Incomplete 1,000-foot tunnel found on U.S.-Mexico border

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency says Mexican authorities have discovered an incomplete tunnel that extends into San Diego. The tunnel is equipped with a lift system, ventilation and lighting. The DEA said Wednesday that the tunnel runs nearly 1,000 feet from its entry in Tijuana, Mexico, including 860 feet into the United States. There is no exit on the U.S. side.

The DEA says Mexican authorities arrested more than a dozen people inside the tunnel Wednesday. No arrests have been made in the United States. The tunnel reaches a depth of 90 to 100 feet and authorities think it has been under construction for about two years.

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Chechen Rebels Claim Nevsky Express Bombing

Chechen rebels have claimed responsibility for a bombing that killed at least 26 people traveling on a train from Moscow to St. Petersburg, rebel web site Kavkaz Center said Wednesday. The attack, which derailed the luxury Nevsky Express train Friday night, was part of a broader strategy announced earlier this year by rebel leader Doku Umarov, Kavkaz Center said in a statement attributed to the rebels’ headquarters. Umarov had called to move terrorist attacks and acts of sabotage from the North Caucasus to the rest of Russia.

Most recently, Chechen rebels also claimed responsibility for the disaster that killed 75 workers at the Sayano-Shushenskaya power plant Aug. 17, but, like in the train bombing, they have failed to produce any proof of their involvement. The rebels pledged to continue attacks on Russian soil but promised to limit civilian casualties. The Chechen rebels were not the first to claim responsibility for the bombing. A radical nationalist group called Combat 18 took credit on a nationalist Internet blog on the day after the attack. Unlike some nationalist groups that claim responsibility for high-profile attacks, Combat 18 actually exists, and its members have been interviewed by the Russian media previously.

• "Who is Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov?", Reuters, 12/2/09.
• "Russia: Bomb Attack on Train", Stratfor, 11/28/09.
  
• "North Caucasus Insurgency Attracting Mainly Young and Committed Members", Jamestown Foundation, 1/15/09.

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Hezbollah Threatens Weapon Buildup

Hezbollah's leader said Monday that the Lebanese militant group will improve its weapons capabilities to face off any Israeli threat and that armed struggle was the only way to regain Arab lands captured by the Jewish state.

Hassan Nasrallah's remarks signaled the group has no intention of meeting a United Nations resolution requiring it to give up its weapons. That position that has generated division among the country's fractious political groups as well as concern in Israel, which says it is preparing to deploy a defense system to shoot down rockets from Lebanon.

Mr. Nasrallah gave no details on the weapons plans, but Hezbollah has said it has tens of thousands of rockets. Israel's military says that since its 2006 war with the group, Hezbollah has tripled its prewar arsenal to more than 40,000 rockets, some of which can strike virtually anywhere in Israel -- a dramatic change from the short-range missiles it fired in 2006.

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Update 1: Suspect in Washington Cop Killings Was Out on Street Despite Lengthy Rap Sheet, Sentences

As the suspect in the ambush execution of four police officers remains on the run, questions are swirling as to how and why Maurice Clemmons — an ex-con who at one time faced more than 100 years behind bars — was allowed to live free.

Clemmons, 37, of Tacoma, Wash., has an extensive, violent criminal history marked by volatile and unstable behavior, according to court records and news reports. His criminal history includes at least five felony convictions in Arkansas and at least eight felony charges in Washington, according to the Seattle Times. He had a lengthy prison sentence commuted in 2000 by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who cited Clemmons' youth.

"Should he be found to be responsible for this horrible tragedy, it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State," Huckabee said in a statement issued Sunday. The former governor, who ran for president in 2008 and has been a leading contender in polls for the 2012 Republican nomination, currently hosts a show on Fox News Channel.

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4 Police Officers Killed In Washington Ambush

One of four police officers killed in an ambush at a coffeehouse Sunday fought with the gunman and may have wounded him before the officer died just outside the doorway, a sheriff's spokesman said. Pierce County, Wash., sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer told reporters that investigators were asking area medical providers to report any people wounded by gunshots.

Troyer said investigators believe two of the officers were shot dead while sitting in the shop, and a third was killed after standing up. The fourth apparently struggled with the gunman out the doorway and "gave up a good fight," getting off a few shots before he was either shot there or succumbed to earlier wounds.

"We believe there was a struggle, a commotion, a fight ... that he fought the guy all the way out the door," Troyer said. "We hope that he hit him."

The gunman burst into the coffeehouse Sunday morning and opened fire on the officers as they sat working on their laptops, killing the three men and one woman in what Troyer described as a targeted ambush.

Troyer said officers were looking for one male suspect who fled the scene and haven't ruled out an accomplice, possibly a getaway driver. Troyer said investigators determined that a hoax call from a person in nearby Tacoma led officers to believe the gunman was on foot and still near the coffee shop. A number of officers spent part of the afternoon carefully searching buildings close by.

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Russia says bomb caused deadly train crash

A bomb caused a Russian train crash that killed dozens of people and injured 100 more, officials said on Saturday, stoking fears of an upsurge in attacks in Russia's heartland. The 14-carriage Nevsky Express, with around 700 people on board, was jolted off the rails on Friday night on the main line between Moscow and Russia's second city, St Petersburg.

Three carriages of the luxury train, which is popular with officials and business executives, lay battered beside the rails after the blast. It was the worst Russian bomb attack outside the mainly Muslim North Caucasus since a spate of suicide attacks in 2004.

"A bomb equivalent to 7 kg (15.4 lb) of TNT was detonated," the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) domestic intelligence agency, Alexander Bortnikov, told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, citing the results of a preliminary investigation.

• "Chechen Terrorism", Council on Foreign Relations, 8/5/08.
• "Russian Train Derailed by bomb", BBC News 8/14/07.
  
• "The Chechen Separatist Movement", Council on Foreign Relations, 7/18/06.

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Inside the Fusion Center

When a tip arrived about a threat of violence at a southern Nevada high school football game, a Clark County School District police officer helped plan a response. When a Colorado man was arrested on terrorism charges, a Department of Homeland Security analyst probed whether he had Las Vegas ties. Though the two cases are very different, the officials who worked them were in the same cubicle-filled room at the Southern Nevada Counterterrorism Center.

Open for more than two years, the Las Vegas "fusion" center is battling terrorism and street crime, a dual mission that has affected how local and federal law enforcement agents view each other and their jobs. The fusion center concept, which was developed by the federal government after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is grounded in the idea that information flow between police agencies is the key to stopping terrorism.

In Las Vegas and elsewhere, the concept has evolved to include a broader "all crimes, all hazards" approach. A sign that federal law enforcement has embraced this strategy came last month when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder visited Las Vegas and praised the local fusion center as a national model.

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Air cargo still vulnerable to terrorists

The Transportation Security Administration is failing to ensure the security of boxed cargo in passenger planes, leaving the airplanes at risk for a terrorist attack, according to a government report obtained by USA TODAY. "Air cargo is vulnerable," says a report by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general.

The report, out today, cites repeated problems with the TSA's program to stop terrorists from sneaking a bomb into any of the tens of thousands of cargo packages carried each day in the bellies of passenger planes.

Investigators were able to slip into supposedly secure warehouses where cargo is stored before being loaded onto airplanes and walk around unchallenged, the report says. Inspector General Richard Skinner also found some workers who handle the cargo had not received required background checks or training.

The TSA "has not been effective" in making airlines and freight-handling companies comply with security rules for cargo, Skinner said in his report.

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Update 3: Politician charged over Philippines massacre

Authorities have filed murder charges against a politician over the massacre of 57 unarmed civilians in the Philippines, state-run media reported Thursday. Andal Ampatuan Jr, who is the mayor of the town of Datu Unsayalso and the son of a Philippines provincial governor, had voluntarily turned himself in for questioning Thursday.

It was not immediately clear how many murder charges Ampatuan would face in Monday's massacre in Maguindanao province, in the southern Philippines. Five other people believed to be connected to the massacre were also being prosecuted, the state-run Philippines News Agency reported. This group includes three police officers.

Suspicion had fallen on the Ampatuan family, key allies of the Arroyo administration in the Maguindanao region of southern Mindanao province. The massacre is the worst politically motivated violence in recent Philippine history.

The man charged in the grisly killings of at least 57 people in the Philippines claimed his innocence from his jail cell, blaming instead the leader of a militant Islamic group. Andal Ampatuan Jr., mayor of Datu Unsay and son of the provincial governor of Maguindanao, was charged with seven counts of murder.

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Hezbollah cell smashed as FBI hits arms trade

The FBI has dismantled an alleged Hezbollah cell accused of arms dealing, depositing counterfeit money in a Canadian bank and selling a Canadian passport to support the Lebanese terrorist group.

Ten people from New York, New Jersey, Lebanon and Venezuela have been indicted and face up to 30 years in prison following an investigation that began in 2006, the U.S. Department of Justice announced yesterday.

The indictments link Hezbollah to a wide array of crimes, ranging from counterfeiting U.S. currency and money laundering to fencing stolen cars, cellular phones, laptops and Sony Play Station 2 systems.

The case also implicates Iran and Syria in Hezbollah's illicit arms network. The suspects allegedly tried to ship guns to Latakia, a Syrian port they said was controlled by Hezbollah. And Hezbollah officials in Iran were allegedly involved in the weapons purchase.

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