Today's Headlines and Commentary

The Associated Press reports two U.S. drones killed two leaders of al-Qaeda’s South Asia branch earlier this year in Pakistan. The attack reportedly took place on January 5^th, and has been confirmed by an al-Qaeda spokesperson in an audio message. Al-Qaeda’s presence in South Asia is relatively limited, so the attack represents a “major blow” to the organization. Meanwhile, the Mohanad Mahmoud Al Farekh trial in New York has, according to the New York Times, highlighted the internal debate within the Obama administration over whether to kill or capture a U.S. citizen terrorism suspect abroad. Ben already highlighted the piece earlier this morning. The Seattle Times reminds us an often-overlooked threat to American national security: climate change. The DNI’s Worldwide Threat Assessment indeed includes climate change as a threat to national security; Larry Phillips and Lara Iglitzin at the Seattle Times remind us of the threat. The House and Senate have been meeting to negotiate a proposed 2016 fiscal budget, attempting to mesh together the different versions that were passed in the respective chambers. Politico reports that one of the biggest areas up for dispute is the defense budget. Sentencing hearings will begin today in the long legal fight to hold four Blackwater security guards accountable for the deadly shootings of Iraqi civilians. The Times got a hold of some internal Department of Justice emails, which show that the road to get to this point was a bumpy one, filled with internal disagreement over what to charge the defendants with, and what kind of sentencing to propose. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for president on Sunday, so we will likely be seeing lots of analysis about her foreign policy and national security experiences crop up in the coming months. First up is Aaron David Miller of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who argues. over at CNN, that though Clinton has a significant foreign policy leg-up compared to most other candidates thanks to running the State Department, she’d still face substantial challenges as president. Doug Bandow, of the Cato Institute, has written a piece for the Huffington Post in which he argues that the current outline for a nuclear deal with Iran is likely the “best the West can expect,” and we should welcome the deal with open arms.  Apropos, per the Times, a Senate Committee "will formally draft legislation Tuesday that would give Congress some authority over lifting sanctions against Iran, a precondition for Iran’s partial dismantlement of its nuclear complex." RT reports that, according to the Pentagon, an American RC-125U stealth aircraft was “intercepted by a Russian Su-27 in an unsafe and unprofessional manner.” The incident occurred on the morning of April 7, while the U.S. reconnaissance aircraft was flying in international airspace over the Baltic Sea. Friction over U.S. surveillance seems to have settled in Brazil, as it has been confirmed that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff will visit Washington, D.C. at the end of June. The International Business Times reminds us that President Rousseff canceled her invitation to come to Washington nearly two years ago, after it was revealed that the United States was conducting surveillance in Brazil, which had scooped up the president’s personal communications. Earlier, documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed the NSA’s capability to implant malware on foreign computers through a program called Quantum. Now the Daily Beast reveals that China has developed a similar program of its own, dubbed the Great Cannon. The program is so advanced that it “can commandeer an unwitting person’s computer and marshal it into a network of machines used to flood websites with traffic and force them to shut down. As a new video of ISIS militants destroying precious artifacts in Mosul surfaced this weekend, some are beginning to wonder if it might make sense to remove ancient artifacts and artwork in places like Iraq and Syria and bring them to the West, in order to prevent further destruction at the hands of ISIS. Over at the Daily Beast, Ann Marlowe explains that such a proposal isn’t as clear-cut as it sounds, and involves several hurdles of international law.

ICYMI: This Weekend, on Lawfare

In this week’s Foreign Policy Essay, C. Christine Fair and Ali Hamzi walk us through whether or not Pakistan will join the war in Yemen. In our most recent podcast episode, Ben talks with Oula Abdulhamid Alrifai, a Syrian woman who fled her home country in 2005 and has watched “it engulfed in flames and savagery” since her departure. Email the Roundup Team noteworthy law and security-related articles to include, and follow us onTwitter and Facebook for additional commentary on these issues. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Visit our Events Calendar to learn about upcoming national security events, and check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.