It is often difficult to disentangle how news frames shape the social construction of reality from the “actual” reality of events. It is like being surrounded by an endless hall of mirrors. This is especially true if a consensual interpretation predominates in any society so that one-sided frames become taken for granted uncritically by politicians, reporters, and the public. To understand this...

Background: Terrorism-related deaths are at an all-time high as there were 32,685 and 29,376 terrorism-related deaths in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Terrorism is defined as the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims. Terrorism is detrimental for mental health, premature mortality, and economic losses and undermines the central tenets of public health to improve the h...

The article identifies some important reasons why terrorism conflicts tend to go into long-lasting deadlocks. Insurgents tend to use terrorism only as a last resort when no other efficient weapons are available. This indicates a severe imbalance of power between the two parts, which makes it impossible to reach a fair compromise by negotiation. The violence of terrorism and counter-terrorism ha...

Using transnational terrorism data from 1980 to 2000, this study empirically examines the relationships between frequency of participation in transnational terrorism acts and economic development and education improvement. We find an inverse U-shaped association between the frequency of various nationals acting as perpetrators in transnational terrorism acts and per capita income in their respe...

1.Introduction The activities of many criminal groups cross national boundaries and escape the control of governments and law enforcement agencies. As a result, they are as much part of domestic as of international politics. The problem of transnational crime in Southeast Asia is severe and consists primarily of drug trafficking, illegal migration, terrorism, money laundering, transnational pro...

Detection of biological weapons is a primary concern in force protection, treaty verification, and safeguarding civilian populations against domestic terrorism. One great concern is the detection of Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax. Assays for detection in the laboratory often employ inactivated preparations of spores or nonpathogenic simulants. This study uses several common ...

The concept of warning behaviors offers an additional perspective in threat assessment. Warning behaviors are acts which constitute evidence of increasing or accelerating risk. They are acute, dynamic, and particularly toxic changes in patterns of behavior which may aid in structuring a professional's judgment that an individual of concern now poses a threat - whether the actual target has been...

The article by Kaplowitz et al in this special issue of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness describes the trauma system response to the wanton suicide shooting at Virginia Tech in April 2007.1 The authors are to be congratulated for sharing their experience so quickly, within just 3 months of the event (as of this writing), and in a manner that is consistent with the science of mas...

T his article reconsiders the effects of terrorism on trade. The conventional wisdom is that trade with a nation affected by terrorism involves higher risks. The consequent rise in the transaction costs is akin to a rise in transportation costs, which tend to reduce trade. Based on such an argument, Nitsch and Schumacher (2004) and Blomberg and Hess (2006) find evidence that terrorism indeed te...

When revolutionaries or insurgents, broadly defined, indiscriminately attack civilians, they generally attack “complicitous civilians,” i.e., those categories of noncombatants which the revolutionaries see as benefiting from, supporting and/or having a substantial capacity to influence the states that the revolutionaries are attempting to displace or overthrow. Such “categorical” terrorism will...