Digital denial

August 26, 2015 - Daily News Briefing

‘Hacktivists’ are going after Islamic State’s online propaganda and scoring some success

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French authorities formally opened a terrorism investigation Tuesday after a thwarted attack on a high-speed train last week, saying the suspected gunman had watched a jihadi video onboard minutes before the violence. The decision to open an investigation was based on the actions of 26-year-old Moroccan suspect Ayoub El-Khazzani on the train Friday night and information from other European authorities about his travels and apparent links to radical Islam, prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters. Molins said El-Khazzani notably watched the online video on his phone minutes before he walked through the Amsterdam-to-Paris train carrying an assault rifle and other weapons. Authorities say they found his phone in a bag left in the train.

A rally in US stocks evaporated in the minutes before the closing bell Tuesday, sending the Dow Jones industrial average down more than 200 points and extending Wall Street's losing streak to six days. For most of the day, it appeared that the market had shaken off some of its worries about the slowdown in China, and at one point the Dow was up by as much as 441. But then sell orders began pouring in in the last 15 minutes of trading. The Dow ended the day with a loss of 204.91 points, or 1.3 percent, at 15,666.44. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 25.59 points, or 1.4 percent, to 1,867.62. The Nasdaq composite declined 19.76 points, or 0.4 percent, to 4,506.49.

Supporters of the Iran nuclear deal see growing momentum on their side in the Senate, raising the possibility they'll be able to block a disapproval resolution and protect President Obama from having to use his veto pen. Such an outcome – which looked all but inconceivable in the days after the deal was signed July 14 – remains a long shot. It would be a major victory for Obama, who is staking his foreign policy legacy largely on the agreement struck by the US, Iran, and five world powers to dismantle most of Iran's nuclear program in exchange for billions in sanctions relief. It would take 41 senators to block the disapproval resolution scheduled for a vote next month; only 34 lawmakers would be required to uphold an Obama veto of such a resolution.

The Islamic State group released propaganda images Tuesday that purport to show militants laying explosives in and then blowing up the 2,000-year-old temple of Baalshamin in Syria's ancient caravan city of Palmyra. The images, posted on social media by supporters of the group, showed militants carrying barrels of explosives and laying them inside the temple. Other, smaller wired cans lay around the temple walls and columns. Another image shows a grey plume of smoke rising above the temple from a distance, followed by an image of the temple reduced to a pile of rocks. One caption reads: "The complete destruction of the pagan Baalshamin temple."

Hungary called on Tuesday for more money from the European Union to handle a rising tide of migrants crossing the Balkans, as a new wave hit its southern border and further exposed the cracks in EU policy towards the worst refugee crisis since World War II. More than 100,000 migrants, many of them refugees from conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, have entered Hungary, part of Europe's Schengen zone of passport-free travel, this year en route to the more affluent countries of western and northern Europe. The influx ticked up on Monday to its highest daily rate this year – 2,093 – as many race to beat a fence that Hungary is building on its 110-mile border with Serbia to keep them out.

In a report providing political ammunition to both parties, Congress' official budget analyst projected Tuesday that this year's federal deficit will drop to $426 billion, the lowest shortfall of Barack Obama's presidency. But the annual summertime update by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office also contained words of warning. It cautioned that without action by lawmakers, a graying population and growing health care costs will push annual federal deficits upward again later this decade, spiking back above $1 trillion in 2025.

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