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The novel coronavirus in Sweden has spread to over 17,500 people and killed more than 2,100, as of Friday, according to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University. While cases continue to grow, the country has taken the surprising route of not imposing a nationwide lockdown. Despite international derision over the decision, the scientist behind Sweden's coronavirus strategy claims the controversial move has been effective as the increased number of people exposed to the virus will hopefully help prevent a second wave of infections. The decision to not issue a lockdown "worked in some aspects because our health system has...

Do you want evidence that the media has overhyped the dangers of the Coronavirus? You don’t need to look any farther than the Washington Post headline from Tuesday: “CDC director warns second wave of coronavirus is likely to be even more devastating.” The headline focused on a quote from the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield: “There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through. We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at...

The director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, is warning that while we're now reaching the apex of infections by the coronavirus, the outbreak could be even worse next winter.Redfield told the Washington Post that we actually lucked out this year. If the virus had hit us a few weeks earlier, medical facilities and resources would also have been needed for other seasonal diseases like the flu, pneumonia, and bronchitis. But there will be no escaping this problem next winter.Science Alert: The coronavirus is  both more contagious and more deadly than seasonal influenza, and...

If these reports turn out to be accurate, they do not bode well for a strategy of getting back to normal in the near term. According to multiple media reports, Singapore and Hong Kong have had to reimpose lockdown policies due to a second spike in coronavirus cases. Both have had an influx of returning residents that might have re-seeded the COVID-19 virus back into the populations, but until the mechanism for these second waves are known, social distancing and closed borders are apparently back in effect.Sky News broke the story on Singapore earlier, and the semi-official China state...

Al-Qahtani reportedly was upset he faced murder and war crimes charges. SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - The alleged “20th hijacker” in the Sept. 11 attacks tried to kill himself at Guantanamo last month, his lawyer disclosed Tuesday, saying the Saudi prisoner was distraught over a possible death sentence for charges later dropped by the Pentagon. Mohammed al-Qahtani cut himself at least three times and had to be hospitalized at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba, attorney Gitanjali Gutierrez said. Al-Qahtani made the suicide attempt after learning military prosecutors filed capital charges against him and five other Guantanamo prisoners for their...

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – A Malaysian recruited by al-Qaeda to pilot a plane in a second wave of Sept. 11-style attacks on the United States pulled out after observing the carnage of the 2001 assaults, Southeast Asian officials said Friday. President Bush on Thursday outlined details of an alleged plot to hijack an airliner and fly it into a skyscraper in Los Angeles. He said cooperation between Washington and several Asian countries helped expose it. The plan never appeared close to the stage where it could be put into execution. Scores of arrests in the aftermath of the Sept. 11,...

Excerpt: Use of poisons U.S. intelligence officials believe that Marri trained for two years in Afghanistan, among other things receiving instruction in the use of poisons and toxins at the Derunta camp near Jalalabad, sources said. He is believed to have trained under Abu Khabab al-Masri, an Egyptian specialist in chemical and biological weapons who was killed ... *** U.S. authorities allege that Marri had gone to the United Arab Emirates in August 2001 to get more than $13,000 in cash from Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the alleged paymaster for the Sept. 11 plotters. *** The Islamic Assembly of North America,...

Osama bin Laden´s son-in-law has been captured and is in the hands of the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI, two administration officials said on Thursday. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, was captured within the last week in Jordan, according to a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Peter King of New York. The lawmaker had been told of the capture by law enforcement officials. Congress was notified when Ghaith was taken into U.S. custody, the officials said.

WASHINGTON — In highly unusual testimony inside the federal supermax prison, a former operative for Al Qaeda has described prominent members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family as major donors to the terrorist network in the late 1990s and claimed that he discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One with a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.... There has long been evidence that wealthy Saudis provided support for bin Laden, the son of a Saudi construction magnate, and Al Qaeda before the 2001 attacks.

Ali Saleh Kahlah al Marri, an admitted former al Qaeda operative, has been released from a American jail and permitted to return home to Qatar. No formal statement has been released yet by either government, but it is being reported that al Marri's release was the result of a bilateral agreement between the Qatari and American governments. According to the US Bureau of Prisons, a prisoner with the same name and estimated age (ID number 12194-026) was freed on Friday. Additionally, a source from al Marri's family told the Qatari press he was recently released and arrived in Doha Saturday....

SEATTLE - NBC News is reporting that the Space Needle in Seattle - a high-profile landmark in America's Pacific Northwest - was apparently a target for al-Qaida terrorists. U.S. officials tell NBC News evidence found in Afghanistan uncovered plans to attack the high-profile Space Needle along with other monuments in Washington State, including massive hydroelectric dams, like the Grand Coulee. According to the NBC News report, plans were also found that targeted the Los Angeles International Airport for a second time. An earlier plot to bomb the airport was foiled two years ago when convicted terrorist Ahmed Ressam was arrested ...

An imprisoned man known as the "20th hijacker" in the 9/11 terror attacks is asking a South Florida federal judge for a transfer to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The request is part of a rambling, handwritten letter filed Wednesday in Miami federal court by Zacarias Moussaoui. He is serving a life prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2005 to conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers to kill Americans.

WASHINGTON – Federal prosecutors plan to move an alleged al-Qaida sleeper agent out of a Navy brig in South Carolina and send him to federal court in Illinois to face trial. Two people familiar with the case of Qatar native Ali al-Marri said Thursday the government plans to transfer him to the civilian court system. The two people spoke on condition of anonymity because it's a pending criminal case. The transfer could avert a Supreme Court hearing in April and a subsequent ruling that would govern other cases against accused terrorists. To justify holding al-Marri, the Bush administration claimed the...

WASHINGTON - California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a top member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she has no information to support White House claims that its secret wiretapping helped thwart a 2002 Los Angeles terrorist attack. President George W. Bush implied in a speech Thursday that information gleaned from the wiretaps helped foil an al-Qaida plot to crash a commercial jetliner into the US Bank Tower. But after a closed-door briefing, Feinstein said she'd heard nothing to indicate a wiretap played any part in foiling the plot. "I have no way of knowing whether it did or not," Feinstein said....

A Malaysian pilot recruited by al-Qaeda to fly a hijacked airliner into the tallest building on the US West Coast pulled out of the plot when he realised it was a suicide mission, security officials in South-East Asia said today. Further details emerged of the plan to target the iconic 73-storey US Bank Building in Los Angeles, revealed by President Bush yesterday in an address to rally support for the War on Terror. Terrorism experts in Malaysia said that Zaini Zakaria, an engineer, was among three men being trained to launch the planned second-wave of Osama bin Laden's assault on...

How US stopped Hambali Natalie O'Brien and Patrick Walters February 11, 2006 IT should have been no surprise that the Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiah and its operations chief Hambali were named by US President George W. Bush as the figures behind a 2002 plot to fly a plane into California's tallest building. JI and Hambali, mastermind of the Bali bombing, were not only intimately connected with al-Qa'ida's chief strategist Khalid Sheik Mohammed in the plan to destroy the US Bank Tower in Los Angeles, they had been in cahoots for years, planning to blow up US airliners and...

...A Southeast Asian intelligence official said at least three members of a Southeast Asian cell earmarked to carry out the attack on the West Coast were being held in Malaysia under the Internal Security Act, which allows detention without trial. "One guy was given money to go for pilot training," said the official, who has proven reliable in the past. He said the would-be pilot, Zaini Zakaria, was arrested in 2002, and the others were probably chosen to play supporting roles in the hijacking. Members of the cell fled to Malaysia from Afghanistan after the United States began bombing al...

Last month, Senator Dianne Feinstein and other Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the executive summary of their final report investigating the CIA's controversial detention and interrogation program. As part of their study, the Democrats compiled twenty case studies, which were intended to address claims made by the CIA regarding the efficacy of its interrogations. One of those case studies focused on the identification and arrest of Ali Saleh Kahlah al Marri, who was freed from a US prison just days ago. Al Marri served as a "sleeper" operative for al Qaeda inside the US in 2001....

Long War Journal reports that the Obama administration has released Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri from a U.S. prison – not from Gitmo, but from a civilian jail after a federal terrorism conviction. Al-Marri is an al-Qaeda operative who was planted as a “sleeper” in the United States by Khalid Sheikh Mohamed to await instructions on carrying out a second wave of attacks after the 9/11 atrocities – against water reservoirs, the New York Stock Exchange, U.S. military academies, and other targets. The Justice Department quietly sprung him on Friday so he could return to his native Qatar, a country the...

Binyam Mohamed is back in the news. You may remember him as the al-Qaeda operative who was slated to help would-be “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla conduct a second wave of post-9/11 attacks, targeting American cities. You also may not remember him. After all, the Obama administration quietly released him without charges. Well, there’s a new chapter in this sordid tale. Mohamed is living large — taxpayer-funded large — in Great Britain. For that, we can thank the Lawyer Left’s stubborn insistence that enemy war criminals are really run-of-the-mill defendants. Actually, make that run-of-the-mill plaintiffs. Unlike Padilla, who actually got into...