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Twenty-six-year-old American communications contractor Nick Berg was beheaded a hostage in Iraq on this date in 2004 — allegedly by the personal hand of Al-Qaeda in Iraq chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi security forces clashed with five wanted militants at a suspected hideout north of Riyadh on Thursday, killing four and wounding the fifth, a security official said. A security agent was also killed and two others were wounded in the shootout at a house outside the town of Buraida, the official said on condition of anonymity. Buraida is one of the kingdom's fundamentalist strongholds. The official said the men were "misguided individuals," a euphemism Saudi officials use to refer to Islamic militants. He said weapons and ammunition were found at the scene. It was not immediately...

The Associated Press reported this week that a Saudi cleric, Sheikh Salman al-Awdah, funneled money to an Egyptian, Rabei Osman Ahmed, who is said to be the mastermind of the Madrid train bombings last March. Al-Awdah's name has been repeatedly linked to al-Qaeda and bin Laden, yet since 9-11, he has tempered his rhetoric. The disparity between his public and his covert activity can be explained by a secret agreement between the Saudi regime and al-Adwah's Movement for Islamic Resurgence.Osman Ahmed's Milan apartment was reportedly wiretapped by Italian anti-terrorism police. In one taped conversation he is reported to say that...

Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama are on alert for the possible entry of suspected terrorist Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, after Honduran authorities warned that the 29-year old suspect, referred to by law enforcement sources as "the next Mohammed Atta," may be seeking to cross into one of the countries. Costa Rica is bordered on the north by Nicaragua and on the south by Panama. Shukrijumah, who is considered one of the FBI's "top 5" terrorist concerns, allegedly was spotted in Honduras on May 27 at a Tegucigalpa Internet cafe. "We found out that this man was in Tegucigalpa at the...

SAN FRANCISCO, May 9 - The incident seemed alarming enough: a breach of a Cisco Systems network in which an intruder seized programming instructions for many of the computers that control the flow of the Internet. Now federal officials and computer security investigators have acknowledged that the Cisco break-in last year was only part of a more extensive operation - involving a single intruder or a small band, apparently based in Europe - in which thousands of computer systems were similarly penetrated. Investigators in the United States and Europe say they have spent almost a year pursuing the case involving...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 - Scientific tests have led American intelligence agencies and government scientists to conclude with near certainty that North Korea sold processed uranium to Libya, bolstering earlier indications that the reclusive state exported sensitive fuel for atomic weapons, according to officials with access to the intelligence. The determination, which has circulated among senior government officials in recent weeks, has touched off a hunt to determine if North Korea has also sold uranium to other countries, including Iran and Syria. So far, there is no evidence that such additional transactions took place. Nonetheless, the conclusion about the uranium transfer...

Brazil has plans to build seven nuclear power plants reported Sunday the Sao Paulo press quoting government officials. The country currently has two nuclear power plants in operation and the major expansion is contemplated under the new Brazilian Nuclear Program (PNB), which the government is reviewing. President Lula da Silva officials told newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo that the government considers the new nuclear plants essential to expanding Brazil's role as a player on the world stage and bolstering its bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. PNB is currently under a coordinated review...

Posted on Tue, Aug. 24, 2004 Swiss Accuse Group of Backing al-Qaida JONATHAN FOWLER Associated Press GENEVA - Swiss investigators have found evidence that suspected members of a group backing al-Qaida were supplying fake documents to enable collaborators to enter Switzerland and other European countries illegally, the supreme court said Tuesday. The Federal Tribunal said one suspect, whose name was not released, was found to have links to both an unidentified al-Qaida recruiter who sent volunteers to the terror group's training camps and another unidentified individual convicted of terrorism offenses in France. The support group also provided cell phone numbers...

No one yet has the full story on the infamous June 29 Northwest Airlines Flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles, on which thirteen Syrian musicians acted so suspiciously that passenger and WomensWallStreet.com writer Annie Jacobsen feared she was about to be killed by terrorists. The identity of the band remained unknown for a while until I identified them as the backup band for Canaanite crooner Nour Mehana, whom I dubbed the "Syrian Wayne Newton." Regardless of the behavior of Nour Mehana's band, Ms. Jacobsen's story has focused international attention on the very serious issue of terrorists sizing up our...

Russia's richest woman sues Forbes magazine MOSCOW, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Russia's richest woman, who is also the wife of Moscow's mayor, is suing the Russian edition of Forbes magazine for defamation over a story detailing her business interests, her company said on Wednesday. A spokesman for Yelena Baturina's Inteko firm said it had filed a suit against the magazine and its editor in Russian courts seeking compensation totalling 213,000 roubles ($8,100). "The article published in the December edition of Forbes magazine contains information which is not true," said Inteko spokesman Gennady Terebkov. That information included "the incorrect reproduction of...

Ahmad Chalabi is in possession of "miles" of documents with the potential to expose politicians, corporations and the United Nations as having connived in a system of kickbacks and false pricing worth billions of pounds. That may have been enough to provoke yesterday's American raid. So explosive are the contents of the files that their publication would cause serious problems for US allies and friendly states around the globe. Late last year and several months before Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority became involved, Mr Chalabi had amassed enough information concerning corruption in the oil-for-food scandal to realise that he was...

WASHINGTON - Al-Qaida has identified a would-be 20th hijacker for the Sept. 11 attacks as a Saudi operative who was killed in a 2004 shootout with his country's security forces. In a statement accompanying a new video, the terrorist network's propaganda arm identified Fawaz al-Nashimi, also known as Turki bin Fuheid al-Muteiry, as the operative who would have rounded out a team that ultimately took over United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a Pennsylvania field before reaching its intended target. A 54-minute video featuring al-Nashimi was obtained Tuesday by IntelCenter, a U.S. government contractor based in Virginia. U.S counterterrorism...

Yesterday on Fox News, my father claims he caught a headline on the scroll that said a boat had been boarded off Panama under suspicion of carrying WMDs.

While I was heartened to hear that USAF Senior Airman Ahmad Al Halabi, like Army Chaplain (Capt) James Yee before him, had been cleared of charges of espionage and treason, I am nevertheless still deeply disturbed by the lack of media attention given this case. Granted, the allegations made a huge splash when they first surfaced in the fall of 2003, fueled to a white hot frenzy by prosecutorial whisperings of possible death sentences. At that time, the government was happy to have us believe that the tentacled reach of Al Qaeda extended all the way to the ranks of...

In 1995, former Iranian president Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani made a little-noticed trip to the neighboring country of Georgia. He spent several hours in Tbilisi, the capital, and then instead of returning to Iran, he made a secret side trip to the breakaway region of Adjara to visit President Aslan Abashidze. The purpose of the detour was not to visit the balmy, palm-treed tourist sea port resort of Batumi on the Black Sea. His purpose was more sinister. The Iranian president was looking for black market sources of chemicals to enrich uranium for building a nuclear bomb. He found a willing...

TERROR REPORT SLAMS CIA The CIA failed to pass on warnings to the FBI about two of the terrorists who went on to become September 11 hijackers, it has been claimed. An FBI agent who was working with the CIA more than a year before the attacks on New York and Washington said he wanted to warn FBI bosses about al Qaeda suspects Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhamzi. They had been spotted at a gathering of terror suspects in Malaysia and were understood to be headed to America, it was reported. US officials told ABC News the agent was denied...

U.S. military forces have discovered a smuggling ring moving copious quantities of explosives and weapons from Iraq to terrorist training camps constructed by the Saddam Hussein regime inside Syria prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The Pentagon also announced that the structure bombed by U.S. warplanes last week, described by many major media outlets as a wedding celebration at a private ranching operation, was actually a "dormitory-like" facility used as a "safe house" to facilitate the clandestine movement of foreign terrorists into Iraq from Syria. According to Pentagon officials, small arms, explosives, and bomb making materials are being removed from...

The following are excerpts from the televised confessions of Muayed Al-Nasseri, who commanded Saddam Hussein's "Army of Muhammad" throughout 2004. The confessions were aired by an Iraqi TV channel that operates from the UAE, Al-Fayhaa TV, and were monitored and translated by the MEMRI TV Project. The following are excerpts; to view the clip, visit http://memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=492: [1] 'The Army of Muhammad was Founded by Saddam Hussein After the Fall of the Regime' Interrogator: "What is your name?" Muayed Al-Nasseri: "Colonel Muayed Yassin 'Aziz 'Abd Al-Razaq Al-Nasseri, commander of the Army of Muhammad, one of the resistance factions in Iraq. The...

June 23, 2006: The revelation that Coalition forces have discovered about 500 shells containing chemical weapons (mostly sarin nerve gas and mustard gas) since 2003, most of which are pre-1991 Gulf War vintage, leads to the question as to why the U.S. waited so long to reveal this. The U.S. government has taken a beating for supposed failures to find weapons of mass destruction in the press, and from political opponents. There have been some discoveries that have made the news, most notably an incident in May, 2004, when terrorists used a 155-millimeter shell loaded with sarin in an IED....

IENNA, May 21 — The United States has informed an international agency that oversees nuclear materials that it intends to move hundreds of tons of uranium from a sealed repository south of Baghdad to a more secure place outside Iraq, Western diplomats close to the agency say. But the organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has taken the position that the uranium is Iraqi property and that the agency cannot give permission to remove it, a diplomat said. The diplomat said that the United States was unlikely to be deterred by that position and that American officials had contacted the...