• Florida man prevented from attacking NYC landmarks for lack of funds

    A Florida man who wanted to attack a landmark in New York City, but lacked the funds to carry out his plan, was arrested on terror charges, according to federal prosecutors; Raees Alam Qazi, 20, told the officers who arrested him that he tried to contact al Qaeda, and that he was motivated by reading the online magazine Inspire which is produced by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula

  • NBC crew freed after a firefight between the kidnappers and anti-regime rebels

    A NBC reporter and four men from his film crew were freed Monday from kidnappers in Syria which kept them tied up, blindfolded, and repeatedly threatened to kill them for five days

  • Aussies debate terrorism and freedom of speech

    Inspireis an English- language jihadist magazine created by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP); so far nine editions of the magazine have been produced; the magazine was produced and edited by two Americans, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Kahn — both were killed by an U.S. drone in Yemen in August 2011; last Monday, a resident of Melbourne, Australia was charged with possessing terrorism-related materials because he was found to have four issues of Inspire in his possession

  • High Russian official: Assad losing the ground war

    The Assad regime does not have many friends left, and yesterday one of them admitted that Assad was losing the war; Mikhail Bogdanov, the deputy foreign minister of Russia, said the regime faced possible defeat to the rebels, adding with unusual frankness for a diplomat: “One must look facts in the face”

  • Senate intelligence committee approves 6,000-page report on CIA interrogation of terrorists

    Senate panel completes a 6,000-page report into the techniques used by the CIA in interrogating terrorists; the report will now be submitted to the administration for review; GOP members of the committee object to the report being made public

  • British PM apologizes for British “collusion” in 1989 killing of Irish lawyer

    British Prime Minister David Cameron offered an apology to the family of Patrick Finucane, a lawyer who represented IRA activists, saying that there was “a shocking level of state collusion” when it came to his killing in 1989; Cameron offered the apology after a 500-page report on the killing was completed, implicating British Army intelligence unit, as well as MI5 and MI6, of facilitating the killing through both action and inaction; Finucane’s widow, demanding a public inquiry, said this report, like earlier ones, aims to protect senior officials close to then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

  • U.S. formally to recognize rebel coalition as Syria’s legitimate rulers

    The end of the Assad family rule over Syria, which begun in 1970, has been moved that much closer yesterday (Tuesday) when President Barack Obama said the United States would formally recognize a coalition of Syrian rebel groups as Syria’s legitimate rulers; other countries, notably France, the United Kingdom, and Turkey have already recognized the opposition as Syria’s legitimate government, but the U.S. move is a game changer; the big question is whether the armed groups inside Syria would feel compelled to accept what members of the coalition agree upon

  • Technique used to nab serial killers helps in controlling pests and disease and in counter-terrorism

    A technique designed to help criminologists catch serial killers is being used by scientists to locate sources of disease, control pests, and study animal behavior; locating a serial killer’s home is similar to finding the nests of animals or centers of disease outbreaks; ecological approaches have applications in counter-terrorism work, as terrorist cells tend to have more than one anchor point within the area in which they operate, exactly so they can avoid detection

  • Modeling terrorism risk to the air transportation system

    RAND recently evaluated a terrorism risk modeling tool developed by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Boeing to help guide program planning for aviation security; the Risk Management Analysis Tool, or RMAT, simulates terrorist behavior and success in attacking vulnerabilities in the domestic commercial air transportation system, drawing on estimates of terrorist resources, capabilities, preferences, decision processes, intelligence collection, and operational planning

  • Terrorism on decline in U.S.

    From 2002 to 2011, the United States has experienced a noticeable decline in terrorism, and North America was the region least likely to suffer from terrorism: there were only twenty-three deaths as a result of terrorism in the United States from 2002 to 2011; the three most active perpetrators of terrorist acts in the United States have been the Earth Liberation Front, Animal Liberation Front, and various anti-abortion activists; al Qaeda and affiliates, the Taliban and affiliates, the KKK and affiliates – combined — accounted for less than 3 percent of terrorist attacks in the United States in the past decade

  • Israel to test advanced Arrow 3 anti-missile missile

    The official in charge of developing Israel’s missile defense system said yesterday that in the coming days Israel would conduct a test of the advanced Arrow 3 missile; the Arrow 3 has been developed to shoot down Iranian ballistic missiles on their way to Israel; the Arrow 3 has been designed to intercept missiles carrying nuclear warheads – and intercept them outside the atmosphere

  • U.S. denies Iran’s claim that it had captured a U.S. surveillance drone

    Drones are used extensively by the United States to monitor not only Iran’s nuclear activities, but also its military moves on land and at sea. Iran’s state television reported on Tuesday that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps naval forces captured an American drone that entered Iranian airspace over the Persian Gulf. The U.S. Navy quickly denied the claim

  • The Assad regime moving chemical weapons closer to delivery vehicles

    Over the weekend, the besieged Assad regime has begun to move chemical munitions out of storage to military bases where the delivery vehicles for these weapons are based; the move of these munitions was captured by U.S. and Israeli intelligence assets, and confirmed by human sources inside the regime; the readiness of the regime to place chemical warheads right next to the weapons – missiles, planes, tanks, and artillery – which will deliver them has dramatically increased the sense of alarm in the region, in Europe, and in Washington

  • New York is home of the terror bar

    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

  • Increase in negative messages about Muslims in the media: study

    Organizations using fear and anger to spread negative messages about Muslims have moved from the fringes of public discourse into the mainstream media since the 9/ 11 attacks; to reach these conclusions, a University of North Carolina sociologist used textual detection software to track the influence of 1,084 press releases about Muslims from 120 organizations on more than 50,000 television transcripts and newspaper articles produced from 2001 to 2008