| This thread has been locked, it will not receive new replies. |
|
Locked on 04/02/2004 3:41:28 PM PST by Sidebar Moderator, reason:
Thread Six: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1109459/posts |
Posted on 03/12/2004 8:23:06 PM PST by thecabal
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- This week's deadly train bombings in Spain will not lead to a rise in the U.S. color-coded terror threat alert system, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman said Friday.
"Based on the current intelligence, we have no specific indicators that terrorist groups are considering such an attack in the U.S. in the near term," said department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Also, be cautious of gas stations with an obvious foreign presence.
Also, this type of crime means we're never ever going to leave. Period.
There is video of all those who participated. The city should be locked down by our Marines, and every house searched until all involved are rounded up.
By Doug Tsuruoka
Homeland security officials are rushing defense labs to make sensors that can detect small nuclear weapons that some authorities fear terrorists might use to devastate a U.S. city.
A March 22 Australian TV report highlighted the need. The story claimed the al-Qaida terror group has bought nuclear "briefcase bombs" on the black market in Central Asia.
Use of the word 'briefcase' sent a shudder through security authorities everywhere. It would mark a huge threat if nuclear bombs that small were developed, let alone in dangerous hands. Almost all experts doubt briefcase bombs exist.
But suitcase bombs do exist. The Soviets developed such trunk-sized nuclear bombs during the Cold War. Moscow has always maintained that no suitcase bombs have escaped its close watch, but reports pop up from time to time that rogue Soviet scientists have helped develop suitcase - and now briefcase - nuclear bombs for the black market.
Such a threat is almost unimaginable. But experts are forced to use the word "almost."
So Far, No 'Breakthroughs'
A big problem is most nuclear experts say the government is far from developing sensors that reliably detect such weapons despite the urgency sparked by 9-11.
"The detection problem is a hard nut to crack," said Richard Lanza, a senior scientist and nuclear engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "I don't think there have been any breakthroughs."
Pinpointing bomb-grade nuclear material is difficult, says Kyle Olson, a former Senate terrorism prober. Many items give off as much radiation as a nuclear bomb, which itself actually emits little radiation.
"Any detector compact and sensitive enough to pick up trace levels of radiation from (suitcase bombs) is also readily spooked by natural environmental or industrial radiation," said Olson.
There are promising products, though. One is called an active detector, says Tom Cochrane, director of the nuclear program for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental policy group.
It's being developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, says Cochrane, a nuclear physicist and former arms control monitor.
The device shines a stream of photons or neutrons through an object that might carry a small nuclear weapon, like a shipping container or suitcase. It would produce gamma rays if it hit any nuclear material, which would show up on the device's display screen.
Ivan Oelrich, a nuclear physicist at the Federation of American Scientists, a policy group in Washington, D.C., has another approach.
"You can shoot neutrons through a shipping container. If the pattern of neutrons coming out the other side is different, it would suggest there's a bomb inside," said Oelrich, who directs the federation's strategic security project.
The methods mentioned by Cochrane and Oelrich take an active approach to sensing nukes by creating tiny atomic reactions that can be detected. But neither device has been built, and many glitches could still surface, Cochrane concedes. One big glitch could be the cost, which could reach the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Homeland Security officials, meanwhile, have put stop-gap detectors in place.
In October 2001, President Bush ordered that hundreds of nuclear sensor devices be installed at major U.S. ports, border posts and key public buildings. He did this after officials got a report that terrorists planned to smuggle a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon into New York City. (The A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima carried 15 kilotons.)
The report proved false. But some estimated such a bomb, detonated in an area like Manhattan, could kill 100,000 to 500,000 people.
These stop-gap sensors, called gamma ray and neutron flux devices, sense radioactive materials or generate images of bombs inside luggage, crates or vehicles.
But the devices aren't that reliable, says Cochrane.
He says both types of detectors can be beaten by breaking a suitcase bomb into small parts and rearranging them to avoid detection.
He says the gamma-ray devices can't detect radiation emissions from some bomb materials, including uranium.
The government also is using older products such as Geiger counters, which can pick up radiation.
But such radiation sensors can be foiled by lead shielding. And suitcase bombs that use highly refined plutonium emit little radiation, making them harder to detect.
"If it's a well-designed, military-style weapon, the radiation signatures are tiny," said Oelrich of the science policy group.
Death Deepened Mystery
Besides being reliable, an effective sensor must work fast at ports, airports and other checkpoints. As a practical matter, screenings must be selective, Cochrane says.
Said Oelrich, "The process can't take more than a minute or so because the U.S. moves millions of shipping containers a year."
There's another big challenge, says MIT's Lanza. Terrorists might find ways to booby-trap nukes to explode if detected. "We're not dealing with stupid people," he said.
This is scary stuff. Most experts don't know if terrorist groups have anything close to an atomic bomb. One bright spot is there might be no briefcase-sized nukes.
"It still isn't possible for the U.S. or the Russians or anyone to build a nuclear device as small as a briefcase," Oelrich said. As for Russia's suitcase bombs, "We don't have any evidence that any are missing."
Still the only major reference to missing suitcase bombs remains a 1997 U.S. TV interview with former Russian National Security Adviser Alexander Lebed.
He said Russia's military had lost track of over 100 suitcase-sized nuclear bombs.
He later recanted. His assertion was never proved, and Lebed, a rival to Russia's current leadership, died in a helicopter crash in April 2002 that some authorities considered suspicious.
And some of the participants are still wearing those black sport pants with the white stripe down the side that they (Fedeyeen)were wearing on the onset of Iraqi Freedom. I see them via cable breaking news everytime there is a bombing, explosion in Iraq.
Wed Mar 31,11:05 AM ET
By Louis Charbonneau
VIENNA (Reuters) - New intelligence on Iran has fueled suspicions the Islamic Republic has a secret uranium- enrichment program, possibly aimed at producing fuel for an atom bomb program, Western diplomats say.
The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has been investigating Iran's atomic program ever since an exiled opposition group reported in August 2002 that Tehran was hiding a massive enrichment plant at Natanz.
Under fire over U.S. suspicions that its nuclear power program is a front for building atomic weapons -- a charge Iran denies -- Tehran agreed last year to submit to tougher IAEA inspections and suspend all enrichment-related activities.
But a group of Western diplomats who follow the IAEA said recent intelligence has provoked suspicion that Tehran moved enrichment activities away from Natanz to smaller sites that are part of a parallel program U.N. inspectors have not uncovered.
"We've got lot of intelligence about small enrichment plants (in Iran) for some months, going back to the November (IAEA) board meeting," one Western diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity. The diplomat gave no details about the form of this intelligence.
Iran's ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna, Pirooz Hosseini, told Reuters in a telephone interview that the latest charges were "baseless" and "an attempt to destroy the fruitful cooperation between the IAEA and Iran."
An IAEA spokeswoman declined to comment.
"HIDE-AND-SEEK"
Allegations that Tehran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, may be hiding facilities from the IAEA are nothing new. However, the specific allegation that Tehran had shifted enrichment activities away from Natanz to smaller sites was first made publicly by an Iranian exile last month.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, formerly a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and now president of the Washington-based Strategic Policy Consulting, Inc., told Reuters on March 9 about a "recent meeting" of top Iranian officials who decided to shift enrichment activities to small, secret plants.
He said the group, which included Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had also decided to "speed up the nuclear weapons program" to get a bomb by the end of 2005 and that Tehran "would pursue a deliberate game of hide and seek with the IAEA."
Washington lists the NCRI as a terrorist organization and shut down its offices last year.
However, the NCRI has a good track record on Iran's atomic program. Jafarzadeh said his latest information came from the same "well-informed sources inside Iran" that told him about Natanz and a heavy-water production facility at Arak in 2002.
Jafarzadeh's allegations appeared to receive support from a recent intelligence report, an analysis of which was obtained last week by the Los Angeles Times. This analysis, seen by Reuters, said Iran had set up a committee last year whose task was to hide activities from the IAEA's nuclear sleuths.
Among the allegedly hidden sites are some 300 plants making parts for centrifuges, which spin at supersonic speeds to purify uranium for use as fuel for power plants or in bombs.
Iran had suspended IAEA inspections on March 12, ostensibly in retaliation against an IAEA resolution that "deplores" Iran's failure to inform the U.N. of sensitive research on items like "P2" centrifuges capable of producing bomb-grade material.
Two weeks later Tehran let the inspectors return, though several Western diplomats said the retaliation may have been an excuse to buy more time to hide activities from the IAEA.
One Western diplomat said that the intelligence could not be considered the "silver bullet" that proved these allegations about a parallel enrichment program beyond any doubt.
"Intelligence gives you well-founded suspicions," said the diplomat, who is convinced the suspicions about Iran's secret enrichment sites "are well-founded."
All the diplomats said that if Tehran had decided to hide enrichment facilities from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the IAEA would have great difficulty finding them without specific leads.
"An enrichment facility can be the least visible part of the fuel cycle. It looks like any other industrial site," one said.
Wed Mar 31, 6:53 AM ET
By Mimi Hall, USA TODAY
Most Americans have not followed the government's advice to prepare for terrorism by stocking food and water, making a plan to contact family members and identifying a "safe room" in their homes, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows.
A year after the Department of Homeland Security launched a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign to encourage people to prepare for an attack, the percentage doing so is dropping sharply.
Four in 10 people say they have a stockpile of food and water at home, down from six in 10 a year ago. Fewer than four in 10 have a designated contact person to help their families coordinate actions. And one-quarter of those polled have a designated "safe room."
"Americans are asleep at the switch when it comes to their own safety," says American Red Cross President and CEO Marsha Evans.
The level of preparedness has declined despite the government's warning early last year that people should prepare for a possible attack involving biological, chemical or radiological weapons. That led to a run on emergency items such as duct tape and plastic sheeting used to seal windows and doors.
"The further away that we get from Sept. 11 and the more time that lapses without a terrorist attack or major disaster, the more challenging it is to get people to take these types of actions," says Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.
Pat Mann, 44, of Bay Village, Ohio, says his family stocked some food and other supplies a year ago. But like many people, they ate the dry cereal and canned fruit they had stored in the basement as the expiration dates approached, and they haven't replaced it.
"We have let our guard down," Mann says. "It's not that I feel there's any less risk. I just haven't thought about it as much."
Another poll out today shows that more than three-quarters of Americans are unaware of, or unfamiliar with, their state or local government emergency plans.
That poll, commissioned by the Council for Excellence in Government, found that 27% were aware of school emergency plans; 36% were aware of plans at the office.
"We're talking about a nation that is largely unprepared," the council's Patricia McGinnis says.
"I don't think Americans are ignoring the issue," he says. "They're putting it in perspective relative to all the other things going on in their lives."
Other findings by the council:
• Nearly half of those polled say they believe the United States is safer than it was on Sept. 11, up from 38% a year after the attacks.
• One in three say a major attack against Americans at home or abroad is very likely in the next few months. That's down from 55% in October 2002.
.
Petti Fong
CanWest News Service
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
VANCOUVER -- West Nile virus is moving toward B.C. from Alberta and the U.S. and there is little chance the province will not be hit, public health officials said Tuesday.
By spring, or summer at the latest, dead birds infected with the virus will be found in parts of the province, said Dr. Murray Fyfe of the B.C. Centre for Disease Control. And that will be followed by human infection.
"It is inevitable it will arrive here," Fyfe said. "There is no reason why it wouldn't. It has spread throughout North America from the Maritimes to California except for this small pocket remaining."
Only B.C., Oregon and Washington states have not experienced an outbreak of the virus.
Since the first outbreak occurred in New York in 1999, the virus, which is transmitted from birds to humans via mosquitoes has infected thousands of people in North America.
Ten deaths in Canada last year and 240 in the U.S. were directly linked to West Nile.
The virus was heading toward B.C. last summer, but didn't make it past the Rocky Mountains at the Alberta border before cold weather stopped it from spreading.
Fyfe said there will be no reprieve this year.
The most likely places where West Nile will be found in B.C. will be in the Dawson Creek-Fort St. John area near the Alberta border, if the virus arrives from the east, or in the Kootenays and the Okanagan if it is carried here by birds from Washington or Idaho.
Humans infected by West Nile can show symptoms ranging in severity from rashes and muscle aches to serious neurological attacks on the brain or spinal cord.
Fyfe said that in an infected area with 100,000 residents, about 15 per cent, or 1,500 people will typically be bitten by mosquitoes.
Of those, about one-third, or 500 to 600 people, will develop symptoms such as moderate fever or a rash and will feel weak for one to two weeks.
Of those people with symptoms, about 11 will develop serious side effects such as meningitis or encephalitis or paralysis.
One or two people among the seriously ill will die.
Wednesday March 31, 2004 9:46 PM
By MOHAMED OSMAN
Associated Press Writer
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) - Sudan has detained 10 military officers and seven opposition party members who planned to stage a coup, the defense minister said Wednesday.
Bakri Hassan Salih said state security discovered the group was planning ``acts of subversion on a number of strategic and service establishments'' in the coming days.
``The group was planning to carry out its plot in the coming few days, as a pre-emptive move to abort the current peace process in the country,'' Salih said on state-run television.
He said the officers had been planning the coup since the middle of last year, assisted by the opposition Popular Congress, whose leader was arrested earlier Wednesday.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
