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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