Islamic terrorists from around the world are being extradited to the Federal District Court in Manhattan or Brooklyn to face prosecution, which is a boon for the qualified lawyers who defend them; the skills these lawyers display often go beyond what can be taught in law school

Egypt’s National Assembly speaker Hossam el-Gheriyan said that the vote on a new constitution – expected to be held today — would be the only way to quell public anger over President Mohamed Morsi’s sweeping decree, which shields his decisions from judicial or parliamentary scrutiny; observers and leaders of the secular opposition are less sanguine; the new Egyptian constitution will be based on the strict Islamic Sharia law; it is not easy to see how the liberal and secular forces which pushed Mubarak out of power nearly two years ago would readily welcome a legal system which, in some respects, would make Egypt look like Saudi Arabia

On 28 July 2012, using only wire cutters and flashlights, peace activist Sister Susan Rice, 82 years of age, and two other confederates – both senior citizens themselves — successfully bypassed the elaborate, and expensive, security system around Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; though the lone security guard at Y-12 has become a convenient scapegoat, it now appears that the breach reflects system-wide security and safety concerns at nuclear facilities under the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); the breach is best understood as the end result of long standing management and organizational failures within and between DOE, NNSA, and NNSA’s private contractors; the NNSA, in fact, appears burdened by many of the same issues it was created in 2000 to resolve

The cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which was supposed to be announced Tuesday at 21:00, is on hold because Israel was unsatisfied with the mechanisms aimed to prevent the rearmament of Hamas by Iran; Egypt’s commitment is key here; Israel does not trust Hamas and regards formal agreements with the organization as worthless; Egypt is in a perfect position to be the guarantor of any agreement with Hamas

King to give up Homeland Security chairmanship | Syrian Islamist rebels reject West-backed opposition coalition, declare Aleppo Islamic state | Pentagon sees seizing Syria chemical arms as vast task | Iran’s first nuclear plant may have suffered new setback | UN nuclear agency: Iran poised to expand nuke work | Germany abandons nuclear power and lives to talk about it | Police-worn cameras being tested in West Valley | License plate scanners under fire |  Fed ID Deadline Looms For N.M.| Ban ‘killer robots,’ rights group urges | Houston airport system embraces technology to share wait times for security checkpoints | Man with strange watch arrested at California airport

The U.S. electric power delivery system is vulnerable to terrorist attacks which could cause much more damage to the system than natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy, blacking out large regions of the country for weeks or months, and costing many billions of dollars, says a newly released report by the National Research Council

In an impressive military move early Wednesday morning, Israel killed Ahmed Jabari, the top military leader of Hamas and a few of his lieutenants; even more impressively, and more meaningful strategically, the Israel Air Force (IAF) attacked dozens of targets across the Gaza Strip, destroying hundreds of Hamas missiles and rockets; the most important targets were storage facilities where mid-range Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 missiles were being kept, and dug-outs from which these missiles would be launched; in a few minutes, Hamas’s strategic ace in the hole was destroyed; but what are Israel’s broader goals, and can these goals be achieved?

The time is running out for the al Qaeda-affiliated Islamist militants who seized control of the break-away region in northern Mali, as the African Union (AU) has backed a plan to send troops into Mali to evict them; the AU endorsed the decision by ECOWAS, an organization of West African countries, which, on Sunday, finalized and approved plans to send 3,300 troops to help Mali’s government take over the region and reunite the country; the ECOWAS plan will now be submitted to the UN Security Council for approval within the next three weeks

The civil war in Syria has taken an ominous turn on Sunday as Israel, for the first time since the October 1973 Yom Kippur war, fired into Syria to warn the beleaguered Assad government that Israel would not tolerate shelling from Syrian territory into Israel; on four separate occasions last week, mortars from Syria fell in the Golan Heights, an area Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 war; it appears that the mortar fire was not intentional, but rather stray rounds, the result of errand shelling; on Saturday nine days ago, a few Syrian tanks entered a no-man’s land near the Israel border, in violation of the 1974 cease-fire and force-separation agreement between Israel and Syria