Excerpted
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=L02167897&WTmodLoc=World-R5-Alertnet-4
Taleban seize 'truce' town from elders (Afghanistan)
February 03, 2007
Taleban fighters have seized control of a strategic town in southern Afghanistan left by British troops after a peace deal with local elders. More than 300 fighters went on the rampage in Musa Qala in Helmand province, the poppy heartland of the country’s opium trade.
They disarmed local police and terrified residents, setting their homes ablaze. They also destroyed a compound used by the district governor and the police. There were reports last night that the Taleban fighters were digging trenches in key positions to prepare for an attempt by Nato forces to regain control of the town.
Excerpted
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,251-2581447,00.html
High-powered guns 'fell off back of army truck' (Australia)
February 02, 2007
A FORMER federal agent says missing high-powered weapons were stolen from trucks transporting them from military and police armouries to a recycling centre. And he has accused the Australian Federal Police and defence department of ignoring warnings by police and military personnel that weapons were being "rebirthed" and sold back to the Government under the 1996 post-Port Arthur massacre $315 million guns buyback scheme.
In one case he says a worker at a military armoury surrendered 30 weapons under the Howard Government scheme, which paid up to $500 per gun.
Peter Smythe, who has written a book called The Wrong Arm of the Law, said truckloads of SLR military assault rifles were sent from the main armoury at the Defence National Storage and Distribution Centre (DNSDC) at Morebank, near Sydney, and several police armouries to the Port Kembla steelworks without an escort. "People handed in weapons that had literally fallen off the back of a truck," he said.
Other weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket launchers and explosives, were stolen by members of the Rebels motorcycle gang and armoury workers and then sold on to gun dealers.
Some weapons, including rocket launchers, have turned up in the hands of suspected terrorists. Sydney man Taha Abdul Rahman is accused of selling rocket launchers to terror suspect Mohamed Elomar.
Excerpted
It was a day that would cost and change so much: Sept. 11. Now at commercial airports, we're willing to be scanned and scrutinized so a similar attack will never happen again. But national experts say consulted by 11 News say we're making another mistake. Take Mary Schiavo, an expert in general aviation methods and security and the former Inspector General for the U. S. Department of Transportation.
"The terrorists have moved onto other plans," Schiavo said. "And there's really nothing to stop them." So what's the problem?
While Uncle Sam spends billons a year on commercial airport security, thousands of smaller general aviation airports are almost going unnoticed. In fact, the TSA only has suggested security guidelines for these airports that often house anything from single-prop Cessna aircraft to larger commercial airline jets.
Hence experts like Schiavo say that inattention is leaving the door wide open. For example, if a terrorist wanted a jet, rather than hijack as in 9/11, the fear is he might just steal it from one of these airports. What's worse: Especially in the Houston area, terrorists could create a disaster far bigger than 9/11 with such a vehicle.
We'll tell you more on that later. First, we decided to check out the first half of the problem, security. So this winter we visited some of the area's general aviation airports to test how locked down they were. Our first stop was Hooks Airport in northwest Harris County.
Here we just simply drove up to a metal gate with a call box and asked: "Can you open her up?" A loud buzzing occurred and the gate slid open letting us past the barb wire and onto the tarmac. No one asked us any questions. Once inside we found a large corporate jet with the door open and no one in sight. But we wondered if such easy access might just be a fluke. So a few days later we returned.
Once again we buzzed the call box at the gate. "Hey can you guys let me in?" we asked. "Uh, who is this?" asked a voice from the call box. Our cameraman gave his name and said "I'm just here to see the plane; I was over here last week." "All right," said the voice and the gate opened, again giving us access to plenty of planes.
However after awhile we were stopped by an airport employee who told us: "Yeah this is homeland security here." He never asked for our ID, but he did give us a friendly ride back to our truck. “This is homeland security," repeated the employee."As in U.S. Homeland Security." "Well how in the heck did I get in here then?" we asked. His answer: "That's what I was wondering." And we left the airport with no problems.
Next we visited the Sugar Land Regional airport. It's has a luxurious new terminal, but we found its security fence doesn't go all the way around, leaving a gap of several hundred feet for anyone to enter through. Despite that, we also found a locked gate, but there were also unlocked doors that led to the hangers and a number of unattended corporate jets.
But, perhaps the most troubling of all was our last stop: Lone Star Executive Airport in Montgomery County.
KHOU-TV 11 News was able to just drive up onto the tarmac and to an empty and large commercial jet at a Montgomery County airport. At the front door was a warning sign saying to report "suspicious activity" and a photo of the burning World Trade Center. But because the airport had no interior fencing, we were able to just drive up onto the tarmac and to an empty and large commercial jet.
Having videotaped our "adventures" we shared them with expert Schiavo. "Oh wow!" she exclaimed as she watched us walk up to the commercial jet. "If he's this close, I mean he's basically in the plane at this point"
Her reaction to what we found at all three airports? "It's not acceptable," she said. "Absolutely not acceptable. People don't realize, they assume there's much more security than there is."
She also emphasized the planes we found someone "can turn ... into a lethal tactical weapon." Schiavo said that's because planes like what we found at Sugar Land Regional, "most likely, the planes can be powered up and ready to go" Schiavo, a pilot herself, also showed us how many planes and jets don't require keys. She also said larger passenger jets like we found may be locked but that many use the same key.
"Once you're moving, there's no stopping you" she said, like the man who stole this seven million dollar jet two years ago from Atlanta. In that case it was a joyriding prank.
Excerpted
http://www.kvue.com/news/state/stories/020207kvueairportsecurity-eh.43900fe4.html
Reversal of early VCJD symptoms may one day be possible
Snip: vCJD in humans, BSE in cattle (mad cow disease) and scrapie in sheep are all forms of a brain degenerative disease where abnormal versions of proteins called "prions" clog up the brain synapses and stop messages passing between cells. The abnormal prions get into the brain and reproduce by making the natural prions change shape into the unnatural form. Eventually the brain develops a spongy-like form.
Humans get vCJD from eating BSE infected meat products and also from receiving the blood of someone who is infected.
Smelling your food may kill you
Snip: To explore things further, they worked with flies that carried a mutation that prevents the proteins that perceive odorants from making their way to the surface of their nerve cells, leaving the flies unable to smell. Female flies that ate a normal diet but lacked this gene saw their lifespans shoot up by over 50 percent (males were affected, but not as dramatically). Even losing one of the two copies was enough to raise lifespan by about 25 percent. The results indicate that, to an extent, smelling your food is lethal. It doesn't account for the full longevity effect, however, as cutting back on calories in the mutants pushed survival out to even longer periods.
Banning the letter "X" and other Saudi tales
Snip: I've said before that we're not fighting a war between the West and Islam but between the 21st and the 12th centuries. Here's more proof: Saudi Arabia's top religious leaders–who have declared jihads, ordered women cloaked head to toe, and fostered extremism worldwide–may now ban the letter "X" because it resembles the Christian cross. This peculiar news comes from a New York Sun story by the estimable Youssef Ibrahim, the Egyptian-born former New York Times reporter. The Saudis' latest fatwa on "X" comes from their highest religious authority, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice– a body so sage that in 1974 it declared the Earth flat.
U.K. Mosques Exposed: If you need more evidence about the role of our pals in Riyadh, check out Undercover Mosque, a new documentary by Britain's Channel 4 program Dispatches. The producers put an undercover reporter into mosques run by some of the U.K.'s most prominent Islamic groups, which publicly present a face of being moderate and mainstream. The result: a chilling hour's worth of calls to jihad, hatred of infidels and democracy, and medieval attitudes toward women and gays. Behind the spread of extremism in British mosques, the program finds, is Saudi Arabia, through its funding of imams, schools, books, and DVDs. Could the same thing be happening in America? It already has. See the Center for Religious Freedom's 2005 study of U.S. mosques and their follow-up report on Saudi textbooks.
Chop Chop Square: Finally, here's a bit on the Saudis' charming custom of chopping off heads and other appendages. Back in November, Lebanon's LBC TV scored an interview with the man it called "the most renowned executioner in Saudi Arabia," Abdallah bin Sa'id al-Bishi (the gentleman pictured above). Under sharia, or Islamic law, Saudi Arabia still severs the heads, arms, and hands of those deemed guilty of various crimes–usually in a public square. The sentence comes the old-fashioned way, by sword. As the LBC correspondent said of al-Bishi, "There is no negotiating with him once the heads have ripened." Here's an excerpt, courtesy of the folks at MEMRI:
First TV host: When you behead more than three or four people at once, does it affect you? My second question is: Do you need a break between executions? Does it affect you or not?
Abdallah al-Bishi: Allah be praised, there is nothing to it. Three, four, five, or six–there is nothing to it. It's entirely normal. An execution is an execution, and as long as the person stands straight ... as long as the person stands straight, it makes our job much easier.