinkedIn pages or on their own websites. Apple declined comment for this article. In April, Apple acquired a camera company named Linx. Like the others Fortune analyzed, neither Apple nor the target company would talk about the iPhone maker’s intentions for it. However, Linx has since gone dark, its website scrubbed from the Internet, and some of its employees are now working at Apple. In fact, Linx co-founder and CEO Ziv Attar is now heading up camera algorithms at Apple, according to his LinkedIn page. Last year, Apple acquired Swell, an audio-streaming service that catered to music and podcast listeners. Again, Apple wouldn’t say why it bought the company, but the service was promptly shut down. The list of companies Apple acquired and subsequently shut down goes on: book-recommendation service BookLamp was nixed in June 2014, followed by digital magazine platform Prss in Sept. Dryft, a keyboard app, went dark in 2014. Even PrimeSense, a 3D sensing company, has stopped selling its products to other companies and is now living inside the growing Apple. In 2012, Apple made an important acquisition by buying AuthenTec, a company that made biometric technology that ultimately became the backbone of its Touch ID fingerprint sensor. Immediately after the company was under Apple’s control, Android smartphone makers had to look elsewhere for biometric technology. It was an issue that put Android vendors on their heels, former Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside said in an interview earlier this year. “The secret behind that is that it was supposed to be fingerprint recognition, and Apple bought the best supplier,” Woodside told The Telegraph about the Nexus 6, which was originally meant to come equipped with a fingerprint sensor using AuthenTec technology. “So the second-best supplier was the only one available to everyone else in the industry.” Of course, Apple is not the only tech company to acquire smaller firms and promptly shut them down. Google GOOG -1.95% , Facebook FB -3.72% , and other prominent technology companies will sometimes make similar moves. However, an analysis of their recent acquisitions—especially those of Facebook, which include image-sharing app Instagram and chatting app WhatsApp—show that they’re not as consistent as Apple at shuttering companies quickly after they acquire them. For example, a video-editing company Google acquired this week, Fly Labs, is still around. Better yet, it’s now making its apps available for free for a period of three months before Google finally takes them down. Experts say Apple’s acquisition strategy is based in part on its desire to cut off potential competitors from accessing technologies it deems important. Moreover, Apple isn’t interested in letting a service continue on and potentially distract it from improving its own services like Apple Maps, Apple Music, or Apple TV, they say. “Apple usually makes technology acquisitions that enhance their existing or future offering,” says Trip Chowdhry, managing director of equity research at Global Equities Research. Chowdhry added that Apple’s acquisition of database company FoundationDB in March was “shut down to launch the product with Apple tvOS.” Beats Music’s shutdown, he says, is all about improving Apple Music. It’s also believed that the FoundationDB acquisition was used to improve the company’s handling of data across its many products, including Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and the Mac. But perhaps there is more to Apple’s acquisitions than meets the eye. While the company clearly has no issue taking services down to improve its own, one could argue that Apple’s acquisition targets also benefit. They are, after all, making some cash from their inventions and incorporating their technologies into Apple’s services. They get more reach than they ever would have as independent companies. So, while Apple’s acquisition playbook may seem all about the company and its users, entrepreneurs don’t seem to lose here, either. Apple may protect its business with acquisitions and it may bring startups under its roof, but eventually, those technologies find their way into the company’s products. And hopefully, they benefit more people than they otherwise would.

Brands Finding Social Ads as Effective as Traditional Advertising

Social advertising is growing on nearly every platform — Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat and more — but the biggest knock against paid social has been proving effectiveness. It appears the tide is changing. According to a recent study by IZEA, 52 percent of companies surveyed have a sponsored social budget and they find social ads to be in the top three most effective marketing investments they’ve made. Ted Murphy, chairman and CEO at IZEA, commented on the study in a press release: For the second year in a row, Marketers are seeing the value in leveraging Content Creators to reach their target audiences in authentic and original ways. We have created the Creator economy, a place where content has real power. Sponsored content has the ability to dramatically change the trajectory of conversations and sentiment for and about brands; we have the power to send products flying off of shelves. Interestingly enough, many consumers surveyed also said that social ads were as effective as TV ads. Just how prevalent are social ads? From the IZEA study: Over one in three adult online users age 18 to 70 have seen a Sponsored Social message in the past year. Overall, consumers estimate they see a total of 86 Sponsored Social messages per month across all platforms — or about three per day. Overall, about two in five consumers are seeing more Sponsored Social messages than one year ago, with highest penetration sites driving the greatest increase. Marketers are feeling a lot better about social ads than in the past. More than half (54 percent) of marketers surveyed feel more positive about paid social than they did a year ago. It definitely shows in the budgets of those polled — 25 percent had an annual budget greater than $500,000; 5 percent of brands surveyed said their social ad budget is greater than $5 million. Marketers also reward content creators, as they are willing to pay 2.1x premium for sponsored video and blog posts over other forms of social advertising. Sponsored social is a source of income for 9 of 10 creators, who say it accounts for 55 percent of their income. Readers: Have you noticed more ads on social channels in the past year?