Impacts of Digital Transformation on Mobility and Transportation Sector

It is indeed a fact that the digital transformation has been changed rapidly in the last few years, and the appearance of the COVID-19 pandemic played a significant role in accelerating the wheel toward intelligent and digital transformation in all sectors; some countries have been recovered quickly from the pandemic and managed to eliminate most of the obstacles while others still struggling. The public transport sector PT during COVID-19 pandemic was affected directly, which is an inevitable result that disrupted the system. This paper will investigate through an online questionnaire survey the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and the digital transformation on transportation modes and activities by evaluating the current situation and assessing future transportation sustainability and whether it will continue to recover appropriately. The research will identify user's awareness, attitude, and behavior toward PT before and during COVID-19, as the trend has been in favor of private vehicles and avoidance of PT, therefore increasing confidence in PT requires decisive action from governments, policymakers, and planners to keep pace with the intelligent transformation. Keywords; COVID19, transportation, sustainability, digital transformation, transportation modes, and activities.

China-EU Two-level Cooperation and Challenges on Public Health during the COVID-19

International public health cooperation has always been one of the typical issues of bilateral and multilateral diplomatic ties in the international community. As two important actors in the international community, China and the EU have worked on many transnational public health cooperation projects. The two-level division of the EU's foreign policy competence decided the Cooperation and Challenges on Public Health between China-EU. Cooperation with the EU member states is expanding, the cooperation with the level of the EU started to show up. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, both China and the EU have publicly expressed their support for WHO's anti-pandemic measures. China has actively provided public health aid to Central and Eastern European countries and shared the Anti-COVID-19 experience. In this article, the author reviewed the progress and mechanism of China-EU public health cooperation, discussed how China and the EU have jointly dealt with the pandemic by sharing experience, providing aids, strengthening multilateralism and international cooperation, and building a community with a healthy future for humankind since the outbreak of COVID-19. Facing the COVID-19，China-EU health cooperation should be further strengthened to show the importance of a community with a shared future for humanity.

Optimizing Perimeter Surveillance Drones to enhance the security system of unmanned aerial vehicles

This work is to optimize perimeter surveillance and explore the distribution of ground bases for unmanned aerial vehicles along the Jordanian border and optimize the set of technologies for each aerial vehicle. This model is part of ongoing research on perimeter security systems based on unmanned aerial vehicles. The suggested models give an initial insight about selecting technologies carried by unmanned aerial vehicles based on their priority; it runs for a small scale system that can be expanded, the initial results show the need for at least four ground bases along the length of the border, and a selected set of various technologies for each vehicle.

In Afghanistan: Western and Soviet Methods of Counterinsurgency

The two-decade-long U.S.-led military mission in Afghanistan ended in August 2021 after a chaotic departure of the NATO troops. Power in Kabul transferred back to the Taliban, the political force the United States and its allies tried to defeat. In its failure to achieve a lasting change, the Western mission in Afghanistan is similar to that of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. These two missions in Afghanistan had many things in common, specifically their unsuccessful counterinsurgency efforts. However, both managed to achieve limited success in their attempts to impose their style of governance on Afghanistan as well. The current study compares and contrasts some of the crucial aspects of counterinsurgency operations conducted by the Soviet and Western forces during their respective missions, such as special forces actions, propaganda activities, and dealing with crucial social issues. Interestingly, when the Soviets withdrew in 1988, they left Afghanistan worse off, but the US-backed opposition forces subsequently made the situation even worse. On the other hand, the Western mission left the country better off in 2021, and violence subsided when power in the country was captured by the Taliban, which the United States has opposed.

NATO's Global Challenges and Russia's Cyberspatialities

Information became more important than material or energy resources in the XXI century. Resources are generally defined as community-owned economic potential elements that can achieve specific goals in economic activity. For modern society, material, financial, labor, natural resources became commonplace. Estonia was the first state in Europe to carry out a massive cyber-attack in April and May 2007. That was why the states decided to get the first convention to defend their cyberspace as they defended their land, air, and sea spaces. In the XXI century in cyberspace, there are some main actors: The United States of America, Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, Israel. Russia is one of the most vital states in cybersecurity, which is constantly developing its abilities. The country has constant interests and goals for which he actively uses information space parallel with political and military opportunities.

The European Environmental Security Agenda

Environmental security was established academically in the early 1980s in the United States. The threat of environmental issues to national security has been the dominant approach among the many distinct interpretations. In 2008, environmental concerns, particularly climate change, were addressed for the first time in the context of EU security. The European security community frequently considers environmental aspects; however, this is usually limited to a strategic level before moving to implementation. In this article, we illustrate how environmental security has evolved, how it has permeated the European security community, and how it might advance further to secure the security of European citizens better.

The armed resistance to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan

The main violent threat to the Taliban regime comes from the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) armed group, but the Taliban regime will also have to deal with armed resistance from ethnic groups in Afghanistan that already feel threatened by the new regime. ISIS – K presents a serious challenge to the Taliban's regime in Afghanistan as the group operates in cells across the country. ISIS – K doesn't possess the capabilities to overthrow the Taliban government. Still, they can damage the credibility of the Taliban, which has claimed that it is the only group that can bring peace and stability to the country. The ethnic groups (the Shia Hazara and Uzbek and Tajik ethnic groups) are already under pressure in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. These groups that in the 1990s formed the "Northern Alliance" that fought against the Taliban are organizing to defend themselves against Islamic State attacks and Taliban persecution and in the future could become a significantly armed opposition to the Taliban regime.

Human Factors in Cybersecurity

Technological solutions in the mobile and digital era are becoming more helpful in informing the population, educational systems, monitoring, tracking the individuals, working, and spending time from home. On the other hand, the valuable information within such systems is posed to the risk of breaches at the individual and organizational level. As a result, cyber threats are constantly evolving. Many security incidents and data breaches are associated with the human factor. Respectively, this work highlights the importance of human factors in cybersecurity. Firstly, this article gives a brief overview of the topic and its significance. Then we present the most common risks in the cybersecurity field and their impacts. The third part emphasizes the role of human factors in security and elaborates on the behavioral approaches. Our conclusions are drawn in the last detail. To further our research, we plan to investigate behavioral science theories on understanding the influence of human factors in cybersecurity.

China-Europe Strategic Issues

Today, a shakeup of forces and a great power competition have begun on the global geopolitical scene. This competition is mainly due to the rise of China, the deepening of globalization and the interdependence of countries, and violent movements that transcend borders, such as international terrorism. In particular, the increase in China's national power has led to a change in the world order that emerged after the Cold War, and geopolitics is once again taking a central role on the global agenda. The geopolitical focus on the Asia-Indo-Pacific Ocean complex has evolved into a geostrategic rivalry where China is seen as the main threat. This approach is reflected in the international security strategy. In addition, it also manifests itself in the practices of international organizations led by the West forces. We see the most important example of this in the European Union's view of China.

Digital Education

The COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid development of technologies have forced restructuring education at all levels. This change from traditional to digital learning demanded that teachers and students possess higher digital literacy. Moreover, it required them to be aware of the importance of security and its countermeasures to protect e-learning systems. The aim of this paper was twofold. First, it focused on security issues when using Moodle, Zoom. Blackboard, and edX. Furthermore, it offers best practices to address security threats and cyber-attacks from the outside network to e-learning systems. From this study, a cryptography mechanism arises as the best technique to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and authentication (CIA) of data on the e-platforms. However, it is not strong enough to mitigate cybersecurity attacks in e-learning systems. For that reason, it is suggested that the cryptography mechanism needs to be combined with other techniques such as biometric authentication, firewalls, IDS, digital watermarking, and security process models.