Free Republic

SNIPPET: "Search at Grundy County plant called part of ongoing probe" SNIPPET: "But a source said the owner of the plant, which processes lamb and goat, was taken into custody at his home in Chicago. Documents and records were taken from the plant and from a Chicago travel agency on West Devon Avenue, also owned by the same person, the source said."

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

Recently, the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) announced a new comprehensive media campaign titled "The Battar Media Raid to Defend the Islamic State [of Iraq] (ISI)," [1] whose declared purpose is to repel the intensive campaign against the ISI by Arab and Western media agencies and to stop the increasing military campaign against the ISI by Sunni organizations in Iraq. In a message titled "The Battar Media Raid: How to Participate? How to Help? What Is My Role?" the GIMF announces the beginning of the campaign and provides a detailed description of the campaign's goals and ways of accomplishing them,...

Takeshi Yamashita does not look like a homeless person. From his carefully distressed jeans to his casual-cool navy striped T-shirt, he is every bit the trendy Tokyoite. Yet the 26-year-old has been sleeping in a reclining seat in an Internet cafe every night for the past month since he lost his steady office job and his apartment. It's cheaper than a hotel, offers access to the Internet and hundreds of Manga comic books, and even has a microwave and a shower where he can wash in the morning before heading off to one of his temporary jobs ranging from cleaning...

LONDON, England (CNN) -- British police confirmed Saturday that they had raided a series of Internet cafes in their investigation into an alleged plot to blow up as many as 10 trans-Atlantic aircraft. There was no confirmation of any arrests in the raids in London, Birmingham and the Thames Valley region, west of the capital. The raids came as links to suspected terror operatives in Pakistan -- possibly connected to al Qaeda -- were emerging Saturday as key elements of the investigation.

from the September 22, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0922/p01s02-woap.html China's model for a censored Internet Some worry China's controls could be copied elsewhere. By Kathleen E. McLaughlin | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor SHANGHAI, CHINA - As China began to go online, observers made brash predictions that the Internet would pry the country open. Cyberspace, the thinking went, would prove too vast and wild for Beijing to keep under its thumb. Now these early assumptions are being sharply revised. Under an authoritarian government determined to control information, China has grown a new version of the Internet. As former US President...

A major city may soon require Internet cafes to be licensed, keep a log of and videotape their customers, and curtail their business hours.It may sound like Beijing, where a fire at an Internet cafe last summer was used as a pretext for the Communists to crack down on political activity. But it's actually New York, where local and state legislators are tripping over each other to look like heroes following a handful of violent incidents tenuously connected to the virtual venues.In the aftermath of a handful of gang-related fights, one of which occurred near a Brooklyn establishment with the...

PARIS, Oct 26: French police say they are to keep closer watch over the country's cybercafes in their quest to better control the activities of Al Qaeda on French soil. According to a magistrate with the Paris-based brigade that has been put in charge of waging France's battle against terrorism in general and Al Qaeda in particular, had French police possessed the means with which to keep closer watch over the cybercafes late last year, they'd been able to stop "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid before he boarded an American Airlines flight to Miami on December 22. Police now say that Reid's...