Terrorists probing, planning for new aviation attacks

Despite billions of dollars spent on securing our nation's airports since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, experts say terrorists are still testing and targeting aviation security because an attack could kill a lot of people, undermine public confidence and cause significant economic damage. "It remains an incredibly high target for terrorists," Erroll Southers, President Obama's first choice to head the Transportation Security Administration, said. Southers had to withdraw his name from consideration due to political reasons. "It's still vulnerable... and it would be a decisive economic blow to our country." Aviation security experts spoke at homeland security and counterterrorism forum Tuesday at the Aspen Institute which was attended by lawmakers, industry insiders, journalists and the public.

Since 1960, there have been more than 90 active attacks by terrorists on airport structures, according to the experts. "What you're seeing here is experimentation on their part to see what they can get through screening. They've been more successful every year getting on planes and that troubles me," Southers said. The experts agreed that aviation security is only as good as its weakest link because once a passenger gets behind security barriers, they can access nearly any airport in the world. Because of that, the experts said that the greatest threat is overseas. Some international airports do not maintain the same security standards as the TSA.

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`Deep-Cover' Russian Spies Worked in U.S.

Federal agents arrested 10 alleged members of a “long-term, deep-cover” Russian spy ring whose ultimate goal was to infiltrate U.S. policy-making circles, according to the Justice Department. The arrests in the New York area, Boston and Arlington, Virginia, broke up a group that began operating in the 1990s, according to two criminal complaints unsealed yesterday in Manhattan federal court. The alleged ring included Russian agents posing as American and Canadian citizens, some of them living in the U.S. for more than 20 years, with the goal of becoming “Americanized” and passing intelligence back to the Russian Federation, according to court papers. “The fact that there are 10 or 11 people here illegally as part of a highly organized effort” and may explain why federal authorities made the arrests now, said William C. Banks, Director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism at Syracuse University in New York. “It may be to send a statement that we’re on to this.” The conspiracy involved at least three unnamed Russian government officials, including one associated with the Russian Mission to the United Nations, according to the complaints.

The defendants face as long as 20 years in prison on the money laundering conspiracy charges. The charges of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. attorney general carries a prison sentence of as long as five years. None of the defendants were charged with espionage, which can result in a life sentence upon conviction. According to Banks, the fact that the alleged agents weren’t charged with espionage or conspiracy to commit espionage may show they didn’t obtain classified information. It may also make the cases easier for the government to prosecute, he said. Prosecutors in spy cases often are forced to drop cases to avoid making classified material public, he said. “The prosecutors are in a fairly enviable position,” said Banks. “There may be some sensitivity as to the types of electronic surveillance used, but a lot of it was old-school cloak-and-dagger stuff.”

• "The Russian Spy Operation: Was It Worth the Trouble?" Time, 6/30/10.
  
• "Russian spy suspect missing in Cyprus", BBC News, 6/30/10.
  
• "Suspect Dubbed Femme Fatale Of Russian Spy Case", NPR, 6/30/10.
• "‘Illegals’ Spy Ring Famed in Lore of Russian Spying", New York Times, 6/29/10.
  
• "Putin hopes US spying claims 'won't harm ties'", BBC News, 6/29/10.
• "Russian Beauty Had Beastly Intentions, U.S. Prosecutors Charge", Fox News, 6/29/10.
• "Russian intelligence found gold market info 'very valuable,' FBI says", GoldSeek.com, 6/29/10.
• "Timeline: Previous U.S.-Russia spy incidents", Reuters, 6/29/10.

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Drug cartels take trafficking to the sea in custom-built, cocaine-laden 'narco subs'

Drug traffickers are spending $1 million a pop to build boats that look like submarines and can carry 4 tons of cocaine for 2,000 miles without refueling. Nicknamed "narco subs," they're made to sneak loads up from South America to Mexico, where the drugs are offloaded and taken overland into the United States. "It is a semi-submersible coffin," said Jay Bergman, Andean regional director for the Drug Enforcement Administration. "You batten down the hatches and you are doing everything to not be detected sailing in the middle of the ocean." At least 13 of the craft have been stopped and their crews prosecuted in U.S. courts since October 2008, according to the Justice Department. The first was intercepted in 2006. The use of narco subs underscores how drug cartels have sought to go over, under or around borders, and have prompted worries that the craft could be used to smuggle weapons or people.

The latest craft was captured last month when a Houston Chronicle journalist was aboard a Customs and Border Protection plane flying from Corpus Christi. The P-3 turboprop was 500 miles off Colombia's coast, coordinating with the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Dallas. "This will go down quickly," advised a helicopter shadowing two speedboats. Flanked by armed Coast Guard boarding teams, three underwear-clad traffickers waved a white flag, climbed out of a hatch and into the American justice system. The boat carried more than 2 tons of cocaine, but most carry 4 to 8 tons, law enforcement official say. Most of the vessels are enclosed, usually a bit longer than school buses, and painted blue to blend in with the ocean. While they don't submerge, they do ride low enough in the water to be tough to spot with radar or heat-seeking cameras.

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Ten arrested in US on charges of spying for Russia

Ten people have been arrested in the United States for allegedly spying for the Russian government, the US Department of Justice has said. They have been charged with conspiracy to act as unlawful agents of a foreign government, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Eight of them were arrested on Sunday for allegedly carrying out "long-term, 'deep-cover' assignments" on US soil. Two others were arrested for allegedly participating in the same programme. An 11th suspect remained at large. Nine have also been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering. In a statement, the justice department said the suspects had been arrested following an investigation lasting several years.

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Digital Photocopiers Loaded With Secrets

At a warehouse in New Jersey, 6,000 used copy machines sit ready to be sold. Almost every one of them holds a secret. Nearly every digital copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive - like the one on your personal computer - storing an image of every document copied, scanned, or emailed by the machine. In the process, it's turned an office staple into a digital time-bomb packed with highly-personal or sensitive data. If you're in the identity theft business it seems this would be a pot of gold. "The type of information we see on these machines with the social security numbers, birth certificates, bank records, income tax forms," John Juntunen, from Digital Copier Security said, "that information would be very valuable."

Juntunen picked four machines based on price and the number of pages printed. In less than two hours his selections were packed and loaded onto a truck. The cost? About $300 each. Until we unpacked and plugged them in, we had no idea where the copiers came from or what we'd find. We didn't even have to wait for the first one to warm up. One of the copiers had documents still on the copier glass, from the Buffalo, N.Y., Police Sex Crimes Division. It took Juntunen just 30 minutes to pull the hard drives out of the copiers. Then, using a forensic software program available for free on the Internet, he ran a scan - downloading tens of thousands of documents in less than 12 hours. The results were stunning: from the sex crimes unit there were detailed domestic violence complaints and a list of wanted sex offenders. On a second machine from the Buffalo Police Narcotics Unit we found a list of targets in a major drug raid.

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Drug use is shifting towards new drugs and new markets

The UN World Drug Report shows that drug use is shifting towards new drugs and new markets. Drug crop cultivation is declining in Afghanistan (for opium) and the Andean countries (coca), and drug use has stabilized in the developed world. However, there are signs of an increase in drug use in developing countries and growing abuse of amphetamine-type stimulants and prescription drugs around the world.

The Report shows that the world's supply of the two main problem drugs - opiates and cocaine - keeps declining. The global area under opium cultivation has dropped by almost a quarter (23 per cent) in the past two years, and opium production looks set to fall steeply in 2010 due to a blight that could wipe out a quarter of Afghanistan's opium poppy crop. Coca cultivation, down by 28 per cent in the past decade, has kept declining in 2009. World cocaine production has declined by 12-18 per cent over the period 2007-2009.

Global potential heroin production fell by 13 per cent to 657 tons in 2009, reflecting lower opium production in both Afghanistan and Myanmar. The actual amount of heroin reaching the market is much lower (around 430 tons) since significant amounts of opium are being stockpiled. UNODC estimates that more than 12,000 tons of Afghan opium (around 2.5 years' worth of global illicit opiate demand) are being stockpiled.

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Arizona is the frontline for illegal border activity

Terrorists crossing AZ border into U.S.?

On a single day in April, in a special cell block deep inside the Pinal County Jail, nearly 400 inmates sat awaiting trial or extradition after being detained trying to cross the Arizona border from Mexico. Only about half of them were actually from Mexico. The cell block, owned by Pinal County, but contracted with the Department of Homeland Security, is a way station in the immigration process, where inmates are held after they are detained by the Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But it’s where the inmates are from that causes concern for some critics and lawmakers. On that one day in April, according to records obtained by ABC 15, Homeland Security officials were holding inmates from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Lebanon, and the Sudan. “They’re coming from all over,” Arizona Senator Jon Kyl said. “And one wonders whether some of them are coming in here to commit acts of terror.”

Cartels Threaten U.S. Law Enforcement in Arizona

In the first public incident of its kind, cartels are making direct death threats to U.S. law enforcement officials in Nogales, Arizona, the police chief there told CNN Monday. Speculation about death threats by cartels towards U.S. law enforcement has been widespread for some time, but this is the first time U.S. officials along the border confirmed a case. The threats began less than two weeks ago, after off-duty police officers from the Nogales police department seized several hundred pounds of marijuana from a drug smuggling operation they stumbled upon while horseback riding in the eastern fringes of Nogales, the chief said. The smugglers in the incident managed to flee into Mexico before they could be detained. It was unclear which cartel was making the threats against the Nogales police department, but there is a turf war on the other side of the border in Nogales Sonora, Mexico, between the Sinaloa cartel and the Juarez cartel.

Mexican Gangs Maintain Permanent Lookout Bases in Hills of Arizona

Mexican drug cartels have set up shop on American soil, maintaining lookout bases in strategic locations in the hills of southern Arizona from which their scouts can monitor every move made by law enforcement officials, federal agents tell Fox News. The scouts are supplied by drivers who bring them food, water, batteries for radios -- all the items they need to stay in the wilderness for a long time. “To say that this area is out of control is an understatement," said an agent who patrols the area and asked not to be named. "We (federal border agents), as well as the Pima County Sheriff Office and the Bureau of Land Management, can attest to that.” Much of the drug traffic originates in the Menagers Dam area, the Vekol Valley, Stanfield and around the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation. It even follows a natural gas pipeline that runs from Mexico into Arizona. In these areas, which are south and west of Tucson, sources said there are “cartel scouts galore” watching the movements of federal, state and local law enforcement, from the border all the way up to Interstate 8.

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Guatemala: Squeezed between Crime and Impunity

A new International Crisis Group Report outlines the massive crime and political problems facing Guatemala in Central America. Entitled "Guatemala: Squeezed between Crime and Impunity" it paints a dismal picture that should not only worry its citizens greatly but also Guatemala's neighbors.

"Guatemala has become a paradise for criminals, who have little to fear from prosecutors owing to high levels of impunity. An overhaul of the security forces in the wake of the peace accords created an ineffective and deeply corrupt police. High-profile assassinations and the government’s inability to reduce murders have produced paralysing fear, a sense of helplessness and frustration. In the past few years, the security environment has deteriorated further, and the population has turned to vigilantism as a brutal and extra-institutional way of combating crime.

Tax collection is still the lowest in Latin America (some 10 per cent of gross domestic product, GDP), in flagrant violation of a key provision of the peace accords. In addition to the rise of clandestine groups, many directed by ex-senior military officers and politicians, the country has seen the proliferation of Mexican drug-trafficking organisations (DTOs) and youth gangs (maras). Criminal organisations traffic in everything from illegal drugs to adopted babies, and street gangs extort and terrorise entire neigh­bourhoods, often with the complicity of authorities."

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Gang members burn bus in El Salvador, killing 14

Gang members opened fire on a bus on the outskirts of El Salvador's capital, then doused it with gasoline and set it on fire, killing at least 14 passengers in what the president on Monday called an act of terror. Police managed to break windows and help 13 people escape the flames but others died inside. Sixteen people suffered injuries in the late Sunday attack, officials said. "This is an act that seeks to generate terror among the population," President Mauricio Funes said, adding that his security Cabinet was to meet to increase security in the country.

Violent youth gangs have besieged the public transit system in this small Central American nation to extort bus workers and largely impoverished commuters and travelers. The armed assault was the deadliest attack this year on a passenger bus. The attack took place in a gang-plagued part of the municipality of Mejicanos, just outside San Salvador, National Police Commissioner Carlos Ascencio said. At least 14 people were killed, he said. Moments later, gang members opened fire on another bus in the same neighborhood, killing two people.

Ascencio said Monday night that eight suspects had been arrested in the bus burning, including one who was detained minutes after the attack and smelled of gasoline. Among the detained were a woman and two minors. Earlier, Funes said seven suspects had been detained, most accused of being members of the Mara 18 street gang. Justice Minister Manuel Melgar called the attack "a typical terrorist act," but said the motive was under investigation. At least 217 drivers and other employees of El Salvador's public transport industry have been killed over the last year and a half in suspected gang attacks, said Catalino Miranda, president of the national federation of transport workers and businessmen. Most victims were shot to death.

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Terrorism report warns of 'dirty bomb' risks, says Italy's nuclear waste deposits vulnerable

Italy's dumps of nuclear waste and other radioactive material are vulnerable to terrorists and should be kept under strict security, a terrorism report released Monday said. The report by a private Italian foundation looks at the causes of Islamic terrorism and the evolution of al-Qaida and other terror groups since 9/11, with a particular eye to Italy. Analyzing the dangers of an attack with nuclear weapons or radioactive "dirty bombs," the report says the fight for non-proliferation is bound to have a central role in anti-terror efforts and will require stricter co-operation among nations. Italy has a dozen sites where radioactive material is temporarily stocked, according to the report.

These sites, the stocked material and their transfers "are vulnerable to terror attacks" and require measures to protect them from any terror risks. The report did not elaborate on the security measures currently in place. Italy closed nuclear plants after a referendum banned nuclear power in 1987. But the report says that the plants have produced 55,000 cubic meters of waste. There is also 2,000 cubic meters of other radioactive material coming from health and medical products, as well as waste produced by hospitals and chemical and other companies. Another risk, the report said, stems from the fact that there are active nuclear plants in nearby or neighbouring countries. The report called for stricter co-ordination between local officials and the government, as well as between countries.

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Financing of terrorism: Risks for Australia

Terrorist groups may have a range of motivations and justifications for their actions including support of a particular religious faith; promotion of international recognition and political self-determination for ethno-nationalist and separatist groups; the achievement of entire political, social, or economic system change according to extremist left- or right-wing models; or simply changing a specific policy or practice as in the case of animal experimentation. One of the main responses to threats of terrorist activity involves the use of financial transaction reporting and monitoring. This operates in two ways—first, by placing impediments in the path of those who seek to accrue and to move funds using the regulated financial sector and second, by enabling law enforcement and intelligence agencies to follow the financial trail of transactions left by those who make use of the regulated financial sector, so as to detect and to prevent possible attacks.

This paper examines the global environment in which the financing of terrorism occurs, particularly with respect to the activities of transnational, organised groups that may have an involvement with terrorist organisations. Consideration is then given to how the financing of terrorism occurs, first through the use of illegally obtained funds and then through financing derived from legitimate sources, such as charitable donations, which are diverted for use in terrorist activities. Evidence of the financing of terrorism in Australia is then examined and cases which have been detected and prosecuted in Australia that entail an element of terrorist financing are reviewed. Although the number of cases is small, they are indicative of the fact that Australia is not immune from terrorist activities that are being financed by Australian individuals and organisations.

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Napolitano: Internet Monitoring Needed to Fight Homegrown Terrorism

Fighting homegrown terrorism by monitoring Internet communications is a civil liberties trade-off the U.S. government must make to beef up national security, the nation's homeland security chief said Friday. As terrorists increasingly recruit U.S. citizens, the government needs to constantly balance Americans' civil rights and privacy with the need to keep people safe, said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. But finding that balance has become more complex as homegrown terrorists have used the Internet to reach out to extremists abroad for inspiration and training. Those contacts have spurred a recent rash of U.S.-based terror plots and incidents.

"The First Amendment protects radical opinions, but we need the legal tools to do things like monitor the recruitment of terrorists via the Internet," Napolitano told a gathering of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy. Napolitano's comments suggest an effort by the Obama administration to reach out to its more liberal, Democratic constituencies to assuage fears that terrorist worries will lead to the erosion of civil rights. The administration has faced a number of civil liberties and privacy challenges in recent months as it has tried to increase airport security by adding full-body scanners, or track suspected terrorists traveling into the United States from other countries.

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Dissident bomb would have caused 'utter devastation'

Police admitted last night that a deadly van bomb, planted outside a PSNI station by dissident republicans, would have caused "utter devastation" if it had been detonated. The van, which contained an estimated 300 pounds of homemade explosive, was left outside the station in the border village of Aughnacloy, Co Tyrone, on Thursday night. Some 350 people were evacuated from their homes as the bomb was being defused by British army ordnance experts, and residents had to spend the night in three local halls. A burnt-out car was later found abandoned near the border in Co Monaghan and gardai were last night working closely with the PSNI to establish if it was linked to the terror gang behind the failed bomb attempt.

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Surprise! Pakistan intelligence pulls Taliban strings

Ever since the United States issued a rather unceremonious threat to bomb the Pakistanis back to the Stone Age in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks unless they changed course, Pakistan has been America's indispensible - if less than reliable - South Asian ally. A new report authored by Matt Waldman for the London School of Economics highlights what U.S. policymakers have long considered Pakistan's greatest deficiency: that its military intelligence apparatus, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, supports the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The ISI's support for the insurgency is no revelation to those who follow South Asia closely; it represents the culmination of decades of policy choices and developing organizational culture. Yet by providing a rare glimpse into the thinking of senior Taliban field commanders, whom Mr. Waldman interviewed around Kabul and Kandahar over a four-month period earlier this year, the report breaks new ground.

Nowhere is this knowledge more needed than in Washington. As a senior U.S. intelligence analyst who recently returned from Afghanistan concedes, the United States knows little about the mechanisms of ISI support for the Afghan insurgency. Lacking a sound understanding of the problems we confront, it's nearly impossible to address them.

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Air India: How a massive intelligence failure led to 329 deaths

In the fall of 1984, three men secretly met to discuss a dark plot, placing a bomb aboard an Air India passenger jet in Montreal. A briefcase full of cash was shown as proof of funding and intent. Not long afterward, two of those three men had independently snitched to police. “There’s a plot to put a bomb on an airplane, right?” a Vancouver police officer asked one of the men during his interview with him. “Yeah…Maybe two,” the man replied. “What kind of airplane?” he was asked. “Air India 747.” “Is this going to be leaving from Montreal?” “Yes.”

With such early warnings and potential inside access, perhaps the most astounding aspect of the Air India tragedy is that it happened at all. Alas, seven month later, on June 23, 1985, a conspiracy of failure unfolded: Air India Flight 182 departed Montreal and exploded mid-fight, killing all 329 passengers and crew. Fumbling the early warnings from the two informants, however, was only the beginning. Many costly and humiliating mistakes — correcting any of which might have saved all on board — are documented in the final report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Air India bombing released yesterday.

“This remains the largest mass murder in Canadian history, and was the result of a cascading series of errors,” the report says. Other advance warnings were similarly ignored or fumbled. It took more than five months for CSIS to get a warrant to monitor telephone conversations of Talwinder Singh Parmar, a man wanted for murder in India who was travelling across Canada preaching violence to avenge the Indian government’s attack on the Golden Temple in Punjab. “What if there had been an additional five months of intelligence?” the report asks. Could it have provided “sufficient intelligence to prevent the bombing?”

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Saudi Arabia gives Israel clear skies to attack Iranian nuclear sites

From the Times Online website comes the news that Saudi Arabia has given Israel the 'green light' to use its airspace to attack Iran's nuclear sites if they so choose. Apparently they hate the Shi'a regime there as much as the Israeli's do. This should prove to be an interesting if unconventional alliance to remove or hobble a common problem. Well they do say that "an enemy of my enemy is my friend!" But it could also stir up trouble in the Middle Eastern diaspora in western countries if any attack takes place. Something to watch out for.

"Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities. In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran. To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defences will return to full alert.

“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” said a US defence source in the area. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [US] State Department." Sources in Saudi Arabia say it is common knowledge within defence circles in the kingdom that an arrangement is in place if Israel decides to launch the raid. Despite the tension between the two governments, they share a mutual loathing of the regime in Tehran and a common fear of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “We all know this. We will let them [the Israelis] through and see nothing."

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RCMP fear black-market cigarettes could fund terrorism

The black market, cross-country tobacco trade has created an underground economy Canadian authorities fear could be used to finance overseas terrorism, internal RCMP intelligence documents obtained by Canwest News Service show. The materials also indicate RCMP intelligence predicted the expansion of the underground tobacco trade shortly after the federal government shelved plans in the early 1990s to invade several Mohawk reserves. The government chose instead to lower tobacco taxes to undercut the financial incentive for smuggling. The underground tobacco trade now spans the country, with authorities finding Mohawk-made cigarettes from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island, according to an RCMP intelligence analysis from 2008.

Black market tobacco also greases an underground economy in Canada worth hundreds of millions of dollars, supplying money for a range of illegal enterprises that could include terrorism, according to an RCMP Quebec division intelligence report for January and February 2008, obtained under the Access to Information Act “By offering tobacco products at a better price, smugglers stimulate an underground economy within which its profits could be used to finance illegal activities,” said the report. “These activities [include] the smuggling of drugs and firearms, the financing of terrorism, money laundering, among others.” The RCMP claim 105 crime groups are involved, at different levels, in the illegal tobacco trade.

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Al-Qaeda grooming Muslims for Mumbai-style attack in UK

Young British Muslims are being groomed by Al-Qaida for a Mumbai-style attack on targets in Britain, the country's spy agency has warned. Britain's internal intelligence agency MI5 has warned that a new generation of British extremists is being radicalised by Middle East-based Anwar al-Awlaki, who recruited the Detroit plane bomber. They are concerned that Awlaki's followers could unleash a wave of easily planned guerrilla-style terrorist attacks similar to the massacre in Mumbai.

Such small-scale attacks could be carried out cheaply by individuals with little terrorist training and without the need for the support of a large organisation, it said. According to the report, al-Awlaki caught the headlines with one of his statements in March, in which he said, "Isn't it ironic that the two capitals of the war against Islam, Washington DC and London, have also become among the centres of Western Jihad (holy war). Jihad is becoming as American as apple pie and as British as afternoon tea."

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2,200 arrested in U.S. crackdown on Mexican drug cartels

Federal authorities on Thursday announced the arrests of more than 2,200 people in 19 states on narcotics-related charges in the largest in a series of operations targeting violent Mexican drug cartels. The 2,266 arrests over the past 22 months were part of Project Deliverance, a joint effort with Mexican authorities that the Justice Department did not disclose until Thursday. Investigators from more than 300 federal, state, local and foreign law enforcement agencies seized 74 tons of drugs, 501 weapons and $154 million in cash, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced.

The crackdown, which included more than 400 arrests on Wednesday, targeted the transportation networks of Mexican drug organizations in the United States, especially along the drug-ravaged southwest border. Among those arrested was Carlos Ramon Castro-Rocha, described as a major heroin trafficker, who was detained by Mexican authorities May 30 and has been charged in federal courts in Arizona and North Carolina. The arrests extended to the Washington area, where 15 people were indicted in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on charges of running a cocaine trafficking network that funneled drugs from Mexico to Virginia and three other states, said U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride.

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Kyrgyzstan Seeks Aid As Ethnic Riots Turn Deadly

Kyrgyzstan begged Russia for military help Saturday to quell ethnic rioting as the country's second largest city burned and thousands of minority Uzbeks fled to the border. More than 60 people were reported killed and nearly 850 wounded in the violence. Interim President Roza Otunbayeva acknowledged that her government has lost control over the south as its main city of Osh slid further into chaos. Her government sent troops and armor into the city of 250,000, but they have failed to stop the rampage. Much of central Osh was on fire Saturday, and the sky was black with smoke. Gangs of young Kyrgyz men armed with firearms and metal bars marched on minority Uzbek neighborhoods and set homes on fire. Stores were looted and the city was running out of food.

Thousands of terrified ethnic Uzbeks were rushing toward the nearby border with Uzbekistan. An Associated Press reporter at the border saw the bodies of children killed in the panicky stampede. "The situation in the Osh region has spun out of control," Otunbayeva told reporters. "Attempts to establish a dialogue have failed and fighting and rampages are continuing. We need outside forces to quell confrontation." The unrest is the worst violence since former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was toppled in a bloody uprising in April and fled the country. It comes as a crucial test of the interim government's ability to control the country, hold a June 27 vote on a new constitution and go ahead with new parliamentary elections scheduled for October.

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Foot-and-mouth scourge spreads in Japan

Foot-and-mouth has spread to Miyakonojo, Miyazaki Prefecture, Japan's biggest livestock center, with three cows testing positive for the highly contagious disease, local officials said Thursday. Also, cows in the previously unaffected city of Hyuga and an unaffected area in the city of Saito, both in Miyazaki, are now highly suspected of being infected based on visible symptoms, agriculture ministry officials said. Located about 50 km away from the infected town of Kawaminami and bordering Kagoshima Prefecture, the Miyakonojo outbreak shows that efforts by the central and local governments have failed to contain the epidemic devastating local livestock.

The Miyazaki Prefectural Government said it has slaughtered all 208 head of cattle at the farm with the three cows. Miyakonojo ranked highest in volume of beef production as well as pork production in Japan in 2006, with beef volume amounting to about ¥15.1 billion and pork ¥22.5 billion, the city said. It will also slaughter all animals on the farms in Hyuga, north of Kawaminami, where a cow is newly suspected of being infected, and Saito, southwest of Kawaminami, where two are suspected among some 580 cows, the officials said. Prime Minister Naoto Kan instructed his government Thursday to increase the number of police and Self-Defense Forces personnel dispatched to the prefecture.

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Black Market in Dogs Big Business in Germany

Lured by lower prices for pedigree puppies, German dog lovers are turning to Eastern Europe to find their Fido. But often the cut-price pooches come with diseases and behavioral problems, and sometimes die after just a few days. Animal welfare organizations are trying to halt the trade. Anyone taking up that offer, though, will not only be the proud owner of a new pooch, but also a victim of the Eastern European puppy mafia. In Poland, Hungary, Romania and Ukraine, dogs are being produced for the Western European market on a grand scale -- and in pitiful conditions. Fed on trash and crammed into dirty kennels, the bitches must give birth twice a year until they become infertile.

The puppies are taken to market far too early and are often only four weeks old when they leave their mothers. Small wonder, then, that they have weak immune systems and sometimes suffer from behavioral disorders. "The puppy trade has become a business worth millions," says Birgitt Thiesmann of the international animal charity Four Paws, which has nine offices in Europe. For years, animal welfare activists have been watching the black market for imported dogs grow. The Internet has accelerated the trade. There, the dogs are presented as if they were coming from responsible dog breeders.

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Cocaine worth $1bn seized in The Gambia

At least two tonnes of cocaine with a street value of some $1bn has been seized in The Gambia, bound for Europe. In addition to the huge haul of drugs, the Gambian authorities have arrested a dozen suspected traffickers, and seized large quantities of cash and arms. Gambian investigators made the first arrests then called in British agents to gather forensic evidence. West Africa has become a major transit hub for trafficking Latin American drugs to markets in Europe. Drugs cartels are taking advantage of the region's poverty and weak security and judicial systems. Agents from the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency - the rough equivalent of the US FBI - helped discover the haul of highly concentrated cocaine behind a false wall in a warehouse basement an hour's drive from the Gambian capital, Banjul.

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Agents feared Mexican drug cartel attack on dam

An alleged plot by a Mexican drug cartel to blow up a dam along the Texas border — and unleash billions of gallons of water into a region with millions of civilians — sent American police, federal agents and disaster officials secretly scrambling last month to thwart such an attack, authorities confirmed Wednesday. Whether or not the cartel, which is known to have stolen bulk quantities of gunpowder and dynamite, could have taken down the 5-mile-long Falcon Dam may never be known since the attack never came to pass. It may have been derailed by a stepped-up presence by the Mexican military, which was acting in part on intelligence from the U.S. government, sources said.

The warning, which swung officials into action, was based on what the federal government contends were “serious and reliable sources” and prompted the Department of Homeland Security to sound the alarm to first responders along the South Texas-Mexico border. Mexico's Zeta cartel was planning to destroy the dam not to terrorize civilians, but to get back at its rival and former ally, the Gulf cartel, which controls smuggling routes from the reservoir to the Gulf of Mexico, said Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez, head of the Southwest Border Sheriff's Coalition, as did others familiar with the alleged plot.

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Durham, N.C., doubles its rate of solving homicides

The nation's most dramatic improvement, according to a Scripps study, was in Durham, N.C., where clearances averaged only 39 percent in the 1990s following a dramatic increase in drug-related crime. But the solution rate shot up to 78 percent for the city's 215 killings since 2000. Durham's department uses several practices espoused by criminologists and Justice Department researchers:

• Generous authorization of overtime for murder investigators during the critical first hours after a killing.
• More manpower at the murder scene, including up to eight detectives.
• Sharing electronic information between investigators and the intelligence and crime-analysis units.
• Sending forensic-science technicians to crime scenes, and expanding in-house lab procedures for fingerprint and ballistics analysis.

In addition, they developed a response unit to locate witnesses after a crime. "We'll get up to 100 officers knocking on doors," Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez. "It's civilians, police, even elected officials who come out so we can get more witnesses... witnesses we otherwise would never have gotten."

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Senior al-Qaeda leader reportedly killed in Afghanistan

Reports say Al-Qaeda's number three leader and Afghan operations chief, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, has been killed. Mr Yazid, also known as Sheikh Said al-Masri, died along with his wife and three children, Islamist websites said, quoting a statement from al-Qaeda. US officials say they believe he was killed recently in the tribal areas of Pakistan in an American drone attack. Previous reports of his death have been wrong, but this is the first time al-Qaeda has acknowledged such claims. American officials often refer to the Egyptian-born militant as the main conduit to leader Osama Bin Laden. As al-Qaeda's operational commander in Afghanistan, he is believed to have had a hand in everything from finances to operational planning.

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Troubling issues surround Oregon arms dealership

This is literally something that could happen anywhere. "It seemed implausible to think that Iranian arms dealers were doing business right here in McMinnville, Oregon, trading in high-powered sniper rifles, semi-automatic hand guns, ammunition and other equipment. How was that even possible, especially in post 9/11 times? It’s a stark reminder that even here, in small-town America, we need to remain vigilant to the dangers in our ever-shrinking world. Local law enforcement knew nothing about the business or the illegal activities until last week, when they learned that federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had arrested Iranian national, Hamid Malekpour, for interstate possession and transportation of firearms and ammunition from McMinnville to Washington state.

Suspicious of his passport and of the reason Malekpour gave customs agents when he initially applied to cross the Canadian border near Blaine, Wash., ICE agents tailed him to McMinnville. Here, they witnessed him loading boxes into his car from an office complex on North Highway 99W. Malekpour, also known as Oliver King, then headed back north, not stopping until he reached a warehouse in Ferndale, Wash., about 10 miles south of the border. Agents stopped him there and found weapons when they searched his car. A subsequent search was conducted in the warehouse, where more high-powered weaponry was stashed. The felonies are being prosecuted in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

The local gun shop, McMinnville Hunting & Police Supplies Inc., is owned by Amir Zarandi, but Malekpour is also listed on the office lease. No one seems to know where Zarandi is from, only that he makes infrequent visits to the location. Because McMinnville does not license its businesses, the city doesn’t have any information about him. The state’s business registry isn’t helpful, either. But Malekpour’s passport indicates that he visited Iran in 2009 and again earlier this year. One of the weapons confiscated from him last week was a .50-caliber sniper rifle, which has the capability of shooting aircraft out of the sky.

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