Recent threats to Twitter's top executives made by a pro-Islamic State (IS) jihadi media group are the latest developments of a long-lingering threat: jihadism on social media.

The murder of twenty-one Christians in Libya by an affiliate of the Islamic State (IS) has brought the sad decline of that country back to international attention. A few months ago, I noted that the ongoing collapse of Libya was not random chaos, nor was it just the result of “militancy” or a lack of governance; rather there was purposeful action by al-Qaeda (AQ)-linked groups pushing the country in a direction that favors violent extremism.

The Shabaab al-Mujahideen Movement, al-Qaeda's branch in Somalia, released a documentary-style video on the September 2013 raid at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, and threatened that "Westgate was just the beginning, and with all hopes of peace forever dashed, Kenya's darkest hour is yet to come."

The Islamic State (IS) has received dozens of official pledges from in Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Indonesia, and several other countries. Perhaps the most interesting—not to mention alarming—of its pledges has been from former Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and tribal leaders in the “Khorasan,” an old name for the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

The Western powers, many of which concerned with the threat of Boko Haram, are watching the path towards the Nigerian federal elections very closely. The U.S. and Britain both expressed dismay with the February 9 decision by President Goodluck Jonathan and his ruling Peoples' Democratic Party to delay the scheduled election from February 14 to March 28.