RIO DE JANEIRO — On a recent morning on the shore of Guanabara Bay, 37-year-old Jose Carlos Daniel stood with his fishing pole and discussed his night job as a doorman.

"I'm concerned about violence," he said through a translator. "I've seen robberies, fights. I'm not very optimistic about security during the [Olympic] Games."

In the run-up to the Summer Olympic Games, which officially begin Aug. 5, much international attention has been paid to the Zika virus' presence in Brazil, the political unrest in the wake of the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and the omnipresent fear of terrorism.

But the growing concern, security experts told Yahoo Sports, is local crime.

View gallery

.

A black banner hangs in a Rio favela to mourn the death of teenager Eduardo Felipe Santos Victor. (AP)

Every year, an estimated 40,000 Brazilians die from gun-related incidents. The number of murders in Rio is up 15.4 percent from last year, according to one recent study, and street robberies have risen by nearly 25 percent.

It's unlikely that many Olympians will venture into troubled areas during the Games, but the proximity of those pockets to the tourist sectors will cause worry throughout the month of August.

"The unique challenge of Rio is the well-armed and aggressive criminal groups," said Antonio Sampaio, a security expert with the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "It remains something we haven't seen.

"I don't think the groups will deliberately target public places; this risk I'm talking about is more taking the form of gunfights," he continued, stressing his belief that the threat to visitors is low. "It's a hilly terrain and the slums are in hills. Sometimes you can actually see the gunfights. You can get an emerging battle in an urban city. If there is a gunfight during the Olympics, that is the most likely form of risk."

Fears of terrorism in Brazil, however, are more muted.

The U.S. State Department has issued a terrorism warning to travellers to Europe for the Euro 2016 soccer tournament and other summer events on that continent, but one official doesn't expect a similar alert for Rio-bound Americans.

"We don't have any information or recent incidents to lead us to believe there's a specific risk for Brazil," said Michelle Bernier-Toth, who is the State Department's managing director for overseas citizens services.

That's somewhat reassuring, and it comes from months of planning.

"The Department of State works very closely with the host government," Bernier-Toth told Yahoo Sports. "We have been doing this for over a year in Brazil to assess the situation for both our teams and private citizens. We know exactly what is happening, and what the response would be. So we can be prepared for the expected and unexpected."

Case in point: a federal judge recently ordered an ankle bracelet for a restaurant owner in the south of Brazil who had been "preparing vigorously … for the Muslim holy war,"according to the results of an investigation. The bracelet is to stay on for the duration of the Olympics, and points to the depth of preparation for the Rio Games: this federal investigation has been going on for three years.

The Olympics are always a potential target, but Bernier-Toth, who has been in her role for more than 10 years, says these Games are no more concerning to her than any other fortnight in the precarious post-9/11 era.

"It's a similar level of concern," she says. "We always plan for the worst and hope for the best."

Brazilian federal prosecutor Sergio Pinel told Yahoo Sports that important safeguards have been bolstered over the past several years in Rio. He told of an inspection at the Rio international airport in 2010 in which he came across a passageway between the public area and a restricted area in a supposedly secure portion of the airport. A door was propped wide open by an ashtray on the floor. "Completely crazy," he said. An overhaul ensued in which the number of security cameras, which Pinel said was less than 100 total two years ago, has now expanded greatly. So has the recording time devoted to surveillance footage.

And in case of any developing emergency, Brazil authorities will have plenty of international support.

"We will staff up and make sure we have people available," Bernier-Toth says.

But what happens when the torch is extinguished on Aug. 21? The Games may avoid incident, but that won't mean the people of Rio – people like Jose Carlos Daniel – will be safe in the months ahead.

"My security concern is what will happen after the Games are done," said Julianna Barbassa, author of Dancing with the Devil in the City of God. "Even during these months and years where Rio has been in an international spotlight, these crime numbers have gotten out of control again. What will happen with no one watching?"

A column of black Humvees carrying Iraqi special forces rolled into southern Fallujah on Wednesday, the first time in more than two years that government troops have entered the western city held by the Islamic State group.

The counterterrorism troops fought house-to-house battles with the militants in the Shuhada neighborhood, and the operation to retake the city is expected to be one of the most difficult yet.

"Daesh are concentrating all their forces in this direction," said Gen. Haider Fadel, one of the commanders of the counterterrorism forces, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State militants.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi promised a swift victory when he announced the start of the operation on May 22 to liberate Fallujah, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad. But the complexity of the task quickly became apparent.

Although other security forces from the federal and provincial police, government-sanctioned Shiite militias and the Iraqi military have surrounded the city, only the elite counterterrorism troops are fighting inside Fallujah at this stage of the operation. And they are doing so under the close cover of U.S.-led coalition airpower.

"We expect to face more resistance, especially because we are the only forces entering the city," Fadel said.

The Islamic State group has suffered setbacks on several fronts in the region where it captured large swaths of territory two years ago. In northern Syria, U.S.-backed rebels made a final push Wednesday in the town of Manbij — a key waypoint on the IS supply line to the Turkish border and its self-styled capital of Raqqa. And in Libya, forces loyal to a U.N.-brokered government have advanced deep inside the coastal city of Sirte, the main stronghold of the IS group's local affiliate.

Fallujah is one of the last IS strongholds in Iraq. Government forces have slowly won back territory, although IS still controls parts of the north and west, as well as the second-largest city of Mosul.

The sky above Fallujah's Shuhada neighborhood on Wednesday filled with fine dust and thick gray smoke obscuring minarets and communication towers as artillery rounds and volleys of airstrikes cleared the way for Iraqi ground forces.

At a makeshift command center, Iraqi forces coordinated the operation via hand-held radios, with Australian coalition troops stationed at a nearby base. One of the Australians listed the casualties among the militants.

"Two KIA (killed in action), one wounded with a missing arm — his right arm," the unidentified Australian radioed after calling in an airstrike on Islamic State fighters.

A frontier city on the easternmost edge of Anbar province, Fallujah has long been a bastion of support among its mostly Sunni population for anti-government militants following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

It is symbolically important to both sides: Many of the Iraqi forces fought al-Qaida in Iraq — the predecessor to IS — in this same territory, and the city was the scene of some of the bloodiest urban combat with U.S. forces in 2004.

Its high value is one of the reasons IS has deployed well-trained snipers and built extensive networks of tunnels to defend it.

"We are having to fight two battles — one above the ground and one below," said Iraqi Maj. Ali Hamel of the military's intelligence wing.

While Fallujah's sparsely populated northern outskirts were recaptured quickly by Iraqi forces, IS used the initial days of the operation to pull the majority of its fighters into the city center, taking about 50,000 civilians with them for use as human shields.

Once Iraq's special forces began trying to punch inside the city limits, the pace of operations slowed.

In past battles with IS in places like Ramadi, Fadel said, one of the signs that the militants were losing their grip on territory was when civilians begin fleeing the city center.

"So far, we haven't seen that" in Fallujah, he said. "Once we do, it will only be a matter of time."

The Islamic State militants "had chosen their battle space," a counterterrorism officer said, explaining how the group set up many defensive positions in the southern outskirts to try to bog down the Iraqi forces before they even had a chance to enter.

That southern neighborhood of Naymiyah, which was secured by Iraqi forces on Sunday, bears the scars of a protracted fight, a now-common sight in Iraqi territory that has been won back from IS.

Walls stood shredded by artillery fire, with almost every home either partially collapsed or pancaked. Craters from airstrikes left many main roads unusable. Convoys of armored Humvees were forced to use the neighborhood's unpaved side streets instead, churning up the soft sand beneath their treads.

"We're expecting another big fight like this one before Fallujah falls," the officer said, explaining that he anticipated Iraqi forces would encounter another heavily fortified neighborhood. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.

On Wednesday evening, the prime minister visited the recently retaken territory.

Al-Abadi was joined by Lt. Gen. Abdel Wahab al-Saadi, the counterterrorism commander of the Fallujah operation.

It was al-Abadi's fourth trip to the area since the operation began. Despite territorial victories against IS, the Iraqi leader continues to grapple with a deepening political crisis and growing social unrest in Baghdad.

(abcNEWS)

Prime Minister Netanyahu met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow Tuesday, their visit marking 25 years of resumed diplomatic relations between the State of Israel and Russia.

Israel’s Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel was also part of Netanyahu’s delegation to Russia, Ariel signing a memorandum of understanding with Russian Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev.

Their meeting was centered on Syria, combatting terrorism and improving economic and trade cooperation between Russia and Israel. According to the Prime Minister’s office the leaders were to discuss “various regional issues including the global fight against terrorism, the situation in and around Syria and the diplomatic horizon between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as bilateral economic and trade cooperation and the strengthening of cultural and humanitarian ties.”

As part of 25 years of resumed diplomatic relations between Russia and Israel, Israel’s delegation to Russia inaugurated a public relations campaign called “Open a door to Israel”- an exhibit highlighting Israel’s achievements in culture, technology, education and science. The inauguration was held at the Manege Exhibition Hall, Netanyahu giving a speech in which he stated:

“Israel’s doors are open to Russia and Russia’s doors are open to Israel. We are marking 25 years since the resumption of relations between us, and not only in culture and technology, but in so many other fields as well. All of these things are being shown here in this innovative exhibit.

But there is also a human bridge of over one million Russian-speakers who are our bone and our flesh, but who also come as goodwill ambassadors of a deep sympathy, Israeli citizens who emigrated from the former USSR. Those who were born and raised in the country absorbed much Russian culture and music. We have just come from the moving ceremony for the unknown soldier and the tunes that were heard are tunes that we remember from our childhood; thus, there are bonds of sympathy and empathy between Israel and Russia, with a common past that has tragic chapters for both peoples, but also a very strong willingness to grasp and develop the future and move forward in creating a better future.

My wife and I and our entire delegation are very moved to be here and it is an honor to dedicate this exhibit on this occasion, 25 years since the resumption of relations.”

(beholdisrael.org)