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The mayor of the US city of Los Angeles has called for international efforts to deal with gang crime, saying his city was "ground zero" for Latino gangs. Most members of the Maras gang cover themselves in tattoosAntonio Villaraigosa told the BBC that many gangs across North and Central America were started from his city. Regional police chiefs are in LA to discuss fighting the gangs, blamed for a spree of murder, rape and robbery. The three-day meeting will focus on improving co-operation and intelligence sharing to stop the gangs. Rising gang crime Mr Villaraigosa said there was a connection...

MI5 officials are warning British laboratories that Islamist terrorists may try to steal deadly viruses. Scientists and lab staff handling biological agents such as samples of polio, rabies, tuberculosis and avian flu, have been told their security measures will be vetted by police. The crackdown comes after M15 told the Foreign Office that al Qaeda operatives are training in germ warfare. The terror network is said to be trying to recruit university students with access to laboratories. Ayman al-Zawahri, al Qaeda's second-in-command, warned Western states in a video on the internet: "You are facing the Islamic rage... what awaits you,...

One of the most entertaining opportunities that will emerge in 2007 will be using Barack Obama to fight Islamofascism. He is the product of a black Moslem from Kenya, Barrack Hussein Obama, and a white atheist from Kansas, Shirley Ann Dunham, who met at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. That is why his middle name is the same as Saddam’s: Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. His first name is taken from the Islamic term in Arabic for “blessed,” baraka, used in the Koran. His father deserted the family when Barack Jr. was two and returned to Kenya. His mother then...

CAIRO - Egypt is on high alert after the H5N1 strain of the avian flu became more resistant to the Tamiflu antiviral drug predominantly used to combat the disease, the health minister was quoted as saying Monday. "The health ministry remains in a state of maximum alert and is reviewing its strategy in combating avian flu following the mutation of the H5N1 virus," Hatem al-Gabali told the top-selling state-owned Al-Ahram daily. The World Health Organisation announced last week that a mutated strain of the virus with "reduced susceptibility" to Tamiflu had been discovered in two people infected with bird flu...

A Tennessee woman who is seeking a divorce from her husband because of his alleged "ties to terrorism" and had traveled out of state to consult with her general counsel lawyer has returned home – under a judge's order to do that or lose that home until the divorce case is concluded. Rosine Ghawji returned yesterday to her Memphis home under the order from Judge Donna M. Fields in the divorce case in which Mrs. Ghawji has alleged her husband is a self-proclaimed radical Islamist and "has threatened to kill her and her two boys if they did not abide...

BALTIMORE, Maryland (Reuters) -- A bird flu pandemic remains a threat that the U.S. health care system must take seriously despite less frequent media coverage and the absence so far of human cases in the United States, experts warned. John Bartlett, an infectious disease expert at John Hopkins University, said the decentralized U.S. health system will make it more difficult to get ready for a possible human pandemic of H5N1 avian virus -- or anything else. He disagreed with the suggestion that the bird flu threat has been overstated by the media. (snip) "And it continues to be just as...

Computers and information networks at the National Defense University (NDU), the Joint Chiefs military education school at Fort McNair in Washington, were hacked and damaged by unknown attackers, defense officials said. (snip) ... hackers had planted clandestine "trap doors" into the system that would allow them future access, or would facilitate computer attacks. The only way to ensure the security of the systems was to replace them... (snip) Official suspicions are focused on Chinese hackers, based on similar attacks on Pentagon and military computer networks. Chinese hackers also were involved in the electronic theft in 2005 of hundreds of evaluation...

It sounds like Iraq or some other foreign land, but it happened on U.S. soil last week. Outside Sasabe, Ariz., a band of armed assailants stormed a National Guard border post and forced the Guardsmen to retreat without a shot. It was a personal affront to the Guardsmen, who should never have been in the unnatural position of being incapable of defending themselves in the first place. But they were, thanks to the Bush administration's look-tough, act-weak immigration policy. *snip* It's past time to rethink this policy of placing Guardsmen at the border but defanging them with overly restrictive rules...

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - The gunfire was deafening. Street corners all over the city were darkened by smoke from grenades and light artillery. The dead lay in pools of blood flowing into the gutters that drain into the Rio Grande. Men with automatic assault rifles stood stoic after the carnage. Then, one by one, they picked up the bodies of their victims, threw them into the back of pickup trucks and headed out of downtown. Bystanders hid inside shops, behind trash bins - wherever they could find refuge from the explosive showdown between members of rival drug cartels. "(I watched...

(2007-01-07) — A draft copy of the speech President George Bush plans to deliver this week about “the new way forward” in Iraq has leaked to the media from a White House source who requested anonymity due to the unethical and treasonous nature of the leak. In the text the president explains why he’s ordering an increase in U.S. troops in Iraq, rather than heeding the demands of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for implementing what the president calls “a strategic skedaddle.” Portions of the speech text are excerpted here… My fellow Americans, as I...

The agency that processes requests from foreigners to live in the U.S. and become citizens is crippled by antiquated technology, and its modernization efforts have largely stalled because of poor planning and management failures. The Department of Homeland Security inspector general reviewed information-technology modernization efforts at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) in a report issued last month. (snip) ...security professionals have not made a serious assessment of vulnerabilities that the proposed changes might create... (snip) ...(Mr Maxwell was) "concerned that foreign agencies might be able to hack into our computer systems... We know that the Departments of Defense and...

Flu fearmongers must be quite depressed these days. Seasonal flu is late. Bird flu -- despite all the headlines -- hasn't gained much traction among humans. And we haven't had pandemic flu in 36 years. (snip) A new study in the Dec. 23-30 British medical journal the Lancet estimates a global pandemic flu could kill 62 million worldwide, mostly in poor nations. (snip) ...while there's no sure-fire cure or preventative measure for the flu, modern medical care and public health practices have dramatically improved since 1918. So any flu epidemic is likely to be far less severe... (snip) There were......

Sen. John McCain has signed a letter for the Environmental Defense Action Fund, in which the Arizona Republican emphasizes the group's support for his bill that aims to place "the first-ever national cap on global warming pollution." Mr. McCain, in his letter, mentions no specific type of "pollution," although carbon dioxide has been the main target of anti-global-warming lobbyists. Carbon dioxide is produced in large part by human breathing and cattle flatulence. The Environmental Defense Action Fund sent out the mailing, including Mr. McCain's letter, in which it asked for contributions and for recipients to sign and mail a prewritten...

Along the ungoverned border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Al Qaeda is training would-be jihadists from the West to attack their home countries. Dec. 25, 2006 - Jan. 1, 2007 issue - For the past year, a secret has been slowly spreading among Taliban commanders in Afghanistan: a 12-man team of Westerners was being trained by Al Qaeda in Pakistan for a special mission. Most of the Afghan fighters could rely only on hearsay, but some told of seeing the "English brothers" (as the foreign recruits were nicknamed for their shared language) in person. One eyewitness, a former Guantánamo detainee with...

...The press quoted senior U.S. intelligence officials for the first time last week detailing the long hand that Syria and Iran play in conjunction with radical proxies in fermenting terror and mayhem from Beirut to Baghdad.....

Police are searching for a man who ran a red light and struck a car driven by a 71-year-old Hendersonville woman who died from injuries sustained in the crash 13 days later. June R. Irwin of Burge Mountain Road was admitted to the ICU neuro-trauma unit at Mission Hospitals in Asheville after the collision on Friday, Nov. 10, at the intersection of Dana Road and Four Seasons Boulevard. Irwin was traveling in a Mazda at about 8:15 p.m. when her car was struck by a Ford Lariat truck driven by Rafael Quirino, 28, of Fox Ridge Drive, according to authorities....

Republicans thought a revetment against a Democratic barrage could be made of anti-immigration hysteria. Demonizing immigrants, they thought, was good politics. And it was -- for the Democrats. Across the land, from border towns that face a large in-migration of illegal border crossers to ones that just indulged in nativism for the sport of it, Republicans who chose this issue as their campaign centerpiece went down to stunning defeat. Running against President Bush was a successful strategy -- if you were a Democrat and the issue was the Iraq war. Running against President Bush was a decidedly ruinous one if...

The war on terrorism has been exploited by the military judge advocates general (JAGs) to increase their numbers. The proliferation of military lawyers is at an all-time high, with Army JAG strength 10 percent larger than it was at the end of the Cold War. The three senior JAGs for the Army, Navy and Air Force, known as TJAGs, want three-star rank similar to the surgeons general of the services. But they need a larger corps of military lawyers to justify the boost in rank, we are told. Legislation to increase the three-star rank was proposed this year but failed...

Republican Vernon Robinson, who describes himself as a black Jesse Helms, is mimicking the former North Carolina senator's most famous ad in his first foray into television. In his 1990 victory over former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, Mr. Helms depicted a pair of white hands crumpling a job rejection letter. "You needed that job," Mr. Helms' ad said. "And you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota." Mr. Robinson, who counts the former Republican senator as a political idol, shows a pair of black hands crumpling a letter. "You...

"Democrats want Americans to trust them on national security, but one reason many voters don't is the wrecking-ball performance of Carl Levin. The Michigan senator continues to block Bush administration national security nominees for no discernible reason other than partisan gamesmanship," the Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. "The senator's latest political hostages are Ken Wainstein, who is waiting to become the assistant attorney general for national security, and Alice Fisher, who is currently running up against the end of her recess appointment as assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division. Both have testified in front of the Senate,...