Homeland Security News

The specialist insurance company Hiscox has grown from one small office to a global brand by concentrating on specialist areas like cyber attack, terrorism and kidnap.

It also covers the homes and property of the rich and famous.

But given how unpredictable the terror threat is and how many different forms an attack can take, it is hard to price up the cost of insuring against it, says chief executive Bronek Masojada.

"Yes it is a bit arbitrary but people want the cover. It isn't the sort of thing like car accidents where there's lots of them and you can work it out," he told 5Live's Wake Up To Money.

"We don't want lots of terrorist events."

Read more: BBC News

A California man accused of killing 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein and burying him in a shallow grave is allegedly a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi with ties to an armed fascist group, according to a report.

Samuel Woodward, 20, was arrested earlier this month on charges that he stabbed high school friend Bernstein at least 20 times and then buried him at a park near his parents' Lake Forest Home.

Bernstein was home on winter break from the University of Pennsylvania when his parents reported him missing.

According to three sources that spoke to ProPublica, Woodward was an active member of the extremist group Atomwaffen Division and referred to himself as a Nazi on social media posts and chats.

Read more: Fox News

The murderous al Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab is making millions of dollars each year by exploiting foreign aid money sent to Somalia by the very western nations who are trying to eliminate the terror group. A CNN investigation has revealed how money given directly by the United Nations to people displaced by conflict and famine is ending up in the hands of Africa's oldest terrorist organization. 

Former members of al-Shabaab and Somali intelligence agents said the terror group is extorting thousands of dollars per day through road blocks and taxes on merchants attempting to transport food and supplies to sell to internally displaced people in towns where they are concentrated.

Former members of the terror group and Somali intelligence agents said that tolls taken from trucks and other vehicles at just two al-Shabaab roadblocks on Somalia's busiest road raked in thousands every day. The UN has estimated that a single roadblock generated about $5,000 per day on the road to Baidoa. 

Read more: CNN

American special operations forces and FBI agents on the ground in Syria are actively searching sites where they believe Western hostages, including Americans executed by ISIS, may have been buried, counterterrorism officials told ABC News. 

Three officials briefed on the ground searches by U.S. commandos -- the first real effort to recover the remains of two American journalists and two American humanitarian aid workers killed from 2014 to 2015 -- said they were undertaken on the basis of new intelligence from two ISIS members from London captured last month by Syrian Kurds. 

“Intel people are digging hard and directing ground guys to locations,” a counterterrorism official who is not authorized to speak publicly told ABC News. Two other counterterrorism officials confirmed to ABC News that ground searches have begun and suggested the efforts are limited so far but could be expanded. The remains are believed to be spread out over several sites. 

Read more: ABC News

The Pakistani Taliban say a senior militant, Khalid Mehsud, has been killed in a US drone attack.

Mehsud was deputy leader of the banned Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the main faction of the hardline Islamist Pakistani Taliban.

He was killed in a drone strike on Thursday in North Waziristan, near the border with Afghanistan, the militant group added in a statement.

The TTP has been blamed for dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks.

In December, gunmen from the militant group stormed a college in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, killing at least nine people and injuring 36.

Mehsud's death would further weaken the Pakistani Taliban, who have been forced to reduce their activities due to a relatively successful Pakistan military offensive, BBC Urdu's Haroon Rashid reports.

Pakistani officials claim many TTP militants have been forced to take refuge in Afghanistan as a result, our correspondent adds.

Source:  BBC News