June 13 2024
Russian ships off FL; terrorists cross southern border; drug shortages; Trump-Biden; murder rate
1 Russian warships sail 30mi off FL coast
2 Officials detain 8 who crossed southern border for suspected ties to terrorism
3 US drug shortages widespread
4 ELECTION 2024 Economist: Trump has 67% chance of beating Biden
5 US murder rates falls
6/13/1966 The Miranda rights are established
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1 Russian warships sail 30mi off FL coast
U.S. Navy monitors Cuba-bound Russian fleet as it sails within 30 miles of Florida. The U.S. Navy warships and aircraft tracked a Russian naval flotilla – three ships, including a hypersonic-capable frigate and a nuclear-powered submarine – as it headed to Cuba and possibly Venezuela Tuesday for extensive military air and naval exercises. The Russian vessels passed within 30 miles off South Florida’s coast, McClatchy and the Miami Herald reported Tuesday. The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that the ships were conducting drills, with the nuclear-capable submarine simulating a strike on a group of enemy ships. The U.S. intelligence community has assessed that none of the Russian vessels are carrying nuclear weapons, the Herald reported. The Biden administration deployed three guided-missile destroyers — the USS Truxtun, USS Donald Cook and USS Delbert D. Black — as well as a Coast Guard cutter, the Stone, and a Boeing P-8 maritime patrol aircraft to the region to track the Russians, a U.S. Northern Command official told McClatchy and the Herald. The Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces said last week that the Russian missile frigate Admiral Gorshkov, the nuclear submarine Kazan, the oil tanker Pashin and the salvage tug Nikolai Chiker will arrive on June 12 for a week’s stay. According to the marinetraffic.com website, the Russian sea rescue tug Nikolay Chiker was positioned 26 nautical miles from Key Largo on Tuesday morning. The Communist Party newspaper Granma said the ship’s visit highlights the “50th anniversary of cooperation ties” with Canada and the “bilateral collaboration for the maintenance of peace in our region. A Venezuelan training ship, the AB Simón Bolívar, is scheduled to stop at Santiago de Cuba June 15 -19.
Article Source: Cipher Brief
2 Officials detain 8 who crossed southern border for suspected ties to terrorism
ICE arrests 8 Tajiks with suspected ISIS-K ties. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested eight people from Tajikistan who entered the U.S across the Mexican border and are suspected to have ties with the terrorist group ISIS. CBS News, quoting sources, reported that the eight crossed the U.S. southern border without valid documents, were vetted and released into the U.S. with notices to appear in immigration court. One had used the CBP One app to enter, according to NBC’s sources. Later, however, law enforcement subsequently became concerned with their presence in the U.S. A multi-agency Joint Terrorism Task Force began investigating them, according to NBC, and a wiretap picked up one of them talking about bombs, the sources said. Investigators determined he had potential ties to ISIS. At that point, FBI and ICE agents moved to arrest them for immigration violations. At least two of the men had crossed into the US in spring 2023, and the arrests come after warnings from FBI Director Chris Wray about possible ISIS terror plots being staged on US soil and the group’s potential for exploiting the southern border. Some Tajiks claiming loyalty to ISIS-K, for Islamic State Khorasan, ISK, attacked a Russian concert hall in Moscow last March, killing 145 people and wounded hundreds more. In April, Wray warned lawmakers that a possible “coordinated attack” could take place in the U.S. “Increasingly concerning is the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, akin to the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russia concert hall a couple weeks ago,” Wray told a Congressional panel. CNN reported last August that the FBI was investigating a Turkish smuggler tied to ISIS who helped dozens of migrants from Uzbekistan cross the US-Mexico border.
West Point’s CTC Sentinel, in its May 2024 issue, reported that in March 2023, U.S. Central Command Commander General Michael Kurilla assessed that ISK’s ultimate goal could include striking the U.S. homeland. A number of ISK-affiliated people have recently been arrested in Turkey and Germany. Five of those arrested in Germany were Tajiks.
Cipher Brief
The United States southwest border is in the midst of an unrelenting wave of migration. Millions of people have arrived since 2021, numbers higher than ever before. The reasons behind those trips are varied and nuanced. Many are fleeing poverty or violence, political or religious persecution, wars, climate change. It’s all here. But what is often lost in telling that complicated story, is the how – how are millions of people are arriving so quickly, so efficiently? That answer is simpler. It's organized crime. “This amount of people arriving to the border would not be possible without this level of involvement by transnational organized crime,” said Gerardo Rodríguez Sánchez Lara, an international security expert who has studied organized crime for decades. Human smuggling is not new, but it has been transformed in the last few years into an industrial operation. Cartels have quickly figured out that facilitating the flow of migrants to the U.S. border can be remarkably lucrative. Different organized crime groups control sections of the border, called plazas, with each controlling what happens inside its own territory.
“They’re from everywhere,” the man in the hoodie tells us of the large group of people gathered, waiting expectantly. “It’s like the United Nations.”Tonight, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Senegal and more are all represented. Other nights, it’s Russia, Turkey, China. The list goes on. They are all from different places but they are all migrants, sharing a singular purpose: to get to the U.S. And it’s the men guarding them, the human smugglers with masks and guns, who will help them get there. “Every week we’re getting 200-300 people,” one smuggler told ABC News. “But it’s happening all over the border every day, every night.”
ABC
Article Source: Cipher Brief, ABC
3 US drug shortages widespread
The first quarter of 2024 recorded the country’s highest-ever number of ongoing drug shortages, American Society of Health-System Pharmacists data shows. A total of 323 drugs — including life-saving medicines like oxytocin, Rho(D) immune globulin and chemotherapy — were in a deficit during the first three months of the year. The January-March numbers were the highest number of shortages recorded since the ASHP began recording them in 2001.
Article Source: The Hill
4 ELECTION 2024 Economist: Trump has 67% chance of beating Biden
The Economist’s prediction model gives Donald Trump a two-in-three chance of winning America’s presidential election in November, compared with one in three for Joe Biden. The model, which updates daily, combines state and national polls with economic indicators to predict the election results. In most states one party has a comfortable advantage; six states (worth 77 electoral votes) will be decisive.
For now, things are looking gloomy for Mr Biden. He trails by around five percentage points in the polls for the Sun Belt battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, though he won them four years ago. If Mr Biden loses those three, he will instead need to win all three of the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Mr Trump leads there by only one or two percentage points, making these states a coin toss.
Article Source: Economist
5 US murder rates falls
Homicides in big U.S. cities fell in 2023 after skyrocketing during the first two years of the pandemic. Killings were down about 15% in the 10 largest cities last year when compared with 2022, according to local government data. That includes a 20% drop in both Philadelphia and Houston and 16% in Los Angeles.
The overall trend shows that the factors that contributed to an increase in violent confrontations in the early days of the pandemic are receding, police officials and criminologists say. Shootings are falling as gang-violence prevention programs get back up and running. Domestic killings have declined as families are no longer cooped up together at home. Police are more active after a pullback in enforcement during the racial-justice protests over the murder of George Floyd, according to local officials.
Another major factor: The city’s leadership, which at one time supported calls to “defund the police,” is now pushing to hire more officers, Moore said.
Article Source: WSJ
6/13/1966 The Miranda rights are established
On June 13, 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decision in Miranda v. Arizona, establishing the principle that all criminal suspects must be advised of their rights before interrogation. Now considered standard police procedure, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you in court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you,” has been heard so many times in television and film dramas that it has become almost cliche.
Sources
1. Cipher Brief
2. Cipher Brief; https://abcnews.go.com/International/abc-news-exclusive-inside-cartels-human-smuggling-operation/story?id=110919861
3. https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/4714890-number-of-drug-shortages-hits-23-year-high/
4. https://www.economist.com/interactive/us-2024-election/prediction-model/president
5. https://www.wsj.com/us-news/homicide-rates-fell-sharply-in-2023-after-rising-during-pandemic-4f84207f?mod=article_inline
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