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Syria has begun moving parts of its vast arsenal of chemical weapons out of storage facilities, U.S. officials said, in a development that has alarmed many in Washington. The country's undeclared stockpiles of sarin nerve agent, mustard gas and cyanide have long worried U.S. officials and their allies in the region, who have watched anxiously amid the conflict in Syria for any change in the status or location of the weapons.

Alan Turing, the British mathematical genius and codebreaker born 100 years ago on 23 June, may not have committed suicide, as is widely believed. At a conference in Oxford on Saturday, Turing expert Professor Jack Copeland will question the evidence that was presented at the 1954 inquest. He believes the evidence would not today be accepted as sufficient to establish a suicide verdict. Indeed, he argues, Turing's death may equally probably have been an accident. What is well known and accepted is that Alan Turing died of cyanide poisoning. … Professor Copeland believes the alternative explanation made at the time...

The ex-teacher, accused of murdering more than 20 women, will defend himself in court as he does not have faith in lawyersAlleged ‘cyanide killer’ Mohan Kumar of Dakshina Kannada district has been studying law in prison as he prepares to defend himself in court. He is accused of killing 20 girls after promising marriage. He was arrested in October 2009. He faces four cases in Bangalore, six in Madikeri, four in Mangalore and some more in various locations. The cases are being handled by a special Fast Track Court. He had turned down the court’s offer of a government lawyer...

"Senate Hs Committee Report Finds Online Jihadist 'Activity' Leads To Violent Islamist Extremism" by Anthony Kimery 02/28/2012 ( 9:12am) SNIPPET: "Violent Islamist extremists use the Internet to recruit, radicalize and mobilize individuals -- including Americans -- and “the threat of violent Islamist extremism has become increasingly decentralized and its messaging has followed that same trajectory,” according to a report issued Monday by both the majority and minority staff of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs." SNIPPET: "The report concluded that “the United States currently has a haphazard approach to dealing with global Internet radicalization and propaganda,” and...

LONDON, July 21 (Reuters) - Olympic organisers are "very alive" to the threat of a cyber attack on the London 2012 Olympics, made more challenging because of its evolving nature, senior Interior Ministry officials said on Tuesday. Ticketing systems, the transport network and hotel bookings as well as security are among potential targets. Olympic security officials are also planning for the possible diversion of aircraft to protect airspace around the venues from terrorist attacks, the officials said. The greatest threat to security at the Games is international terrorism, the government's latest "Safety and Security Strategy" report said.

The bag contained enough of the crystallized substance “to wipe out the neighborhood,“ O’Loughlin said A Northeastern University lab tech’s suspected suicide by cyanide - 30 miles away from campus - is raising public safety fears over easy access to deadly chemicals days after the ninth anniversary of 9/11. The 30-year-old NU lab tech - identified by the school as Emily Staupe - was found dead early yesterday morning in her Milford bedroom along with what initial tests show was a plastic bag filled with crystallized cyanide, according to Milford and state police. Neil Livingstone, a Washington, D.C., terrorism expert,...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A naturalized citizen from Iran who has a history of mental illness pleaded innocent to possessing enough cyanide to harm hundreds of people, authorities said. Hessam S. Ghane, 53, was undergoing a court-ordered mental evaluation and remained in custody pending the results.Ghane has no ties to any terrorist organization, an FBI agent testified Tuesday before a federal magistrate. Psychiatrist Howard Houghton testified that Ghane suffered suicidal depression and paranoia.Houghton said he called police in February after Ghane threatened government groups and unnamed individuals. After making the threats, Houghton said, Ghane said: "You know I...

Why do many food plants contain cyanide? In murder mysteries, the detective usually diagnoses cyanide poisoning by the scent of bitter almonds wafting from the corpse. The detective knows what many of us might find surprising — that the deadly poison cyanide is naturally present in bitter almonds and many other plants used as food, including apples, peaches, apricots, lima beans, barley, sorghum, flaxseed and bamboo shoots.There's a reason that cyanide exists in all these plants, and it is — to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes — evolutionary, suggests Kenneth M. Olsen, PhD, an assistant professor of biology in Arts &...

Some of the Islamic Terrorists' plotted mass murder --2000--- OLYMPICS 2000 BOMBSaturday, 26 August, 2000, 05:37 GMT 06:37 UK Olympic 'bomb plot' foiled Police accidentally uncovered the threat to the Olympics New Zealand police have uncovered a possible plot to blow up a nuclear reactor in Sydney during next month's Olympic Games. The reactor is in Sydney's suburbs Australian police have been informed and the two forces are working together on the case involving a group of Afghan refugees who had suspicious material in their possession. The group was reportedly linked with Afghanistan-based terrorist Osama bin Laden. Detective superintendent...

Obama amputates our nuclear arms By: Charles Krauthammer ...snippet...Under President Obama’s new policy, however, if the state that has just attacked us with biological or chemical weapons is “in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” explained Gates, then “the U.S. pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against it.” Imagine the scenario: Hundreds of thousands are lying dead in the streets of Boston after a massive anthrax or nerve gas attack. The president immediately calls in the lawyers to determine whether the attacking state is in compliance with the NPT. If it turns out that the attacker...

NEW YORK-- A suicidal college student who carried highly toxic sodium cyanide into a subway tunnel caused a brief terrorism scare early Friday, police said. Track workers spotted the 20-year-old man -- wearing a hard hat, safety vest and boots -- at about 5:30 a.m. wandering deep inside the tunnel under the East River. The workers pulled him aboard a train and took him to a lower Manhattan subway station. Police there discovered he was carrying a backpack holding a quart container full of sodium cyanide pellets, five highway flares and two bottles of water. -snip-

A phony track worker triggered a terror scare inside a lower Manhattan subway tunnel Friday morning - but he turned out to be a despondent college student who wanted to kill himself by ingesting sodium cyanide, police said. A 20-year-old Pace University student who has been on the school's Dean's List told police he wanted to find a discreet alcove, mix the cyanide pellets with water and ingest it. "He did not want to be found," said Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, the NYPD's top spokesman. "He had no ID on him. He was looking for some isolated place in the...

Note: The following text is a quote: Ali Al-Marri Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Provide Material Support to Al-Qaeda Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, 43, a dual national of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaeda. Al-Marri entered his guilty plea at a hearing this afternoon before Judge Michael M. Mihm in U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois. In so doing, al-Marri admitted that he agreed with others to provide material support or resources to al-Qaeda in the form of personnel, including himself, to work under al-Qaeda’s...

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SNIPPET: "The Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa stated, citing a Sunni Ahwazi organization opposed to the Iranian regime, that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has equipped Russian SS-4 missiles with chemical warheads – mustard gas, sarin, and cyanide – and that they are aimed at the Gulf countries and other Arab countries. The SS-4 has a range of about 2,000 km. According to the report, the IRGC has stepped up research of biological weapons research..."

As the fire and homicide investigation continues, officials say several firefighters were exposed to cyanide gas in two separate incidents as they were mopping up hot spots near the small city of Acton on the northern edge of the massive blaze. The poisonous cyanide fumes are suspected in acute breathing problems suffered by Los Angeles firefighters battling the Station Fire in the Aliso Canyon. One firefighters suffered life-threatening respiratory arrest and remains in hospital after she was knocked out by noxious fumes on Sept. 1 near Acton. Two days later, six firefighters suffered severe breathing difficulties in another part of...

WASHINGTON – Federal prosecutors plan to move an alleged al-Qaida sleeper agent out of a Navy brig in South Carolina and send him to federal court in Illinois to face trial. Two people familiar with the case of Qatar native Ali al-Marri said Thursday the government plans to transfer him to the civilian court system. The two people spoke on condition of anonymity because it's a pending criminal case. The transfer could avert a Supreme Court hearing in April and a subsequent ruling that would govern other cases against accused terrorists. To justify holding al-Marri, the Bush administration claimed the...

If Saleman Abdirahman Dirie intended to do harm with the sodium cyanide found in his Denver hotel room, he could have done a lot of it. Firefighters said Wednesday that Dirie, whose body was found Monday, had a pound of the substance in Room 408 at the Burnsley All Suite Hotel in Capitol Hill, and an expert said that if it were mixed with acid, that would be plenty enough to function as a weapon. Denver police verified that the substance found in Dirie's hotel suite was sodium cyanide, which converts to a gas if mixed with acid and could...

DENVER -- A Canadian national found dead inside an upscale Denver hotel with a pound of highly toxic sodium cyanide had killed himself, the deputy coroner said Wednesday. However, a spokesman for Dirie's family said he finds the idea that it was suicide "ridiculous." Saleman Abdirahman Dirie, 29, was found dead inside the Burnsley hotel on Aug. 11. In his hotel room, firefighters found nearly a pound of sodium cyanide -- the crystal form of cyanide "This office completed an autopsy. The test results have been returned to our office and the decedent was positive for ingesting cyanide. The manner...

The former Somali refugee, who was buried Thursday, was described as humble, reclusive and "psychotic." A Minnesota-based legal advocacy center for Somalis is assembling a troubling, curious background of a man found dead in a Denver luxury hotel Monday near a pound of deadly cyanide. "He was psychotic; he was on medication," said Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, which has talked to dozens of people who knew Saleman Abdirahman Dirie, a 29-year-old Canadian citizen and former Somali refugee. Dirie's journey to the U.S. and his stay in an expensive hotel does not fit the profile...