• Minneapolis recruiter for Somali terrorist group al Shabab goes on trial

    Minneapolis resident Mahamud Said Omar is facing five separate terrorism-related charges after being accused of helping to recruit and finance U.S. militants for a Somali terrorist group; since 2007 the group, known as al-Shabab, has recruited more than twenty young men to leave Minnesota for Somalia to take up arms with the terrorist group; among the recruits was Shirwa Ahmed who, in November 2008, became the first known U.S. citizen to carry out a suicide bombing

  • Future of interrogation methods of terrorists may depend on election

    On the campaign trail, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have not said much about their approach to interrogating terrorists; but as the manner in which U.S. government agencies approach such interrogations, and the practices agents employ, may well depend on the outcome of next month’s election

  • How vulnerable is the U.S. to agro-terror attack?

    Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States has spent billions of dollars to make the country safer from another catastrophic event, but little of that money, and little attention, have been directed toward preventing, coping with, and recovering from a terrorist agro-attack; how vulnerable is the United States to an attack on its food system?

  • Technology soon to make drones deadlier, more autonomous

    Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become America’s main weapon in the campaign against terrorists  — at the forefront are the Predator and the Reaper — and technological changes would soon make them even deadlier; in the next decade drones will be faster and carry more weapons than today’s versions; they will also have better sensors and more sophisticated computers, allowing them to plan and execute attacks with little human participation

  • PKK escalates terror campaign in Turkey

    Seven people, including three soldiers, were killed Tuesday in an explosion that struck a military truck as it traveled along a road in Turkey’s southeastern Tunceli province; in the last fourteen months, more than 700 people have been killed in attacks by the PKK on Turkish military and civilians, and in Turkish retaliatory attacks against the Kurdish organization; during the most intense period of the PKK-Turkey conflict, between 1984 and 1999, more than 40,000 Turks were killed in attacks and counterattacks; the key to the surge in PKK terrorism in the last fourteen months: the autonomy the Syrian regime has tacitly given the Kurdish region in northeast Syria, an autonomy which has allowed the PKK the freedom to organize, arm, and launch attacks into Turkey

  • West Africa expert still hopes Mali would not devolve into “Africanistan”

    Earlier this summer, Islamic militants in the West African nation of Mali destroyed the tombs of Sufi Muslim saints in the fabled city of Timbuktu; the act, widely compared to the Taliban’s destruction of colossal stone Buddhas in Afghanistan, raised concerns about the fate of other cultural treasures in what was once a vibrant center of Islamic scholarship

  • Libya gives Islamist militias until Tuesday to disband

    Libya president Mohammed el-Megaref on Saturday announced he was giving rogue militia forces in Libya until Tuesday to disband; he said that the Libyan government would address the illegitimate militia problem by using the joint police, the armed forces, and the what he referred to as the “authorized militia brigades”

  • Twenty dead, scores injured, in violent anti-U.S. demonstrations in Pakistan

    Demonstrations across Pakistan this afternoon (local time) have turned deadly, with reports that eighteen people were killed and seventy-eight injured; most of the violence occurred during demonstrations in Karachi and Peshawar; among those killed in Karachi were two police officers; in Peshawar, two police officers were killed; U.S. diplomatic facilities were cordoned off by the police, and the demonstrators instead torched theaters and shops; the Pakistani government deployed a large number of military and security personnel, and cellular phone services in fifteen cities were temporarily blocked to prevent militants from using phones to detonate bombs during the protests; in several cities, military helicopters buzzed overhead

  • Administration: attack on consulate was a pre-planned terrorist attack

    The administration yesterday (Thursday) began to move away from its initial description of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi as a spontaneous reaction to the anti-Islamic movie, to suggest that the attack was a terrorist act  planned in advance

  • Critics: U.S. not doing enough to combat domestic terrorism

    The effectiveness of the U.S. campaign against al Qaeda and its affiliates may have reduced the threat of foreign terrorists launching attacks on targets in the United States, but the threat of terrorism the United States is facing has not been reduced owing to the rise in domestic terrorism

  • France braces for Muslim backlash

    France said it would temporarily close French embassies, diplomatic facilities, cultural centers, and schools in twenty Muslim countries in anticipation of anti-French backlash; on Wednesday, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published cartoons which mocked the Prophet Mohammed; the French government government also said it would not give a permit for a protest demonstration, scheduled for 22 September, against the crude anti-Islamic movie produced by an Egyptian Christian Copt now living in California

  • Many issues fueling Muslim world's anti-American backlash: expert

    Anti-U.S. uprisings in the Muslim world reveal old and new tensions despite hope for better relations with the West since the Arab Spring; the sources of the unrest are suspicion of U.S. motives; ignorance of the norms and practices of democratic societies; and the more recent, and more dangerous, manipulation of these sentiments by radical, conservative Islamic groups in the Middle East and North Africa

     

  • French satirical magazine today publishes unflattering caricatures of Prophet Mohammed

    The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo announced yesterday (Tuesday) that today (Wednesday), it would publish satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed as a protest against the violent wave of anti-American demonstrations in several Muslim countries

  • U.S. urgently needs better bioterrorism, disease tracking system

    Nearly eleven years have passed since the fall 2001 bioterrorism-related anthrax attacks that shook the United States, killing five people and injuring seventeen, a leading bioterrorism expert says the country has still not learned its lesson; he says that current data mining approaches are passive and do not provide immediate solutions to the emergencies at hand, proposing instead an electronic, clinician-based reporting system which would have the capacity to limit the impact of a bioterrorism attack

  • Libya arrests 50 in connection with Benghazi consulate attack

    The Libyan government and the Obama administration differ on the origins of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi; Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, insisted that attack in Benghazi was similar to the attacks on embassies in Cairo and Sana, and that all were reminiscent of previous spontaneous unrest among Muslim in response to perceived slights toward the Prophet Mohammed; the Libyan president, announcing the arrest of about 50 in connection to the attack, said the attack was planned “by foreigners” affiliated with al Qaeda; among those arrested are militants from Mali and Algeria