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Two women living in Queens have been charged with planning to build a bomb, in a plot revealed by a monthslong undercover investigation that found the women had discussed the merits of various types of bombs and had obtained four propane gas tanks. The women, Noelle Velentzas, 28, and Asia Siddiqui, 31, who until recently were roommates in Queens, were named in a complaint unsealed on Thursday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, where they appeared Thursday afternoon.

Santa Ana, Calif. (AP) -- Two men accused of plotting attacks on military sites and other targets in Southern California in 2005 were expected to plead guilty to terrorism conspiracy charges Friday, prosecutors said. Kevin James and Levar Haley Washington were set to enter the pleas in federal court in Santa Ana, the U.S. attorney's office said in a statement. Both were indicted two years ago on federal charges, including conspiring to wage war against the U.S. government through terrorism. Authorities claim James, Washington and two others were a cell of a California prison gang of radical Muslims that was...

Meaning of 'jihad' focus of Fla. trial By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer 24 minutes ago Defense attorneys in the Jose Padilla terrorism support trial are going to great lengths to suggest to jurors that jihad is not necessarily Muslim holy war and that mujahedeen could just as easily be freedom fighters as terrorists. The meaning of words, especially Arabic words, is center stage as federal prosecutors play hours of FBI telephone intercepts involving Padilla and two other defendants charged with participating in an Islamic extremist support network. Padilla, 36, is a U.S. citizen who was held for 3 1/2...

FBI Director Robert Mueller said this week that his agency busted a smuggling ring organized by the terrorist group Hezbollah that had operatives cross the Mexican border to carry out possible terrorist attacks inside the U.S. "This was an occasion in which Hezbollah operatives were assisting others with some association with Hezbollah in coming to the United States,” Mueller told a House Appropriations subcommittee during a Tuesday hearing on the FBI's budget. In a stunning revelation, Mueller admitted that Hezbollah had succeeded in smuggling some of its operatives across the border, telling the House committee: "That was an organization that...

Seven very BIG reasons to vote Republican tomorrow: 1) The war against global jihadism. There is no reason whatsoever to trust the Democrat Party with our national security against the global jihadists. They don't even recognize the threat, much less possess the spine to actually fight the enemy. And the cut and run Democrat Party will not stop at surrender. Make no bones about it, their overall objective includes making the US completely defenseless. 2) The ongoing battle for the constitution and against liberal judicial activism. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to trust the liberal/socialist Democrat Party with majority...

INDIANAPOLIS -- An Indiana truck driver was sentenced Friday to more than 13 years in prison for what prosecutors said was a plot to sell U.S. intelligence secrets to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime. "I am not a bad man," Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban told U.S. District Court Judge John D. Tinder during his sentencing hearing. "I help this country a lot. ... I came to live in peace." Assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Jackson said Shaaban was putting up a front in maintaining his innocence. "This defendant is a man without a conscience. Mr. Shaaban has no allegiance to this...

CLEVELAND A federal grand jury has indicted three Ohio men on charges of planning attacks on U.S. military personnel in Iraq, according to an indictment. The three men, who all lived in Toledo within the last year, were arrested over the weekend, said Assistant U.S. Attorney David Bauer in Toledo. The indictment was unsealed Monday. They were to be arraigned in federal courts in Cleveland and Toledo on Tuesday afternoon. The suspects recruited others to train for a violent holy war against the United States and its allies in Iraq, the indictment said. The group traveled together to a shooting...

Scouted L.I. for camp - feds The son of a former Malcolm X aide was nabbed yesterday, along with a Florida doctor, in a plot to start an Al Qaeda training camp in the U.S. - even scouting out a Long Island warehouse for a terror school, officials said last night. Tarik Shah, 38, a self-proclaimed martial arts expert from the Bronx, and Dr. Rafiq Sabir, 50, presented themselves as a "package deal" to help Muslim "brothers" wage jihad here and in the Middle East, said Manhattan U.S. Attorney David Kelley. Kelley said Shah - son of Lieutenant X, one...