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TSA enlisting parking attendants and meter maids in anti-terror campaign
From the 1993 attempt on the Twin towers, to Timothy McVeigh, to Faisal Shahzad, the United States has experience with terrorists using vehicles to carry out their plots; TSA’s First Observer program will roll out lesson plans for workers such as parking attendants and meter maids to help them become the latest anti-terror weapons
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End to water-boarding: Using brain waves to reading terrorists minds about imminent attacks
There may soon be no need for water-boarding or other “enhanced interrogation” to extract vital information about pending attacks from captured terrorists or terrorism suspects; Researchers at Northwestern university were able to correlate P300 brain waves to guilty knowledge with 100 percent accuracy in the lab
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A Qaeda attacks Jordanian port city; 1 killed, 3 hurt
A Grad rocket exploded early Monday in the Jordanian seaside resort of Aqaba, killing one person and injuring at least three; al Qaeda operatives launched a similar rocket attack on Aqaba on 8 July 2007, in which a Jordanian soldier was killed; one of the targets of the 2007 attack was the USS Ashland, which was docking at the Aqaba port at the time
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Leaked U.S. documents: Pakistan collaborates with the Taliban to kill Americans
Leaked U.S. military documents offer detailed and disturbing accounts of the degree and scope of the cooperation between Pakistan’s intelligence agency and anti-American forces in Afghanistan; this cooperation comes from an agency of a country that receives more than $1 billion a year in aid from the United States; ISI, the Pakistani secret service, recruits insurgents, trains them, supplies them, helps them choose targets, and provides them with the weapons to carry out attacks; the cooperation has resulted in the death of many American soldiers and, more broadly, is aimed to undermine U.S. strategy and goals in Afghanistan
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Petraeus pushes for labeling Afghanistan's Haqqani network as terrorists
Gen. David H. Petraeus is pushing the Obama administration to have top leaders of the Haqqani network, a feared insurgent group run by an old warlord family, designated as terrorists; the group’s power lies in its deep connections to Pakistan’s spy agency, the ISI, which sees the Haqqani network as a way to exercise its own leverage in Afghanistan; move could add more tension to U.S.-Pakistan relations, and complicate Afghan political settlement with the Taliban
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India: Pakistan ISI behind Mumbai attacks
For the first time since the December 2008 Mumbai attacks, in which 166 people were killed and hundreds injured, India officially and explicitly accuses ISI, the Pakistani secret service, of planning, controlling, and coordinating the attacks; some of the evidence against the ISI emerged from the interrogation by Indian officials of a Chicago man, David Headley, who pleaded guilty to working with the jihadist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) to plan the attacks
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To prevent terrorism we need better understanding of the process of radicalization
Why do some radical people turn to violence while others do not? Experts say that we really do not know for sure, but we need to know if we want to strengthen our counter-terrorism measures; until the understanding of this improves, the efforts to stop further terrorist attacks will continue to rely on a lot of luck
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Rising number of domestic terrorism cases make Muslim Americans grapple with homegrown jihad
Recent arrests of Muslim men in terrorism plots lead some adherents to ask whether there is a need for more urgency in approaching the risks of homegrown jihadists; says one Muslim scholar: “There is this tug of war inside ourselves of trying to reconcile Islam and being an American”
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7/7 London bombings: "The rules of the game have changed"
Two weeks after the 7 July attacks, the then prime minister, Tony Blair, called a press conference at which he warned: “Let no one be in doubt. The rules of the game have changed”; he outlined twelve new measures that aimed to transform the landscape of British counterterrorism; together, they were intended to offer a greater degree of collective security; each came at considerable cost to the liberties of both individuals and groups of people; the controversial Terrorism Act 2006 passed after the 7 July bombings has led to increased arrests and convictions
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Report: Terrorism in Britain "mostly home grown"
New study finds that that 69 percent of terrorist offenses in the United Kingdom were perpetrated by individuals holding British nationality; 46 percent of offenders had their origins in south Asia including 28 percent who had Pakistani heritage; 31 percent had attended university and 10 percent were still students when they were arrested; 35 percent were unemployed and living on benefits
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Attacks on trains: what the numbers say
Terrorists see public surface transportation as a killing field; despite their continuing obsession with attacking commercial aviation, when it comes to wholesale killing, trains and buses offer easily accessible concentrations of people
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Scotland Yard: U.K. proposed budget Cuts "will increase terrorism risk"
The U.K. government wants the Scotland Yard to find £150 million in savings as part of “eye-watering” Treasury budget cuts; the assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard, says these cuts cannot be made without increasing the risk of a terrorist attack
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GSA scraps proposed anti-terrorism training site on Maryland's Eastern Shore
The administration planned to invest $70 million in building one of the U.S. largest anti-terrorism training center near the town of Ruthsburg on Maryland’s East Shore; stiff opposition from local residents, environmentalists, and Republican in Congress convinced the General Services Administration to scrap the plan
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Law enforcement disrupted eleven plots against NYC since 9/11
Since the 9/11 attacks, New York police and the U.S. intelligence services have disrupted eleven plots against New York City
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Calls in Canada for better protection against fertilizer bomb threat
The Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers wants a comprehensive plan of action to prevent agricultural supplies such as fertilizers from becoming tools of terrorists; the association calls for an “integrated crop input security protocol” for Canada’s 1,500 agri-retail sites; this plan would include perimeter fencing, surveillance and alarm devices, lighting, locks, software, and staff training in various security techniques, at retail outlets; estimated cost: $100 million
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More headlines
The long view
The Chilling Crime Spree of The Order – and Its Lasting Effect on Today’s White Supremacists
The new historical crime drama, “The Order,” starring Jude Law and Nicholas Holt, is being described as a riveting “cat-and-mouse thriller.” But for criminologists like us, the white supremacist extremism that takes place in the film is not a nod to a distant past, but a reflection of beliefs and rhetoric that still percolate on social media and inspire acts of terror.
Islamist Terror Incidents Targeting U.S. Increase in 2024
Islamist terror incidents targeting the United States increased in 2024 after several years of reduced activity, with federal and state authorities arresting individuals in seven different incidents on charges related to five unsuccessful plots and two actual attacks.