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Arrests foil southern bomb plot: police Published on Jun 29, 2004 YALA - Authorities claim to have foiled a bomb plot to kill several public officials in the far South following yesterday's arrest of five suspected Muslims insurgents in a joint pre-dawn raid by the military and police.Several items were seized from a rented house in Yala's Muang district where the suspects were living, Defence Minister Chettha Thanajaro told a press conference at an Army camp in Pattani yesterday. The house is located about 200 metres away from an Islamic missionary centre.More than 100 officers were involved in the raid,...

 "The extensive investigation by the bipartisan commission formed to study the 9-11 attacks has just reported that there was no meaningful relation between Iraq and Al Qaeda of any kind," said Al Gore in his latest furious denunciation of George W. Bush. (Perhaps someone should ask George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and Bob Dole, losing nominees who never made such furious denunciations of the presidents who beat them, to do an intervention on Gore.)  Gore was just parroting the line of The New York Times, which a week before ran the headline "Panel finds no Iraq-Al Qaeda tie" over...

With regard to the recent attacks on westerners in Saudi Arabia, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah made the following remarks: “Zionism is behind it. It has become clear now. It has become clear to us. I don’t say, I mean... It is not 100 percent, but 95 percent that the Zionist hands are behind what happened.” Saudi Prince Nayef, the Saudi Interior Minister said, “Al-Qaida is backed by Israel and Zionism.” Some call this dangerous Saudi doubletalk. “The crown prince’s statements are inflammatory and irresponsible,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. “On the one hand they say reassuring words to American leaders,...

Secretary of State Colin Powell says the United States is satisfied that Saudi Arabia is doing all it can to end a string of attacks on foreign workers. In U.S. television interviews, Secretary Powell said the United States is doing all it can to help the Saudis restore a sense of security so that such attacks do not disrupt the oil sector and normal commerce. He also confirmed that one American civilian was killed Saturday in Riyadh and another is missing. An Internet statement attributed to al-Qaida has claimed responsibility and said the captured American will be treated like U.S....

BRUSSELS, June 8 (Reuters) - Belgian police have arrested 15 people on suspicion of planning terror attacks in coordinated raids that also spanned Italy, France and Spain, officials said on Tuesday. Italy earlier arrested an Egyptian man considered to be a mastermind of the Madrid train bombings in the first Europe-wide raids on Islamic militants linked to the March attack in which 191 people were killed. "We know them to be part of a terrorist group," the director of the federal police bureau of Brussels, Glenn Audenaert, told reporters. He said 200 police were involved in the operation and that...

Arafat accused of approving attacks on Israel May 20 2004 at 01:15PM Tel Aviv - An Israeli court that convicted Marwan Barghouthi of murder on Thursday said the Palestinian uprising leader's orders for attacks on Israelis were sometimes "based on instructions" from President Yasser Arafat. "Arafat would never give explicit instructions for attacks but he let it be known when the timing was right," the judges said in a verdict read out in a Tel Aviv courtroom. "He made sure his subordinates understood very well when he was interested in a ceasefire and when he was interested in terror attacks...

The total number of international terrorist attacks in 2003 -- 190 incidents that killed 307 people -- was the lowest since 1969, according to the latest Department of State report on worldwide terrorism. The annual report, "Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003," shows the number of attacks last year was down slightly from the 199 attacks reported in 2002. At the same time, the 2003 figure is a 45 percent decline from the 346 attacks in 2001. The 2003 Patterns of Global Terrorism Report -- required by federal law to be submitted to Congress annually -- was released by the State...

I have been getting an inordinant number of attacks on my system. They are on ports 666 and 3049. I have Norton intercepting these attacks, but I am not well-versed ebough on firewalls and the like to know what exactly is going on. The whois for most of them go back to my ISP (SBC). Interestingly, a few have come from Denmark, where the prince just got married to that commoner. Is anyone else getting this kind of thing -- like there is a virus running around?

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) warned on Tuesday that health-care costs were crippling small businesses and criticized President Bush (news - web sites) for taking campaign money from companies picked to administer new prescription drug cards for seniors. Despite the uproar over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, Kerry stayed focused on delivering his week-long message: that the nation's health system is "badly broken" and that Bush stood by as the cost of care and drugs soared. Kerry said health insurance premiums for small businesses had risen 47 percent in just three years,...

WASHINGTON - Dozens of Vietnam veterans questioned John Kerry's fitness to be president Tuesday, accusing him of exaggerating his credentials as a war hero and having betrayed U.S. troops in Southeast Asia with anti-war activities after his return home. The veterans' attack on the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coincided with the Kerry campaign's launch in 19 key election states of two TV ads heralding his military and political service to the country. In bitter, dueling news conferences that reopened the wounds of the Vietnam War era, Kerry's detractors openly belittled the Massachusetts senator while a smaller group of veterans defended...

A lesbian foster parent allegedly raped a 15-year-old girl in her custody twice last month, tearing apart a Fall River household and sparking a new firefight in the ongoing gay marriage fury. Christina Machado, 26, was in the Bristol County lockup last night, charged with forcefully raping the teen - abuse allegedly witnessed by the woman's friends and reported by the girl's teachers. Department of Social Services officials who spent two weeks investigating told the Herald the case was ``disturbing'' but said Machado had a near-spotless record in eight years as a foster parent. But conservatives leaped on the case....

WASHINGTON (AP) - GOP Senate hopeful Bill Jones said Friday that incumbent Barbara Boxer shouldn't be criticizing President Bush over the war on terror, contending that Boxer herself failed to focus on terrorism prior to Sept. 11, 2001. Boxer, D-Calif., chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's subcommittee on international operations and terrorism for several months before the terror attacks on New York and Washington. Shortly after taking over as chairwoman she was quoted as saying she planned to have hearings focused on women, children and other issues. "If we're going to dissect one memo in August that the president reviewed...

Annan adviser attacks American occupation and Bremer's tactics Jonathan Steele in Baghdad Thursday April 15, 2004 The Guardian (UK) The UN's adviser on Iraq made a surprising attack on Washington's handling of its year-long occupation last night, condemning the detention of prisoners without trial or charge and offering a withering analysis of America's governance of the country. Lakhdar Brahimi, a respected veteran diplomat who used to be the senior UN representative in Afghanistan and now serves as special adviser on Iraq to the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, also criticised the Americans for their onslaught on Falluja. "The cordoning off...

WASHINGTON -- Osama bin Laden is so hounded by U.S. forces that he no longer controls al-Qaida, a top American counterterrorism official said Thursday. "The sense is no, he's not [in charge] in the way that we think of it," said Ambassador Cofer Black, the State Department's counterterror coordinator. Bin Laden -- who the CIA believes is hiding in the mountainous border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan -- is unable to meet with his lieutenants to plot new attacks and relies instead on other terror groups to strike, Black told the House International Relations Committee. "This guy spends most of...

Feds Warn of Transit Terror Attacks Friday, April 02, 2004 WASHINGTON — The federal government is warning local authorities of possible attacks on the U.S. transportation system this summer, U.S. officials told Fox News. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security (search) sent out warnings Thursday night saying there is uncorroborated information pointing to possible attacks on buses and trains, specifically, near major U.S. cities. The two agencies issued the warnings to law enforcement and security personnel throughout the country. The possibility of such attacks has been a factor as officials contemplate how to best secure locations in Boston and...

EU 'covered up' attacks on Jews by young Muslims By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels (Filed: 01/04/2004) Jewish leaders accused the European Union yesterday of covering up the true scale of anti-Semitic violence carried out by Muslim youths, reigniting a controversy over Europe's failure to confront Islamic extremism at home. A study released by the EU's racism and xenophobia monitoring centre astounded experts by concluding that the wave of anti-Jewish persecution over the last two years stemmed from neo-Nazi or other racist groups. "The largest group of the perpetrators of anti-Semitic activities appears to be young, disaffected white Europeans," said a...

US allies hit by wave of Islamist terror attacks By Daniel McLaughlin in Moscow and Ahmed Rashid in Lahore (Filed: 30/03/2004) Islamist terrorists were blamed yesterday after two suicide bombings, an explosion and a series of gunfights left at least 19 people dead in Uzbekistan, a crucial American ally in the war against terrorism. The attacks coincided with claims that the leader of an Uzbek Islamist terrorist group fighting with al-Qa'eda had been wounded during battles in Pakistan's wild borderlands. Sadyk Safayev: Uzbekistan is stable They marked the largest outbreak of Islamist violence in the former Soviet republics of central...

WASHINGTON - The Republican budget plan would create record deficits, hurt the economy and reward wealth rather than work, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Saturday. In the weekly Democratic radio address, Pelosi, D-Calif., used the federal budget passed by the House this week to deliver an election-year attack on GOP priorities. She said the budget would award tax cuts to rich people and corporations while increasing health-care costs for veterans and doing nothing to produce new jobs. Democrats, by contrast, want to balance the budget, spend more on education and protect benefit programs like Medicare, she said. The budget...

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld joined other high-ranking officials in the Bush administration March 22 in disputing claims made by a former White House counterterrorism official. Former antiterrorism chief Richard Clarke alleges in a new book and has said in interviews that President Bush and his advisers were slow to recognize the threat posed by al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and were too preoccupied with attacking Iraq to respond appropriately after the attacks. "The (National Security Council) began the process of working through a plan to deal with al Qaeda from the early days of the administration,"...

<p>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The State Department said Friday that it remains "deeply concerned" al Qaeda is planning more deadly attacks against Americans overseas and at home.</p> <p>The department urged U.S. citizens to "increase their security awareness," especially when traveling abroad.</p>