Le Journal

Through Monday, January 26 Salt & Vine (Italian; Olney) Dinner only. Through Friday, January 30 Moon Rabbit (Vietnamese; Penn Quarter) Dinner only. Through Saturday, January 31 A Kitchen + Bar (American; West End) Lunch, brunch, and dinner. Casa Teresa (Spanish; Downtown DC) Lunch, brunch, and dinner. Ceibo (American; Adams Morgan) Dinner only. The Dabney (American; […] The post A Ton of Places Are Extending Winter Restaurant Week first appeared on Washingtonian.

Lexar has announced the launch of its new TouchLock Portable SSD, introducing advanced NFC-based security and hardware encryption in an ultra-slim, MagSafe-ready design built for modern mobile workflows. [Read More]

by Michael Jacobson, Senior Fellow in The Washington Institute’s Jeanette and Eli Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, and Matthew Levitt, the Fromer-Wexler Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute and director of its Jeanette and Eli Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence Last week, President Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from sixty-six international organizations, including three with vital counterterrorism missions. Soon after, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the administration would continue reviewing such organizations and severing ties with those it deems “wasteful, ineffective, or harmful,” in line with Trump’s February 2025 executive order to that effect. The new withdrawals and the implication that more will follow raise questions about whether the administration intends to continue America’s post-9/11 counterterrorism leadership role. The U.S. government and the United Nations will be issuing new CT strategy documents and revisions in the near future, and both represent important opportunities for the administration to clarify that it remains committed to setting the international counterterrorism agenda, including via multilateral organizations. Besides facilitating historic U.S. victories and progress over the past twenty-five years, this multilateral approach will be essential going forward if President Trump hopes to achieve his goals against the Islamic State (IS), Iran-linked terrorism, and other threats—not just in the Middle East, but also in South America and beyond. Targeting the Wrong Organizations The administration did not provide further details on why it is cutting ties with the CT organizations named in the announcement: the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF), the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law (IIJ), and the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF). The United States helped create and lead each of these entities, and withdrawing from them will have a negative counterterrorism impact. The most high-profile of the three organizations is the GCTF, which was established in 2011 and brings together civilian policymakers and practitioners from thirty-one countries and the European Union—including Russia and China, various nations on the frontlines of global terrorism (e.g., Kenya and Pakistan), and donor states in Western Europe and the Gulf that fund or provide technical assistance and training. In its early years, the GCTF facilitated in-depth discussions with Arab governments struggling to handle terrorist groups that rode the wave of the Arab Spring movements. The forum enabled Western donors and experts to advise these states on how to counter such groups without violating human rights. More recently, it served a similar function in Africa, where IS and al-Qaeda threats have grown exponentially. The GCTF has also developed a useful body of best practices on broad criminal justice/rule of law approaches and narrower technical issues such as drone threats and prison radicalization. Among other benefits, this body of expertise furthers U.S. interests by helping allies address their own CT problems. The IIJ was founded as a counterterrorism training center for criminal justice practitioners, bringing GCTF best practices into action and proving extremely effective at advancing U.S. priorities. For example, at Washington’s request, the IIJ held the first “battlefield evidence” forum in 2019, training countries how to use information collected on the battlefield to aid civilian prosecutions of foreign terrorist fighters. Previously, many governments were reluctant to do so and lacked the requisite know-how and legal authorities. A year later, two multinational agencies—the EU’s umbrella prosecution organization Eurojustand the UN Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate—followed the U.S./IIJ example, issuing battlefield evidence guidelines of their own. By November 2025,…

The Department of Energy (DOE) is seeking public input on how to rapidly build a next-generation American workforce in artificial intelligence (AI) through its Genesis Mission, which aims to double U.S. science and engineering productivity over the next decade. In a request for information (RFI) posted to SAM.gov on Jan. 16, DOE said it wants to train 100,000 American scientists and engineers in AI over the next decade to “lead the world in AI-powered science innovation and applications.” To do that, DOE said that it wants feedback on how it can address challenges related to the “rapid mobilization of the full capabilities of our nation’s S&T [science and technology] enterprise and tightly coordinated efforts across DOE and its National Laboratories, universities, industry, and philanthropic organizations.” Read the rest of the story at MeriTalk.

A Moroccan terrorist convicted in Quebec almost two decades ago has been denied parole in a decision that said he had no remorse and continued to legitimize violence. Said Namouh, 52, remains a “significant, indeed concerning, risk,” despite having been behind bars since 2007, according to the Parole Board of Canada. In its ruling, the Board noted that “no signs of de-radicalization have been observed” in Namouh, who was sentenced to life in 2010 and faces deportation upon his release. Read the rest of the story at Global News.