Among the many mysteries hanging over the Paris attacks, few are more puzzling than the fate and role of jihadist Salah Abdeslam, subject of an international manhunt since the carnage.

He and his brother Brahim played a key logistical role in the wave of terror that left 130 people dead and hundreds injured, renting cars and hotel rooms where the jihadists could hole up.

Brahim, like another five of the assailants, blew himself up after the bloodshed. A seventh was shot by police. However Salah did not. Instead he was spirited away to Belgium by two other men who were arrested and charged there.

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When Islamic State jihadists issued their claim of responsibility, their statement mentioned the assaults on the stadium, the 10th and 11th districts of Paris, but also the 18th, where no attack took place. However four days later the police found a black Renault Clio, rented in Salah's name, parked partly over a pedestrian crossing in the 18th district...(more)

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RTL Belgium reported on theories that Abdeslam had been told to attack the 18th arrondissement in Paris - the Montmartres area - but for some reason had not gone through with it.

In a statement released the day after the attacks, IS spoke of simultaneous attacks in the 10th, 11th and 18th arrondissements by eight "brothers wearing explosive belts".

In the end, seven suicide bombers died and there was no attack on the 18th district.

The vetting process
takes two years
in-person interviews and supporting documents
their experience of conflict cross-checked against intelligence
about 50% of applicants approved

It's a lengthy process.

As you might imagine, all of the vetting, from interviews to fingerprinting, takes a while. On average, officials say it's 18 to 24 months before a refugee is approved for admission to the U.S.

The U.S. has admitted some 1,800 Syrian refugees in the past two years, and President Obama wants to allow 10,000 more. The administration says half of those who have been admitted are children and about a quarter of them are adults over 60. Officials say 2 percent are single males of combat age.

It’s “the first of the storm”, says Islamic State. And little wonder. For the chaotic scenes on the streets of Paris and the fearful reaction those attacks provoked are precisely what Isis planned and prayed for. The greater the reaction against Muslims in Europe and the deeper the west becomes involved in military action in the Middle East, the happier Isis leaders will be. Because this is about the organisation’s key strategy: finding, creating and managing chaos.

There is a playbook, a manifesto: The Management of Savagery/Chaos, a tract written more than a decade ago under the name Abu Bakr Naji, for the Mesopotamian wing of al-Qaida that would become Isis. Think of the horror of Paris and then consider these, its principal axioms.

Hit soft targets. “Diversify and widen the vexation strikes against the crusader-Zionist enemy in every place in the Islamic world, and even outside of it if possible, so as to disperse the efforts of the alliance of the enemy and thus drain it to the greatest extent possible.”

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Simply treating Isis as a form of “terrorism” or “violent extremism” masks the menace. Merely dismissing it as “nihilistic” reflects a wilful and dangerous avoidance of trying to comprehend, and deal with, its profoundly alluring moral mission to change and save the world. And the constant refrain that Isis seeks to turn back history to the Middle Ages is no more compelling than a claim that the Tea Party movement wants everything the way it was in 1776. The truth is more complicated. As Abu Mousa, Isis’s press officer in Raqqa, put it: “We are not sending people back to the time of the carrier pigeon. On the contrary, we will benefit from development. But in a way that doesn’t contradict the religion.”..
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Moscow suspended passenger flights to Egypt and Washington imposed new air travel security requirements in the wake of the crash of a Russian jet in Egypt, as Western officials pointed on Friday to the conclusion it was brought down by a bomb.
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The sound of an explosion could be heard on the black boxes recovered from the plane, according to an investigator who had access to them, French TV station France 2 said on its website. The investigator ruled out engine failure, it added.

British and U.S. spies intercepted "chatter" from suspected militants as well as internal communication about the incident from one other government that suggested a bomb, possibly hidden in luggage in the hold, had downed the airliner, Western intelligence sources said.

The intelligence sources, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity, said the evidence was not categorical and there was still no hard forensic or scientific evidence to support the bomb theory....

Updated | Online hacking group Anonymous has denied responsibility for the recent publication of a list that claims some U.S. politicians belong to the Ku Klux Klan.

Last week, Anonymous said it would soon release the identities of about 1,000 members of the white supremacist organization. Anonymous is expected to release the details on Thursday, the day of the global protest movement known as the Million Mask March, in which demonstrators around the world will march in a protest against corrupt governments and corporations.

Anonymous denies it has any connection to the list of names, which was published Saturday on the website Pastebin. Most of the politicians included on the list—four Republican senators, four Democratic mayors and a Republican mayor—have denied the claims.

There is no evidence immediately apparent that confirms the details posted on the website. The posting user is identified as "Amped Attacks."...(more at link)...