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The Supreme Court is leaving in place a decision that the alleged mastermind of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors should face a trial by a military commission. The court on Monday declined to take up the case of Saudi national Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri. Al-Nashiri had sought to challenge the authority of a military commission in Guantánamo Bay hearing his case. But an appeals court ruled last year that al-Nashiri’s challenge would have to wait until after his trial. …

'Why they did not kill me, why they didn't tie my hands, I don't know,' he said. Describing his 18-month ordeal, Father Tom Uzhannalil told reporters in Rome he still did not know why he was not killed. Using the only Arabic he knew, the priest said he told his captors: 'Ana hindiin' ("I am Indian").' He said: 'Perhaps they wanted some ransom or whatever it is. I only believe that maybe God had put that into their heads when I said, "I am Indian" and they made me sit there while they killed the others, the Sisters.' Father Tom...

A Royal Saudi Air Force Typhoon has crashed in Yemen’s southern province of Abyan, Yemen, killing the pilot. A RSAF Typhoon combat aircraft involved in a mission against Houthi fighters over Yemen crashed into a mountain in Al Wade’a district on Sept. 13, 2017. The pilot, identified as Mahna al-Biz, died in the incident that follows the one of a UAE pilot, who was also reportedly killed in another crash in Yemen last week, said Yemen’s Saba news agency. According to the first (unconfirmed) reports on social networks, the aircraft suffered a technical failure during a CAS (Close Air Support)...

A candidate for Lackawanna City Council with a felony conviction has survived an effort to kick him off the ballot because of his crime. Opponents in Lackawanna's First Ward challenged Mohamed T. Albanna's petition to be on the ballot because of his 11-year-old conviction for illegally sending $5.5 million to Yemen, his native country. The Erie County Board of Election commissioners unanimously rejected two challenges to Albanna's petitions following a hearing. "That kind of blew it out of the sky," said Albanna, owner of AB&S Wholesale on Clinton Street. Albanna was prosecuted under the Patriot Act during an era in...

The strange and fascinating world of the British spy known as ‘Chris Whatsit’ was unravelling yesterday. Christopher Steele was once MI6’s top spy on Russian affairs and lived in the shadows until being unmasked as the alleged author of the ‘dirty dossier’ on Donald Trump. He was dubbed ‘Chris Whatsit’ by his late wife on their first date because she could not remember his name – but he revelled in being a man of mystery. Now the 52-year-old is hoping to return to anonymity after fleeing his £1.5million home in Surrey, telling his neighbour to look after his three cats....

“The imam said he frequently gives money to needy people, particularly former members of his mosque.” Yes, the jihadi for whom he was buying the weapons was very needy. He needed to kill some Infidels. “Feds link Detroit terror suspect to ISIS supporter,” by Robert Snell, Detroit News, August 22, 2017: Detroit — Federal prosecutors Monday linked Sebastian Gregerson to a Virginia man who threatened to commit a domestic terror attack in support of the Islamic State. The link was revealed in a 47-page federal court filing that more fully describes ties between Gregerson and like-minded associates, including a radical...

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More than half a million people in Yemen have been infected with cholera since the epidemic began four months ago and 1,975 people have died, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday. Each day there are more than 5,000 new cases of the waterborne disease, which causes acute diarrhoea and dehydration, in the country where the health system has collapsed after more than two years of war, it said. "The total number of suspected cholera cases in Yemen this year hit the half a million mark on Sunday, and nearly 2,000 people have died since the outbreak began to...

1. Ahmad Abu Adass In 2005, the last year of his life, Ahmad Abu Adass was 22 and still living with his parents in Beirut, Lebanon. He was kind and liked people, his friends later told investigators, but none of them thought he was very sophisticated. The best way to describe him was simple, one said. He was generous and a little naïve. He was very weak, physically. A Sunni Muslim of Palestinian descent, Adass had become interested in religion and now spent many hours at the Arab University Mosque near his home. It was there, after a prayer session,...

In the third such successful strike on warships belonging to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in Yemen since the beginning of 2017, Houthi rebel recently attacked an unknown vessel of the United Arab Emirates’ Navy. Beyond this most basic detail, however, both sides have released wildly different and equally unconfirmed statements regarding the incident. On July 29, 2017, pro-Houthi forces, referring themselves as the “Yemeni Navy,” released a statement taking responsibility for the attack, which they said occurred in the Red Sea off the coast of the port city of Mocha, Yemen. According to an English-language report from the Houthi-controlled SABA...

Yemen is urging the U.S. government to take in dozens of Yemenis who traveled to Malaysia in recent months expecting to immigrate to the United States, only to find themselves stranded by President Donald Trump's temporary travel ban. The Supreme Court ruling sharply limited the number of people affected by the ban. Largely unreported has been the fate of one group - thousands of citizens of the six countries who won a randomized U.S. government lottery last year that enabled them to apply for a so-called green card granting them permanent residence in the United States. In a stroke of...

Highlights o India has displaced Pakistan on a list of countries facing terror attacks in 2016 o According to the report, out of 11,072 terror attacks in 2016 worldwide, India bore the brunt of 927 o The US analysis labelled Naxals as the third most deadly terror organisation in the world after IS and Taliban [Caption] The Modi government has decided not to seek a political outreach and concentrate on intensive security operations. NEW DELHI: India has displaced Pakistan on a list of countries facing terror attacks in 2016, with higher fatalities and injuries than its restive neighbour, according to...

Now, even fallen kuffars cannot be left in peace. This rampage of wanton destruction arises from the desire of Islam to wipe the memory of any other faith or culture from the face of the Earth. The aim is to create a world based upon the false belief that nothing other than Islam ever existed. A dozen masked militia ripped apart a cemetery in the former British colony of Aden, Yemen. Nearly two thousand graves were vandalised in the spree of destruction and St Joseph Church, which overlooks the graveyard, was razed to the ground. Wielding their tools, the fanatics...

The legendary FBI agent in charge of New York’s counterterrorism division, Carlos T. Fernandez, is retiring after 21 years. Fernandez, 50, was posted in Yemen after the USS Cole bombing, in Afghanistan after 9/11 and in Libya after Benghazi. He is joining Viacom as their global head of security at their Times Square headquarters. Insiders say the media giant has hired him to lead all of their security teams on a global basis, protect their offices and digital systems, and ensure the safety of Viacom staff and guests who attend their events.

Seized by violence and teetering on the edge of famine, Yemen is grappling with another danger that threatens to outpace them both: cholera. "We are now facing the worst cholera outbreak in the world," international health authorities said in a statement Saturday. Anthony Lake, executive director of UNICEF, and Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, say that "more than 1,300 people have died — one quarter of them children — and the death toll is expected to rise." They suspect that is because Yemen now has upwards of 200,000 cases to grapple with, and that number is growing...

... n unprecedented report from the corporate press claims U.S. forces have participated in extreme torture and abuse of detainees accused of affiliation with Al Qaeda in Yemen — including “the ‘grill,’ in which the victim is tied to a spit like a roast and spun in a circle of fire,” the Associated Press finds. A network of secretive prisons in southern Yemen provide the backdrop for the alleged barbaric acts allegedly carried out by forces from the U.S. and United Arab Emirates — many of those detention facilities remain hidden in plain sight. That some of the covert prisons...

The Senate on Tuesday narrowly turned back a bipartisan bid to rebuke Saudi Arabia and reject President Donald Trump's plan to sell the kingdom more than $500 million in precision-guided munitions, sparing the new Republican administration an embarrassing defeat. The vote Tuesday was 53-47, clearing the way for the sale to be finalized. The precision munitions are part of Trump's proposed $110 billion arms package to Riyadh, which the administration said would create U.S. jobs while also improving a key ally's military capability. But opponents of the deal, led by Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., have been...

WASHINGTON — An American kidnapped two years ago in Yemen while helping coordinate aid for Unicef and the Red Cross also had a second, secret role: He was shipping materials for elite military commandos under a clandestine contract his employer had with the Pentagon. The arrangement with Special Operations forces has never been made public. {snip} Mr. Darden’s work offers a rare look into the shadowy world of military contractors that operate in lawless war zones like Yemen, Somalia and Libya. But arrangements like the one Transoceanic had with Special Operations forces can cast suspicion over aid workers, potentially putting...

Venezuela's coming civil war has been a long time coming, and it is still coming. The rot set in early after President Chávez was elected in 1999, as shown by Venezuela's cattle statistics. Chávez's agricultural reforms sent cattle production into a nosedive. But no matter – there was plenty of oil revenue to make good the shortfall with imported beef. Then the oil revenue fell away, too, so ordinary Venezuelans now subsist on starchy root vegetables. Recently, individual troops have been siding with the protesters, a sign that the civil war is not far off. Despite Venezuela's troubles, population growth...

A cholera outbreak in Yemen is gaining momentum, adding to the misery of the Arab world’s poorest country which is already wracked by war and on the brink of famine. Around 51 people have been killed since the outbreak began in late April and the rate of deaths has been increasing in recent days, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Yemen’s healthcare system has been decimated during two years of fighting and medicines are in desperately short supply, partly because of a blockade enforced by the Saudi-led military coalition that supports Yemen’s government. Around 7 million of the country’s...