New airport rules target passengers via Nigeria and 13 other countries

The Feds issued the toughest airport security rules ever for U.S.-bound passengers Sunday, ordering patdowns, body scans and other new screenings for most fliers.

The TSA directive targets people flying from or through 10 countries of interest -- Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen -- and four countries that the State Department says sponsor terrorism -- Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.

The new directive will be in place indefinitely and replaces the order the TSA imposed after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab of Nigeria was accused of trying to blow up a plane landing in Detroit on Dec. 25.

Every passenger holding a passport from these countries, or flying through these countries en route to the United States, will undergo enhanced scrutiny, the official said.
The "majority" of all other passengers, including U.S. citizens, will also be subjected to the stricter security, the official said. These passengers will be selected at random.

The enhanced screening measures will include some combination of a full-body patdown, a full-body scan, a thorough hand inspection of all carry-on luggage and the use of explosives-detection technology, such as swabbing a passenger's hands, clothing and luggage.

"The bottom line is they are going to do enhanced screening measures, which would either be a full-body patdown, or if they have the [full-body scan], they can use that instead," the official said.
The official declined to say whether the full-body patdowns will include passengers' private areas in an attempt to detect explosives hidden in underwear, as was the case with the botched Christmas Day attack.
The TSA has the authority to mandate security screening levels for air carriers that are flying into U.S. air space. Security officials at airports around the globe will be responsible for carrying out the U.S. government's new security directive.

A White House spokesman said it approved the new rules.

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2 Americans Killed in Nigerian Religiopolitical Crisis

As you begin to read this, I want to ask you, why are you reading it?

Is it because it says 2 Americans were also killed?

Unfortunately this reflects how much American Television Networks value other nations around the world and how they determine what Americans should know about. In the past few days, international news segments reported the Mumbai terrorist attack. But surprisingly none said anything about the religious/political crisis in Nigeria which killed even more people than the Mumbai Attack ,even if you can find the news on their websites.

CNN: "Sheikh Khalid Abubakar, the imam at the Jos, Nigeria's main mosque, said more than 300 bodies were brought there Saturday, and 183 more could be seen near the building waiting to be interred."

MSNBC: "Sheikh Khalid Abubakar, the imam at the Jos, Nigeria's main mosque, said more than 300 bodies were brought there Saturday, and 183 more could be seen near the building waiting to be interred."

Fortunately No American was killed.

The lesson? As long as Americans are not dying, the bloodshed does not make news to the American public.

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Palestinian Terrorist Resorts To Bulldozer Attack Killing 2

A Palestinian bulldozer driver plowed into a string of vehicles on a busy Jerusalem street Wednesday, killing two people and wounding dozens of others before he was shot dead by an off-duty soldier, authorities said.

The attack wreaked havoc and left a large swath of damage in the heart of downtown Jerusalem. Traffic was halted and hundreds of people fled through the streets in panic as medics treated the wounded.

"I saw the bulldozer smash the car with its shovel. He smashed the guy sitting in the driver's seat," said Yaakov Ashkenazi, an 18-year-old seminary student.

Police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said the bulldozer was driven by an Arab man from east Jerusalem who had a criminal background.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Israeli police referred to the attacker as a terrorist. The attack took place in front of a building housing the offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets. A TV camera captured the enormous bulldozer crushing a vehicle and an off-duty soldier killing the perpetrator by shooting him in the head several times at point-blank range as onlookers screamed.

At the scene of the attack, a half-dozen cars were flattened and a third was overturned by an enormous Caterpillar tractor. A bus also was overturned and another bus was heavily damaged. Israel's national rescue service confirmed two deaths and the two bodies lay motionless on the ground covered in plastic. Local TV was reporting four dead.

A woman sprinkled water over a baby's bloodied face, a rescue worker stroked the hair of a dazed elderly pedestrian and a loved one raised the bleeding leg of a woman sitting outside the overturned bus.

Esther Valencia, a 52-year-old pedestrian said she barely escaped the carnage. "He almost hit me. Someone pushed me out of the way at the last moment. It was a miracle that I got out of there."

Sixteen-year-old Eyal Lang Ben-Hur was in a bus when the driver yelled out, "Get out of the vehicle! Everyone out!" People fled in a panic, he said, and the bus was hit an instant later.

Israel's national rescue service said at 22 people were wounded, with at least 14 people hospitalized.

Injured people sat dazed on the ground amid piles of broken glass and blood stains on the street. A baby had blood all over its face, and the driver of the bulldozer was slumped motionless over the steering wheel.

"Where's the baby? Where's the baby?" said one distraught man as he ran from the overturned bus.

Yosef Spielman, who witnessed the attack, said the bulldozer picked up a car "like a toy."

"I was shocked. I saw a guy going crazy," he said. "All the people were running. They had no chance."

At one point, witnesses said police attacked the perpetrator, after which the witnesses said he slumped over with his eyes closed. Then he suddenly lifted himself back up and continued his rampage, the witnesses said.

Hen Shimon, a 19-year-old solider, said the whole scene was a "nightmare."

"I just got off the bus and I saw the tractor driving and knocking everything down in his path," she said. "Everything he saw he rammed. He had a gun and started shooting at a police officer."

In a statement, police said a "terrorist" had carried out the attack but gave no further details.

The attack occurred in an area where Jerusalem is building a new train system. The project has turned many parts of the into a big construction zone.

During the second Palestinian uprising, which erupted in late 2000, Jerusalem experienced dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks. The city has been largely quiet in the past three years, though sporadic attacks have persisted. In March, a Palestinian gunman entered a Jerusalem seminary and killed eight young students.

In contrast to West Bank Palestinians, Arab residents of Jerusalem have full freedom to work and travel throughout Israel. Many Jerusalem Arabs work in the construction industry, possibly helping the attacker to easily gain control of a bulldozer.

About two-thirds of Jerusalem's 700,000 residents are Jews, and the rest are Palestinians who came under Israeli control when Israel captured their part of the city in 1967. Jerusalem's Arabs are not Israeli citizens but hold Israeli ID cards that allow them freedom of movement in the city and throughout Israel.

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A Moroccan diplomat's Son Turned Al Qaeda Propagandalist Convicted In Britain

A computer nerd from Shepherd's Bush became al Qaeda's top internet agent, it can be revealed today.

Younes Tsouli, 23, an IT student at a London college, used his top-floor flat in W12 to help Islamist extremists wage a propaganda war against the West.

Under the name Irhabi 007 — combining the James Bond reference with the Arabic for terrorist — he worked with al Qaeda leaders in Iraq and came up with a way to convert often gruesome videos into a form that could be put onto the Web.

Videos he posted included messages from Osama bin Laden and images of the kidnapping and murder of hostages in Iraq such as American Nick Berg.

His capture led to the arrest of several Islamic terrorists around the world, including 17 men in Canada and two in the US.

Associates linked to Tsouli in the UK have also now been detained. His 10-year jail sentence was increased to 16 years last month.

At first intelligence operatives who came across his activities dismissed him as a joke. It was only when anti-terrorist detectives began trawling through files on his computer after his arrest that they realised his true significance.

When he was seized, forensic science officers found that Tsouli had been creating a website called YOUBOMBIT.

At his trial at Woolwich crown court a jury heard how the Met trawled through a “hugely gigantic'' amount of material — computers, CDs and memory sticks — to bring Tsouli and two other men to justice.

Detectives found literature urging Muslims to take up the fight against other religions. It was the first time anyone in Britain had been prosecuted for inciting terrorist murder purely based on the internet, the court heard.

Tsouli, who set up and ran several sites over the summer of 2005, was described as the most prominent of the three on trial. The other two were also jailed. One intelligence source said: “In a network structure, if you get the right guy the whole thing goes down.”

Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, the head of the Met's counterterrorism operations, said: “It was the first virtual conspiracy to murder that we have seen.”

Tsouli arrived in London in 2001 with his father, a Moroccan diplomat. He studied IT at a college in central London and was quickly radicalised by images of the war in Iraq posted on the internet.

By 2003 he had already begun posting his own material including a manual on computer hacking and a year later had moved on to publishing extremist images and al Qaeda propaganda on the web.

It is claimed al Qaeda leaders in Iraq spotted Tsouli's work and took the decision to recruit him, using his expertise to post their own extremist videos to a wider audience.

In 2005, Tsouli became administrator for the web forum al-Ansat, used by 4,500 extremists to communicate with each other, sharing such practical information as how to make explosives and how to get to Iraq to become a suicide bomber.

But the enterprise had become so huge, it began to attract the attention of cyber-trackers who monitor the internet for extremists, leading to Tsouli's arrest.

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In A Cave Or In The City, Where Is Osama Bin Laden?

Osama bin Laden could hide more easily in a city than a remote tribal region, a former Pakistani intelligence chief said on Tuesday, challenging the notion that the al Qaeda leader is probably holed up in a mountain cave.

Lieutenant-General Asad Durrani, former head of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), said news of outsiders' presence travels fast in the tribal areas and it would be hard to keep it secret for years.

"In the countryside or in tribal areas ... it's difficult to hide yourself because there people live ... and operate in a manner in which finding out about unusual presence is very important," Durrani told Reuters in an interview in London.

He said it was true that tribal customs placed great value on showing hospitality and not betraying a guest. "In the tribal code, anyone who seeks your protection has to be defended, if necessary with your life."

However, he added: "I am not sure over a period of four, five or six years that it would be possible even for the tribesmen to keep his presence under wraps."

Such information would have traveled or been divulged, given the incentives, Durrani said in a reference to the $25 million US bounty on bin Laden's head.

"My conclusion therefore is it's extremely unlikely that he is around that place."

On the run

In the six years since the September 11 attacks on the United States and subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan, Western intelligence officials have frequently said they suspect he is hiding somewhere in the inaccessible mountains along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

"This is a man on the run in a cave who is virtually impotent other than his ability to get these messages out," White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend said last month when bin Laden issued his first new video for nearly three years.

Durrani said an urban centre could provide a better refuge.

"Why not a big city? Anywhere in Pakistan, Afghanistan. Anywhere outside the region where it is easier to keep cover," he said. "These are the places where you can hide yourself much better."

Other top al Qaeda figures associated with the September 11 attacks have been captured in Pakistani cities -- alleged plotter Ramzi Binalshibh in Karachi in September 2002 and self-confessed plan mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Rawalpindi in March 2003.

Pakistan has seen an upsurge in violence since July, when militants scrapped a peace deal with authorities in the tribal region of North Waziristan and army commandos stormed a radical mosque in the capital, Islamabad. US intelligence officials fear al Qaeda is using the tribal areas as a safe haven in which to rebuild its strength.

Durrani said he was concerned that next week's expected court ruling on the whether President Pervez Musharraf is eligible for re-election and the return of exiled opposition leader Benazir Bhutto could provide a focus for further attacks.

"She (Bhutto) will have to take extraordinary security measures," he said.

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