• Arab Silicon Valley plan raise fears of CPU shortages, security risks

    GlobalFoundries, originally part of U.S. No. 2 CPU manufacturer AMD, plans to spend $7 billion on a new chip fabrication facility in Abu Dhabi, the first in the Middle East; business and security experts say it is not a good idea to have a large segment of the U.S. and world economy depend on chips manufactured in an unstable, turmoil-prone region; the worry is not only that a hostile government coming to power would cut off computer components necessary for economnic activity and national security, but that foreign governments could build software or hardware into chips that could transmit confidential information

  • China stealth-jet maker eyes U.S. contracts

    Last month China shocked military analysts by unveiling its first stealth fighter; as is the case with many other Chinese technological advances, the technology was stolen from the United States, albeit indirectly: the Chinese fighter was made with technology from a U.S. stealth plane shot down in 1999 by Serbian forces during the Kosovo war; now, the Chinese manufacturer is teaming up with a small California company to bid on U.S. defense contracts, including contracts for stealth aircraft; the Chinese company also wants to bid on the contract to build the new generation of Marine One helicopters, which are used to transport the president (the U.S. president, not China’s)

  • Egypt's opposition groups have varied, conflicting agendas

    The opposition to the Mubarak regime is not unified except on one issue: the removal of Hosni Mubarak from power; the five major groups leading the opposition include the pious Muslim Brotherhood, the liberal Al Ghad Party, the nationalist WAFD Party, the socialist 6 April Youth movement, and the umbrella group National Association for Change (NAC), led by Mohamed el Baradei, which includes all these groups, and many more; the Brotherhood enjoys the broadest popular support among Egypt’s poor (and the vast majority of Egyptians are poor), and the best organization; to prevent the Brotherhood from coming to power, the WAFD and AL GHAD parties, with the support of el Baradei and some of the smaller members of the NAC, should consider cooperation with Ahmed Shafik, Omar Suleiman, and Sami Annan — the troika set to succeed Mubarak

  • Free program to detect suspicious vehicles unveiled

    Funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and administered by the TSA, the First Observer program encourages parking lot operators to watch for oddities such as improperly parked cars, civilians conducting surveillance, and strange odors such as diesel from gasoline vehicles

  • Disaffected youth, stagnation, poverty threaten Mideast regimes

    In six Arab-Muslim states in the Middle East, six — Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen — more than 50 percent of the citizenry are under the age of 25; in other six states — Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates — the “under 25s” make up between 35 to 47 percent of the population; in Yemen, some 75 percent of the population is under 30, and the poverty rate exceeds 45 percent; in Egypt, some 66 percent of the population is under 30, while fully half the country’s 80 million citizens lives on less than $2 per day; since 1980, the Arab world has experienced the highest rate of [population] growth of any region in the world; during the same period, the Arab economies have been sputtering, creating far too few jobs

  • Freshman lawmakers receive terrorism briefing

    Last week new members of the U.S. House of Representatives were briefed on the current state of terrorism; their briefing warned that while al Qaeda had been disrupted it was still a dangerous organization; al Qaeda is increasingly turning to radicalization of American Muslims to carry out small scale attacks; the briefing also covered the delicate balance between expanded policing powers and civil liberties as Americans want security, yet are highly suspicious of the federal government; in moving forward the briefing urged lawmakers to candidly reassess costly security measures in light of growing fiscal concerns

  • Mubarak to step down after September elections

    President Hosni Mubarak announced Tuesday that he will not seek reelection in September; he said on national TV that he will devote his remaining months in office to fashioning a constitutional reform; President Obama welcomed the announcement, saying that Egypt’s transition “must begin now”; he said the United States would be happy to offer assistance to Egypt during that process; Mubarak’s plan appears to divide Egyptians — and the protesters; some are determined to carry on, while others think these are major concessions and that the protests have gone far enough; Egypt’s powerful army vowed that it would not use force against the protesters, despite maintaining a strong presence in central Cairo

  • The threat: The Muslim Brotherhood

    The Muslim Brotherhood, established in Egypt in the 1920s, is described by one scholar as “the mothership for the jihadi ideologies and thinking—- therefore one can say today’s Al Qaeda, and today many other jihadists, are off shoots of the Muslim Brotherhood”; among the Brotherhood’s graduates: Al Qaeda’s number two leader, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri who was imprisoned for three years on weapons charges following President Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981; Hamas, the terror network behind suicide bombings and rocket attacks in Israel; the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, whose goal is the destruction of Israel

  • Pro-government demonstrators clash with opponents

    Thousands of pro-government demonstrators appear in Egypt’s major cities and clash with anti-government demonstrators; the anti-Mubarak protesters have been accusing the army of moving aside to let their pro-government rivals enter streets and square where anti-government protesters congregate; in a statement, Egypt’s army called for demonstrators to return to their homes; meanwhile, Internet services were returning to the country, having been cut off for days by the government; state television also reported an easing of a nationwide curfew

  • Stuxnet may turn Bushehr into a new Chernobyl

    The destructive Stuxnet virus infected some 45,000 industrial control computers and servers in Iran; it destroyed more than 20 percent of Iran’s centrifuges, and, on 16 November, forced Iran to shut down uranium enrichment operations; it also infected the control system of the Bushehr reactor; Stuxnet is a sophisticated virus: while doing its destructive work, it makes sure that control computers continue to display “normal” operational information; one Russian expert described how engineers at Bushehr “saw on their screens that the systems were functioning normally, when in fact they were running out of control”; a new intelligence report says that with control systems disabled by the virus, an accident in the reactor is likely — an accident which would have the force of a “small nuclear bomb”

  • New Jersey's detention center expansion underway

    With the growing number of deportations of illegal aliens from the United States, federal officials expect demand for space to rise within coming years; Newark county officials are awaiting approval by federal authorities to upgrade and expand the Essex County Correctional Facility, significantly increasing its detainee capacity. The county’s proposal would provide a less punitive setting for detainees along with improved medical care, amenities, and federal oversight

  • U.S., Egypt look to post-Mubarak era

    The days of Hosni Mubarak in office appear numbered, and there are behind-the-scenes discussions among U.S., Egyptian, and Saudi diplomats about a “smooth transition”; it is not yet clear whether the efforts to ease Mubarak out are meant to allow the military regime which came to power in 1952 to remain in power, headed by more acceptable leaders than Mubarak, or whether these efforts are aimed at a more thorough revamping of the Egyptian political system; the main goal is to prevent a repetition of the Iran 1979 scenario: an authoritarian regime replaced by a centrist, secular — but weak and devoid of support — government, only for that government to be swept from power by the Ayatollahs within months

  • Iranian suicide-bombing book found in Arizona desert

    A book celebrating suicide bombers has been found in the Arizona desert just north of the U.S.- Mexican border; last year DHS had in custody thousands of detainees from Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen; U.S. Border Patrol statistics indicate that there were 108,025 OTMs — or illegal immigrants other than Mexicans — detained in 2006, compared to 165,178 in 2005 and 44,614 in 2004

  • Western analysts, Israel: Egyptian regime will weather the storm

    Israeli and western analysts agree Egyptian regime will remain as popular uprising gains strength while government clamps down on protesters; little to no concern of Muslim Brotherhood takeover: government shuts down Internet access, cellular service, and other personal communications in an effort to contain the rebellion as turmoil spreads across Egypt; journalists under assault; former IAEA chief El-Barradai under house arrest; ruling party headquarters set ablaze

  • U.S. ditching terror color warning system

    By the end of April, terror threats to the United States will no longer be described in shades of green, blue, yellow, orange and red; the new plan for a terrorism alerts system calls for notifying specific audiences about specific threats; in some cases, it might be a one-page threat description sent to law enforcement officials describing the threat, what law enforcement needs to do about it, and what the federal government is doing, one of the officials said; the five-tiered color-coded terror warning system, created after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, was one of the Bush administration’s most visible anti-terrorism programs; the use of colors emerged from a desire to clarify the nonspecific threat information that intelligence officials were receiving after the 2001 attacks