Flight ban on laptops 'sparked by IS threat'....................

Flight ban on laptops 'sparked by IS threat'

An aircraft cabin ban on large electronic devices was prompted by intelligence suggesting a terror threat to US-bound flights, say US media.

The US and UK have announced new carry-on restrictions banning laptops on certain passenger flights.

The so-called Islamic State group (IS) has been working on ways to smuggle explosives on to planes by hiding them in electronics, US sources tell ABC.

The tip-off was judged by the US to be "substantiated" and "credible".

Inbound flights on nine airlines operating out of 10 airports in eight countries are subject to the US Department of Homeland Security ban.

Phones and medical devices are not affected.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is hosting a two-day meeting of ministers and senior officials from 68 nations to discuss the threat from IS.

The Washington talks will be the first full meeting of the coalition since December 2014.

What is the meeting about? By Barbara Plett-Usher, US State Department correspondent

This will be a chance for the Trump administration to put its stamp on the global battle against the Islamic State group, and for the reticent secretary of state to put his stamp on a foreign policy issue that the president has identified as a priority.

The State Department says the meeting aims to accelerate efforts to defeat IS in its remaining strongholds: the Iraqi city of Mosul and the Syrian city of Raqqa.

On the campaign trail Mr Trump claimed to have a secret plan to obliterate the group. But his Pentagon has largely stuck with Barack Obama's strategy of supporting local ground forces, albeit with increased US military participation as the assault on Raqqa nears.

Coalition members will also discuss how to stabilise and govern the cities after the conflict; and they're looking to see if Washington remains committed to a longer term effort to secure the region.

UK flight ban on devices announced

Easyjet introduces laptop ban

What do we know of the threat?

Eric Swalwell, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC News there was "a new aviation threat".

"We know that our adversaries, terrorist groups in the United States and outside the United States, seek to bring down a US-bound airliner. That's one of their highest value targets. And we're doing everything we can right now to prevent that from happening."

"It was based on intelligence reports that are fairly recent. Intelligence of something possibly planned."

The restriction is based, we are told, on "evaluated intelligence", BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner writes.

That means that US intelligence has either intercepted discussion of a possible extremist plot or has been passed word of one by a human informant.

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Israel's Arrow anti-missile system 'in first hit'

Israel has shot down a Syrian missile using its most advanced anti-missile system for the first time, Israeli media say.

A surface-to-air missile (SAM) was intercepted using the Arrow system, designed to stop long-range ballistic missiles, reports say.

The SAMs were fired at Israeli jets which had just raided sites in Syria.

Debris from the intercepted SAM came down in Jordan. Two other SAMs are said to have landed in Israel.

In a rare admission, the Israeli military said its aircraft had attacked several targets in Syria before Syria launched the missiles.

Israel said none of its planes had been "compromised", despite Syria claiming it had shot down one of four aircraft involved in the raid.

A serious escalation: Analysis by Jonathan Marcus, BBC defence correspondent

This episode is unusual on a number of counts. It is rare for Israel to admit to air strikes in Syria though there have been reports of at least four similar raids against Hezbollah weapons shipments since the start of December last year.

This also looks to be the first operational use of Israel's Arrow anti-ballistic missile system - launched possibly at an errant Syrian surface-to-air missile - that might have landed in Israeli territory.

The incident - not least because the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) statement has made it "official" - represents a serious escalation in tensions between Israel and Syria.

It comes less than 10 days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Moscow for talks with Vladimir Putin. Russian radars and aircraft control a significant slice of Syrian airspace.

It's a signal perhaps to all concerned that if weapons supplies to Hezbollah continue, then Israel is ready to escalate its air campaign.

Israeli missile defence a game-changer?

There has been sporadic cross-border fire between the two countries since the start of the Syrian war in 2011.

Air strikes, said to have been carried out by Israel, have hit sites in Syria on numerous occasions, reportedly targeting weapons shipments for Lebanon's Shia militant movement Hezbollah.

Shells, mostly believed to be strays from the fighting in Syria, have also landed in the Israel-occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Syria has also previously fired anti-aircraft missiles at Israeli fighter planes over its airspace, although none are known to have been hit.

The Israeli military said its planes were already back in Israeli airspace when the SAMs were fired in the early hours of Friday.

Israeli media said one missile was intercepted north of Jerusalem by the Arrow system.

The Jordanian military said missile debris also landed in rural areas in the north of the country, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Pictures and video on social media showed a group of people gathered round what were said to be the burnt remains of a missile embedded in the ground amid twisted metal beside a building.

AP said it hit the courtyard of a home in Inbeh, about 25 miles (40 kilometres) from the Syrian border.

What is the Arrow system?

An anti-missile defence system jointly developed by Israel and the US in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, which saw Israel hit by 39 Scud missiles fired by Iraq
Two increasingly advanced versions of the system have been developed since it was introduced in 2000
Ostensibly designed to take out long-range ballistic missiles (those which leave the Earth's atmosphere on a very high trajectory)
Part of a multi-tiered missile defence shield to protect Israel against short-, medium-, and long-range missile threats
BBC

Is North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un rational?

Is Kim Jong-un rational? The new US ambassador to the United Nations thinks he is not. Nikki Haley said after North Korea's simultaneous launch of four ballistic missiles: "This is not a rational person." But is she right?

Kim Jong-un may have many flaws. He is without doubt ruthless - the bereaved relatives of the victims of his regime, including within his own family, would testify to that. He may have driven through an economic policy that keeps his people living at a standard way below that in South Korea and, increasingly, China.

And he seems to have personal issues, such as eating a lot - photographs show his bulging girth - and being a fairly heavy smoker.

But whatever these failings and foibles, is he actually irrational - which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as "not logical or reasonable, not endowed with the power of reason"?

Scholars who study him think he is behaving very rationally, even with the purging and terrorising of those around him. Prof Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University in Seoul told the BBC: "He is perfectly rational. He sometimes overdoes it. He sometimes tends to apply excessive force. Why kill hundreds of generals when dozens will do?

"Most people he kills would never join a conspiracy but he feels it's better to overdo it. It's better to kill nine loyal generals and one potential conspirator than to allow a conspirator to stay alive.

"But he is rational."

Prof John Delury of Yonsei University in Seoul said that even having his half-brother killed (as the allegation is - denied by Pyongyang) would be a rational act; not nice but rational.

"A sad fact of history is that young kings often kill their uncles and elder brothers. It may be cruel, but it is not 'irrational'. If you don't take my word for it, read Shakespeare."

On this assassination of Kim Jong-nam, allegedly at the hands of agents of the regime, Prof Lankov says it is similar to the Ottoman Empire, where concubines of the Sultan had countless children, any of whom had a bloodline that might one day legitimise a claim to the throne.

Prof Lankov thinks that Kim Jong-nam was, accordingly, a threat, probably not that great a one but still intolerable: "Probably he was not that dangerous but you never know. He was definitely under Chinese control."

Prof Delury said that there was nothing irrational about Kim Jong-un's drive to obtain credible nuclear weapons: "He has no reliable allies to guarantee his safety, and he faces a hostile superpower that has, in recent memory, invaded sovereign states around the world and overthrown their governments.

"The lesson North Koreans learned from the invasion of Iraq was that if Saddam Hussein really possessed those weapons of mass destruction, he might have survived."

This was compounded by the lesson of Libya, according to Prof Lankov: "Did American promises of American prosperity help Gaddafi and his family? Kim Jong-un knows perfectly well what happened to the only fool who believed Western promises and renounced the development of nuclear weapons. And he's not going to make that mistake. Once you don't have nuclear weapons you are completely unprotected.

"Did Russian or American and British promises to guarantee Ukrainian integrity help Ukraine? No. Why should he expect American, Russian or Chinese promises to help him stay alive? He is rational."

If he is rational, what does he want? On this, scholars are divided. Prof Brian Myers of Dongseo University in Busan in South Korea said that Kim Jong-un wants security but also a united Korea as the only way he and the regime can survive in the long term.

"As every North Korean knows, the whole point of the military-first policy is 'final victory', or the unification of the peninsula under North Korean rule."

A credible nuclear force would give him the ability to pressure the United States to remove its troops from the peninsula.

"North Korea needs the capability to strike the US with nuclear weapons in order to pressure both adversaries into signing peace treaties. This is the only grand bargain it has ever wanted," said Prof Myers.

And once the US troops had gone, on this argument, North Korean rule would be unstoppable.

Prof Lankov doesn't agree with the emphasis. He thinks survival is by far the most important motive behind Kim Jong-un's actions: "Above all, he wants to stay alive. Second, economic prosperity and growth - but it's a distant second."

So what's to be done? Prof Lankov sees no good options: "I don't see any solution right now." He thinks the best option is to persuade North Korea to freeze its development of nuclear weapons at a particular size of arsenal "but it will be very difficulty and North Koreans may not keep their promises".

And money would have to be paid. "But this deal isn't good from an American point of view because it means paying a reward to a blackmailer, and if you pay a reward to a blackmailer once, you invite more blackmail.

"The second option which might work is a military operation but that is likely to trigger a second Korean war and will permanently damage American credibility as a reliable ally and protector.

"Worldwide, a lot of people would see that it's better to have enemies than such friends."

BBC NEWS

'Huge advance' in fighting world's biggest killer

An innovative new drug can prevent heart attacks and strokes by cutting bad cholesterol to unprecedented levels, say doctors.

The results of the large international trial on 27,000 patients means the drug could soon be used by millions.

The British Heart Foundation said the findings were a significant advance in fighting the biggest killer in the world.

Around 15 million people die each year from heart attacks or stroke.

Bad cholesterol is the villain in heart world - it leads to blood vessels furring up, becoming easy to block which fatally starves the heart or brain of oxygen.

It is why millions of people take drugs called statins to reduce the amount of bad cholesterol.

The new drug - evolocumab - changes the way the liver works to also cut bad cholesterol.

"It is much more effective than statins," said Prof Peter Sever, from Imperial College London.

He organised the bit of the trial taking place in the UK with funding from the drug company Amgen.

Prof Sever told the BBC News website: "The end result was cholesterol levels came down and down and down and we've seen cholesterol levels lower than we have ever seen before in the practice of medicine."

BBC NEWS

Islamic State: An invincible force?

In June 2014, so-called Islamic State (IS) took over the Iraqi city of Mosul. Within weeks, the organisation had swept through large swathes in Iraq and Syria, seizing a territory the size of the United Kingdom.

The territory IS controls has shrunk in the two years since a US-led multinational coalition launched an air campaign on its positions, first in Iraq and then Syria.

The coalition has managed to push IS out of the Iraqi cities of Tikrit and Ramadi, as well as an ever-increasing stretch of Syrian-Turkish borderland.

Enemies of the "caliphate", backed by (mostly) US fighter jets, are now bivouacked 50km (30 miles) from the IS "capital" of Raqqa, in northern Syria.

Yet IS' hold on its most valuable strategic terrain, the areas seized either in or before 2014, is still uncontested.

It is entrenched in Mosul and Raqqa and the Sunni Arab tribal heartland of the Euphrates river valley, which stretches from eastern Syria to western Iraq.

While it has lost much of the northern Syrian borderland, IS has also expanded into areas hitherto resistant to it, such as the Damascus suburbs and parts of the Aleppo countryside.

War spoils

IS' military arsenal consists of Russian and American weaponry mostly seized from government and rebel forces in both Iraq and Syria.

Its stockpiles include a fleet of Humvees seized after it defeated the US-equipped Iraqi army in Mosul and elsewhere.

The group's ability to acquire war spoils in the form of Russian and American tanks, recoilless rifles, rocket-launchers, light arms and ammunition was seriously diminished after it became harder to swiftly seize new territory.

When the campaign started in 2014, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said IS could muster between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters, up from an initial estimate of 10,000.

Despite over a year of air strikes, in February this year the White House said IS still had up to an estimated 25,000 fighters, mainly foreigners, from more than 90 countries.

Turning minds

Despite its fearsome reputation and initial shock grab of territory, IS is not invincible on the battlefield.

The bulk of its rank-and-file infantry, particularly foreign, do not fight well and are often dispatched by their native commanders as cannon fodder.

IS' most capable soldiers, its "special forces", have typically been Iraqi and Syrian militants with long experience of fighting in those countries, and graduates of other insurgencies, notably the Libyan-heavy al-Battar Brigade or the various units of militants from Chechnya or elsewhere in the Caucasus.

Where IS has excelled is in the realm of intelligence tradecraft.

This includes the maintenance of a highly elaborate and multilingual propaganda machine that caters to all constituencies, from American Muslims to Iraqi tribesmen.

Using bribery, blackmail and its own totalitarian form of cultural outreach, it has been able to win friends and influence people across thousands of square kilometres, often conquering a town, city or village long before its advancing columns lay siege to it.

IS dispatches cash-strapped sleeper agents into the ranks of its opposition, such as the Iraqi Security Forces or the Free Syrian Army, to slowly, covertly, buy or build a constituency.

Baathist core

IS is in many respects a project of Saddam Hussein's now-outlawed Baath Party, but with a different ideology.

Former agents or officers of the former Iraqi president's regime dominate its leadership.

For instance, Samir Abd Mohammed al-Khlifawi, better known as Hajji Bakr, was a colonel in Saddam's elite intelligence service of Saddam's Air Defence Force.

He was responsible for building IS' infrastructure in northern Syria in 2012 before being killed by anti-Assad rebels.

Another key IS figure was Abu Abdul Rahman al-Bilawi, a former captain in the Iraqi army. He was killed two days before the group's seizure of Mosul in June 2014, an operation whose final blitzkrieg he himself planned and so was accordingly dubbed "Bilawi Revenge".

Bilawi hailed from Iraq's Dulaim tribe, the country's largest. He was also quite close to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of a precursor to IS.

A third ex-Baathist was Abu Ali al-Anbari, also once an intelligence officer in Saddam's army.

Anbari is the mastermind of the group's espionage and clandestine services, heading the IS Security and Intelligence Council and so tasked with running a vast honeycomb network of spies, operatives and sleeper cells, including those now active in countries beyond Iraq and Syria.

The ex-Baathists shape the group's jihadist ideology, handle its security (weeding out infiltrators or possible putschists) and military operations, and ensure its resilience.

They represent a battle-hardened and state-educated core that would likely endure (as they have done through US occupation and a decade of war) even if the organisation's middle and lower cadres are decimated.

Ex-Baathists have established an underground network, whose operatives are often disguised, even from other members.

This network of sleeper cells and security-minded members represent the organisation's core and, even if IS is defeated or contained militarily, will make it difficult to vanquish all together.

Hassan Hassan is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, London, and a Resident Fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, Washington; Michael Weiss is a senior editor at the Daily Beast.

BBC NEWS