A daily, open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.

By Professor Joseph B. Varner

Global War on Terror

Security forces traded gun and rocket fire with unknown assailants holed up in a Kabul house on Wednesday. A spokesman for the intelligence service, Saeed Ansari, said the troops wanted to capture the suspects alive, but gave no details on who was targeted. Two intelligence agents were killed and two others wounded during the exchange. One of the officials said an unidentified woman also died in the clash. The clash followed an assassination attempt by suspected Taliban militants on President Hamid Karzai during a military parade Sunday. Karzai survived unharmed, but three people, including a lawmaker, were killed. Three assailants also died. (Source: AP)

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Troops captured a camp that housed a bomb-making factory of Al Qaeda-linked militants Wednesday after heavy fighting in the southern Philippines. Troops bombarded the Abu Sayyaf camp on Jolo Island before dawn with artillery and mortar fire. About 300 Philippine marine and army commandos battled around 200 militants, overrunning the camp by 7 a.m. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Homemade bombs assembled at the camp, which are typically rigged from 81 mm mortar rounds, were similar to those used in attacks in nearby Zamboanga city and other areas. The Abu Sayyaf, which is estimated to have 380 men, down from 1,000 in early 2000, is believed to have launched its last major attack in February 2005 with simultaneous bombings in Manila and two southern cities that killed eight people and wounded more than 100. Despite problems, the guerrillas have continued to plot attacks, including against American soldiers who have been providing counterterrorism training to Filipino troops in the country's volatile south. (Source: AP)

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An explosion went off Wednesday near the Italian embassy in Yemen's capital, but the apparent attack caused no injuries. The embassy in central San'a is next to a government building and the headquarters of the opposition Socialist party and it was not immediately clear what the target was. The explosion was caused either by a hand grenade or a bomb. Earlier this month, three projectiles hit a foreigners' housing complex in San'a but caused no injuries. The complex is in an upscale neighborhood that also houses U.N. buildings.

On March 20, three mortars missed the American Embassy and crashed into a high school for girls nearby, killing a security guard. (Source: AP)

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Mauritanian authorities say they have arrested two men charged with organizing attacks perpetrated by an Al Qaeda-linked gang. Head of judicial police Mohamed Abadallahi Ould Adda says the men were arrested early Wednesday morning in the northwest African nation. One faces charges that he planned and executed the December killings of French tourists. The other is accused of masterminding a February attack on Israel's embassy. A third man suspected of involvement in attacks was also detained. (Source: AP)

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Iraq

Dozens of fighters ambushed a U.S. patrol in Baghdad's main Shiite militia stronghold Tuesday, firing rocket-propelled grenades and machine gun bursts as the American push into Sadr City increasingly faces pockets of close urban combat. U.S. forces struck back with 200-pound guided rockets that devastated at least three buildings in the densely packed district that serves as the Baghdad base for the powerful Mahdi Army militia. The U.S. military said 28 militiamen were killed as the U.S. patrol pulled back. As the troops pulled back, one vehicle was hit with two roadside bombs. Six American soldiers were wounded. Local hospital officials said dozens of civilians were killed or wounded. (Source: AP)

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Meanwhile, two U.S. soldiers were killed in northwestern Baghdad on Tuesday. One soldier died when his vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device. The other died of wounds sustained when he was attacked by small-arms fire. No other details were immediately available. (Source: AP)

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Separately, an Iraqi court adjourned until May 20 the trial of Tariq Aziz, one of Saddam Hussein's best-known lieutenants, and seven other defendants over charges of allegedly ordering the execution of dozens of merchants for profiteering half an hour after it started. The judge postponed the trial, saying co-defendant Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam Hussein's cousin who is known as "Chemical Ali," was too ill to attend. (Source: AP)

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The Oil Ministry reported that Iraq increased crude oil exports by 3.3 million barrels in March 2008 over the previous month. The ministry said this resulted in revenues of nearly $15.5 billion. On April 24, the ministry said Iraq's crude oil exports for March reached 59.4 million barrels. In February, exports were reported at 56.1 million barrels, netting slightly more than $15 billion. (Source: World Tribune)

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United States

President George W. Bush said Tuesday he disclosed details of an alleged Syrian nuclear drive to send a clear "message" to North Korea and Iran that they could not hide their nuclear activity. (Source: AFP)

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Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday that sending a second U.S. aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf could serve as a "reminder" to Iran, but he said it's not an escalation of force. Speaking to reporters after meeting with Mexican leaders, Gates said heightening U.S. criticism of Iran and its support for terror groups is not a signal that the administration is laying the groundwork for a strike against Tehran. Still, he said Iran continues to back the Taliban in Afghanistan. (Source: AP)

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False identifications based on a terrorist no-fly list have for years prevented some federal air marshals from boarding flights they are assigned to protect, according to officials with the agency, which is finally taking steps to address the problem. Federal Air Marshals (FAMs) familiar with the situation say the mix-ups, in which marshals are mistaken for terrorism suspects who share the same names, have gone on for years just as they have for thousands of members of the traveling public. (Source:Washington Times)

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The Senate Intelligence Committee voted Tuesday to limit CIA interrogators to techniques approved by the military, which would effectively bar them from waterboarding prisoners. The vote on an amendment by Senator Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., taken behind closed doors as the committee debated legislation to authorize money for intelligence operations in 2009, marks at least the second attempt by intelligence overseers in Congress to regulate CIA questioning of detainees. Congressional officials discussed the vote on condition of anonymity because the vote was secret. President Bush vetoed the 2008 intelligence authorization bill in March because it included the same curbs on questioning techniques. This interrogation provision, if passed by the full Senate and House, would likely face the same fate. (Source: AP)

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A popular "21st Century GI Bill" increasing college tuition benefits for veterans could reach the House floor next week, though Democrats may try to attach it to a war spending bill, placing President Bush in a difficult political position. The measure, which would provide educational benefits similar to those given to veterans returning from World War II, would double the college tuition assistance given to many veterans who served after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The legislation boasts strong bipartisan and bicameral support. It is co-sponsored by 58 senators and 250 House members and endorsed by many of the nation's leading veterans organizations. (Source: Washington Times)

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Poor management by the Defense Department and General Dynamics Corp. has led to billions of dollars in overruns and years of delays for a key weapons program, a congressional panel said Tuesday. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found that major development flaws have pushed up the cost of the Marine Corps' amphibious Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program by 168 percent per tank and pushed the production deadline back by eight years. The Defense Department says it will acquire 593 vehicles from General Dynamics at a total cost of $13.2 billion, compared with an earlier projection of 1,025 tanks for $8.4 billion, according to a House Oversight Committee report released on Tuesday. The committee presented its findings at Tuesday's hearing on a major Government Accountability Office report concluding that inefficient Pentagon management led to cost increases, delays and production shortfalls for many key weapons programs last year. (Source: SignOnSanDiego.com)

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Africa

South Sudanese troops and Arab tribesmen clashed for four days in an oil-rich region in central Sudan, killing dozens of people before peace was restored on Tuesday. The fighting broke out in the Kailak-Kharasana area in southern Kordofan province. Claimed by both north and south, the area has become a potential flashpoint that could wreck the fragile peace between the ethnic African south and Sudan's Arab-dominated government in the capital Khartoum. The north and south fought a 21-year civil war that ended with a peace agreement in 2005 that resulted in an autonomous government in the south. The latest fighting erupted after local Misseriah Arab tribesmen attacked a garrison of southern forces whom they maintain should not be in the disputed region. (Source: AP)

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Police on Tuesday released nearly 200 people who were arrested last week in a raid at opposition headquarters, while President Bush called on Zimbabwe's neighbors to step up the pressure on longtime leader Robert Mugabe. (Source: AP)

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Americas

The former head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service has said a recent Federal Court decision that may block Canadian agents from intercepting conversations of domestic targets abroad cements Canada's reputation as a "risk averse" nation. Sir Richard Dearlove, who headed MI-6 from 1999 to 2004 said: "Plus ca change, plus c'est la même chose ... I doubt Canada has the will" to plug the security gap by passing new laws. Sir Richard acknowledged during a phone interview that he's heard the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has been doing some good strategic work, including clandestine activities in Afghanistan and dredging up valuable intelligence sources from within Canadian ethnic communities. But he said a much broader rethinking is in order, as CSIS's relatively few foreign agents remain legally obliged to operate as passive receptacles of information, "postboxes" in the words of Sir Richard, as opposed to classic foreign operatives who actively gather intelligence. CSIS was created in 1984 as a spy service that would operate within the confines of Canada, though its leadership now says the agency has the capacity to work overseas. (Source: Globe and Mail)

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Canadian government officials are threatening to cancel a $5-billion contract with Sikorsky Inc. because the U.S.-based helicopter maker is asking for up to $500-million in extra funds to replace Canada's 40-year-old Sea Kings. Senior sources said the relationship between Ottawa and Sikorsky took a turn for the worse after the firm acknowledged this year that it was running late in its plans to provide 28 high-tech Cyclone helicopters to the Canadian Forces. The government's controversial efforts to replace the Sea Kings, which go back to the early 1990s, are now complicated by Sikorsky's request for more funds to deliver replacement helicopters. Sikorsky officials refused to comment on the current negotiations, but senior federal officials said the company has requested between $250-million and $500-million in new funding. Sources said there is talk in government that the Cyclones need a "more powerful engine" to meet Canada's requirements, and that delivery could be delayed by nearly two years even with additional money. (Source: Globe and Mail)

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Mexico's government said Tuesday that it will accept talks with a leftist rebel group linked to a series of oil pipeline blasts last year, as long as the group refrains from any new attacks. The People's Revolutionary Army on Monday proposed a cease-fire with the government as long as it stopped pursuing and investigating the rebels and their supporters. Mexico's Interior Department responded that it is ready to hold talks with the small rebel group, but would not agree to halt investigations or prosecution of rebels. In 2007, the group known as the EPR claimed responsibility for blasts at more than a half-dozen oil and natural gas ducts to demand the release of two of its members allegedly being held by the government. The government has denied holding the two men, and said it was investigating their disappearance in the southern state of Oaxaca in early 2007. Local media have suggested the Oaxaca state government, which was the target of leftist protests in 2006, may have been responsible for the men's disappearance. The state government has denied any involvement. (Source: AP)

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Police killed one of Colombia's most-wanted drug lords in a shootout Tuesday after an informant led officers to a ranch hide-out. The U.S. government had a US$5 million (euro3.2 million) reward out for the man. Miguel Angel Mejia, one of two suspected drug-trafficking brothers known as 'The Twins,' was killed in a raid by 14 police officers at the La Union ranch in the northwestern state of Antioquia, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told a news conference. Two members of Mejia's security unit also were killed and three of his men were arrested. Mejia was killed wearing desert-style American military fatigues, he added. (Source: AP)

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Asia

Countries involved in deadlocked nuclear talks with North Korea are seeking to resume negotiations in May, the South's main envoy said Wednesday. The six-country negotiations have not met once this year, due to disputes over North Korea's promised nuclear declaration. The North and U.S. have been meeting one-on-one to resolve an impasse about what will be included on the list, most recently mid-April in Pyongyang.

Still, South Korean envoy Kim Sook said the U.S. and North Korea had more work to do to resolve their differences. (Source: AFP)

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Police shot dead an alleged Tibetan independence "insurgent" in northwest China, state press said Wednesday, the first official admission that authorities killed anyone during recent unrest. (Source: AFP)

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Fighting between government forces and Tamil Tiger separatists across Sri Lanka's embattled north killed 34 rebels and one soldier, the military said Wednesday. In the latest fighting, the military said army troops pushed into rebel-held territory in the Mannar district early Wednesday, triggering a battle that killed 11 guerrillas. (Source: AFP)

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Security forces in Indian Kashmir shot dead a senior leader of a Pakistan-based militant group late on Tuesday, dealing another blow to militants in the region. This year nearly a dozen senior rebel members have been killed in gun battles in the troubled region, according to police. Police identified the dead militant as Sajad Afghani, a Pakistani national and "chief operations commander" of the Harkat-ul Mujahideen militant group. The group is fighting against Indian troops for more than a decade in the Himalayan region. Afghani was killed in an abandoned hospital building in Sopore town, north of Srinagar, the state's summer capital, a day after the "financial chief" of Hizbul Mujahideen, the region's main militant group was shot dead. Officials say more than 43,000 people have been killed since a revolt against New Delhi's rule broke out in 1989.

Violence has fallen significantly across Kashmir since India and Pakistan, both of whom claim the region in full but rule it in parts, began peace talks in 2004. But people are still killed in daily shootouts and on Tuesday, a policemen and a suspected militant were shot dead in a town, south of Srinagar. (Source: AFP)

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Europe

Britain said on Tuesday it had agreed to a NATO request to send a 600-strong reserve battalion to bolster an alliance peacekeeping force in Kosovo. Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority declared independence from Serbia on February 17 in a move that had Western backing but was rejected by Serbia and its ally Russia. The decision stoked tensions with the ethnic Serb minority in northern Kosovo that erupted into riots last month in which a Ukrainian police officer serving with the United Nations was killed and dozens of U.N. police and NATO soldiers were injured. (Source: Reuters)

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Belarus' authoritarian president said Tuesday the country won't release imprisoned political figures early, despite pressure from the United States and Europe. The U.S. and the European Union already have imposed various sanctions on Belarus to try to force the release of people they consider political prisoners, and the United States has threatened further sanctions. Earlier this year, Belarus released a handful of political figures from detention early in what President Alexander Lukashenko called a goodwill gesture to the West. (Source: AP)

Russia's Defense Ministry said Tuesday it is building up troop contingents in two separatist regions of Georgia because of provocative actions by the former Soviet republic. Russia's Defense Ministry said the build-up measures include creating 15 additional observation posts along the Georgia-Abkhazia administrative border. The measures are within limits set earlier by the Commonwealth of Independent States, a grouping of former Soviet republics that includes both Russia and Georgia. However, Georgian Prime Minister Vladimir Gurgenidze said Tuesday that Russia had sent several armored troop carriers to the area near the town of Gagra, which is well inside Abkhazia. (Source: AP)

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Russia has showed off the first modernized Tupolev Tu-160 strategic bomber, which a senior air force official said would help Moscow match the nuclear capability of a potential enemy. Russian television showed the giant, white-painted airplane releasing parachutes to slow down the speed as it landed at Engels airbase in the Volga region of Saratov after being upgraded at the Kazan Aviation Association. The supersonic jet with variable-sweep wings is the heaviest combat aircraft ever built. Along with the Tu-95 turbo-prop, it resumed round-the-clock patrols across the world last year on the order of President Vladimir Putin after a break of 15 years. The upgraded aircraft has modern avionics with more advanced targeting and navigation systems. Igor Khvorov, Air Forces Chief of Staff, quoted by local media said that: "Including this plane we received today, now there are 16 Tu-160 strategic nuclear cruisers in active service." Introduced in 1987, the Tu160 became Moscow's Cold War-era response to the US B-1 B Lancer inter-continental bomber. Codenamed White Swan by Russian pilots and Blackjack by NATO, it can carry and rapid-fire 12 cruise missiles with nuclear warheads, or carry 40 tonnes of bombs and fly for over 8,125 miles without re-fuelling. (Source: Reuters)

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Middle East

PA head negotiator Ahmed Qureia has rejected a proposed map of a future agreement presented by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in which Israel would retain control of the larger settlement blocs in the West Bank as well as the Jordan River Valley and Jerusalem. Qureia also rebuffed comments made by Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday regarding special security arrangements for a mountain ridge in Palestinian territory east of Ben-Gurion Airport. Qureia said: "We reject any demand, any position, or any Israeli statement regarding territory outside the 1967 borders." (Source: Ynet News)

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Hamas gunmen have raided the Palestinian side of the Nahal Oz fuel terminal, stealing at least 60,000 liters of fuel meant for the Gaza power station, the head of the PA's gas agency, Mojahed Salam, confirmed Tuesday. Also Tuesday, an Egyptian security official said that Egyptian border guards discovered two tunnels north of the Rafah border crossing that were used to pump fuel into Gaza. (Source: Jerusalem Post)

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Palestinians in Gaza fired 15 rockets and 20 mortar shells at Israel on Tuesday. Five people were lightly wounded by rockets in Sderot. (Source: Ynet News)

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Military Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin warned the Israeli government on Tuesday that Palestinian terror organizations are interested in executing a large-scale attack ahead of Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations. He added that Hamas was trying to break the blockade of Gaza by causing another border breach. Due to Egypt's tightened security, however, Yadlin believes that this time Hamas will focus on the Israeli border. (Source: Ha'aretz)

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Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Tuesday that "This is not the right time for a cease-fire with Hamas." (Source: Jerusalem Post)

Secretary of State Condolezza Rice said Tuesday: "The leaders of Hamas are increasingly serving as the proxy warriors of an Iranian regime that is destabilizing the region, seeking a nuclear capability and proclaiming its desire to destroy Israel. How can any government negotiate with a group that sees every agreement, every choice not as a compromise to advance peace, but as a tactic to later advance war? The only responsible policy is to isolate Hamas and defend against its threats until Hamas makes the choice that supports peace." (Source: AFP

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Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz said in an interview he believes the Golan Heights is a "strategic asset" and should not be relinquished to the Syrians, in part because of that country's close alliance with Iran. (Source: New York Sun)

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Syria will not sever ties with Iran and Hizbullah even as part of a possible peace agreement with Israel, Dr. Samir Taqi, a senior Syrian analyst, said in an interview with Al-Manar television on Tuesday. (Source: Ha'aretz)

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Secretary Rice also poured cold water on any prospects that Israel and Syria could negotiate peace terms. Rice said the Bush administration had tried to interest Syria in peacemaking, with such moves as an invitation to a Mideast conference last November in Annapolis, Md. "It is hard to see there is a Syrian regime receptive" to negotiations with Israel at this point, she said. "Syria is like Iran's sidecar," she said, aligning itself tightly with a country that threatens Israel's existence. And "you know about Syria's nuclear program," Rice added. (Source: AP/Washington Post)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

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A daily, open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.

By Professor Joseph B. Varner

Global War on Terror

President Hamid Karzai was warned of a weekend assassination plot against him, Afghanistan's intelligence chief said Tuesday, while admitting that failings by the security services allowed militants to launch the attack. Amrullah Saleh told Parliament the plot to kill Karzai was hatched last month and the gunmen had rented the hotel room they opened fire from 45 days before the attack. Karzai and other dignitaries escaped unharmed from Sunday's assault during a ceremony in Kabul marking Afghanistan's victory over the Soviet occupation of the country in the 1980s. Three other people, including a lawmaker, died. Three of the attackers were also killed in a gun battle with security forces after the assault, Karzai's government said, but the Taliban said three other insurgents got away. (Source: AP)

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Meanwhile, a suicide attack killed 16 people, including 12 police, in an eastern province, a NATO spokesman said. Forty-one people were wounded. (Source: AP)

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The North African Al Qaeda shifted its tactics to woo new recruits from the Berber community in Algeria, intelligence sources say. Anonymous Algerian sources Tuesday quoted by Med Basin Newsline said Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb network, which seeks to overthrow the Algerian government and establish an Islamist state, shifted its methods of intimidation against the Berber minority in favor of urging Berbers to join its mission. (Source: UPI)

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An explosion in southwestern Somalia killed four Ethiopian troops and the subsequent gunfire killed two civilians, witnesses said Tuesday. Local resident Asha Madey Abdi said the explosion Monday afternoon in Baidoa, 155 miles southwest of the capital, also wounded two Ethiopian soldiers. Sheik Muqtar Roble said the Ethiopian troops had opened fire after the explosion, killing two civilians and wounding another two. It was not clear what caused the blast. Ethiopian troops supporting the shaky transitional government come under daily attack from Islamic insurgents, whom they kicked out of the capital in December 2006. The insurgents, who vow to fight an Iraq-style insurgency, receive support from Ethiopia's archenemy Eritrea. (Source: AP)

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The State Department has urged American citizens to reconsider travel to Syria, warning that they could be targeted by Islamic insurgency groups. The warning comes on the heels of reports Syria is mobilizing for a possible war with Israel and the closed session briefing last week to members of Congress on North Korea-Syria collaboration in the construction of a nuclear reactor leading to an Israeli air strike last year. (Source: World Tribune)

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Iraq

The U.S. military said soldiers have killed 28 militants during a four-hour firefight in Baghdad's Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City. A U.S. military spokesman said the clashes broke out after a U.S. patrol was attacked about 9:30 a.m. with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns. Six U.S. soldiers were wounded in Tuesday's fighting but their injuries were not life-threatening. (Source: AP)

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An Iraqi official has said a roadside bomb has killed a senior government official in northern Baghdad. A spokesman said Tuesday's roadside bomb hit Dhia Jodi Jaber as he left his home in his car. The spokesman Abdullah al-Lami says Jaber was a Director General at the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. He was in charge of the Ministry's projects and reconstruction department. His son also has been lightly injured in the blast. (Source: AP)

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The U.S. military has killed two regional commanders of Al Qaeda in Iraq. U.S. aircraft tracked and killed the Al Qaeda commander in the Salah Eddin province on April 26, officials said. They identified the operative as Mohammed Muzahem Al Harbouni. Officials said Al Harbouni and three of his lieutenants, one of them a Saudi national, were killed in the air strike. They said the Al Qaeda squad was traveling in a car that was tracked and targeted by U.S. aircraft about 25 kilometers east of Samara. (Source: World Tribune)

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Three attacks by suicide bombers in northern Iraq Tuesday killed one person at a checkpoint and wounded several others, including a mayor. The separate incidents happened in Nineveh and Diyala provinces, were fighting has picked up between insurgents and Iraqi and U.S. forces. In one incident, a woman detonated an explosive vest at a checkpoint manned by members of a local Awakening Council, an organization that assists Iraqi and U.S. security in Abu Sayda in Diyala province. One person was killed and five others injured. Details about the other two bombings weren't immediately available. (Source: UPI)

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U.S. Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad on Monday slammed the destabilizing role of Iran and Syria in Iraq and urged them to stop the flow of weapons and foreign fighters into their war-scarred neighbor. He said the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Qods Force "continues to arm, train, and fund illegal armed groups in Iraq." He added that the bulk of weapons used by these militias were "made in Iran and supplied by Iran, including mortars, rockets and explosively-formed penetrators (EFPs)." He also expressed concern about the flow of arms and foreign fighters across the Iraqi-Syrian border, citing estimates that Syria is the entry point for "90% of all known foreign terrorists in Iraq...and we know that al-Qaeda terrorist facilitators continue to operate inside Syria." (Source: AFP)

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Turkey has decided to revise its policy toward the Kurdish movement. The government has launched a drive to engage with the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq. Officials said the policy was meant to reduce support for the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a war against Ankara. (Source: World Tribune)

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United States

Budget experts have warned that Navy plans to spend billions for expanding the fleet are unlikely to materialize. The Navy’s plan to produce a future fleet of 313 ships is getting panned by critics that charge the long-range plan to increase the current fleet of 279 ships and reverse decades of decline is not affordable and unrealistic. Independent naval analysts have also said the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan is based on too many optimistic assumptions about cost growth. (Source: Newport News Daily Press)

Africa

Lawyers for Zimbabwe's opposition party pressed police Tuesday to respect a court order and release nearly 200 people arrested at its headquarters during raids last week. Alec Muchadehama of the Movement for Democratic Change said a Harare High Court late Monday ordered that they be released. He said he was heading to the main police station to find out why the ruling wasn't carried out. Police made the mass arrests during a swoop on opposition party headquarters on Friday. Many of those detained had fled to Harare to escape mounting violence and intimidation from ruling party loyalists in the countryside following the March 29 elections. The raids sent a powerful message that longtime leader President Robert Mugabe intends to hold onto power despite a growing global clamor for him to step aside and rising violence at home. (Source: AP)

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Royal Dutch Shell's oil production in Nigeria has dropped by more than 500,000 barrels a day due to attacks on its operations, militant groups claim. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said that recent attacks carried out by the group caused the largest producer of oil to reduce its output, Panapress News Agency reported Tuesday. (Source: UPI)

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In another incident in the Gulf of Aden, off Somalia, a South Korean bulk carrier came under pirate attack on Monday at about 0940 GMT. Pirates believed to be from Somalia attacked the ship for about 40 minutes with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

The ship was still sailing to its destination in Europe despite the damage suffered in the attack. There has been an unprecedented surge in pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden with 13 attacks so far this year. (Source: AFP)

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The International Criminal Court has published an arrest warrant for a Congo militia leader wanted for allegedly using child soldiers. The court says Bosco Ntaganda conscripted child soldiers to fight in the Ituri region of eastern Congo from July 2002 until December 2003. The court's prosecutor says Ntaganda is still at large in the Congo.

Prosecutors say he is chief of staff of a "political-military group" commanded by rebel Laurent Nkunda in North Kivu province. (Source: AP)

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Americas

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday that the United Nations plans to establish a task force to tackle the global food crisis to avert "social unrest on an unprecedented scale." (Source: AP)

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France's Foreign Minister and President Alvaro Uribe on Monday sought to advance efforts to free hostages held by Colombia's leftist rebels. Neither Uribe nor Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner commented publicly on their hourlong meeting. France recently sent a plane with a doctor aboard in a failed attempt to help hostage Ingrid Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian citizen kidnapped while running for president in 2002. (Source: AP)

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President Raul Castro announced Monday that Cuba will convene its first Communist Party Congress since 1997, a gathering that could chart the island's political future long after he and his older brother Fidel are gone. Castro also said the government within weeks will commute death sentences for several inmates. The prisoners are likely to include two Central Americans sentenced for planting bombs, one of which killed an Italian tourist, in Havana tourist locales a decade ago. Capital punishment will remain on the books in Cuba. The Congress, planned for next year, follows a series of minor social changes the younger Castro has decreed during his first two months in power to make life easier and less restrictive for ordinary Cubans. (Source: AP)

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Asia

South Korea approved on Tuesday its first financial assistance package to victims of abductions by the North. (Source: AFP)

A Chinese court sentenced 17 people, including six monks, to jail Tuesday for their alleged roles in deadly riots in the Tibetan capital, in the first trial concerning last month's unrest. (Source: AP)

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An activist says officials have detained two people at Hong Kong's airport ahead of the Olympic torch relay. Students for Free Tibet spokeswoman Lhadon Tethong told The Associated Press that two fellow activists were detained and questioned after arriving in Hong Kong on Tuesday. (Source: AP)

A deadly virus outbreak in Fuyang in China's eastern Anhui province has killed 20 children and infected 1,500 others. The virus confirmed as enterovirus 71 apparently has been spreading since last month. All affected children are younger than six years of age with the majority being under two. By Tuesday, the virus had killed 20 of the affected children. (Source: UPI)

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Dead swans found recently in northeast Japan carried the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza, the government said Tuesday. One dying and three dead swans were discovered April 21 near Lake Towada, a popular tourist spot, in Akita prefecture. Officials had determined earlier that they were infected with the bird flu virus, but further testing by the National Institute of Animal Health confirmed the strain involved. (Source: AFP)

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Heavily armed pirates attacked a Thai oil tanker carrying jet fuel in Malaysian waters the maritime watchdog said Tuesday. Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau's (IMB) Piracy Reporting Centre, told AFP that in the April 25 incident, eight armed pirates on a powerful speedboat boarded the Thai tanker. Maritime officials identified the tanker as "Pataravarin 2." Choong said the pirates attacked the ship's master and stole seafarers’ money before escaping in the dark. The ship was heading into the Singapore Strait on the way to Phuket in southern Thailand. Choong said this was the second pirate attack since January this year in Malaysian waters. (Source: AFP)

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A dozen rebels suspected of involvement in attacks on East Timor's top leaders surrendered to authorities Tuesday, and met the president in an emotional ceremony. Rebel commander Gastau Salsinha and 11 of his men, believed to have carried out the February 11 ambushes on the Premier and President turned themselves in with 11 firearms. Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao escaped unharmed from the ambush of his motorcade by mutinous soldiers. An attack the same day on President Jose Ramos-Horta, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, nearly killed him. (Source: AP)

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Five Chinese workers being held hostage since Saturday in Indonesia's Aceh province were reportedly freed Tuesday. The five along with two other Chinese workers and one Indonesian men were abducted by gunmen last Saturday in the province's Gayo Lues district, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported. The gunmen demanded a ransom of about $32,600 and released two Chinese hostages Sunday to carry their demand, the report said quoting Chinese Embassy officials. (Source: UPI)

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The government has won a majority in a snap election held in the tiny Pacific island country of Nauru, ending a five-month political deadlock over the budget, a government spokesman said Tuesday. Twelve of the 18 members of the new Parliament took up seats on the government side when the house met Tuesday for the first time since elections last weekend, spokesman Rod Henshaw said in a statement. (Source: AP)

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India and Iran were expected to push ahead with a $7 billion gas pipeline during a visit by the Iranian president to New Delhi on Tuesday, despite opposition from the U.S. Energy-starved India desperately wants to kick-start the long-stalled pipeline project because it needs the Iranian fuel to help drive its economic development. But the pipeline and India's traditionally strong ties with Tehran have both come under pressure from the U.S., which strongly opposes the project. (Source: AP)

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Europe

Workers returned to the Grangemouth refinery in central Scotland on Tuesday after a 48-hour strike that forced the closure of a major North Sea pipeline system. UNITE, Britain's largest union, said further industrial action is possible unless refinery owner Ineos backs down in a dispute over pensions. The strike at the refinery led to the closure of the Forties Pipeline System, which brings more than 700,000 barrels of oil a day from the North Sea to British Petroleum PLC's Kinneil plant. Kinneil is powered from the Grangemouth site. (Source: AP)

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Web sites run by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty fell victim to a cyberattack causing a denial-of-service to Belarusian and other users. (Source: UPI)

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Russia announced on Tuesday it was beefing up its peacekeeping force in Georgia's breakaway regions, saying it had evidence Tbilisi was readying its forces for an attack.

Georgia denied it had any plans to attack the separatist Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions, but the Russian move marks a new escalation in a crisis between the two ex-Soviet neighbors that has already alarmed Georgia's allies in the West. Tbilisi accuses the Russian peacekeepers serving in the breakaway regions of siding with the separatists. A Georgian official said President Mikhail Saakashvili would make a statement later on Tuesday. Russia announced the new troops four days after saying it would use force to defend its compatriots if Georgia attacked the regions, which threw off Tbilisi's control in wars in the chaotic post-Soviet 1990s. Most residents hold Russian passports. The Russian Defence Ministry said Georgian forces had been building up on Abkhazia's borders, sending aircraft over the conflict zone and harassing Russian peacekeepers. Saakashvili has said he wants the Russian peacekeepers replaced by an international force. (Source: Reuters)

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Middle East

The new security chief of the Palestinian Authority is the son of a longtime opponent of the late Yasser Arafat. Major General Hazem Atallah has taken over the PA police in the West Bank. The 49-year-old is the son of Abu Zaim, or Atallah Atallah, who led a Jordanian-backed reform movement against Arafat in the 1980s. (Source: World Tribune)

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Palestinians in Gaza fired ten Kassam rockets and six mortar shells at Israel Tuesday morning, causing damage at three different locations. One rocket directly hit a house in Sderot, while another hit a kibbutz infirmary. On Monday, Palestinians fired at least 18 rockets and dozens of mortar shells at Israel. (Source: Ha'aretz)

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As part of Israeli efforts to bolster Mahmoud Abbas, the Israeli Defense Force lifted a key West Bank roadblock outside Nablus on Monday. Nablus is a hotbed of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror activity, defense officials said. (Source: Jerusalem Post)

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Three wanted members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, who had been arrested for their activities against Israel, escaped Monday from the PA prison in Jericho. (Source: Ynet News)

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U.S. President George W. Bush will try to bolster the faltering Israeli-Palestinian peace process on a May 13-18 trip to the Middle East, but the White House said on Monday he is "under no illusions" of a quick breakthrough. (Source: Reuters)

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Hizbullah has embarked on a major expansion of its fighting capability and is now sending hundreds, if not thousands, of young men into intensive training camps in Lebanon, Syria and Iran to ready itself for war with Israel. The initial training and selection of recruits is done in Lebanon, with Iran preferred for training on certain weapons, RPGs and anti-tank missiles. Signs of the militia's dramatic expansion are alarming Hizbullah's domestic and international enemies. The decision to expand both the military wing and the supporting militias stems not from the losses during the 2006 war but from Hizbullah's success as a conventional military force in that conflict, says a Lebanese army commander who has worked with the group, his view being confirmed by a U.S. military study. (Source: Observer-UK)

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CIA Director Michael Hayden said that the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in September would have produced enough plutonium for one or two bombs within a year of becoming operational. (Source: Houston Chronicle)

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Saudi Arabia plans to increase oil exploration over the next four years. The Middle East Economic Digest (MEED) reported that Saudi Aramco has drafted a plan to increase drilling by 33 percent from 2009 through 2013. The industry newsletter said Aramco would drill 248 wells, a major increase from the initial 187. MEED reported that the Saudi plan, expected to be approved by the company and the Oil Ministry over the next two weeks, also stipulated a 40 percent increase in oil exploration investment. This would mean that Aramco would invest $13.7 billion, up from the original target of $10.7 billion. (Source: World Tribune)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

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A daily, open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.

By Professor Joseph B. Varner

Global War on Terror

Taliban militants attacked an Australian patrol with automatic rifles and rocket propelled grenades in southern Afghanistan, and the ensuing battle left one of the commandos dead and four others wounded, officials said Monday. The battle occurred Sunday in Uruzgan province about 16 miles southeast of the town of Tirin Kot, said Air Marshal Angus Houston, the Chief of Australia's Defense Forces. He said he did not have information on Taliban casualties. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd warned on Monday that Australians should brace themselves for more casualties in Afghanistan in the months head. Rudd said Australia's 1,000 troops in Afghanistan will face a more "difficult and dangerous and bloody" campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents as the winter snow melts with spring. (Source: AP)

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The attack came hours after militants firing rockets and automatic rifles attacked the Afghan President Hamid Karzai at a ceremony in Kabul on Sunday, missing their target but killing three and wounding eight others. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault that sent President Karzai and foreign Ambassadors scurrying for cover. Gunmen opened fire as a 21-gun salute echoed over the capital at an anniversary ceremony to mark the mujahedeen victory over the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The president was hustled away, surrounded by bodyguards, and left in a convoy of four black SUVs. The gunfire apparently came from a three-story guesthouse, popular with migrant laborers, about 300 yards from the stands where Karzai was seated alongside Cabinet ministers and senior diplomats, who all escaped unharmed. A U.S. Embassy official confirmed U.S. Ambassador William Wood was also not hurt. A lawmaker who was about 30 yards from the president was killed in the attack. Residents reported that a 30-minute gun battle broke out between security forces and gunmen holed up in the guesthouse, located in a neighborhood of ruined mud brick buildings. Defense Minister General Abdul Rahim Wardak said three attackers were killed by security forces, and assault rifles and machine guns were confiscated. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujaheed said six militants were deployed to target the president, and three of those militants died in the attack. He said they were armed with guns, rockets and suicide vests although no suicide bombings were reported. (Source: AP)

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In eastern Afghanistan, U.S. and Afghan army troops fought off coordinated insurgent attacks, leaving a dozen militants dead and a dozen others wounded, a U.S. military statement said Monday. As many as 40 insurgents attacked five military outposts on Sunday in Korangal Valley of volatile eastern Kunar province, using small arms fire, rockets and mortars. The joint force returned fire and called in airstrikes that left 12 militants dead and 12 others wounded, the coalition said. No U.S. or Afghan soldiers were hurt. (Source: AP)

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The UN in Yemen has raised the level of security in its buildings in a bid to mitigate any terrorist attacks against it but has not closed any of its offices, a senior UN official told IRIN. (Source: Reuters)

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Algerian government forces killed 14 Al Qaeda fighters and destroyed a number of rebel hideouts in mountains east of Algiers, newspapers reported on Sunday. Four rebels, including a leading member of Al Qaeda's north Africa wing, were killed by the army last week in El Oued province, 435 miles southeast of Algiers. The military, backed by helicopters, also killed 10 rebels and destroyed several Al Qaeda hideouts in a separate operation during the same week in Boumerdes province, about 31 miles east of Algiers. Four soldiers were wounded in the Boumerdes operation, which is still going on against more rebels in surrounding mountains areas. (Source: Reuters)

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The United States and Germany have signed a deal allowing the two nations to share data on suspected terrorists. The pact, which must still be approved by German lawmakers, would allow the two allies to trade information on such things suspects' ethnic origin, religious beliefs, union membership and even their sex lives, Der Spiegel reported Sunday. The proposed bilateral agreement has drawn criticism from union leaders in Germany. (Source: UPI)

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The top White House terrorism expert reportedly thinks some gains are being made in the worldwide public relations battle against Al Qaeda, as the administration and its overseas allies press efforts to show that Osama bin Laden's network is killing Muslim civilians rather than defending its interests. Juan Carlos Zarate, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for Combating Terrorism, said Wednesday at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy: "More and more Muslim and Arab populations, [including] clerics and scholars, are questioning the value of Al Qaeda's program." The efforts he described are in line with plans that Michael E. Leiter, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, discussed in February before the same organization. Leiter, who is responsible for strategic communications planning in the fight against terrorism, said the goal is "to prevent the next generation of terrorists from emerging." One approach, he said, is "to show that it is Al Qaeda, not the West, that is truly at war with Islam." (Source: Washington Post)

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As boating season approaches, Opening Day is Saturday in Seattle, the Bush administration reportedly wants to enlist the country's 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could be used in a terror attack. According to an April 23 intelligence assessment, "The use of a small boat as a weapon is likely to remain Al Qaeda's weapon of choice in the maritime environment, given its ease in arming and deploying, low cost, and record of success." While the U.S., so far, has been spared this type of strike, terrorists have used small boats to attack in other countries. To reduce the potential for such an attack in the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Coast Guard, has developed a new strategy intended to increase security by enhancing safety standards. Today, officials are expected to announce the plan, which asks states to develop and enforce safety standards for recreational boaters and asks them to look for and report suspicious behavior on the water, much like a neighborhood-watch program. (Source: AP)

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Iraq

American and Iraqi troops killed 38 militants in the fiercest clashes with militants in weeks in Baghdad, including 22 who attacked a military checkpoint in a Shiite militia stronghold, the U.S. military said Monday. The clashes Sunday were concentrated in Sadr City, the stronghold of the Mahdi Army, where U.S. soldiers used Abrams main battle tanks to repel the attackers. (Source: AP)

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Fifty-eight people, including five children and eight women, were also injured in clashes in Sadr City since Sunday, local health officials said Monday. (Source: AP)

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Attacks continued Monday morning as insurgents lobbed more rockets or mortar shells toward the Green Zone, which houses the U.S. embassy and much of the Iraqi government on the west side of the Tigris River. The U.S. Embassy on Monday confirmed the area was hit by indirect fire, the military's term for rocket or mortar attacks, and said there were "no reports of serious injury or deaths at this time." On Sunday, the U.S. military claimed success with operations that have effectively sealed off the southern section of Baghdad's Sadr City, a militia stronghold that is believed to be one of the prime launching sites for the Green Zone attacks. (Source: AP)

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One Iraqi soldier was killed and nine people wounded including four soldiers on Sunday, when a parked car bomb struck the Jamiaa District in western Baghdad. (Source: Reuters)

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One civilian was killed and seven other people wounded, including four policemen, when a car bomb exploded near a police checkpoint on Sunday in Harthia district, in western Baghdad. (Source: Reuters)

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Six bodies were found in different districts across Baghdad on Sunday. (Source: Reuters)

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A roadside bomb wounded one policeman when it struck his patrol on Sunday in central Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad. (Source: Reuters)

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The fighting escalated as anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, rejected terms set by the Iraqi government for lifting a crackdown against his Mahdi Army militia. On Sunday, Al-Sadr's spokesman in the holy city of Najaf called the Shiite-led government's terms for ceasing the crackdown against the militias "illogical." (Source: AP)

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Meanwhile, representatives from rival factions in Iraq, senior Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish politicians, said Monday that all parties agreed to renounce violence at weekend talks in Finland facilitated by former peace negotiators in Northern Ireland and South Africa.
(Source: AP)

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Turkish warplanes and artillery units struck Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq who were preparing to cross the border to carry out attacks, the military said Saturday. The raids took place Friday and Saturday, according to a brief statement on the military's Web site. The strikes were in the regions of Zap, Avasin-Basyan and Hakurk near the border, where rebels were known to have maintained bases in the past. In the statement, the military said all of its planes had returned to their bases safely after "successfully completing their duty." There was no word on any casualties, but the military said it had taken care not to harm the local civilian population there. The Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, has been fighting for self-rule in Turkey's southeast from bases in northern Iraq. The fighting has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 1984. (Source: AP)

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United States

An important article in the current issue of National Defense magazine has echoed warnings in the press over the past three years about the growing tactical threat of China's diesel-electric submarines to U.S. surface warships in the Western Pacific Ocean. The article by Grace V. Jean in the April 2008 issue of National Defense notes that diesel submarines are proliferating rapidly in navies around the world. They may, indeed, be the most popular type of warship being constructed. Russia, China, Germany and France all now make excellent combat diesel submarines. Russia and France are particularly aggressive in exporting them to boost their arms sales revenues. Israel's reported survivable second strike nuclear deterrent is carried on three German Dolphin class diesel submarines, with two more being constructed. India has reportedly followed Israel's example and has bought French Scorpion diesel-electric subs to carry its own survivable second strike deterrent that, like Israel's, is carried on submarine-launched cruise missiles. Jean cited Richard Dorn of AMI International as estimating that currently there are about 377 diesel subs in service around the world operated by 39 nations. Jean also noted a trend we have tracked over the past two years in these columns of Russia's remarkable success in selling Kilo-class subs. China was already an enthusiastic customer. Now Venezuela and Indonesia have reportedly ordered them from Russia. Jean has tallied 30 sales of Russian Kilos around the world, with five more going to Venezuela by 2020, six to Indonesia, and China having bought in all 12 of them.

Jean also noted that China is already operating 10 Song-class diesel submarines. In November 2006 a Song-class submarine, surfaced within sight of the USS Kitty Hawk. (Source: UPI)

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Lockheed Martin has sent the Pentagon plans for a new series of space-based combat-support systems. The company said in a statement Wednesday it has sent the U.S. Department of Defense suggested projects for next-generation combat support space systems. The plans were sent to the Operationally Responsive Space Office at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., following the publication of three Broad Agency Announcements in March. Lockheed Martin said its new proposals offered ORS mission projects for "responsive spacecraft bus and payloads technologies; a multi-mission low earth orbit modular space vehicle; and responsive launch, range and system architecture and modeling technologies." (Source: UPI)

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Oil prices hit an all-time high near $120 a barrel Monday after a weekend refinery strike closed a pipeline system that delivers a third of Britain's North Sea oil to refineries in the U.K. The shutdown comes amid supply outages in Nigeria that have helped to support oil against a strengthening dollar. (Source: AP)

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The President of OPEC, the cartel of oil-producing countries, has given warning that the price of crude could hit $200 a barrel, sparking fears that rising fuel costs will force more businesses into bankruptcy. Chakib Khelil, the Algerian Energy Minister and President of OPEC, said that the falling value of the U.S. dollar would continue to drive up oil prices as investors sought to store their wealth in other assets. (Source: The Times-UK)

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Africa

Congo troops clashed Friday with Rwandan Hutu militias with whom they were formerly allied, culminating a week of violence that has forced more than 12,000 people from their homes and prompted the U.N. refugee agency to suspend operations. (Source: AP)

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The top U.S. envoy for Africa urged the international community on Sunday to take a tougher stance against Zimbabwe's longtime leader Robert Mugabe. Jendayi Frazer's comments came as Zimbabwe's electoral commission said it was getting closer to releasing the results of the presidential vote one month after the election. Frazer said the most immediate priority was to halt increasing violence against opposition supporters, an apparent attempt to intimidate people ahead of a possible election runoff. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is believed to have won the Presidential election, though not with enough votes to avoid a runoff. He has accused Mugabe of engineering the long delay, and the campaign of intimidation and violence, in a bid to hold onto power. The electoral commission will reportedly invite Mugabe and Tsvangirai, or their polling agents, to a final "verification and collation exercise" on the tallies on Monday, according to the Sunday Mail newspaper, a government mouthpiece. However, the electoral commission confirmed that the opposition would hold a majority in parliament for the first time since Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain in 1980. (Source: AP)

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Authorities paid pirates a ransom of $1.2 million to win the freedom of a Spanish fishing boat and its 26-member crew seized off the Horn of Africa a week ago. Suspected pirates armed with rocket-propelled grenades had seized control of the tuna-fishing boat from Spain's Basque region last Sunday about 200 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia, a region where piracy has escalated recently. The pirates released the ship Saturday, authorities said. The crew was freed after Spanish authorities paid a $1.2 million ransom, Abdi Khalif Ahmed, chairman of the Haradhere local port authority in central Somalia, said late Saturday. (Source: AP)

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Americas

U.N. peacekeeping operations are expected to cost about $7 billion for the year that ends June 30, up from the $5.6 billion spent the previous year. That contrasts with the $1,232 billion the world's militaries spent in 2006. The U.N. has 84,000 soldiers, observers and police officers in 17 operations around the world under its direction. (Source: Worldwatch Institute)

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Massive gun battles broke out between suspected drug traffickers who fired at each other while speeding down heavily populated streets of this violent border city early Saturday, killing 13 people and wounding nine. (Source: AP)

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President Rene Preval on Sunday chose an international banking official to be the troubled country's next Prime Minister. Preval has designated Ericq Pierre, a senior official with the Inter-American Development Bank, to succeed ousted Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis, said Stephen Benoit, a member of Preval's Lespwa party in the lower house of Parliament. (Source: AP)

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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Sunday he will try to facilitate the release of three Americans held captive by Colombia's largest rebel group even though he has lost contact with the guerrillas. Chavez confirmed his willingness to help a day after New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said the socialist leader had agreed to mediate a possible exchange of the U.S. defense contractors for imprisoned guerrillas. Chavez helped pave the way for the release of six captives earlier this year. But on Sunday, he reiterated previous claims that his government has lost contact with leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). (Source: AP)

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Bolivia's leftist government has established dozens of outposts in the high Andes region of Peru, which Peruvian officials fear have become centers of revolutionary training that threaten to revive Marxist-inspired insurgencies that terrorized the nation for decades.

Some are located in public buildings; others operate out of private homes. Hernan Fuentes, the governor of Peru's Puno province, openly supports the centers, claiming they are part of an anti-poverty effort to channel aid for local humanitarian projects. Most centers feature large iconic images of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is using his nation's windfall from surging oil prices to fund what he calls a "Bolivarian" revolution throughout Latin America. The centers are known as "ALBA houses," named after Mr. Chavez's Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas, a socialist trading bloc founded by Mr. Chavez as an alternative to U.S.-backed free-trade efforts. (Source: Washington Times)

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Asia

North Korean military engineers are completing an underground runway beneath a mountain that can protect fighter aircraft from attack until they take off at high speed through the mouth of a tunnel. The 6,000 foot runway is a few minutes’ flying time from the tense front line where the Korean People’s Army faces soldiers from the United States and South Korea. The project was identified by an air force defector from North Korea and captured on a satellite image by Google Earth, according to reports in the South Korean press last week. It is one of three underground fighter bases among an elaborate subterranean military infrastructure built to withstand a “shock and awe” assault in the first moments of a war. (Source: The Times-UK)

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A North Korean officer fled across the heavily armed border with the capitalist South, the first officer to do so in about 10 years, a South Korean military official said on Monday. (Source: AP)

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South Korea President Lee Myung-Bak has instructed his Cabinet to secure overseas land near North Korea to produce grain for that country's communist neighbor "on a long-term basis." Enroute to the U.S. last week, Lee expressed his concerns about the impact of soaring international grain prices on South Korea, which imports more than 70 percent of its food needs from overseas markets. Global food prices skyrocketed 57 percent in March from a year ago, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. These price hikes involve such grains as rice, wheat and corn. Even meat prices have spiked due to the increased cost of livestock feed. To cope with the soaring food costs, Lee told his Cabinet to consider leasing land in the Russian Far East and Southeast Asia to grow crops, which could be used to help North Korea. Eventually, South Korea should be prepared to feed the combined 70 million people in a unified Korean nation. (Source: World Tribune)

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The U.S. aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk sailed into Hong Kong on Monday on its final away-from-home port call five months after being turned away by China. (Source: AP)

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An eastern Chinese province has introduced a daily reporting system to monitor the spread of a virus that has killed 19 children and spread panic among residents, Xinhua news agency reported on Monday. The enterovirus 71, or EV71, which can cause hand, foot and mouth disease, began spreading in Anhui province's Fuyang city from early March, Xinhua said, but was only publicly reported on Sunday. (Source: AFP)

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Security was tightened Sunday in Myanmar's largest city as rumors spread that pro-democracy activists would launch protests against an upcoming referendum on a draft constitution backed by the ruling military. (Source: AP)

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Australia will withdraw 200 troops from nearby East Timor because security in the restive nation has improved since rebel soldiers wounded the President. (Source: AP)

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An Indian rocket blasted off and successfully launched a cluster of 10 satellites in a single mission Monday, marking a milestone for the country's 45-year-old space program. The PSLV rocket lifted off at 9:20 am (0350 GMT) from the Sriharikota space station in southern India in clear weather, leaving behind a massive trail of orange and white smoke, on its 13th flight. (Source: AFP)

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India reportedly has signed a deal with France's Dassault to upgrade its 51 Mirage multi-role fighter planes at a cost of $1.57 billion. (Source: UPI)

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Authorities in eastern India arrested at least 100 villagers and deployed a huge police force to quell a protest against a proposed deep-sea port, officials said on Monday. Villagers in Orissa state, fearing they will lose their land without adequate compensation, forced officials to suspend construction work late on Sunday in Dhamra, where India is planning to build one of its biggest ports. The proposed port on the eastern coast will handle 83 million tonnes of cargo per year. (Source: Reuters)

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Separatist rebels used light aircraft to bomb an army defense line in Sri Lanka's war-torn north early Sunday, hours after fierce clashes killed 42 combatants. Military spokesman said the Tamil Tiger plane dropped three bombs near Sri Lankan forces in the Welioya region but that no soldiers were hurt. Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan was not immediately available for comment Sunday. Troops and insurgents engaged in ferocious fighting Saturday along the front lines of Welioya killing 22 insurgents and seven soldiers. One soldier was missing. Separate clashes along the northern Jaffna, Mannar and Vavuniya fronts left 13 other rebels dead. It was the first attack by the rebels' air wing, made up of a few self-assembled light aircraft, since it helped insurgents on the ground attack a government Air Force base last October. The government lost eight planes in that assault. Nanayakkara said two rebel aircraft were spotted on the radar and ground troops fired at them with anti-aircraft guns. An air force plane also chased the Tiger bomber but it escaped. On Saturday, Sri Lankan fighter jets pounded a rebel artillery position in Welioya. (Source: AP)

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Police found and defused a makeshift time bomb Monday that was set to go off at a bus station in central Sri Lanka during the crowded morning rush hour. (Source: AFP)

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A member of Nauru's government claimed victory Sunday for the ruling administration in a snap parliamentary election, but results couldn't be confirmed with the electoral office because communications to the mid-Pacific island were down. Justice Minister Mathew Batsiua announced the results of Saturday's poll in an e-mail, President Marcus Stephen was expected to have a larger majority in the 18-seat Parliament. (Source: AP)

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Europe

Police stopped a car carrying weapons and ammunition from Kosovo toward Macedonia on Monday and arrested four Kosovo Albanians. The weapons, which were given to NATO-led peacekeepers responsible for securing Kosovo's borders, apparently were intended for extremists in neighboring Macedonia. The cargo contained high-caliber weapons and ammunition, including rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and anti-aircraft machine guns. (Source: AP)

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Twenty-two years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, work is under way on a colossal new shelter to cover the ruins and deadly radioactive contents of the exploded Soviet-era power plant. (Source: AP)

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Russia said Friday it may use military force if conflict breaks out between Georgia and its breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, voicing concern about the presence of Georgian troops in the area. (Source: AP)

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Middle East

A new report has warned that the U.S. faces tense relations with Egypt that could affect their security cooperation. The report by the Washington Institute said the regime of President Hosni Mubarak has dismayed the U.S by continued human and civil rights violations. Authored by former Pentagon official and senior fellow David Schenker, the report said the latest violations came in wake of a waiver by President George Bush of legislation that would freeze $100 million in U.S. military aid to Cairo. Egypt receives $1.3 billion per year in U.S. military aid. "These domestic problems have unfolded at a time when Egypt's relations with the United States are at their nadir, a situation that undermines Washington's already tenuous ability to encourage the kind of political and economic reforms that might help ameliorate Egypt's internal crises." (Source: World Tribune)

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Egyptian security forces detained four people and have accused them of plotting to buy fuel for a pilotless aircraft for the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, security sources said on Saturday. Two of those detained were members of Egypt's opposition Muslim Brotherhood. Sources said the aircraft was meant to be loaded with explosives for an attack. (Source: Reuters)

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Hamas leader Khaled Meshal said Saturday that his group would accept an Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire with Israel, but that "It is a tactic in conducting the struggle." He called it "normal for any resistance" to sometimes escalate, sometimes retreat from fighting. "In 2003, there was a cease-fire and then the operations were resumed." On Friday, an Israeli government spokesman dismissed the proposal, saying Hamas was just "biding time in order to rearm and regroup." (Source: AP/New York Times)

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Hamas militiamen in Gaza on Sunday attacked fuel trucks headed toward the Nahal Oz border crossing to pick up fuel for UNRWA, to enable food distribution, and for hospitals, forcing them to turn back. Sources in the Palestinian Petroleum Authority said: "Dozens of Hamas militiamen hurled stones and opened fire at the trucks. The trucks were on their way to receive fuel supplied by Israel. The drivers were forced to turn back. Some of them had their windshields smashed." Eyewitnesses in Gaza City said that at least on four occasions over the past few weeks, Hamas militiamen confiscated trucks loaded with fuel on their way from Nahal Oz to the city. The fuel was taken to Hamas-controlled security installations. (Source: Jerusalem Post)

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A statement issued by the E.U. on the fuel shortage in Gaza placed blame on Hamas. (Source: Jerusalem Post)

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The Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank on Sunday accused the Islamist Hamas movement of preventing the delivery of fuel oil to hospitals in Gaza. Israel has said that it cannot deliver any more fuel as the tanks on the Palestinian side of the fuel terminal are full because Hamas will not allow the distribution of the one million liters of petrol and diesel stored there. (Source: AFP)

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Pressure is reportedly picking up on Israel to reach a cease-fire deal with Hamas in Gaza ahead of U.S. President George W. Bush's planned visit to Jerusalem in two weeks, Israeli defense officials said Sunday. Head of the IDF Southern Command Major-General Yoav Galant recently expressed fierce opposition to a cease-fire with Hamas, warning it would be used by the terrorist organization to rebuild its damaged infrastructure and to increase its arms smuggling under the Philadelphi Corridor from Sinai. (Source: Jerusalem Post)

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Israeli security officials have said that if Hamas cannot restrain the smaller militant Palestinian groups, first and foremost Islamic Jihad, there will not be much point to any cease-fire agreement. (Source: Ha'aretz)

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Palestinians in Gaza fired Kassam rockets at Israel on Sunday. One rocket exploded in the yard of a home in Sderot, causing damage. Another exploded in Kibbutz Zikim, south of Ashkelon. (Source: Ha'aretz)

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Palestinian terrorists fired a Grad-type Katyusha rocket at Ashkelon on Sunday, causing serious damage to a garage in the city's industrial zone. (Source: Jerusalem Post)

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Palestinians open fire at an Israeli bus passing the village of Silwad in the Ramallah area on Sunday. No one was wounded, but the bus was damaged. (Source: Jerusalem Post)

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An Israeli tank shell slammed into a tiny Gaza Strip home Monday during a skirmish with gunmen, killing a Palestinian woman and four of her children as they prepared to sit down for breakfast. (Source: AP)

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A militant and an unidentified man were also killed in fighting in Beit Hanoun, a northern Gaza border town Palestinian militants frequently use to fire rockets and mortars at southern Israel. (Source: AP)

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Israel's Amos 3 communications satellite was launched into space successfully on Monday from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The satellite, designed and built by Israel Aerospace Industries, is expected to function for 18 years and will replace its predecessor, Amos 1. (Source: Ynet News)

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Senior Isreali sources have charged that UNIFIL is intentionally concealing information about Hizbullah activities south of the Litani River in Lebanon to avoid conflict with the group. In the last six months there have been at least four cases in which UNIFIL soldiers identified armed Hizbullah operatives, but did nothing and did not submit full reports on the incidents to the UN Security Council. (Source: Ha'aretz)

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Turkey's prime minister flew to Damascus Saturday and said he was trying to restart direct talks between Syria and Israel, stepping up his nation's behind-the-scenes efforts to negotiate a peace deal between the longtime enemies. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan spent five hours in Syria meeting with President Bashar Assad and discussing Turkish efforts to mediate a deal. (Source: AP)

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For the first time, Congress is threatening to link U.S. weapons sales to the oil production policies of the Gulf States. Leading Democrats in Congress have warned that they would block U.S. arms sales to such states as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait unless they increase crude oil production. They said the failure of Saudi Arabia to raise production has been a major factor in the soaring price of gasoline in the U.S. (Source: World Tribune)

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The U.S. intelligence community has determined that North Korean work on a nuclear weapons facility in Syria was nearly ready for testing and within weeks of completion when it was destroyed by an Israel air strike in September 2007. The CIA has told Congress that Pyongyang constructed a plutonium production facility in Syria in 2007. CIA Director Michael Hayden told members of the House and Senate intelligence committees and Senate Armed Services Committee that the nuclear facility in Dir Zeir in northeastern Syria had been weeks or months away from completion before the strike. (Source: World Tribune)

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Syria has the biggest missile arsenal and the largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the Middle East, built up over the past two decades with arms bought from North Korea. North Korea, which detonated a nuclear device in October 2006, has become pivotal to Syria’s plans to enhance and upgrade its weapons. Syria’s liquid-fuelled 550 kilometer range, Scud-C missiles depend on “essential foreign aid and assistance, primarily from North Korean entities”, said the CIA in a report to the US Congress in 2004. Diplomats based in Pyongyang have said they now believe reports that about a dozen Syrian technicians were killed in an explosion and train crash at Ryongchon, North Korea, on April 22, 2004. North Korea blamed a technical mishap, but there were rumors of an assassination attempt on Kim, whose special train had passed through the station en route to China some hours earlier. No independently verified cause of the disaster was made known. However, teams of military personnel wearing protective suits were seen removing debris from the section of the train in which the Syrians were travelling, according to a detailed report quoting military sources which appeared on May 7, 2004, in the Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper. The technicians were said to be from Syria’s Centre D’Etudes et de Recherche Scientifique, a body known to be engaged in military technology. Their bodies were flown home by a Syrian military cargo aircraft which was spotted on May 1, 2004 at Pyongyang. There was speculation among military attachés that the Syrians were transporting unconventional weapons, the paper said at the time. Diplomats said the Sankei Shimbun report was now believed to be accurate. Last year Jane’s Defence Weekly reported that dozens of Iranian engineers and Syrians were killed on July 23 attempting to load a chemical warhead containing the nerve gases VX and Sarin onto a Scud missile at a plant in Syria. The Scuds and warheads are of North Korean design and possibly manufacture. Some analysts think North Korean scientists were helping the Syrians to attach air-burst chemical warheads to the missiles. Syria possesses more than 100 Scud-C and the 700 kilometer range, Scud-D missiles which it bought from North Korea in the past 15 years. In the 1990s it added cluster warheads to the Scud-Cs that experts believe are intended for chemical weapons. Like North Korea, Syria has an extensive chemical weapons program including Sarin, VX and Mustard Gas. The Scud-C is strategically worrying to Israel because Syria has deployed it with one launcher for every two missiles. The normal ratio is one to 10. The conclusion that has reportedly been drawn by Israeli intelligence is that Syria’s missiles are set up for a devastating first strike. (Source: The Times-UK)

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Since 2004 there have been a series of leaks designed to suggest that Syria has renewed its interest in atomic weapons, a claim denied by Damascus. In December 2006 the Kuwaiti newspaper, Al-Siyasa, quoted European intelligence sources in Brussels as saying that Syria was engaged in an advanced nuclear program in its northeastern Hasakah province. It also quoted British security sources as identifying the man heading the program as Major Maher Assad, brother of the President and Commander of the Republican Guard. Early last year foreign diplomats had noticed an increase in political and military visits between Syria and North Korea. They received reports of Syrian passengers on flights from Beijing to Pyongyang, almost the only air route into the country. They also spotted Middle Eastern businessmen using trains between North Korea and the industrial cities of northeast China. On August 14 Rim Kyongman, the North Korean Minister of Foreign Trade, was in Syria to sign a protocol on “cooperation in trade and science and technology”. His delegation held the fifth meeting of a “joint economic committee” with its Syrian counterpart. No details were disclosed. Initially, the conclusion of diplomats was reportedly that the deal involved North Korean ballistic missiles, maintenance for the existing Syrian arsenal and engineering expertise for building silos and bunkers against air attack. Now it is known that Israeli intelligence interpreted the meeting as the last piece in a nuclear jigsaw; a conclusion that Israel shared with President George W Bush. (Source: The Times-UK)

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The danger to Israel is multiplied by the triangular relationship between North Korea, Syria and Iran. Syria has served as a conduit for the transport to Iran of an estimated £50million of missile components and technology sent by sea from North Korea to the Syrian port of Tartous. They say Damascus and Tehran have set up a £125m joint venture to build missiles in Syria with North Korean and Chinese technical help. North Korean military engineers have worked on hardened silos and tunnels for the project near the cities of Hama and Aleppo. Israel also noted reports from Pyongyang that Syrian and Iranian observers were present at missile test firings by the North Korean military last summer and were given valuable experimental data. Israeli sources said last week that Iran was informed “in every detail” about the nuclear reactor and had sent technicians to the site. (Source: The Times-UK)

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These factors are the reported background against which Israel took its decision to strike at the Syrian nuclear facility in September 2007. Two signals from the North Koreans in the aftermath reportedly showed that the bombs hit home. On September 10, four days after the raid, Kim sent a personal message of congratulations to Assad on the Syrian dictator’s 42nd birthday. Just days later a top Syrian official, Saeed Elias Daoud, Director of the ruling Syrian Arab Ba’ath party, boarded a Russian-made vintage jet belonging to the North Korean airline, Air Koryo, for the short flight from Beijing. Daoud brought reportedly counsel and sympathy from President Assad. (Source: The Times-UK)

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Ten North Koreans helping to build a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria may have died in an Israeli air raid last September, Japanese public broadcaster NHK said on Monday, citing South Korean Party unit that exports weapons and military technology and members of the North Korean military unit which made nuclear facilities in the country. Two or three North Koreans survived the air strike. (Source: Reuters/Washington Post)

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On Thursday, CIA Director Hayden told the Congressional committees in closed-door sessions that since the Israeli air strike North Korea was not believed to have renewed nuclear assistance to Syria's Al Kibar facility. But the director said the CIA could not rule out North Korean nuclear programs in other areas of Syria. The statement, hours after the CIA briefing, said Syria did not inform the International Atomic Energy Agency of the construction of the nuclear reactor. After the Israeli strike, the White House said, the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad "moved quickly to bury evidence of its existence." Officials said the U.S. intelligence community was persuaded of North Korea's nuclear program by aerial photographs and a video provided by Israel. The photographs displayed the contours of a nuclear reactor complex similar to that of Yongbyon, while the video reported the presence of a North Korean scientist at Al Kibar. (Source: World Tribune)

Conservatives consolidated control of Iran's legislature in run-off elections but opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gained strength, according to final results Saturday. The results indicate that the hard-line leader is growing increasingly vulnerable ahead of a bid for re-election next year. The Conservative majority in the 290-seat parliament is divided between supporters of Ahmadinejad and opponents who say he has mishandled a nuclear standoff with the West and concentrated too much on fiery, anti-U.S. rhetoric while neglecting the economy. Within the conservative bloc, Ahmadinejad's supporters added 27 seats to the 90 they won previously. His moderate opponents gained 11 on top of 42 from the first round in March, according to final results released by the Interior Ministry. Reformists, who favor greater democracy, closer ties with the West, and reducing clerical powers in Iran, made a respectable showing even after most of their candidates were barred from running. They added at least 15 seats to the 31 they won in the first round, a gain of six seats over the 40 they have in the outgoing parliament.

Independents picked up 32 seats on top of 39 they won in the first round. Results for three seats were annulled by the Interior Ministry for unspecified reasons. (Source: AP)

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Iran demanded Sunday that Azerbaijan deliver a Russian shipment of nuclear equipment blocked at its border with Iran for the past three weeks. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said in his weekly briefing that his country has asked the Azerbaijani ambassador in Iran to get his government "to deliver the shipment as soon as possible." Hosseni claimed that the blocked nuclear equipment "is in the framework of Iran-Russia cooperation" and there should be "no ban on it." The shipment is destined for a Russian-built nuclear reactor in the southern Iranian port city of Bushehr.

Azerbaijan has said it was seeking more information about the shipment due to fears that it might violate any of the three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed on Iran over its failure to halt uranium enrichment. (Source: AP)

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The U.S. navy fired warning shots at two Iranian boats in the Arabian Gulf Friday. A U.S. forces security team on a chartered transport ship used loudhailers, radios and flares to warn off two small Iranian boats acting in an "unclear" manner. But the boats ignored the warning and the Americans opened fire, unleashing several bursts of live ammunition. The incident took place in the early morning near the international boundary. (Source: Telegraph-UK)

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The top U.S. military officer said Friday that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" as one of several options against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq. Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be "extremely stressing" but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force. U.S. Army General David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who was nominated this week to head all U.S. forces in the Middle East, is reportedly preparing a briefing soon on increased Iranian involvement in Iraq. The briefing will reportedly detail, for example, the discovery in Iraq of weapons that were very recently manufactured in Iran. Mullen said: "The Iranian government pledged to halt such activities some months ago. It's plainly obvious they have not." He said unrest in the Iraqi city of Basra had highlighted a "level of involvement" by Iran that had not been clear previously. (Source: Washington Post)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

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A daily, open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.

By Professor Joseph B. Varner

Global War on Terror

It was reported that Al Qaeda increasingly faces sharp criticism from once-loyal sympathizers who openly question its ideology and tactics, including attacks that kill innocent Muslims, according to U.S. intelligence officials, counter-terrorism experts and the group's own communications. In March, Al Qaeda's chief strategist, Ayman Zawahiri, released a 188-page Internet book to rebut complaints, particularly those saying Zawahiri and Bin Laden should be held accountable for violence against Muslims. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

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The Pentagon is considering whether it should push to change the NATO mission in volatile southern Afghanistan to give the United States greater control in the fight against a growing Taliban threat. The move is one of many being assessed as fears rise that the collective effort of NATO forces in the country lacks coherence. The Taliban's comeback over the past two years has been marked by a spike in suicide bombings and other violence, at the same time that critics say the complex command structure governing NATO and U.S. forces has stifled combat and reconstruction efforts. American officials see a possible answer in modeling the southern region after the east, which falls under NATO but is led by a subordinate U.S. command and viewed as relatively successful. (Source: Christian Science Monitor)

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A car bomb killed three people in northwestern Pakistan Friday, despite calls from Taliban leaders asking Islamic militants to refrain from attacks amid efforts by the new government to reach peace deals in the region. A spokesman for Pakistani Taliban militants claimed responsibility for the blast but said it did not damage their commitment to peace negotiations opened by the government. The bomb, which shattered a five-week lull in violence, went off between a police station and a market area in the city of Mardan at 6 a.m. local time. Javed Khan, a city police official, said one police officer as well as the owner of a small restaurant and one his staff were killed. Twenty-six people were injured, including 18 policemen. It was the first major bombing since Pakistan's new government took office and pledged to scale back military operations against militants. The last deadly blast was a suicide attack that killed five soldiers in the South Waziristan region on March 20. The government, led by the party of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, has vowed to negotiate with militants who renounce violence and sought to distance itself from the strong-arm tactics of U.S.-backed President Pervez Musharraf, whose influence is fading. Maulvi Umar, spokesman for an umbrella group called Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, said its militants carried out the attack to avenge the death of an associate called Hafiz Saidul Haq. Umar said police shot and killed Haq about 10 days ago when he came to Mardan for his brother's wedding. (Source: AP)

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The latest flare-up in fighting this week in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, has sparked a fresh exodus of an estimated 7,000 people rushing to escape violence that has killed a substantial number of civilians and reportedly wounded some 200, including women and children. The exodus from the war-ravaged city further aggravates the situation in a country where over 1 million people are already internally displaced. Some 700,000 of them fled Mogadishu last year alone. The latest violence also prevents the internally displaced living in areas surrounding the city from returning to their homes. (Source: Reuters)

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The head of Interpol said on Friday that there is a “real possibility” that the Beijing Olympics will be targeted by terrorists or that anti-China groups could attack athletes. (Source: Reuters)

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An accused terrorist with ties to Al Qaeda was able to secure a visa before being arrested at Pearson International Airport in Toronto, Canada in July of last year. According to a secret document sent to Stockwell Day from the Canada Border Services Agency last July, the Minister of Public Safety was told a man of Pakistani descent obtained a visa to temporarily live in Canada from the High Commissioner in London. According to the note, the man, whose identity is not revealed, is a suspected terrorist implicated in Al Qaeda's mass destruction weapons program. On July 12, 2007, agents from the CBSA arrested the man who'd arrived from Newcastle, England. While verifying his passport, agents were able to ascertain he had been flagged by Canadian authorities. The man was interrogated by customs agents and then requested to be returned to England while renouncing his visa, but the pilot would not let him on the plane. The man spent a night in a detention in centre in Toronto before he was deported back to Manchester, England the following day. Authorities in Great Britain were told the man was being deported back to their country, but it is unclear where he is now. (Source: Globe and Mail)

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Only a third of Canadians believe Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr will receive a fair trial if the U.S. prosecutes him for war crimes, a new survey reveals. An Angus Reid Strategies poll released yesterday shows a country still divided over the case of the Toronto-born prisoner, who has been in custody at the U.S. base in Guantanamo, Cuba, for almost six years. While 33 per cent of the 1,015 Canadians questioned online last week believe Khadr will get justice at the U.S. prison, 47 per cent said they do not "feel sympathy" for him. When asked whether Canada should intervene in his case, 38 per cent said he should be left to face trial in Guantanamo Bay, 43 per cent said he should be brought home to face trial here, and 19 per cent were undecided. The survey has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The Pentagon has charged Khadr with five war crimes, including "murder in violation of the laws of war" for the death of U.S. Sergeant Christopher Speer. Khadr was 15 when he was shot and captured following a firefight in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002. Guantanamo prosecutors allege he threw a grenade that mortally wounded Speer. Khadr's father, Ahmed Said Khadr, was aligned with Al Qaeda's elite and comments made by his mother and siblings after the September 11, 2001 attacks enraged many Canadians. Pakistani forces killed Khadr's father in 2003, and Khadr's lawyers have argued Omar is being tried for the "sins of his father." (Source: The Star)

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Iraq

At least 13 people were killed Thursday as U.S. and Iraqi troops battled Shiite gunmen in Baghdad, where the fighting spread last month after erupting in the southern city of Basra, where Britain's 4,000 soldiers are based. (Source: AFP)

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Several rockets or mortar shells slammed into the U.S.-controlled Green Zone. One projectile hit the roof of the building housing the Polish Embassy's security staff, slightly wounding one person. (Source: AFP)

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Five people were killed and 28 wounded early Thursday in Sadr City. (Source: AFP)

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Eight more people were killed and two wounded during fighting in the capital's Husseiniyah area, another base of Shiite militants. (Source: AFP)

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Also Thursday, a roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol exploded in Baghdad's western Mansour area, killing three civilians and wounding 14 others. (Source: AFP)

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Meanwhile, the U.S. military said two of its soldiers died in an accident north of Baghdad in Salahuddin province when their vehicle rolled onto its side. (Source: AFP)

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In western Anbar province, U.S. troops killed six Sunni insurgents in a clash north of Lake Tharthar. The region, a former resort area northwest of Baghdad, is now a stronghold of insurgents affiliated with Al Qaeda. (Source: AFP)

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An aide has said the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's threat to unleash a full-scale war applies only to U.S.-led forces. Last week, al-Sadr warned he would declare "open war" if the government did not end its crackdown against his fighters. (Source: AP)

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British Defense Secretary Des Browne said in London that Britain still hopes to remove hundreds of soldiers this year, but the pullout will stay frozen because of the surge in fighting. Britain had planned to withdraw about 1,500 soldiers this spring, leaving some 2,500 in the south, down from 46,000 during the U.S.-led invasion, 18,000 in May 2004 and 8,500 at the end of 2005. The U.S. has 155,000 military personnel in Iraq. The announcement came as British Foreign Secretary David Miliband made an unannounced visit to Baghdad for talks with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other top Iraqi officials. (Source: AFP)

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The U.S. military said on Friday it had killed 10 fighters in helicopter missile strikes and ground battles in eastern Baghdad overnight. Sources at two hospitals in Baghdad's Sadr City slum said they had received the bodies of 11 people killed in air strikes, all men. Another 74 people, including nine women and 12 children, were wounded. In a statement, the U.S. military said soldiers had killed three fighters who attacked them with mortars. Two helicopter strikes against militants planting roadside bombs killed six, and a third strike killed one. (Source: Reuters)

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Nearly three-quarters of the attacks that kill or wound American soldiers in Baghdad are carried out by Iranian-backed Shiite groups, the U.S. military said Wednesday. (Source: New York Times)

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Iraq's largest Sunni bloc has agreed to return to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's cabinet after a boycott of nearly a year, several Sunni leaders said. They cited a recently passed amnesty law and the government’s crackdown on Shiite militias as reasons for the move. (Source: New York Times)

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United States

The Senate Armed Services Committee has asked the Defense Department's inspector general to review the role of senior Air Force officials in a $50 million contract, seeking further investigation into possible criminal conduct, ethical violations and failures of leadership. (Source: Washington Post)

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A project heralded as the dawning of an innovative, low-cost era in Navy shipbuilding has turned into a case study of how not to build a combat ship. The bill for the first of a new class of vessels designed to operate in coastal waters, being built by Lockheed Martin in Wisconsin, has soared to $531 million, more than double the original, and by some calculations could be $100 million more. With an alternate General Dynamics prototype similarly struggling, the Navy last year temporarily suspended the entire program. The program's tribulations speak to what military experts say are profound shortcomings in the Pentagon’s acquisitions system. Even as spending on new projects has risen to its highest point since the Reagan years, being over budget and behind schedule have become the norm. (Source: New York Times)

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The Navy plans to re-establish its Fourth Fleet, disbanded in 1950, to oversee ships, aircraft and submarines operating in the Caribbean and Central and South America. To be led by Rear Admiral Joseph Kernan, the fleet will be based in Mayport, Fla., coordinating efforts with the U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command, which also is based there. (Source: San Diego Union-Tribune)

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U.S. is reportedly adding 60,000 barrels of oil a day to giant underground caverns in Texas and Louisiana to be used for the proverbial "rainy day" in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. At issue now are the reserve's 701.3 million barrels of oil, enough to replace imports for 58 days. As a member of the International Energy Agency, the U.S. is required to hold 90 days of net petroleum imports. By 2019, the U.S. plans to reach 1 billion barrels, which will provide 100 days of emergency supplies. Adding in 90 percent of commercial stockpiles, the U.S. has 118 days' supply today and will have 123 days by 2020, estimates Jeremy Cusimano, an economist for the Petroleum Reserves, which is part of the Department of Energy, in Washington. (Source: Christian Science Monitor)

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Africa

Zimbabwe police said they have raided opposition headquarters in Harare and arrested people they accuse of being responsible for postelection violence. The opposition has said people were seeking refuge at the offices after being attacked by ruling party loyalists. Assistant Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena could not say how many people were rounded up in Friday's raid. The opposition and independent religious and human rights groups have accused President Robert Mugabe's regime of a violent crackdown on dissent since March 29 elections. (Source: AP)

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Militants say they have sabotaged an oil pipeline in Nigeria's south. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta says its fighters hit a pipeline late Thursday in southern Rivers State. That brings to four the number of pipelines the militant group claims to have blown up in the past week. The group said Friday that the pipeline belongs to a Royal Dutch Shell PLC joint venture. Shell was not immediately available for comment. (Source: AP)

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A Spanish fishing boat seized off Somalia was spotted on Friday near a remote coastal town and local leaders there said they had sent gunmen to chase away the pirates holding the vessel. The tuna fishing boat Playa de Bakio, with 26 crew on board, was sighted near Hobyo, central Mudug region, a day after the pirates were chased away from another town, Haradheere. Both towns have served in the past as bases for pirates who have made the waters off Somalia, some of the World's most dangerous. (Source: Reuters)

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The rebel Lord's Resistance Army reportedly appears to have begun a new campaign of abducting child fighters in central Africa, after balking at signing a peace deal earlier this month. The move raises fears that the group is planning to renew its decades-long insurgency and expand it beyond the borders of Uganda. All of the abductions have occurred in remote bush areas. In the raid about which the most is known, rebel fighters abducted 99 men, women and children in Obo, a town in the southeastern corner of the Central African Republic, near the borders with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan. The rebels moved into this largely lawless triangle two years ago, after five LRA commanders were indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. (Only two of those are still alive.) It is difficult to establish precisely how many people have been abducted, Amnesty International said that it has evidence of "at least 350" people abducted; the UN has put the number near 500 during the past three months, while the Ugandan military reported 200 people abducted in DRC early this month, and 55 in Sudan in late March. (Source: Globe and Mail)

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Americas

A high-level Canadian military delegation, led by the Chief of the Defense Staff, General Rick Hillier, will pay a two-day visit to Macedonia on Sunday through Monday. At the meeting in the General Staff of the ARM, General Hillier will be updated on defense reform and transformation of the ARM as well as on the analysis after the NATO summit in Bucharest. ARM General Staff will brief the Canadian military delegation about the latest restructuring of the ARM and its participation in international peacekeeping operations. The ARM will benefit from the shared experiences/lessons learnt from the operations of Canadian Special Forces within ISAF in Afghanistan. The interlocutors will discuss the opportunities to enhance the bilateral military cooperation between the two armies. In the course of the visit, General Hillier will meet with Defense Minister Lazar Elenovski. In 1999, Macedonian Ministry of Defense and the Canadian Ministry of National Defense signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Military Cooperation. (Source: MakFax Online)

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Argentina's Economy Minister has resigned in the first major departure from President Cristina Fernandez's four-month-old administration, a government official said Friday. (Source: AP)

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Gunmen ambushed and killed the leader of Honduras' largest workers federation and two traveling companions on Thursday. At least six assailants opened fire on a vehicle carrying Altagracia Fuentes and her companions as they traveled along the country's northern Caribbean coast, chief prosecutor Leonidas Rosa said. Fuentes, 60, was the secretary of Honduras' Workers Federation, which has some 300,000 members. She had traveled to the region for an International Workers Day celebration on May 1. Investigators believe the killings were planned in advance. (Source: AP)

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Asia

The White House said Thursday that North Korea's secret work on a nuclear reactor with Syria was "a dangerous and potentially destabilizing development for the world," raising doubts about North Korea's intention to carry through with agreements to end its nuclear program. Seven months after Israel bombed the reactor, the White House broke its silence and said North Korea assisted Syria's secret nuclear program and that the destroyed facility was not intended for "peaceful purposes." (Source: AP)

The Chinese government agreed on Friday to meet with a representative of the Dalai Lama in the coming days, state-run media reported, after weeks of calls from world leaders for dialogue in the wake of anti-government protests in Tibet. (Source: AP)

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The head of the European Commission said Friday he hopes to see "positive developments soon" in Tibet after talks with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters in Beijing that he remained opposed to a boycott of the Olympic Games, which have become a lightning rod for criticism of China's human rights record, especially after a crackdown on anti-government protests in Tibet. (Source: AP)

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A Chinese General has disclosed the arrangements for using the newly established direct telephone link between the Pentagon and China's Ministry of Defense, indicating that it may not be easy to reach a Chinese military leader in a crisis or an emergency. Chinese Major General Qian Lihua, Director of Foreign Affairs for the Ministry of Defense, said in an interview published in the official military newspaper PLA Daily April 16 that the phone link is located in the Chinese Defense Ministry in Beijing, not the real Chinese military command center located underground at a place called Western Hills. (Source: Washington Times)

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Indonesia launched a major bird flu drill Friday that will test the ability of the nation hardest hit by the virus to respond to a possible pandemic. Thousands were taking part, from local residents to government officials. The three-day simulation started with the isolation of a village on the resort island of Bali, where a field hospital was being set up to treat people with flu-like symptoms. Before the drill ends Sunday, officials will try to prevent "infected" travelers from leaving the international airport and spreading the virus to other countries. (Source: AP)

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The European Union will call next week for an international arms embargo on Myanmar's military junta and warn of tougher sanctions if the generals fail to improve human rights conditions. (Source: AFP)

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Sri Lankan forces took control Friday of a revered Roman Catholic church that religious groups had feared was in danger of being damaged by the raging civil war between the government and ethnic Tamil separatists. The seizure of the church in Madhu, which had been abandoned by the Tamil Tiger rebels, was an important morale boost for the government two days after scores of soldiers were killed in a fierce battle with the rebels.

However, a cherished statue of the Virgin Mary, a magnet for mass pilgrimages, remained in rebel-controlled territory. In other fighting, 17 rebels and four soldiers were killed in a series of battles in the north Thursday. (Source: AP)

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Meanwhile, controversy continued to grow in the aftermath of the ferocious battle Wednesday along the front lines at Muhamalai. The army reported 81 soldiers killed or missing in that fight, though other reports gave far higher death tolls. The military said more than 100 rebels died. (Source: AP)

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Sri Lanka's government has sent police to seize hoarded rice as it looks to harvests in the island's strife-torn north to help ease a shortage of the island's staple food. (Source: AFP)

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Nepal's Maoist former rebels won 220 seats in a 601-member special assembly, making them the single largest party, the Election Commission said on Friday. The election crowns a 2006 peace deal ending a 10-year-long Maoist insurgency that killed some 13,000 people in one of the world's poorest countries. The new assembly will write a new constitution, abolish Nepal's 240-year-old monarchy and make laws. (Source: Reuters)

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Europe

Nicolas Sarkozy admitted Thursday to making mistakes during his volatile first year as French president, but said he remains committed to deep reforms to one of the world's major economies. In a wide-ranging television interview, Sarkozy defended his presidency amid mounting criticism from both those who say his promised reforms have been too limp and those who fear he is dismantling the social protections many French hold dear. Observers said the scope of reforms to labor protections, schools and health care in the major European economy hinges on Sarkozy's will to push them through and his ability to convince the French of their importance. (Source: AP)

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In a major shift in policy, Poland, long considered a close ally of the United States, wants the European Union to beef up its military role by having its own independent planning headquarters and more say over military issues, according to the Polish Defense Minister. But the Minister, Bogdan Klich, said Poland would maintain its traditionally strong pro-U.S. stance. (Source: International Herald Tribune)

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A sharp rise in food prices has developed into a global crisis, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday. Ban said the UN and all members of the international community are very concerned, and immediate action is needed. He spoke to reporters at UN offices in Austria. He was meeting with the nation's top leaders for talks on how the UN and European Union can forge closer ties. (Source: AP)

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A seismology center says a moderate earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8 has shaken a city in southwestern Turkey. There are no reports of any injuries. (Source: AP)

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Middle East

The UN stopped distributing aid to Gaza on Thursday after running out of fuel. The Nahal Oz terminal, which supplies the Strip with commodities, remained shut due to the terror attacks on the Nahal Oz and Kerem Shalom crossings, during which five Israelis were killed. Palestinian distributors have been refusing to pick up about a million liters that Israel pumped earlier this month into the Palestinian side of the fuel depot. UNRWA said the stored fuel was not destined for UN agencies in Gaza, which buy their own supplies but also have to import them through Nahal Oz. (Source: AFP/Ynet News)

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Two Israeli security guards were shot dead Friday at the Nitzanei Shalom industrial zone on the boundary between Israel and the Palestinian-ruled West Bank city of Tulkarm. Hundreds of Palestinians work at Nitzanei Oz. (Source: Ha'aretz)

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Also Friday, three Kassam rockets fired by Palestinians in Gaza struck southern Ashkelon. A fourth rocket was fired toward Kibbutz Yad Mordechai. (Source: Ha'aretz)

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Israel dismissed on Friday a proposal by Hamas to call a conditional six-month truce in Gaza, calling it a ruse aimed at allowing the Palestinian Islamist group to recover from recent fighting. (Source: Ha'aretz)

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A delegation from Hamas on Thursday told Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman that Hamas is prepared to accept a temporary cease-fire with Israel, to begin in Gaza, and then extend to the West Bank after a predetermined time. According to Hamas' proposal, Israel will cease all military activity in Gaza and, in return, Hamas will ensure an end to cross-border rocket fire at Israel or other militant operations, including arms smuggling into Gaza. (Source: Ha'aretz)

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Hamas spokesman in Gaza Ayman Taha told the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya that Hamas will stop rocket fire if Israel lifts the blockade on Gaza. Nevertheless, he said that Hamas would not stop arms smuggling or weapons development. (Source: Jerusalem Post)

Thousands of Hamas supporters are gathering near Gaza's northern and southern borders calling for an end to the blockade of the territory. (Source: AP)

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According to a survey by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center this week, support for Haniyeh is higher than that for Mahmoud Abbas. The main reason lies in Fatah's failure to demonstrate change. Elections to the Fatah leadership are not on the horizon, and talk of injecting young blood sounds more like a joke than a real possibility. (Source: Ha'aretz)

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President Bush sought to assure Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas that a peace agreement with Israel remains possible, during a meeting at the White House Thursday. (Source: Washington Post)

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The Bush administration released detailed photographic images on Thursday to support its assertion that the building in Syria that Israel destroyed in an airstrike last year was a nuclear reactor constructed with years of help from North Korea. The administration said it withheld the pictures for seven months out of fear that Syria could retaliate against Israel and start a broader war in the Middle East. A senior administration official said the White House had extensive discussions with Israel before the airstrike. The White House raised the possibility of confronting Syria with a demand that it dismantle the reactor or face the possibility of an attack. But that idea never gained traction with the Israelis or some in the administration, and in the end, the official said, Israel cited satellite evidence to declare that the Syrian reactor constituted "an existential threat" to Israel because it might soon be ready for operation. The official added that Israel's attack proceeded "without a green light from us." "None was asked for, none was given." A senior intelligence official said the U.S. agreed that Syria was "good to go" in turning on the reactor, though it would have been years before it could have produced weapons fuel. (Source: New York Times)

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The head of the UN nuclear monitoring agency angrily criticized Israel on Friday for bombing an alleged Syrian nuclear facility, and chastised the U.S. for withholding information on the site. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei also was not provided information about the site until Thursday, the same day U.S. officials briefed members of the House Intelligence Committee about evidence including dozens of photographs taken from ground level and footage of the interior of the building gathered by spy satellites after the Israeli strike seven months ago.

ElBaradei was briefed by telephone by John Rood, the U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control. (Source: AP)

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Syria on Thursday dismissed U.S. accusations that North Korea was helping it build a nuclear reactor that could produce plutonium. Syria's ambassador to Britain, Sami al-Khiyami, told Reuters that the accusation, which President George W. Bush's administration was expected to lay out to lawmakers on Thursday, was to put pressure on North Korea in talks about Pyongyang's nuclear program. (Source: AP)

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Iranians voted Friday in parliamentary run-off elections expected to leave conservatives firmly in control because most reformist candidates were barred from running. At stake are 82 of the 290 seats in parliament, including 11 representing the capital, Tehran. In the first round, conservatives won 132 seats. But the conservatives, who are loyal to principles of the 1979 Islamic revolution, are divided between supporters of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and opponents. His supporters took 90 of the 132 conservative seats in the first round on March 14. Reformists won 31 seats and independents won 39 seats. The remaining seats are permanently assigned to religious minorities such as Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians. Ahead of the first round of voting, the cleric-run Guardian Council disqualified some 1,700 reformist candidates accused of insufficient loyalty to Islam and the 1979 revolution. Reformists, who call for reducing clerical powers and support greater economic and social tolerance, could only run in about half the races around the country. (Source: AP)

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The Commander of the Israeli air force, Major General Eliezer Shkedy, spoke to 60 Minutes about Iranian President Ahmadinejad's threats against Israel. Shkedy said: "I think it is a very serious threat to the State of Israel, but more than this, to the whole world. They are talking about destroying and wiping us from the earth. We should trust only ourselves....In those days people didn't believe that Hitler was serious about what he said. I suggest not to repeat this way of thinking, and to prepare ourselves for what they are planning." (Source: CBS News)

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By 2009, Iran "could be a nuclear power, if not a nuclear weapon state," former special Middle East envoy Dennis Ross said in Toronto, as reported by the Canadian Jewish News. If not stopped by next year, Iran will have "crossed the threshold of stockpiling fissionable material....Once they cross that threshold, we're going to be in a different ball game. We have to approach this with a high degree of urgency. We're running out of time." (Source: Newsmax)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

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By Professor Joseph B. Varner

As the world’s attention focuses on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, there is a risk that the international community will allow North Korea’s program to fall between the cracks.

This would be a serious mistake.

North Korea is supposed to be disabling its nuclear plants pursuant to an agreement which was the outcome of negotiations between it and South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan. Under the terms of the agreement, North Korea was also to divulge all of its nuclear programs and activities by the end of last year. In exchange, it was to receive 1 million tones of fuel oil, establish normal relations with the United States and Japan and move toward a formal peace agreement.

Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly to those who have been following this saga through the years, the North Koreans failed to make full disclosure by the agreed upon deadline

Last Friday (February 22) U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed North Korea to honour its commitments and disclose both its nuclear weapons programs and its alleged proliferation activities. The North Koreans are widely believed to be a global leader in proliferation of both missile and missile technology and nuclear technology. In July 2006 it test-fired seven missiles, including the long-range Taepodong-2, which in theory could reach the US west coast. These tests were soon followed by its first nuclear test, conducted in October 2006.

Washington is particularly interested in information surrounding a possible transfer of nuclear technology from North Korea to Syria, speculating that an Israeli air strike in Syria last September may have targeted a joint nuclear project. That attack on September 6 is believed to have destroyed a Syrian construction site on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, located 11 kilometres north of At-Tibnah in the Deir Az-Zur region, some 145 kilometres from the Iraqi border.

Raising suspicions further is the fact that satellite photos show that the complex, which the Syrians have admitted was military, has now been completely raised, erasing any evidence of what the site was actually intended for. Informed opinion has suggested that it was a nuclear reactor complex to produce material for nuclear weapons. According to David Albright, President of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and a former UN weapons inspector, the buildings appeared similar to the North Korean 20 – 25 MW thermal reactor building in Yongbyon.

Professor Uzi Even of Tel Aviv University, a former scientist in Israel’s nuclear program, believes that the Syrian structure that was attacked and destroyed was an actual bomb factory. The assembly of one bomb requires about four kilograms of fissionable material. After its nuclear test conducted about a year ago, North Korea still had enough plutonium (an estimated 40 kg) to produce 10 atom bombs. The whereabouts of this plutonium is unknown as it is not under supervision.

It appears that North Korea and Syria have a great deal to answer for. That was six months ago. The international community might rightly ask: what else has North Korea transferred abroad, to whom? What else has it been up to under the guise of diplomacy since then?

So far, answers have not been forthcoming.
*Article originally published on www.intelligencedigest.ca Feb. 25, 2008

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Professor Varner teaches courses in homeland security and intelligence studies at American Military University and serves as the Program Director for the Department of Homeland Security.

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A daily, open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.

By Professor Joseph B. Varner

Global War on Terror

Pakistan has protested to NATO and Afghan authorities over a skirmish that killed at least nine people. In a pre-dawn battle Wednesday, militants attacked an Afghan border post across from Pakistan's Bajur tribal area. During the melee, Pakistani and Afghan troops also traded fire. A Pakistani soldier and at least eight suspected militants died. On Thursday, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, said NATO forces provided small arms fire and air support to Afghan forces. Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Sadiq has said NATO and Afghan forces were told not to repeat such incidents. (Source: AP)

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Pakistan's government is reportedly seeking a peace deal with the tribe of a Taliban commander suspected in the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Zahid Khan, a senior official in one of the parties of the ruling coalition, said government envoys were in talks with elders of the Mahsud tribe in South Waziristan. The tribe includes Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistan's top Taliban leader who is accused of ties to Al Qaeda. Mehsud is wanted for a string of suicide attacks in Pakistan. The previous government has accused him of Bhutto's assassination in December. Mehsud has reportedly denied involvement and Bhutto's party has not repeated the assertion. (Source: AP)

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Four men jailed for life for their part in attempted suicide bombings in London in July 2005 had their appeal bids turned down on Wednesday after the judge branded their crimes "merciless." The men, who were sentenced each to spend at least 40 years behind bars for a plot to bomb three underground trains and a bus two weeks after 52 people were killed in similar attacks, argued they had merely been taking part in an elaborate hoax. (Source: Reuters)

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Fifteen terrorist plots have been foiled in the three years since the London bombings, Bob Quick, Scotland Yard's new head of anti-terrorism, has disclosed. Britain was said to be the primary target for Muslim extremists, ahead of America and other European countries. (Source: Telegraph-UK)

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U.S. Federal prosecutors announced Wednesday that they will try for the third time to convict six men accused of plotting to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower and attack other buildings. In arguing for a new trial, prosecuting attorney Richard Gregorie pointed to taped conversations obtained by the FBI in which the leader of the "Liberty City Seven," Narseal Batiste, made threatening comments about citizens of the United States. The defendants, of whom six remain under threat of prosecution, were arrested June 23, 2006, at a warehouse in Miami's low-income Liberty City neighborhood, where FBI informants posing as Al Qaeda operatives persuaded the men to pledge an allegiance to the terrorist organization and offered them $50,000 to take part in a terror plot. Among the activities some the men engaged in were taking pictures of federal buildings around Miami. During both of the previous trials, Batiste testified that he and his followers agreed to the informants' proposal only because they thought they could con them out of the money. (Source: Washington Post)

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According to a CIA official's statement in court documents filed yesterday the CIA concluded that criminal, administrative or civil investigations stemming from harsh interrogation tactics were "virtually inevitable," leading the agency to seek legal support from the Justice Department. The CIA said it had identified more than 7,000 pages of classified memos, e-mails and other records relating to its secret prison and interrogation program, but maintained that the materials cannot be released because they relate to, in part, communications between CIA and Justice Department attorneys or discussions with the White House. (Source: Washington Post)

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Iraq

Britain's Foreign Secretary held talks Thursday with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as at least 13 people were reported killed in the ongoing fighting between Shiite militiamen and Iraqi and U.S.-led forces. The British Embassy confirmed that Foreign Secretary David Miliband had arrived on a previously unannounced visit but refused to release any other information due to security concerns. Britain has about 4,500 troops in Iraq, most of them based at an airport camp near the southern city of Basra. Britain suspended plans to withdraw about 1,500 troops this spring after fighting broke out last month between Iraqi forces and Shiite militiamen. (Source: AP)

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Iraqi security forces claim they have captured Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, the Vice-Chairman of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party. Duri tops the Iraqi government's current list of most-wanted fugitives and is considered an operational leader with close ties to anti-U.S. insurgents. In remarks to the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat published on Wednesday, Iraqi national security adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie said Duri was in Syria from where he led the insurgency in Iraq. (Source: Telegraph-UK)

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In the latest clashes, five people died and 28 were wounded early Thursday in Baghdad's embattled Sadr City district, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. (Source: AP)

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Another eight people were killed and two wounded during fighting in the capital's Husseiniyah area, another base of Shiite militants. (Source: AP)

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Meanwhile, the U.S. military said Thursday that two of its soldiers were killed in an accident in Salahuddin province when their vehicle rolled onto its side. (Source: AP)

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Another American soldier died in a single-vehicle accident on a highway in neighboring Kuwait. A soldier was injured in the crash. (Source: AP)

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Coalition forces have reported Iran may be supplying medium-range rockets to Shi'ite militias in Iraq. On April 19, Iraqi troops, as part of Operation Charge of the Knights, discovered a cache of munitions that included a 240 mm high-explosive warhead in Basra. The warhead, which contained Iranian markings, was said to be the most advanced weapon found in the possession of the Mahdi Army. Officials said the warhead appeared to be part of the Fajr-5 medium-range rocket produced by Iran and transferred to Hizbullah in 2006. So far, they said, Shi'ite militias were not believed to have fired a 240 mm rocket in Iraq. Other weapons found in the Shi'ite militia cache in Basra included 160 mortars, 25 artillery shells and a large quantity of explosives. Officials said the weapons contained Iranian markings and appeared less than a year old. Officials said Teheran was believed to have supplied missiles with a range of at least 70 kilometers to the Mahdi Army, Special Groups and other militias in 2008. They said the rockets were meant to be used against the U.S.-led coalition and Baghdad government. (Source: World Tribune)

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The United States

The case of an 84-year-old New Jersey man charged with passing secrets to an Israeli agent a quarter-century ago has created speculation that more Americans may have been serving Israeli intelligence than previously thought. Jonathan Pollard, a civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy, was arrested by FBI agents in Washington D.C. in 1985 and pleaded guilty to spying charges, receiving a life sentence. Now, retired U.S. military engineer Ben-ami Kadish faces similar charges. The link between Pollard and Kadish is a now-defunct Israeli intelligence agency enigmatically known as the Scientific Relations Office. The office was run by Rafi Eitan, a former officer of the Mossad spy agency who is now an octogenarian Israeli Cabinet minister in charge of pensioners' affairs. Kadish and Pollard allegedly had the same handler, Yosef Yagur, "an intelligence agent under diplomatic cover" serving as an attache in Israel's New York consulate but covertly attached to Eitan's office. Yagur is now retired and lives in Tel Aviv. (Source: AP)

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Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman Aryeh Mekel said Wednesday that "Since 1985, the prime ministers' orders to refrain from engaging in this kind of activity (espionage) have been strictly followed. The U.S.-Israel relationship has always been premised on true friendship as well as shared values and interests." (Source: Ynet News)

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Several U.S. officials have downplayed the arrest of a former U.S. army engineer on charges he spied for Israel, and suggested fears of blowback are unjustified. They pointed to the lengthy amount of time, 23 years, since the espionage is alleged to have occurred and the understandings that emerged between the two states after the arrest of Jonathan Pollard. Bruce Reidel, a former CIA official and Middle East analyst, said, "given the passage of time, I think both governments will not want this to upset the already many difficult issues they have to deal with." (Source: Jerusalem Post)

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General David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, was tapped Wednesday to lead U.S. Central Command in a major shift in the military command at a time of growing tensions with Iran. (Source: AFP)

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The U.S. Defense Department said it has appointed a new head of the Air Force Materiel Command. After a nomination by President George Bush, Defense Department officials announced that Lieutenant General Donald Hoffman has been named to the spot. Hoffman is currently serving as a military deputy in the Office of the Assistant Air Force Secretary for Acquisition at the Pentagon. (Source: UPI)

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General Michael V. Hayden, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, announced Wednesday that he would retire from the Air Force this summer but continue running the agency as a civilian. (Source: New York Times)

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Speaking to an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey offered praise for the successful efforts by Robert F. Kennedy decades ago to break the back of the Italian American mafia but told listeners that the current threat from international syndicates poses even greater challenges. (Source: Washington Post)

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Africa

Britain is reportedly circulating a draft UN resolution calling for the United Nations to move its Somalia political operation to the conflict-wracked nation, step up efforts to restore peace, and keep planning for a UN takeover of peacekeeping from the African Union. (Source: AP)

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State media said on Wednesday that a unity government led by President Robert Mugabe may be the best way to break Zimbabwe's post-election deadlock as the first result from a recount of votes was declared. (Source: AFP)

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A shipment of weapons meant for Zimbabwe but which neighboring countries refused entry to will return to China because there was no way to deliver it to the landlocked country in political turmoil, China's Foreign Ministry said Thursday. The shipment, including mortar grenades and bullets, was to arrive amid a standoff in Zimbabwe over elections held more than three weeks ago. (Source: AP)

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Children in flood hit Tanzania face greater danger from the deadliest disease in Sub Saharan Africa, as the rest of the globe prepares to mark the first ever World Malaria Day. Forced to flee the floods, leaving behind their homes, livelihoods and possessions, Tanzanian children are now returning to an increased threat from the Sub Saharan serial killer, malaria. Receding waters have left stagnant pools, which act as breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Plan, the leading international children's organization is the only international NGO to have responded providing bed nets and other emergency relief to the worst affected families. (Source: Reuters)

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Americas

Denmark has invited high-ranking officials from Norway, Russia, the United States and Canada to meet in Greenland next month to discuss competing claims to the Arctic, it said on Wednesday. Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller and his Norwegian counterpart Jonas Gahr Stoere will join representatives from other countries bordering the Arctic Ocean on May 27-29 in Ilulissat, a town in the Danish autonomous territory. The countries plan to discuss territorial claims in the Arctic, as well as cooperation on accidents and oil spills and native peoples' issues, the Danish Foreign Ministry said. They expect to issue a declaration at the end of the meeting. (Source: National Post)

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The Bush administration said Wednesday it was tentatively planning to sell Canada six Boeing Co CH-47D heavy-lift transport helicopters that could boost the ability to operate together in the U.S.-declared global war on terrorism. The proposed sale, including 12 Honeywell International Inc (HON.N: Quote, Profile, Research) T-55 turbine engines, plus two spare engines and related gear, could be worth up to $375 million if all options are exercised, the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a notice to Congress. (Source: Reuters)

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A chorus of anti-U.S. leftist Latin American leaders issued a strong show of support Wednesday for Bolivia where the government believes it is threatened by a breakaway bid from wealthy regions. President Evo Morales faces a referendum vote May 4 on regional autonomy, sought by the relatively prosperous eastern regions of his impoverished nation, South America's poorest. Those regions largely oppose La Paz's socialist policies. Chavez called Wednesday's urgent summit meeting of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, a regional group set up to counter U.S. trade and diplomatic efforts in the region. The group includes Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Dominica. (Source: AFP)

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Lawmakers in Haiti are urging President Rene Preval to name a new prime minister by the end of the week, after several days without a head of government following the forced exit of Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis. (Source: AFP)

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The death toll from a dengue outbreak in Rio de Janeiro state has reached 92, topping what was previously the state's deadliest bout with the disease, Brazil's government news agency said Wednesday. (Source: AP)

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It was reported that Brazil's discoveries of what may be two of the world's three biggest oil finds in the past 30 years could help end the Western Hemisphere's reliance on Middle East crude. Saudi Arabia's influence as the biggest oil exporter would wane if the fields are as big as advertised, and China and India would become dominant buyers of Persian Gulf oil, said Peter Zeihan, Vice President of analysis at Strategic Forecasting in Austin, Texas. Zeihan said Brazil may be pumping several million barrels of crude daily by 2020, vaulting the nation into the ranks of the world's seven biggest producers. (Source: Bloomberg)

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Asia

North Korea expressed optimism Thursday over talks this week with a U.S. delegation on its nuclear program, raising hopes of breaking the impasse that has deadlocked arms negotiations. The nuclear talks have been mired since last year over what the North will include in a declaration of its nuclear programs. The communist nation missed a year-end deadline to complete the declaration, which it had agreed to provide to the other countries in the negotiations. North Korea's Foreign Ministry said Thursday it had discussed technical matters with the Americans for moving forward on that and other agreements from the arms talks. (Source: AP)

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A French lawyer known for his provocative style and infamous clients has taken center stage at the tribunal for Cambodia's former Khmer Rouge leaders, challenging the judges and adding to the woes of an already troubled court. The aggressive stance taken by Jacques Verges at an appeal by former Khmer Rouge President Khieu Samphan for release from pretrial detention augurs possible new hurdles for the tribunal, plagued over the past few years by political wrangling, corruption scandals and inadequate financing. (Source: AP)

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Indonesia does not want money for its samples of a deadly bird flu virus, a health official said Wednesday after the U.S. criticized his country for refusing to share the samples with the international community. (Source: AP)

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Former communist rebels won the most seats in Nepal's new governing assembly, taking more than double the number of their nearest rival, an election official said Thursday.

The former insurgents, known as the Maoists, are now expected to form the backbone of Nepal's new government and usher in sweeping changes to the impoverished Himalayan nation, although they will not have an absolute majority in the 601-seat Constituent Assembly. Among the biggest likely changes is the expected abolition of Nepal's 239-year-old monarchy, which the Maoists have repeatedly said must go. (Source: AP)

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Tamil Tiger rebels and Sri Lankan troops fought one of their fiercest battles in years Wednesday, battering each other with small arms and mortars in a confrontation that the military said killed 100 guerrillas and left 76 soldiers dead or missing. The rebels claimed they killed more than 100 soldiers and lost only 16 of their fighters in a 10-hour firefight they characterized as a rout of the heavily armed government forces. Either way, the battle was a serious blow to the government's promise to capture the Tamil Tigers' de facto state in the north, crush the rebel group, and end the 25-year-old civil war in this Indian Ocean island nation by the end of the year. The military said fighting broke out just before dawn when rebel forces overran government positions in the rugged Muhamalai region of the Jaffna peninsula, north of rebel-held territory. Government troops fought back with small arms, mortars and tanks, eventually driving off the assault and launching a counteroffensive that pushed 500 yards into Tamil Tiger territory. Soon after the ground fighting, air force jets and helicopters destroyed two rebel artillery positions and hit rebel bunkers in the area, the military said in a statement. The military initially said 15 soldiers died, but later increased that toll to 38. By early Thursday, it said 43 were dead, 33 were missing and 120 were wounded. The toll was the worst suffered by the military in months and would make it one of their deadliest battles since renewed fighting started here more than two years ago. Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan said the rebels counted more than 100 dead soldiers and about 500 wounded troops. Both sides routinely inflate casualty figures for the other side and underreport their own losses. (Source: AP)

Europe

Russian President Vladimir Putin praised his predecessor Boris Yeltsin for bringing freedom to Russia, as he attended a graveside ceremony on Wednesday to mark the first anniversary of Yeltsin's death. Putin's critics accuse him of betraying Yeltsin's legacy by rolling back democratic freedoms, concentrating too much power in his hands and restoring many of the attributes of the Soviet Union that Yeltsin helped overturn. In a symbolic moment at the memorial ceremony, a military band played a few bars of the national anthem introduced by Yeltsin, then switched to the Soviet melody that Putin reinstated as Russia's official anthem. (Source: Reuters)

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Russia has rejected a call by key Western powers to rescind its plan to strengthen ties with two breakaway Georgian regions, insisting it only wants to promote their economic development and not annex them. Diplomats from the United States, Britain, France and Germany, who are supporters of Georgia, said they were "highly concerned" about Russia's strengthened ties with Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia said Wednesday it would not change its plans. Tensions between Russia and Georgia have escalated over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which have close ties to Moscow and have been independently run since the early 1990s, when fighting with Georgian troops ended. Georgian Foreign Minister David Bakradze said his government has seen "very alarming signs of creeping annexation" of the two regions by Russia. In the latest incident, Georgia claimed a Russian fighter jet shot down an unmanned Georgian spy plane Sunday as it flew over Abkhazia, a claim Moscow denies. Georgia asked for a UN Security Council meeting following the incident and Bakradze flew to New York to put the country's case before its members. Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin lamented that a representative of Abkhazia was not invited to address the council as well. (Source: AP)

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Middle East

A letter that President Bush is reported to have personally delivered to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon four years ago has emerged as a significant obstacle to President Bush's efforts to forge a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians during his last year in office. Ehud Olmert, the current Israeli Prime Minister, said this week that Bush's letter gave the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush's peace plan officially calls for a freeze of Israeli settlements. In an interview this week, Sharon's Chief of Staff, Dov Weissglas, said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this understanding in a secret agreement reached between Israel and the U.S. in the spring of 2005, just before Israel withdrew from Gaza. In a key sentence in Bush's 2004 letter, the President stated, "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." Weissglas said he then negotiated a "verbal understanding" with Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams that would permit new construction in those key settlements; Rice and Sharon then approved the Weissglas-Abrams deal. U.S. officials have said no such agreement exists, and in recent months Rice has publicly criticized construction on the outskirts of Jerusalem, which Israel does not officially count as settlements. National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley, at a news briefing in January, suggested that Bush's 2004 letter was aimed at helping Sharon win domestic approval for the Gaza withdrawal. (Source: Washington Post)

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Israel Thursday accused Hamas of causing a "fabricated crisis" by refusing to distribute one million liters of fuel delivered to Gaza. Israel Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said the million liters of fuel, which he said was enough for humanitarian needs, that Israel transferred three weeks ago, is still waiting to be collected on the Palestinian side of the Nahal Oz fuel crossing terminal.Gaza residents said Hamas officials have taken fuel for their own purposes and given it to high-ranking officials, government employees and its own students, but has not distributed the remainder to the population at large. (Source: M&C)

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The White House is reportedly preparing to make public on Thursday video evidence of North Koreans working at a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor just before it was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike on September 6. Senior officials in Israel and the U.S. have said the target was a nascent nuclear reactor that had been under construction for years, modeled on the reactor North Korea used to obtain the fuel for its small nuclear weapons arsenal. The video, believed to have been obtained through Israeli intelligence services, shows Korean faces among the workers at the Syrian plant. (Source: New York Times)

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Sources familiar with the video, taken last summer, said that it shows that the Syrian reactor core's design is the same as that of the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, including a virtually identical configuration and number of holes for fuel rods. (Source: Washington Post)

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Peace overtures between Israel and Syria moved up a gear on Wednesday when a Syrian cabinet minister said that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel had sent a message to President Bashar al-Assad to the effect that Israel would be willing to withdraw from all the Golan Heights in return for peace with Syria. (Source: New York Times)

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UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Monday for the disarmament of Hizbullah's well-armed militia. In his six-month report to the Security Council, Ban warned that Lebanon will not be a fully sovereign, democratic state until Hizbullah is disbanded. (Source: AP/USA Today)

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In the report Ban also warned that "Palestinian refugee camps continue to pose a major challenge to stability and security in Lebanon, in particular due to the presence of a range of non-state actors in the camps. I remain concerned that threats from al-Qaeda-inspired militias in Palestinian refugee camps continue." (Source: Daily Star-Lebanon)

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The U.S., France and Britain walked out of a UN Security Council debate on the Middle East on Wednesday after Libya compared the situation in Gaza to that of Nazi "concentration camps." French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert plucked off his translation earpiece and walked out, followed by his two colleagues, after Libyan Deputy Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi made the statement. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

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Iran has been kicked out of an international defense show in Malaysia for exhibiting missile equipment in violation of UN rules. Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak said Iranian companies were ordered out of the Defense Services Asia show Tuesday because their exhibition was deemed "offensive." Najib said the exhibit was in defiance of UN resolutions that ban Iranian arms exports and forbid countries from providing Iran with technical and financial assistance that could contribute to its alleged nuclear weapons program. Iran is under three sets of UN Security Council sanctions for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment and meet other council demands designed to ease fears that its civilian nuclear program is a cover for attempts to make atomic weapons. (Source: AP)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

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A daily, open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.

By Professor Joseph B. Varner

Global War on Terror

Al Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, criticized Muslims for failing to support Islamist insurgencies in Iraq and elsewhere in a new audiotape posted Tuesday on the Internet. Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant also blasted Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas over their reported readiness to consider a peace deal with Israel. He also used the two-and-a-half hour message to urge Muslims to join militant groups, mainly in Iraq, where he claimed that the insurgency against the Iraqi government and the United States-led coalition forces is bearing fruit. "I urge all Muslims to hurry to the battlefields of Jihad (holy war), especially in Iraq," Zawahiri said in the message, the second in a two-part series to answer about 100 questions put to him via online militant forums. In his message, Zawahiri also called on the various jihadist groups operating in the country to unite behind the "more advanced" Al Qaeda-backed "Islamic State of Iraq". In the first part of the message released last Friday, Zawahiri commemorated the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq with a call to Muslims to make Iraq a "fortress of Islam." (Source:Breitbart.com)

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A spate of suicide bombings and other attacks on security forces in southern Afghanistan Wednesday left 13 people dead and 24 others wounded. In Kandahar province, a suicide bomber blew himself up next to a vehicle carrying intelligence agents in the border town of Spin Boldak, killing three civilians. Two children and three intelligence agents were among the 14 hurt. Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the insurgent group was behind the attack and identified the bomber as a man named Gul Mohammad. (Source:AP)

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In neighboring Helmand province, a suicide bomber struck a police convoy, killing two officers and wounding three, said district Police Chief Khairudin Shuhja. Shuhja was in the convoy but was not injured in the attack. (Source:AP)

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In eastern Kunar province, Taliban militants attacked a police border post, killing five officers and wounding seven others. (Source:AP)

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Separately, a border police patrol in northwestern Badghis province hit a mine, killing three officers riding in the vehicle. (Source:AP)

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Kazakh police have detained a man wanted in neighboring Uzbekistan on suspicion of taking part in a riot in the Uzbek town of Andizhan in 2005, a Kazakh police spokesman said on Wednesday. The West condemned Uzbekistan in May 2005 for its handling of the Andizhan events where witnesses said hundreds of people were killed when state troops opened fire on unarmed protesters. Uzbekistan blamed the violence on Islamist rebels. On Wednesday, Kazakh police said the Uzbek man, detained on Sunday in the Kazakh financial capital Almaty during a raid on his apartment, is accused at home of taking part in acts of terror and attacking law enforcement agents in Andizhan. (Source:Reuters)

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The United Nations has reduced its presence in Yemen due to the increased profile of Al Qaeda. Officials said the UN closed several offices in Yemen in April in wake of attacks on a Western compound in Sanaa. They said the UN also placed walls of concrete around its headquarters in Sanaa to prevent rocket strikes. On March 20, Al Qaeda fired three mortars toward the U.S. embassy in Sanaa. The mortars missed the embassy and struck a girls’ high school. Two people were killed. (Source:World Tribune)

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The Danish Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that it has evacuated its staff from embassies in Algeria and Afghanistan because of threats after newspapers reprinted a cartoon depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Embassy employees have been moved to secret locations in both countries' capitals but continue to work. The announcement comes after Danish intelligence officials warned of an "aggravated" terror threat against Denmark since newspapers in the country in February of a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The warning specifically singled out North Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan. (Source:AP)

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The United States government is scrapping a $20 million prototype of its highly touted "virtual fence" on the Arizona-Mexico border because the system is failing to adequately alert border patrol agents to illegal crossings. (Source:AP)

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Iraq

Civilian casualties reportedly mounted Wednesday as clashes between Shiite gunmen and U.S. and Iraqi troops spread to Baghdad's outskirts. Police said two women were among seven people killed in fighting overnight. Fierce fighting broke out during a military operation late Tuesday in Husseiniyah, a mainly Shiite area that sits to the north of Baghdad's embattled Sadr City district. U.S. and Iraqi troops were backed by helicopters as they fought until Wednesday morning with suspected Shiite militiamen who dominate the area, police said. Women and children were among 20 people wounded. Police and hospital officials, who all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information, also said eight civilians were killed and 44 others wounded in fighting in Sadr City, a sprawling district in northeastern Baghdad. U.S. soldiers responded after they were attacked by rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire, killing 12 "criminals" in three separate incidents Tuesday in eastern Baghdad. (Source:AP)

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The U.S. military said Wednesday that 15 suspected militants were killed in separate attacks a day earlier in mainly Shiite areas. (Source:AP)

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A man planting a roadside bomb in northeastern Baghdad also was shot to death by American soldiers in northeastern Baghdad, while two others spotted with a mortar tube were killed in an airstrike. (Source:AP)

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Two U.S. Marines and an Iraqi civilian also were killed when a bomb-rigged water tanker truck exploded at a checkpoint near the western city of Ramadi on Tuesday in another apparent strike by Al Qaeda in Iraq in one of its former strongholds. (Source:AP)

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The killings underscored the threat still posed by Sunni insurgent groups even as public attention has focused on the month-old campaign by American and Iraqi troops against Shiite militias. Al Qaeda in Iraq, the homegrown Sunni insurgent group that American officials believe is led by foreigners, asserted responsibility for the attack in a statement that was posted an hour later at a local high school. It said the group has prepared "an army of suicide bombers" who will "target the centers of infidelity and apostasy" in the city. The Washington Post

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The U.S. military raised the death toll in Tuesday's female suicide bombing in Diyala province to 18 including 10 Iraqi civilians, a Kurd and seven Iraqi policemen. It also said two Iraqi policemen were wounded. It was the second suicide attack by a woman in as many days in Diyala, a flashpoint in the battle against Al Qaeda. A young woman blew herself up Monday at the headquarters of a group of U.S.-allied Sunni fighters, killing three people and wounding three others. Last weekend, Al Qaeda announced a one-month offensive against U.S. troops and Sunnis who have joined forces with Americans. AP

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The United States

It was reported that although NASA is concerned about last weekend’s rough, off-target landing of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying three astronauts, an agency official expressed confidence on Tuesday that the Russians would solve the problem. The Soyuz capsule, carrying a crew home from the International Space Station, made a steeper-than-normal re-entry early Saturday and landed in Kazakhstan about 260 miles short of its target. (Source: The New York Times)

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Africa

UN officials have warned that the conflict in Darfur is deteriorating, with full deployment of a new peacekeeping force delayed until 2009 and no prospect of a political settlement for a war that has killed perhaps 300,000 people in five years. (Source:AP)

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UN Security Council members have agreed that Eritrea's treatment of UN peacekeepers on its disputed border with Ethiopia is "unacceptable," but the council needs more time to deliberate on the matter. The Eritreans have obstructed UN peacekeeping efforts for the past 1 1/2 years with its military occupation of part of a buffer zone and restrictions on UN night patrols, supply routes and diesel fuel. Tensions between Eritrea and Ethiopia remain high because of Ethiopia's refusal to accept a 2002 ruling by an independent boundary commission on the border demarcation between the two countries, which awarded the key town of Badme to Eritrea. Eritrea and Ethiopia have been feuding over their border since Eritrea gained independence from the Addis Ababa government in 1993 after a 30-year guerrilla war. A 1,700-strong UN force has been monitoring a 15-mile wide, 620-mile long buffer zone between the Horn of Africa neighbors under a December 2000 peace agreement that ended a 2 1/2-year border war. (Source:AP)

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The first results from an election recount under way reportedly show President Robert Mugabe's party has won an additional parliamentary seat, state media reported Wednesday. Election officials began recounting ballots in 23 districts over the weekend, most of them won by the opposition. The recount could prove pivotal for the ruling party, which lost control of parliament by a handful of seats for the first time ever. The state-run Herald newspaper also suggested Wednesday that a government of national unity led by Mugabe could end Zimbabwe's deepening political and economic crisis, in a major departure from its regular stance of accusing the opposition of manipulating the vote.

The proposal in a newspaper considered a government mouthpiece comes as the U.S. top diplomat for Africa heads to southern Africa for talks with regional leaders on Zimbabwe's postelection crisis. Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer headed to South Africa on Wednesday and also is to visit Angola and Zambia for talks on Zimbabwe. No presidential results have been released from the March 29 election, and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's party insists it won outright. The Movement for Democratic Change has called the government's refusal to release the results part of a ploy to steal the vote. (Source:AP)

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Zimbabwe's regime got a taste of the international isolation critics say it deserves, with its neighbors blocking a shipment of Chinese arms to prevent them from being used against Robert Mugabe's opponents. China said Tuesday the weapons might be returned home. Union, church and human rights leaders across southern Africa rallied against allowing the Chinese freighter An Yue Jiang to dock at ports in any of landlocked Zimbabwe's neighbors, and they were bolstered by behind-the-scenes pressure from the United States. (Source:AP)

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A Nigerian court will decide next week whether authorities can try a rebel leader from the oil-producing Niger Delta in secret. The decision to try Henry Okah in secret has angered militants of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), who have launched a series of attacks in recent days. Lawyers defending Okah filed a motion on Tuesday at the Federal High Court in the central city of Jos, challenging the order for a secret trial. Okah, who was arrested in Angola last September and handed over to Nigeria in February, has been charged with treason and gun-running and stands accused of conspiring to wage war on Nigeria. He faces the death penalty if convicted. (Source:Reuters)

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Americas

A close political ally of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe wanted for allegedly backing illegal militias surrendered to police Tuesday night after Costa Rica denied him political asylum. Colombia's chief prosecutor had ordered the arrest of former Senator Mario Uribe, President Uribe's second cousin, earlier Tuesday on charges of criminal conspiracy for "agreements to promote illegal armed groups." The former senator had immediately entered the Costa Rican embassy in Bogota to seek asylum but was denied. (Source:AP)

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A top associate of leftist guerrillas in Colombia who assisted in the procurement of weapons, ammunition and cash in exchange for cocaine and cocaine paste has been extradited to the United States to stand trial on conspiracy charges. Juan Jose Martinez Vega, also known as "Chiguiro," was returned to New York this week as part of a massive crackdown led by the U.S. federal agents on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Fifty of the organization's top leaders were targeted in a federal grand jury indictment. (Source: The Washington Times)

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Asia

South Korea's Foreign Minister said on Wednesday that a team of U.S. officials visiting North Korea was trying to resolve a deadlock in international nuclear disarmament talks.

The U.S. delegation led by Sung Kim, the top State Department expert on the Koreas traveled on Tuesday to the communist nation to press for a list of nuclear programs the North had promised to deliver by the end of last year. (Source:AP)

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European business officials warned Wednesday that calls in China for a boycott of French products since the raucous Olympic torch relay in Paris could spark a backlash against Chinese exports. (Source:AP)

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The USS Kitty Hawk was scheduled to make a port call in Hong Kong this weekend, five months after being turned away by China, a U.S. Consulate General spokesman said Wednesday. (Source:AP)

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Cambodia's genocide tribunal abruptly adjourned a pretrial hearing for the former President of the Khmer Rouge after his French attorney erupted at judges because the case file had not been translated into French. Jacques Verges, one of the lawyers representing Khieu Samphan, 76, in his appeal against pretrial detention, has earned notoriety with a client list that includes Nazi Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie, Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and confessed serial killer Charles Sobhraj. (Source:AP)

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At least 52 guerrillas and 38 soldiers were killed and hundreds more wounded Wednesday, officials said, as Tamil separatists reported repulsing a Sri Lankan offensive ahead of key local elections. (Source:AFP)

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Nepal's Maoists were reportedly pushing Wednesday to build a coalition government with rivals following the upset victory by the former rebels in landmark elections, with vote counting nearing completion. (Source:AFP)

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Middle East

U.S. Secretary of State Condolezza Rice said Tuesday that former President Carter's recent talks with the Palestinian group Hamas had not been helpful. Rice said "We counseled President Carter against going to the region and particularly against having contacts with Hamas," adding that the administration had "wanted to make sure there would be no confusion and there would be no sense that Hamas was somehow a party to peace negotiations." (Source: The New York Times)

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The Hamas regime has continued its crackdown on the opposition Fatah movement.

Palestinian sources said Hamas has increased restrictions on Fatah in the Gaza Strip. The sources said Hamas has banned demonstrations as well as Fatah publications and news coverage. On April 18, Hamas police prevented a Fatah protest in the southern Gaza town of Rafah. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said police officers beat demonstrators and fired into the air. The human rights group said the Fatah protest, called to commemorate Palestinians detained by Israel, had been peaceful. (Source:World Tribune)

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Palestinians in Gaza on Tuesday fired three rockets at Israel, one of which slammed directly into a home in Sderot, causing a number of residents to suffer shock. Another rocket struck an open area and caused a fire. A further rocket hit Ashkelon's industrial district. (Source:Ha'aretz)

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The Nahal Oz fuel terminal reopened Wednesday some two weeks after a Palestinian terror attack left two Israelis dead. For the time being, only diesel fuel for Gaza's power station will be transferred. The terminal was partially opened last week for the transfer of diesel and heating gas, but Palestinian gunmen fired at the tankers. (Source:Ynet News)

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In a postscript to a two-decade-old spy scandal, the FBI on Tuesday arrested an 84-year-old former U.S. Army civilian engineer and charged him with providing classified defense documents to Israel. The alleged crimes that led to the arrest of Ben-Ami Kadish took place between 1979 and 1985, when Kadish, a U.S. citizen, worked at the Army's Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey. According to court documents unsealed Tuesday, Kadish's alleged handler turns out to be the same Israeli consular official in New York who allegedly served as a "control" agent for Jonathan Pollard, the former Navy intelligence analyst arrested in 1985 and convicted the next year whose case cast a cloud over U.S.-Israeli relations for years. Kadish told the FBI that he did not operate after 1985. A senior U.S. intelligence official said Kadish's alleged activities were first discovered within the last few years, more than 20 years after they occurred, as a result of super secret intelligence monitoring related to ongoing inquiries about the Pollard case. (Source:Newsweek)

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Western and Palestinian diplomats said Tuesday that a planned follow-up to November's Middle East peace conference in Annapolis will likely be postponed or even canceled because of Mahmoud Abbas' reluctance to take part. Abbas, who meets with President Bush at the White House on Thursday, is doubtful that anything of value would be accomplished at the conference, set to take place in Moscow in June. An Israeli official noted that his country always prefers to "sit down with the other party," rather than get distracted by more international events. Israel also is opposed to Russia's plan to put Israeli-Syrian issues, such as the Golan Heights, on the conference agenda. (Source:The Washington Times)

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Meanwhile, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Robert Danin "will be head of mission" for the Jerusalem-based office of Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday. Blair represents the Quartet of major players in the Middle East peace process, who will next meet on May 2 in London. (Source:AFP)

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Iranian President Ahmadinejad reportedly has fired off a letter to Parliament Speaker Gholam Ali Hadad Adel on Tuesday, furiously denouncing him for bypassing the Presidency by giving the order to implement legislation. Meanwhile, the heads of two powerful judiciary bodies lambasted Ahmadinejad for accusing his opponents in a speech last week of forming an economic and political mafia. Ahmadinejad has also been under fire from leading clerics for his economic policies. The public arguments come ahead of the second round of parliamentary elections on Friday. AFP/Nasdaq

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The seizure of 1,150 kilograms of nuclear-grade graphite in Mumbai on the eve of its export by air to Iran has demonstrated beyond all doubt where India stands in respect of Iran's efforts to acquire nuclear weapon capability. An alert customs officer in Mumbai became suspicious of an export consignment by Nickunj Eximp Enterprises of 1,150 kilograms of graphite to Ward Commercial Company in Tehran. Bhabha Atomic Research Center experts, who were asked to take samples, confirmed that it was nuclear-grade graphite. One more consignment of graphite of Nickunj Eximp headed for Dubai was stopped. The graphite was imported by local dealers at Rs 50 per kilograms from China and was being exported to Iran at Rs 2,000 a kilogram. (Source:Daijiworld-India)

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Azerbaijan halted a Russian shipment of equipment intended for Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, demanding more information for fear of violating UN sanctions, officials said Monday. The Russian state-run company Atomstroiexport said trucks carrying the equipment were stopped two weeks ago in Astara, on the Azerbaijani-Iranian border. (Source:AP)

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The UN nuclear monitoring agency on Wednesday announced what it called a "milestone" agreement with Iran that aims to provide answers about allegations that Tehran tried to develop nuclear weapons. International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said IAEA Deputy Director General Olli Heinonen and his team had agreed with Iran to start a process aiming to clarify the issue in May. (Source:AP)

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The Pakistani crew members of a hijacked, Dubai-flagged ship said on Wednesday they were lucky to be alive after being tricked and captured by Somali pirates then rescued in a shootout at sea. (Source:AFP)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

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By Shelley Smith

The continued criminal activities of United States and international gangs, terrorists and extremists groups are representing a tremendous threat to homeland security, global security and civil society, while lethal gangs have become a plaque to major metropolitan areas and to suburban and rural locations. As gangs and terrorism seek to recruit, they have become more dynamic, flexible and continue to adapt to environments as they plan for future activities. Gang activity in the U.S. is an extension of the gang activity that is observed in El Salvador.

The two largest Hispanic gangs in El Salvador are the Mara Salvatrucha 13 or known in the U.S. as MS-13, operates in 42 states in the U.S. and the District of Columbia. The Mara-18 or known in the U.S. as the 18th Street Gang, or Mara 18 or M-18, operates in 37 states and 11 countries. These gangs have become an international problem and have connections in the United States with counterparts throughout Latin America, Mexico and elsewhere. They are believed to number about 100,000 in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua and growing. Through deportation the gang members return home, but take the opportunity to learn and bring the knowledge back to the U.S. to distribute to their members and counterparts.

Deportation and the combating of gang members has not stopped or slowed down their activities of recruitment, violence, rape, robbery, murder and beheading victims, distribution of drugs, weapons, extortion, kidnapping, prostitution, and vehicle theft. The gang members are international in nature and their usage of the Internet and cell phones have made them a national and international problem as we have seen in the tactics of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups and organizations.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has put agents in El Salvador in order to coordinate efforts and conduct crackdowns on gangs in an effort to obstruct or shutdown the mobility of gangs. The gangs cause mayhem in cities and suburbs across the U.S., continue to operate from prisons and exploit and make rooms in MySpace.com with the intent for communication amongst gang members and for recruitment.

As narco-terrorists, Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCO), U.S. gang members, and foreign-born members who operate without borders or flags, continue to spill across the Mexico border while operating outside and inside the U.S., they are adding new twists to their tactics and techniques by lowering their profiles. They are doing makeovers by exchanging gang image for business and university images by removing tattoos, limiting tattoos and changing their attire. They are targeting high school and college students for recruitment.

In a report by Gary I. Wilson and John P. Sullivan, “On Gangs, Crime, and Terrorism”, February 28, 2007, these types of Hispanic gangs, al Qaeda and terrorist groups may be vastly different, but they share the common characteristics of transcending borders, indiscriminate violence, coercion and intimidation, recruitment, and targeting nation-states. When viewing the map “Terrorist Network in America 1991 – 2005”, page 25, from the Report to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, June 2006, “Al-Qaeda: The Many Faces of an Islamist Extremist Threat” and the map from The Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual Hate Group list, “Intelligence Project Hate Groups in 2006,” that names more than 800 groups in the country; with the problems of the gang activities in the U.S., they exhibit the tremendous dangers being inflicted on the United States.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), through an innovative strategy named Operation Community Shield launched in 2005, have greatly increased arrests, imprisonment and/or deportation of gang members and have produced optimistic results as they struggle battling this systemic geopolitical crime that is an ongoing national and international problem. But as U.S. and Mexican counter-narcotics operations have been shifting traffic patterns across the borders, they are affecting the level of stability, while impacting the sensitive social and political issues between the two countries.

Sources:
Crackdown on Gangs Goes International
Violent Criminal Alien Gangs Target U.S.
PoliceOne.com
Tattooed Faces a Dead Giveaway: Gangs Go for New Look

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About the Author

Shelley Smith is an expert in analysis and research on national and international law, foreign affairs, criminal justice systems and the psychology of criminal behavior. Smith is currently working toward a B.A in Intelligence Studies with a focus on analysis and terrorism at American Military University.

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By Jenni Hesterman

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff believes that a significant story regarding the terror threat has been mostly overlooked by the press…and he’s right.

About 18 months ago, transportation officials announced worldwide restrictions for carrying liquids on domestic and international flights. Not much could be said at the time about the threat, and frustrated travelers, airline and security personnel all questioned the basis for the directive. A case playing out this month in a London this courtroom finally provides the long awaiting answer.

Eight men are currently on trial for conspiring to smuggle explosive agents on board seven international flights in August 2006, all originating at Heathrow Airport in London, with destinations in North America. The group planned to detonate the devices mid-flight, halfway across the ocean, "in the name of Islam".

The explosive devices were to be fashioned from a mixture of hydrogen peroxide bleach and Tang powdered drink, which provides citric acid. This mixture which would then be carried onboard the flight in plastic bottles, disguised as sports drinks or soda. Once airborne, the remaining component (a common device which I will omit from this posting) would be added to the liquid, forming a powerful explosive device. Court-appointed scientists used the material to create a sample blast, which was so powerful that it destroyed the video camera capturing the event.

The plotters targeted full flights to achieve maximum loss of life. The first flight in the sequence of seven targeted flights was to take off at 2:30pm for San Francisco, and the last just 1 hour and 41 minutes later, a 5:11pm flight bound for Chicago. According to British officials, who had been watching the group for months, the plot was disrupted just 2 weeks from execution.

Only 1 month prior to their arrest, the group paid roughly $240K in cash for a flat in East London to use as a meeting place and laboratory for assembling the devices. The flat contained not only the ingredients and instructions for the bombs, but several suicide martyrdom tapes calling for jihad, and expressing individual motives for planning the attacks.

The self-professed leader of the group, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, said that Osama bin Laden was his inspiration for the pending attacks, and also stated “the time has come for you to be destroyed”. On the tape, he boasts that “body parts will decorate the streets”, and that he wanted to join in holy war to “punish and humiliate” nonbelievers. Another defendant, Uma Islam states “this is revenge for actions by the USA in the Muslim lands, and their accomplices, such as the British and the Jews” and “this is a warning to the nonbelievers that if they do not leave our land, there are many more like us, and many more like me, ready to strike until the law of Allah is established on this earth”. Waheed Zaman professes that "America and England have no cause for complaints. I am warning these two nations death and destruction will pass upon you like a tornado."

One of the men, Assad Sarwar, who is suspected of links to extremists in Pakistan, wasn’t going to be an actual suicide bomber--he had other deadly ambitions. His briefcase was recovered in the woods behind his house with a computer memory stick containing information about attacks on other U.K. targets, such as power stations, oil refineries, and a major gas terminal.

Today, a tape was shown to the court showing the men shopping for the bomb ingredients at B&Q, Ikea and Tesco stores in London. Despite the overwhelming evidence, all 8 men deny the charges against them. The trial is expected to continue for several more weeks before the jury renders its verdict.

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About the Author
Jenni Hesterman is a retired Air Force colonel and counterterrorism specialist. She is a senior analyst for The MASY Group, a Global Intelligence and Risk Management firm that supports both the U.S. Government and leading corporations. She is also an adjunct professor at American Military University, teaching courses in homeland security and intelligence studies.

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The US National Counterterrorism Center has launched an interactive version of its 2008 calendar.

The US National Counterterrorism Center is pleased to present an interactive version of the 2008 Counterterrorism Calendar. This version of the Calendar contains many features across the full range of terrorism-related issues: terrorist groups, wanted terrorists, and technical pages on various threat-related issues. The Calendar timeline marks dates according to the Gregorian and Islamic calendars, and contains significant dates in terrorism history as well as dates that terrorists may believe are important when planning “commemoration-style” attacks.

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