When Ordered, Twitter Monitors Tweet-Bangers For Authorities

Representatives of Twitter and Facebook said they cooperate with authorities investigating gangs that use the social-networking tools to communicate about crime, according to a report. "Representatives from Twitter and Facebook say they regularly cooperate with police and supply information on account holders when presented with a search warrant," states the Associated Press. Authorities say they're increasingly coming across gangs that use Twitter and Facebook to communicate. In one example cited in the Associated Press, a gang warned members that an affiliate released early from behind bars might have cut a deal and could be a snitch. It did so via Twitter. Is this the era of tweet-banging? Facebangers?

If so, that sword cuts both ways: Authorities were following members' tweets as part of its ongoing investigation of the Bay Area gang. Law enforcement seems to be finding social media as useful as gangs are. Prosecutors said they found evidence on YouTube that helped them crack down on the Eastside Riva gang in Riverside last week. "You find out about people you never would have known about before," Dean Johnston of the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement told AP. "You build this little tree of people." AP reports that (even) gangsters are moving on from MySpace to Twitter and Facebook to keep their own social networks alive. Threats, boasts and tips are shared this way, law enforcers say. Some gangs even have groups on Facebook. But gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha and Florencia still prefer MySpace, according to the report.

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Drug cartels tighten grip; Mexico becoming 'narco-state'

For months, the leaders of Tancitaro had held firm against the drug lords battling for control of this central Mexican town. Then one morning, after months of threats and violence from the traffickers, they finally surrendered.Before dawn, gunmen kidnapped the elderly fathers of the town administrator and the secretary of the City Council. Within hours, both officials resigned along with the mayor, the entire seven-member City Council, two department heads, the police chief and all 60 police officers. Tancitaro had fallen to the enemy.

Across Mexico, the continuing ability of traffickers to topple governments like Tancitaro's, intimidate police and keep drug shipments flowing is raising doubts about the Mexican government's 3-year-old, U.S.-backed war on the drug cartels.Far from eliminating the gangs, the battle has exposed criminal networks more ingrained than most Americans could imagine: Hidden economies that employ up to one-fifth of the people in some Mexican states. Business empires that include holdings as everyday as gyms and a day-care center. And the death toll continues to mount: Mexico saw 6,587 drug-related murders in 2009, up from 5,207 in 2008 and 2,275 in 2007, according to an unofficial tally by the respected newspaper Reforma. Cartels have multiplied, improved their armament and are perfecting simultaneous, terrorist-style attacks.

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Anthrax contaminated heroin spreads in U.K.

British authorities today warned drug users that heroin in London was highly likely to be contaminated with anthrax, after a first confirmed case there and following nine deaths in Scotland. "While public health investigations are ongoing, it must be assumed that all heroin in London carries the risk of anthrax contamination," said Dr. Brian McCloskey, who is director of the Health Protection Agency (HPA) in London.

"Heroin users are advised to cease taking heroin by any route, if at all possible, and to seek help from their local drug treatment services."McCloskey added that the risk to the general population was "negligible."Anthrax has been found in 19 heroin users in Scotland since December and nine of those people died, six of them in the Glasgow area, officials said. The first case in London was confirmed yesterday, and the user was in hospital receiving treatment.

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Shi'ites targeted by bombs in Iraq and Pakistan

18 killed in dual bomb attack in Karachi

A blast targeting a bus filled with Shiite religious observers in Karachi killed at least 12 people and another explosion in front of a hospital where attack victims were being treated killed six more Friday, a government official said. Motorcycles were used in both assaults, police said, and they came during the Shiite observance of Arbaeen, a commemoration that takes place 40 days after the anniversary of Iman Hussein's death, which is also known as Ashura. Sindh provincial health minister, Dr. Saghir Ahmed said that along with the 12 dead, 30 people were injured in the first blast. The second blast happened in front of the emergency room at Jinnah Hospital, where doctors treated people from the first attack and people on stretchers were waiting to be taken in to the crowded facility. Along with the six slain, five people were wounded. The last deadly blast in Karachi took place late December during Ashura, when more than 40 people were killed. A twin car bombing Friday tore through a crowd of Shiite pilgrims packing a highway as they walked to a holy city south of Baghdad for a major religious observance, killing at least 35 people and wounding 151 others, Iraqi officials said.

Blasts kill 35 at height of Iraq Shiite pilgrimage

It was the third deadly bombing this week hitting the ceremony in which hundreds of thousands of Shiites have been converging on the city of Karbala. Friday's attack struck during the culmination of the pilgrimage. This week's violence took place as Iraqi politicians argued over an effort to bar hundreds of candidates from running in the March parliamentary elections because of suspected ties to Saddam Hussein's former regime. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Thursday he would not allow the US ambassador to meddle in the dispute, which Washington fears could hamper Sunni-Shiite reconciliation. Friday's attack began shortly after noon when a parked car bomb exploded just east of one of three main entrances to Karbala, two Health Ministry officials said. The explosion sent throngs of pilgrims running down the highway and straight into the path of a suicide car bomber who detonated the vehicle, they said.

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Women 'scared into prostitution'

Young women and girls were subjected to bizarre rituals to scare them into a life of prostitution, an Irish court has heard. Some were shoved into coffins and witnessed chicken slaughter before they were trafficked from Nigeria and coerced into a large and lucrative prostitution ring run by a married couple. Irish-born Thomas Carroll, 48, and his South African wife Shamiela Clark, 32, ran a complex and organised prostitution business in Ireland, which earned more than one million euros in one year, Cardiff Crown Court, in Wales, was told.

Clark, who went by the name of Carmen, ran a "call centre" where she co-ordinated the brothels and took calls from clients, organised accommodation and placed adverts in newspapers, the court heard. Robert Davies, prosecuting, said the business used foreign sex workers "so they would not have homes to go to at night".

Most of the young women and girls, one aged just 15, came from South America and Nigeria, with many not knowing they would have to work as prostitutes to pay off the huge debts they were told they owed their traffickers. Women from Nigeria underwent "terrifying and humiliating" rituals involving menstrual blood, killing chickens and being pushed into a coffin "to put the fear of death in them", Judge Neil Bidder was told.

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Londonistan

Just in case the Brits hadn't figured that out, the usual anonymous U.S. State Department official was happy to do it for them. Last month, an official told the Daily Telegraph that their country "has the greatest concentration of active al Qaeda supporters [in the West]," posing a threat to Britain and "the rest of the world." The same article cited a fresh and ominous finding from the director of MI5. He estimated his service was aware of some 2,000 "radicalized Muslims" who might be involved in terrorist plots. That figure, of course, doesn't include the population of plotters who have escaped MI5 scrutiny, like Abdulmutallab. As if to underline the threat, on Jan. 12, the British government banned two of the country's most notorious Islamist organizations, Islam4UK and Al Muhajiroun, under a 2000 anti-terrorism law.

So why is this particular front in the war on terrorism proving such a challenge? Haras Rafiq, a British Muslim who founded a think tank to combat Islamic extremism, worries that a big share of the blame goes to his own government. For decades, he says, Britain tolerated plotting by domestic Islamic radicals as long as they targeted other countries, often ones in the Middle East. "We gave them freedom to preach violence and extremism -- [as long as] they were preaching it abroad and not in the U.K. They used that freedom to take over community organizations, mosques, TV stations," he says. "They've been building capacity for their viewpoint." He describes the radicals' techniques as strikingly reminiscent of those of 20th-century communists and fascists. The Islamists have also mimicked the Irish Republican movement by using ostensibly non-violent political groups to covertly radical ends.

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U.S. Believes Pakistani Taliban Leader Is Dead

U.S. counterterrorism officials believe Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud is dead following a missile attack last month, a senior intelligence official said Wednesday in the strongest signal that Washington has offered about the militant's fate. Neither Pakistan nor the U.S. has officially confirmed the death of Mehsud, who commands an Al Qaeda-allied movement that is blamed for scores of suicide bombings and is suspected in a deadly attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan late last year. Mehsud's death would be the latest successful strike against suspected terrorists by the U.S. and its allies. The U.S. has recently stepped up attacks from unmanned aircraft in Pakistan, and a closer collaboration with Yemen has led to recent airstrikes there. President Barack Obama highlighted the increasing success of such attacks in his State of the Union address last week.

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Terrorists 'plan attack on Britain with bombs inside their bodies' to foil new airport scanners

Britain is facing a new Al Qaeda terror threat from suicide ‘body bombers’ with explosives surgically inserted inside them. Until now, terrorists have attacked airlines, Underground trains and buses by secreting bombs in bags, shoes or underwear to avoid detection. But an operation by MI5 has uncovered evidence that Al Qaeda is planning a new stage in its terror campaign by inserting ‘surgical bombs’ inside people for the first time. Security services believe the move has been prompted by the recent introduction at airports of body scanners, which are designed to catch terrorists before they board flights. It is understood MI5 became aware of the threat after observing increasingly vocal internet ‘chatter’ on Arab websites this year.

The warning comes in the wake of the failed attempt by London-educated Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up an airliner approaching Detroit on Christmas Day. One security source said: ‘If the terrorists are talking about this, we need to be ready and do all we can to counter the threat.’ A leading source added that male bombers would have the explosive secreted near their appendix or in their buttocks, while females would have the material placed inside their breasts in the same way as figure-enhancing implants.

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Heists Targeting Truckers On Rise

Thieves are swiping tractor-trailers filled with goods, triggering a spike in cargo theft on the nation's highways. Over five days last month, an 18-wheeler carrying 710 cartons of consumer electronics was stolen from a Pennsylvania rest stop, a 53-foot-long rig packed with 43,000 pounds of paper was ripped off in Ottawa, Ill., and a 40-foot-long truck filled with reclining armchairs went missing in Atlanta.

Truckloads containing $487 million of goods were stolen in the U.S. in 2009, a 67% increase over the $290 million worth of products swiped a year earlier. Thieves stole 859 truckloads in 2009, up from 767 loads in 2008 and 672 in 2007, according to FreightWatch International, an Austin, Texas-based supply-chain security firm that maintains a database of thefts that several government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, look to for trends.

"In the past two months, we've just seen such an increase that it's to the point where criminals are just wreaking havoc," said Sandor Lengyel, a detective sergeant and squad leader in New Jersey State Police's cargo-theft unit. "They'll pretty much steal anything." Cargo thieves ripped off $28 million in goods in New Jersey in 2009, an 87% spike from the $15 million stolen in 2008, he said. Law-enforcement authorities in Illinois, California and Pennsylvania are among several agencies and industry groups also reporting a spike.

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Female Homicide Bomber Kills 54 in Baghdad

A female homicide bomber walking among Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad detonated an explosives belt on Monday, killing at least 54 people and wounding more than 122, officials said. The bombing was the first major strike this year against pilgrims making their way to the southern city of Karbala to mark a Shiite holy day. It came as security official warned of a possible increase in attacks by insurgents using new tactics to bypass bomb-detection methods.

The bombing raises fears of an escalation of attacks as hundreds of thousands of Shiites head by Friday to the southern holy city of Karbala to mark the end of 40 days of mourning following the anniversary of the death Imam Hussein, a revered Shiite figure.

The bomber hid the explosives underneath an abaya — a black cloak worn from head to toe by women — as she joined a group of pilgrims on the outskirts of Baghdad's Shiite-dominated neighborhood of Shaab, said Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, Baghdad's top military spokesman.
The bomber set off the blast as she lined up with other women to be searched by female security guards at a security checkpoint just inside a rest tent, al-Moussawi said.

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