Free Republic

Foreign hackers broke into a water plant control system in Illinois last week and damaged a water pump in what appears to be the first reported case of a malicious cyber attack damaging a critical computer system in the United States, according to an industry expert. On Nov. 8, a municipal water district employee in Illinois noticed problems with the city’s water pump control system, and a technician determined the system had been remotely hacked into from a computer located in Russia, said Joe Weiss, an industry security expert who obtained a copy of an Illinois state fusion center report...

Iraqi government district manager, Thayer Hamdallah, 28, village leader, Muktar Ismael Hamaad, 36, and Lt. Col. Rod T. Arrington, commanding officer of 3rd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, talk near a $22,000 Marine-funded generator which powers the village of Al Kabani on July 25, 2004. Earlier, the three men cut the ribbon to a new water purification station, which pumps fresh water to approximately 3,000 impoverished people in the area. That $175,000 project, also paid for by the Marines, brought construction and maintenance jobs to the villagers. Iraqis broke ground on the project June 8. Elements of the reserve infantry battalion...

Four buddies parked their car by the Detroit River early Tuesday morning, where they said they sat reminiscing about high school. They pulled over near the Detroit Wastewater Treatment Plant on Jefferson and Dearborn Street. They had a laptop computer. And they are Arab Americans. Soon, they were surrounded by five Detroit Police cars and had cops screaming in their faces. Five more cars arrived, then five more. Assem Musaibli, 21, said officers began insinuating that he and his friends had evil intentions. "They told us we fit a description," Musaibli recalled Wednesday from his Dearborn home. "I said, 'Why,...

Now, since the September 11 terrorist attacks on American soil, it seems everything has changed. The sobering reality of teams of trained terrorists targeting the United States, puts new pressures and concerns into every corner of our daily lives; indeed, into every corner of our minds! When and where will they attack next? How will they attack? Will they poison our air with biological or biochemical warfare? Will they poison our food? And what about our water supplies? . In Chicago today on all our news stations, but not yet in print, I wanted to share our coincidences going on...

As I was pulling into the driveway after running errands this morning, I just heard the news on the local all-news, all-the-time radio station in Chicago, that there's been an explosion at the water filtration plant in Chicago, and that many emergency vehicles were being dispatched to the site. Nothing more at this immediate time, but it's being treated as a very serious event.