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Locked on 12/23/2004 10:40:31 PM PST by Admin Moderator, reason:
XXIII: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1307764/posts |
Posted on 11/17/2004 9:24:29 PM PST by nwctwx
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Because they have too much time on their hands and dry ice bombs are currently 'cool' to make.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A 79-year-old woman was arrested at Fort Lauderdale International Airport on Tuesday when security screeners found an unloaded gun in her carryon bag, sheriff’s officials said.
Margaret Anderson of Bonita Springs was planning to board a flight on Bahamas Air when an X-ray scanner revealed a small handgun inside the bag, and Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies took her and her luggage into custody, sheriff’s spokesman Jim Leljedal said in a news release.
Deputies found a single shot Colt Derringer in a gun case built to resemble a hardcover book, with seven .22 caliber bullets in the case next to the weapon, the sheriff’s office said.
Anderson told deputies and reporters she knew the gun case contained a pistol, but had forgotten it was in the tote bag. She said she had put the gun in the bag when she recently moved and never removed it, the sheriff’s office said.
She was booked into Broward County Jail on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon and later released on $1,000 bond. If convicted, she faces up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
“I’m awful sorry. I wouldn’t harm a soul,” Anderson said after her release.
FRIGHTFUL BLASTS: Rumbling booms so powerful homeowners feared their furnaces had exploded or cars had rammed their houses began election night, Nov. 2, on Richmond’s north side.
THE SEARCH FOR A CAUSE: Investigators ruled out railroads, aviation, military exercises and activities from quarries and found no damage or debris from explosives. Residents suspected sewer gas detonations or small earthquakes.
A BREAK IN THE CASE: Police and fire investigators on Tuesday discovered homemade “pressure devices” in sewers in the area. They are not incendiary and not designed to kill or injure but to create an unsettling blast.
QUOTE: “On Election Night, right after they called Florida for Bush, there were these huge booms, these huge explosions. We thought maybe a furnace exploded or a truck crashed into the house.” Sara Driggs, a Democrat, on a night that didn’t go her way at all.
LOL. OK.
You think it's just punk kids?
This could also explain some of the flying manhole covers...
OK. I'll go on and take this post just to get it over with...
Yep, the 'punk' science kind.
CIA Says Iran, Qaeda Pursued Nuclear Weapons
Reuters ^ | November 23, 2004 | Tabassum Zakaria
Posted on 11/23/2004 6:15:53 PM EST by West Coast Conservative
Iran "vigorously" pursued programs to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons during the latter part of 2003 and was working to improve delivery systems, a CIA report said on Tuesday.
Al Qaeda was also engaged in rudimentary nuclear research, the CIA said, and the network's stated willingness to launch an unconventional attack was a major concern.
The unclassified semi-annual report to Congress on the acquisition of technology relating to weapons of mass destruction from July 1 through Dec. 31, 2003, was posted on the intelligence agency's Web site www.cia.gov.
"Iran's nuclear program received significant assistance in the past from the proliferation network headed by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan," the CIA report said.
Khan's network provided Iran with designs for Pakistan's older centrifuges and for more advanced and efficient models, and components, the report said.
Iran was trying to improve delivery systems and sought foreign materials, training and equipment from Russia, China, North Korea, and Europe, it said.
Last week Iran denied allegations by an exiled opposition group that it obtained weapons-grade uranium and a nuclear bomb design from Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb.
The United States believes Iran has been pursuing a secret nuclear weapons program and has tried to convince the international community of those concerns.
TERRORISM THREAT HIGH
"One of our highest concerns is al Qaeda's stated readiness to attempt unconventional attacks against us," the report said. Osama bin Laden and other leaders have said it was al Qaeda's religious duty to acquire nuclear weapons, the CIA said.
Documents recovered in Afghanistan showed that al Qaeda "was engaged in rudimentary nuclear research, although the extent of its indigenous program is unclear," it said.
Pakistani nuclear engineer Bashir al-Din Mahmood, who reportedly met with bin Laden, "may have provided some assistance to al Qaeda's program," the report said.
"In addition, we are alert to the very real possibility that al Qaeda or other terrorist groups might also try to launch conventional attacks against the chemical or nuclear industrial infrastructure of the United States to cause panic and economic disruption," the CIA report said.
Several groups associated with al Qaeda planned attacks in Europe with easily produced chemicals and toxins best suited to assassination and small-scale scenarios, the CIA said.
Documents recovered in Afghanistan show al Qaeda has crude procedures for making mustard agent, sarin, and VX nerve agent, and had conducted research on biological agents. "We believe al Qaeda's BW (biological warfare) program is primarily focused on anthrax for mass casualty attacks," the report said.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1287056/posts
ROFL!
Whether this is good or bad in an economic sense is very complicated, and that is not the reason this is causing concern anyway. The reason this is causing concern is WHY the dollar is going down: Apparently, sovereign nations are speculating against the dollar. BTW: This is considered very bad form in diplomatic circles.
Some background may help: The value of a currency will fall during a speculative attack, but if the fall does not become self sustaining, the speculators will lose a lot of money. Speculators are gambling that future events will cause the currency to decline in value on at least a temporarily sustained basis (at least long enough for them to reverse their speculative positions at a profit).
So, the relevant question is WHY sovereign nations would think the value of the dollar is going to go down. The implied message is that they know something that the rest of us do not. And they see enough profit potential to justify committing a diplomatic faux pas.
bump
bump!
heard today tht in Fallujah, 60+ mosques of 70+ all were equipped for terrorists R Us
Thanks, Donna. Going to check out the link now.
me too , have no clue
chem warheads?!
Biochemical threat next terror wave
Michelle Wiese Bockmann
The Australian 23nov04
A TERRORISM expert has warned Australia of a new, global generation of Islamist terrorists "armed, trained financed and ideologicised" to use chemical and biological weapons.
In declaring that part of this new global terror wave would come out of Southeast Asia, Singapore-based Rohan Gunaratna said he found the Jemaah Islamiah group had come extremely close to developing "chem-bio" weapons last year, recounting his alarming analysis of a Jemaah Islamiah bio-terror training manual that was taken from a Philippines safe house in late 2003.
The manual gave incorrect manufacturing instructions and lacked safeguards, Dr Gunaratna told an emergency medicine conference in Adelaide yesterday.
Any JI members who had used the methods in the manual would have died or become sick, he said.
"But it is only a question of time that a group that has these intentions will have the capability to develop them," he said.
Dr Gunaratna, who heads the terror unit at Singapore's Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, said terror groups showed "repeated expressions of interest" in moving in the "biochem" direction.
"We are seeing a new generation of terrorists being trained in the use of chem-bio weapons," he said.
"We rarely saw this in the 1990s but today we are seeing increasingly this kind of training.
"Groups are being trained to use these agents," he added, but the "probability of attack is still low".
Terrorists had attemped in 2002, last year and this year to use "chem-bio" weapons and "this is the best indication of the next attacks".
"I believe they will try again next year," Dr Gunaratna said.
He has also analysed videotapes showing al-Qa'ida testing of cyanide gas to kill dogs in the Afghanistan desert, using crudely manufactured gas chambers.
And he found al-Qa'ida cells uncovered in Jordan this year and London last year were "quite close" to targeting sites using chemical or biological weapons.
A US specialist had recently told him that al-Qa'ida was on the verge of recruiting a biochemist to replace Malaysian biochemist Yazid Sufaat, arrested in 2002.
Dr Gunaratna also warned that a terrorism attack on Australia was "inevitable" as members of Jemaah Islamiah were currently training in the southern Philippines, and that Australian-based supporters, while "not operational", were providing financial support.
He said Australia, along with all "allies and friends" of the US, was a terrorism target.
The invasion of Iraq had increased the threat of global terrorism attacks, and raised support for about 30 radicalised Muslims groups, to which dwindling al-Qa'ida members imparted knowledge, he said.
Dr Gunaratna said that the al-Qa'ida membership had dropped to about 500 with about 3000-4000 of its members arrested, but it had trained 70,000 people from 1989 to 2001 in Afghanistan.
JI was believed to have about 5000 followers, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said in March.
Dr Gunaratna said there were 75 car bombs in Iraq last month because most of the terrorists there had been trained in this form of warfare in Afghanistan.
Currently, terrorists are in the "early stage of gaining operational experience (in chem-bio warfare) ... but if one group is successful, others will follow", he said
thansk for the ping and Happy TG!
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