Researchers have successfully demonstrated for the first time that laser-generated neutrons can be enlisted as a useful tool in the war on terror, as Los Alamos shows first nuclear material detection by single short-pulse-laser-driven neutron source.

Former CIA director Michael Hayden said a terror attack like the Boston Marathon bombings would never have taken place in New York City. Hayden, who also headed the National Security Agency (NSA), said the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) broad campaign of spying on the Muslim communities in the city would have helped officials identify the radical tendencies of the alleged bombers, thus preventing the attack.

Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) on Monday, Memorial Day, met with Syrian rebel leaders. McCain’s visit makes him the highest ranking U.S. official to enter Syria since the civil war began in 2011.Rebel commanders asked that the U.S. consider providing heavy arms to the Free Syrian Army, set up a no-fly zone in Syria, and conduct airstrikes on Hezbollah. McCain, for his part, asked the rebels how they planned to reduce the presence of Islamic extremists in rebel ranks.

In a major policy speech Thursday, President Obama announced plans to set higher standards for the use of drones in the fight against terrorists. He defended the use of the unmanned vehicles in that war, however, including when, in extreme situations, they are used to kill American citizens.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday unanimously ruled that the U.S. government does not have to release more than fifty images and a video of Osama Bin Laden, taken after his death. “It is undisputed that the government is withholding the images not to shield wrongdoing or avoid embarrassment, but rather to prevent the killing of Americans and violence against American interests,” the judges said.

Ricin was in the headlines a few weeks ago, when envelopes containing the poison were mailed to President Obama, Senator Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), and a Mississippi judge. The threat from ricin is low, however, because ricin cannot poison someone through contact with the skin. To be poisoned, an individual would have to ingest or inhale traces of the poison.

FBI director Robert Mueller yesterday defended the way his agency handled the Russian request that the FBI pay attention to Tamerlan Tsarnaev in the months before the 15 April attack on the Boston Marathon. The two key junctures: following the FBI’s March 2011 investigation of Tamerlan, an investigation which found no ties between him and terrorism, the FBI twice, in September and October 2011, asked the Russian security services for more information about why the Russians suspected Tameraln, so the FBI could dig more deeply, but the Russians never responded. Still, the FBI went ahead and placed Tameraln’s name on a low-level watch list, which meant that his travel was tracked. The CBP Boston office, however, took no action in response to two FBI’s electronic messages – from January and June 2012 — about Tsarnaev’s travel to Russia.

After a 26-year long legal battle, Canada two weeks ago deported a Palestinian terrorist who attacked an El Al plane in Athens in 1968. He entered Canada with a false passport, but his identity was quickly discovered. The main point of contention was where should Issa Mohammad, the terrorist, be deported to: he was a Palestinian, but there is no Palestinian state to accept him. The Lebanese government finally agreed to take him, and he was deported

One day after the president of Nigeria said that Islamist terrorists, who now control parts of northeast Nigeria, have declared war on Nigeria, the Nigerian military has deployed thousands of troops to three states in the country’s northeast to reassert the government control over the area.