A Terrorism Analysis of the April 14, 2014, Bus Terminal Bombing in Abuja, Nigeria

This Transportation Security Perspective is the fourth in a continuing series produced by the National Transportation Safety and Security Center of the Mineta Transportation Institute. These examine major terrorist attacks and trends in terrorists targeting surface transportation. Previous perspectives include the terrorist bombings in Volgograd, Russia; the assault on passengers at the Kunming train station in China; and the reported plot against the Metro in Los Angeles

The Terrorist Attack in Kunming, China: Does It Indicate a Growing Threat Worldwide?

At 9:00 pm on March 1, 2014, six men and two women, dressed in black and wielding knives, arrived at the Kunming train station, one of the largest in southwest China, and began slashing people at random. Before authorities could stop them, the assailants had killed 29 people and wounded another 143. It was the second worst terrorist attack in the history of the People’s Republic of China, not including a series of bombings in Shijiazhuang in 1998, which killed 108 people. These, however, were carried out for personal, not political reasons. It was also China’s second most lethal transportation attacks

Mineta Transportation Institute Says Subways Are Still in Terrorists’ Sights

The FBI arrested a California National Guard reservist on March 17 as he headed for the Canadian border on his way to Syria. Once in Syria, Nicholas Michael Teausant, who is also a student at San Joaquin Delta Community College in Stockton CA, planned to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Although he had never attended the army’s basic training course and was in the process of being discharged by the National Guard for failing to meet “basic education requirements,” Teausant thought he could teach the Syrian jihadists shooting skills and urban warfare tactic

By the Numbers: Russia’s Terrorists Increasingly Target Transportation

If body count is the terrorists’ goal, then surface transportation provides an attractive target— crowds of strangers in confined environments. While Umarov’s Chechen predecessors carried out spectacular hostage seizures at hospitals, a primary school, and even at a theater in the heart of Moscow, trains, subways, and buses have featured heavily among their targets

Troubling Trends in Terrorism and Attacks on Surface Transportation: The Outlook Is Grim, but People Still Have a Great Deal of Control

This Transportation Security Perspective is the seventh in a continuing series produced by the National Transportation Safety and Security Center of the Mineta Transportation Institute. These examine major terrorist attacks and trends in terrorists targeting surface transportation

Suicide Bombings Against Trains and Buses Are Lethal but Few

This Transportation Security Perspective is the sixth in a continuing series produced by the National Transportation Safety and Security Center of the Mineta Transportation Institute. These examine major terrorist attacks and trends in terrorists targeting surface transportation. Previous perspectives include the terrorist bombings in Volgograd, Russia; the assault on passengers at the Kunming train station in China; the security breach at Mineta San Jose Airport; and the reported plot against the Metro in Los Angeles, among others

Explosives and Incendiaries Used in Terrorist Attacks on Public Surface Transportation: A Preliminary Empirical Analysis, MTI Report WP 09-02

This report provides data on terrorist attacks against public surface transportation targets and serious crimes committed against such targets throughout the world. The data are drawn from the MTI database of attacks on public surface transportation, which is expanded and updated as information becomes available. This analysis is based on the database as of February 20, 2010. Data include the frequency and lethality with which trains, buses, and road and highway targets are attacked; the relationship between fatalities and attacks against those targets; and the relationship between injuries and attacks against them. The report presents some preliminary observations drawn from the data that can help stakeholder governments, transit managers, and employee to focus on the ways the most frequent and/or most lethal attacks are carried out as they consider measures to prevent or mitigate attacks that may be considered likely to happen in the United State

International Trade and the Environment: A Framework for Analysis

This paper sets out a general equilibrium pollution and trade model to provide a framework for examination of the trade and environment debate. The model contains as special cases a canonical pollution haven model as well as the standard Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson factor endowments model. We draw quite heavily from trade theory, but develop a simple pollution demand and supply system featuring marginal abatement cost and marginal damage schedules familiar to environmental economists. We have intentionally kept the model simple to facilitate extensions examining the environmental consequences of growth, the impact of trade liberalization, and strategic interaction between countries.

Free Trade and Global Warming: A Trade Theory View of the Kyoto Protocol

This paper demonstrates how three important results in environmental economics, true under mild conditions in closed economies, are false or need serious amendment in a world with international trade in goods. Since the three results we highlight have framed much of the ongoing discussion and research on the Kyoto protocol our viewpoint from trade theory suggests a re-examination may be in order. Specifically, we demonstrate that in an open trading world, but not in a closed economy setting: (1) unilateral emission reductions by the rich North can create self-interested emission reductions by the unconstrained poor South; (2) simple rules for allocating emission reductions across countries (such as uniform reductions) may well be efficient even if international trade in emission permits is not allowed; and (3) when international emission permit trade does occur it may make both participants in the trade worse off and increase global emissions.