International News

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7 Terrorists Admit to Planning Attacks in Saudi Arabia (Persian Gulf News) “Seven terrorists have admitted to being involved in planning terrorist attacks in the Kingdom,” reports Gulf News. “… four Saudis, an Egyptian and two from Chad said that they have been also planning to storm a central prison in Jeddah to free terrorists. The Saudi official state television broadcasted their confessions on Tuesday evening.” [View article]

U.S. Pays Pakistan for Declining Antiterror Patrols (New York Times) “The United States is continuing to make large payments of roughly $1 billion a year to Pakistan for what it calls reimbursements to the country’s military for conducting counterterrorism efforts along the border with Afghanistan, even though Pakistan’s president decided eight months ago to slash patrols through the area where Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are most active,” reports the New York Times. “… Pakistan has received more than $5.6 billion under the program over five years, more than half of the total aid the United States has sent to the country since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, not counting covert funds.” [View article]

Israel Arrests 33 Senior Hamas Members; Iran Warns Against Attacking Lebanon (CNN; MSNBC) “Israeli forces early Thursday arrested more than 30 Palestinian Hamas leaders during raids on their homes and offices in the West Bank as part of a crackdown on Hamas and its militant apparatus, which has pounded the Jewish state with hundreds of rockets,” reports CNN. “… Israel also kept up pressure on Hamas militants in Gaza, continuing its air assault on targets there.” But Iran yesterday “warned Israel it would be ‘uprooted’ if the Jewish state made any move against and attacked Lebanon in the coming summer,” reports the Associated Press. [View CNN article] [View AP article]

British Terror Suspects on the Run Are ‘No Threat’ (Scotsman) “Home Secretary John Reid said [yesterday] that” three “control order absconders presented no threat to the British public,” reports the Scotsman. “… Reid said their orders had been designed to prevent overseas travel.” Lamine Adam, Ibrahim Adam, and Cerie Bullivant “failed to report to a police station on Tuesday.” [View article]

Indian Policemen Jailed for 1993 Mumbai Bombings (Reuters AlertNet) “An Indian court sentenced four policemen to six years in prison on Monday in connection with the serial bomb blasts in Mumbai that killed 257 people in 1993, the country’s worst bomb attack,” reports Reuters. “The policemen were tried under a now defunct anti-terror law and were found guilty of accepting bribes to allow a consignment of arms and explosives to be transported to India’s financial and entertainment hub.… The Mumbai court has spent 13 years probing the 13 explosions that tore through several Mumbai landmarks, including the Bombay Stock Exchange building, a cinema hall and a crowded market.” [View article]

Yemen Says Terror Suspect Is Captured (Yahoo! News) “One of the FBI’s most-sought terrorism suspects has surrendered to authorities in Yemen, more than a year after tunneling out of a prison there,” reports the Associated Press. “… Jaber A. Elbaneh lived in Lackawanna, N.Y., before leaving to train at Osama bin Laden’s al-Farooq training camp in Afghanistan in 2001, according to a federal indictment in Buffalo, N.Y. Six of his traveling companions—dubbed the ‘Lackawanna Six’—returned to the United States and were arrested in September 2002. All are serving sentences ranging from seven to 10 years after pleading guilty in 2003 to supporting terrorists.” [View article]

Is al-Qaeda on the Run in Iraq? (Time) In “Anbar province, home of the Sunni insurgency,” the “level of violence has plummeted in recent weeks,” reports Time. “An alliance of U.S. troops and local tribes has been very effective in moving against the al-Qaeda foreign fighters.” Sheiks have publicly opposed al-Qaeda and volunteered their men to serve in the police and army. “The success in Anbar has led sheiks in at least two other Sunni-dominated provinces, Nineveh and Salahaddin, to ask for similar alliances against the foreign fighters.” [View article]

China Resends Tainted Imports to U.S. (Washington Post) “Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical. Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics. Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria. Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides. These were among the 107 food imports from China that the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month, agency documents reveal, along with more than 1,000 shipments of tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic Chinese cosmetics and counterfeit Chinese medicines,” reports the Washington Post. “For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. [See the May 11 newsletter.] And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught—many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry.… In the first four months of 2007, FDA inspectors—who are able to check out less than 1 percent of regulated imports—refused 298 food shipments from China.” Only “56 shipments from Canada were rejected, even though Canada exports” five times more “food and agricultural products to the United States.” [View article]

Mercy Ships photo

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New this week in the Journal of Homeland Security In Angels and Mobsters, Antonio Nicaso and Lee Lamothe look at the relationships within the organized crime and terrorist underworlds. The authors examine criminal entities, terrorist groups, and particularly Canada’s approach to fighting crime and terrorism—an approach the authors find fault with. Joseph Wheatley reviews the book.

United Nations News

UN Defers Destruction of Smallpox Virus (MSNBC) The World Health Organization on May 18 “delayed for at least four years any decision on when to destroy the world’s last known stockpiles of smallpox, a deadly virus eradicated nearly 30 years ago,” reports MSNBC. “There is no treatment for the virus that was killing millions of people a year as recently as the 1960s and left many more blind and scarred.… But the United States and Russia, which hold the only known stockpiles of the virus in high-security laboratories, have long resisted calls to destroy them in case smallpox is found to exist elsewhere.” [View article]

UN Finds Iran’s Nuclear Plans Advancing (London Times) “Iran is expanding its nuclear programme and the ability of international inspectors to monitor its activities is deteriorating, according to a confidential report from the” International Atomic Energy Agency, reports the Times. The agency says “that Tehran [is] now closer to … ‘industrial scale’ uranium enrichment.” The agency admits “that inspectors have a ‘deteriorating’ understanding of unexplored aspects of the programme.… Iran is still believed to be some way off from producing weapons grade nuclear material. Right now its centrifuges are believed to be capable of producing 5 per cent enriched uranium—sufficient for the peaceful purposes that Iran insists it is working towards—but far from the 90 per cent level needed to make a bomb.” [View article]

Nigerian Farmers Using Banned Bird Flu Vaccine (AllAfrica) “Commercial poultry farmers in Nigeria are vaccinating their chickens against a deadly strain of bird flu virus despite a government ban,” according to the UN Integrated Regional Information Networks. “… large-scale farmers around the commercial capital, Lagos, and in the north of the country have been buying the imported vaccines through local markets that are poorly regulated and frequently sell fake or defective products.” [View article]

WHO Agreement Will Share Bird Flu Vaccine (BBC) “The World Health Organisation says it has reached a framework agreement to ensure [that] all countries share samples of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu,” reports the British Broadcasting Corporation. (See the March 30 newsletter.) “… The agreement aims to ensure that an up-to-date vaccine can be produced and that affected countries can afford it.… Although experimental vaccines based on the H5N1 virus exist, in order to ensure that any new vaccine would work, it must be based on the latest strain of the virus.” [View article]

Countries at UN Symposium Offer Steps for Countering Terrorism At a symposium in Vienna, Austria, last week, UN member states, regional organizations, and civil society groups proposed practical steps for countering terrorism: ensuring that the voices of terrorist victims are heard, facilitating a dialogue between victims and states, sharing best practices on preventing radicalization, countering the growing terrorist use of the Internet, incorporating human rights obligations into all aspects of counter-terrorism work, sharing experiences on protecting vulnerable targets such as users of mass transport, and ensuring that the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy is carried out in an integrated manner. [View press release]

UN Counterterrorism Assessments Near Completion Assessments of counter-terrorism measures taken by all 193 United Nations member states will be presented to the Security Council committee by the end of May. The assessments will help give the committee a comprehensive picture of actions taken and how better to assist states in complying. [View article]

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National News

U.S. Crime Rises as Police Focus on Terror (NineMSN, Australia) “Many US cities are struggling to stem a wave of violent crime and murder that has raised questions of whether police are fighting terrorism at the expense of street crime,” reports Reuters. Data from the Police Executive Research Forum show that the murder rate has risen “by more than 10 percent in dozens of big US cities since 2004. ‘What we’re seeing … is a new volatility,’” says Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Forum. “‘Some [cities] are seeing a reduction.… It’s a dramatic shift from the past 10 years when it was mostly all decreases,’ he said. Some police departments have seen staff reduced as police officers fight in Iraq, while resources that could be used to fight street crime get channeled into security at airports and other transit points.” [View article]

Minuteman Chief Purges Ranks (Washington Times) “The top leaders of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps have been terminated by the group’s president, Chris Simcox, for requesting a meeting to discuss a lack of financial accountability by the organization’s leadership,” reports the Washington Times. Simcox “came under fire last year over questions about how much money the” Minutemen “had raised and where it had gone.” The Minutemen are “volunteers who set up observation posts along the U.S.-Mexico border to bring attention to rising illegal entry into the U.S.” [View article]

Nature Conservancy Says Border Fence Threatens Wildlife (Yahoo! News) “Environmentalists have spent decades acquiring and preserving 90,000 riverfront acres of Texas scrub and forest and protecting their wildlife”—and “now they fear [that] the hundreds of miles of border fences will undo their work and kill some land animals by cutting them off from the Rio Grande, the only source of fresh water,” reports the Associated Press. “… some worry that the barrier—described in some plans as triple-layer metal fencing—will damage the tourism industry along the Rio Grande.… Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said environmental concerns will be taken into account in the final decisions. But Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has used his authority to waive environmental regulations for security reasons in other states, and Knocke said he would do so in the Rio Grande Valley if necessary.” The Nature Conservancy “said [that] the government should instead use more border agents, sensors and cameras.… Close to $100 million has been spent creating, restoring and maintaining the refuges, wildlife officials said.” [View article]

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DHS News

TSA Tests Liquid Explosives Detectors at 6 Airports The Transportation Security Administration has been testing technology capable of screening sealed bottled liquids for explosives at six major airports: Miami International, Newark (NJ) Liberty International, Detroit Metro, Los Angeles International, Las Vegas McCarran International, and Boston Logan International. The commercially available hand-held bottled liquid scanners are being used by the U.S. government domestically and overseas, but this is the first time they are being used in an airport environment. [View press release]

TSA Issues Critical Infrastructure Transport Plan This month, the Transportation Security Administration published its Transportation Systems Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources Sector-Specific Plan as input to the National Infrastructure Protection Plan. Transportation protection presents “complex implementation issues for industry, and State and local governments,” says the report, and the threats have “very significant consequence and plausible likelihood,” as well as “multi-jurisdictional and sector-wide effect.… Federal involvement will improve the sector’s risk management posture.” [View report]

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Other Federal News

DHS Announces Existence of Sector-Specific Infrastructure Protection Plans The Homeland Security Department has announced the completion of 17 sector-specific plans in support of the National Infrastructure Protection Plan, which outlines a risk management framework that defines critical infrastructure protection roles and responsibilities for all levels of government and private industry. Each sector-specific plan is tailored to the unique risk characteristics of that sector to promote greater consistency of protective programs and resources within the sectors. [View press release] [View list of plans]

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State and Local News

School Districts’ Emergency Planning Falls Short Most school districts “have developed multi-hazard emergency management plans,” according to Cornelia Ashby, Government Accountability Office Director of Education, Workforce, and Income Security, testifying before the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee on May 17. However, 56% “have not employed any procedures in their plans for continuing student education in the event of an extended school closure, such as might occur during a pandemic, and many do not include procedures for special needs students. Fewer than half of districts with emergency plans involve community partners when developing and updating these plans. Finally, school districts are generally not training with first responders or community partners on how to implement their school district emergency plans.” [View abstract]

Iowa Teenager Charged With Terrorism (Quad-City [IL & IA] Times) “A teenage boy has been charged with three counts of threats of terrorism and three counts of harassment in connection with a bomb threat that was written on a restroom wall at Pleasant Valley Junior High School” in LeClaire, IA, “earlier this month,” reports the Quad-City Times. [View article]

Street Crime Tied to L.A. Terror Threats (Ontario, CA, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin) Terrorism experts say that “gangs [are] funding terrorist groups and draining resources from law-enforcement agencies,” reports the Daily Bulletin. During a forum at the University of California at Los Angeles, “Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Lt. John Sullivan … said organized crime groups in Los Angeles County are supporting international terrorists.” (See the Quote of the Week.) [View article]

Courthouse Sniper Kills Two in Idaho (Washington Post) “A sniper sprayed dozens of bullets at a courthouse,” in Moscow, “killing a police officer and wounding a sheriff’s deputy and a civilian, then apparently killed a caretaker and himself [May 20] in a nearby church, police said,” reports the Associated Press. “Investigators think the gunman deliberately fired into an emergency dispatch center inside the Latah County Courthouse to lure people into the line of fire.… Police had no information about the gunman’s motive.” [View article]

1st NY Death Linked to 9/11 Dust (New York Times) “New York City’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, has for the first time directly linked a death to exposure to dust from the destruction of the World Trade Center,” reports the New York Times. He “said that he was certain ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ that dust from the twin towers contributed to the death of Felicia Dunn-Jones, 42, a civil rights lawyer who was engulfed on Sept. 11 as she ran from her office a block away from the trade center. She later developed a serious cough and had trouble breathing, and she died five months after the terrorist attack.” (See also the May 18 newsletter.) [View article]

Arsonist Sentenced as Eco-Terrorist (CNN) “Declaring that fires set at a police station, an SUV dealership and a tree farm were acts of terrorism, a federal judge Wednesday sentenced a member of a radical environmental group to 13 years in prison,” reports the Associated Press. “Stanislas Meyerhoff, 29, has admitted to being a member of a Eugene [Oregon] cell of the Earth Liberation Front known as The Family, which was responsible for more than 20 arson fires from 1996 through 2001 in five Western states that caused $40 million in damage.… Meyerhoff denounced the [Earth Liberation Front], saying its goals of promoting a public discussion about stopping practices that harm the Earth actually cut off debate and harmed people.” [View article]

Florida Doctor Convicted of Supporting al-Qaeda (Washington Post) “A federal jury convicted a Florida-based doctor on Monday of … swearing allegiance to” al-Qaeda “and attempting to help treat wounded fighters,” reports Reuters. “Rafiq Sabir, 52, was found guilty of conspiracy to provide material support … and providing or attempting to provide material support or resources” to al-Qaeda. Sabir “faces a maximum of 30 years in prison when he is sentenced September 12.… The case did not involve any attack plot, but centered on an oath that Sabir and his close friend Tarik Shah made in Arabic in May 2005 to an undercover FBI agent posing as an al Qaeda recruiter.” [View article]

Liberty U. Student Arrested With Homemade Bombs (Seattle Times) Mark David Uhl, 19, “a Liberty University student who told a family member he had made bombs and planned to attend the funeral of the Rev. Jerry Falwell apparently was upset about an anti-gay fringe group that protested at the funeral, authorities said,” reports the Associated Press. “Officials still were trying to figure out what … Uhl planned to do with the bombs.… Uhl faces one charge of possession of an unlawful destructive device.” Authorities “found homemade bombs in the trunk of Uhl’s car.” [View article]

Illinois Voted Against Real ID but Still Has Bills to Pay (Quad-City [IL & IA] Times) “Even though the Illinois House and Senate have both voted to oppose a federal driver’s license law, the state will still have to start paying for the federal program soon,” reports the Quad-City Times. The “nonbinding rebuke of the federal law” doesn’t “carry the weight of law. So the state will have to put the program in place beginning with this year’s budget, unless changes are made at the federal level. [Illinois] Secretary of State Jesse White’s office is asking for $22 million this year” to pay the bills. [View article]

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Private-Sector News

Insurers Agree to Pay Billions for 9/11 Ground Zero Losses (New York Times) New York Governor Eliot Spitzer on Wednesday “announced the settlement of all insurance claims at ground zero,” reports the New York Times. It means “that $4.55 billion will be available for rebuilding the World Trade Center site. The agreement, which the insurers described as the largest single insurance settlement ever undertaken by the industry, ended a protracted legal battle with insurers over payouts related to the terrorist attack.” [View article]

U.S. Financial Sector Plans Test of Pandemic Response The U.S. financial services industry plans to test its ability to respond to a pandemic with an exercise to take place in the fall. The multi-week, sector-wide pandemic exercise is sponsored by the U.S. Treasury Department, in partnership with the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council for Critical Infrastructure Protection and Homeland Security, and the Financial and Banking Information Infrastructure Committee, and with the Securities Industry and Financial Management Association in a planning and project management role. The exercise is scheduled to begin September 24. [View press release]

Verizon Will Provide Enhanced 911 System for New York City (Government Computer News) “New York City has awarded Verizon Business a seven-year, $195 million contract to implement an enhanced 911 system for the city’s police, fire and emergency medical personnel to help them locate and communicate with 911 callers,” reports Government Computer News. “The agreement with the city has an option for four years’ worth of extensions, including upgrades in network and equipment technology to ensure that the system remains state of the art. The new system will enable New York City’s police, fire and Emergency Medical Services division for the first time to share redundant, dual-dedicated switches to receive and process E-911 calls.… All operations” should move “to the new system in 2008.” [View article]

Education The Homeland Security Institute lists these education programs as a service to readers who may be interested; it does not endorse them or their courses. New education listings are posted for four weeks. Identifying and Controlling Human Infections and Illness Associated With Avian Influenza (online) This three-day training course sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists provides a standardized curriculum to state and local public-health responders. [View press release] [View course website] Hospital Security Preparedness (June 5-8; Washington, DC) The ER One Institute at the Washington Hospital Center is offering an immersion course for hospital protective services and law enforcement. It uses hands-on training, live drills, and classroom instruction from faculty with extensive security and counterterrorism experience. The course goal is to achieve competency in handling all hazards to hospital security, from routine situations to mass-casualty incidents and terrorist attacks against the facility. For more information, call Lisa Rizzolo at (202) 877-7453. [View course website] Mirror Image (June 17-22; Moyock, NC) Mirror Image is an intensive classroom and field training program, designed to realistically simulate terrorist recruiting, training techniques, and operational tactics. Participants will receive insight into the mindset and rationale of terrorists through hands-on experience with the methods and means they use, plus education about the ideologies that motivate them and cultural dimensions that influence their decision making. [View course website] Discounts for sworn officers and security professionals (online) Ellis College, a fully accredited online college for working professionals, has a new tuition discount program for active and retired sworn officers in law enforcement, corrections, probation, and parole, along with security professionals. It also offers discounted tuition to active, retired, and veteran military personnel. [View press release] Security Leadership Essentials with Knowledge Compression (July 30–Aug. 4; Charlottesville, VA) This course is designed to empower senior and advancing managers who want to get up to speed fast on information security issues and terminology. It will help students meet the requirements of Department of Defense Directive 8570 and includes a test pass guarantee. [Register online] Security Essentials Bootcamp Style (August 6-11; Virginia Beach, VA) Students will learn the language and underlying theory of computer security and gain essential, up-to-the-minute knowledge and skills required for effective performance if they are given the responsibility for securing systems and/or organizations. The course will help students meet the requirements of Department of Defense Directive 8570 and includes a test pass guarantee. [Register online] Introduction to the Incident Command System The National Wildfire Coordination Group and the U.S. Fire Administration have jointly developed and implemented a new online course that will enable firefighters, incident responders, and others to learn and understand the basics of the Incident Command System. It is available on the National Wildfire Coordination Group’s training website. [View press release] [View course website]

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New Upcoming Events (After four weeks, new events will be moved to the Upcoming Events page) ACE Exchange V (June 4-6, Buffalo, NY) The Automated Commercial Environment is the commercial trade processing system being developed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to facilitate legitimate trade while strengthening border security. The ACE Exchanges will provide information on ACE and allow an open forum of communication between Customs and Border Protection and the trade community. The conferences will educate the trade community on the benefits of ACE, its impact on business operations, and legal policy changes under way, such as the new mandatory electronic manifest policy. [View conference website] Creating and Using Multi-Hazards Knowledge and Strategies (June 28; Washington, DC) This workshop of the National Academies’ Disasters Roundtable will feature presentations by experts from the hazards research, policy, and practitioner communities, including both public- and private-sector representatives, and will include audience discussion. [View conference website] 17th World Conference on Disaster Management (July 8-11; Toronto) A venue for disaster management professionals from around the world to present, network, and learn. It comprises over 80 educational sessions and 16 half-day workshops and seminars. [View conference website] Heartland Security Conference & Exhibition (July 9-11; Minneapolis) The National Defense Industrial Association and the Defense Alliance of Minnesota will address the urgent and long-range system and technology needs of homeland security and national defense, focusing on threat awareness, preparedness, and responsiveness. [View conference website] NACCHO 2007 (July 11-13; Columbus, OH) Local health officials and their public health partners will examine strategies, share ideas, and plan actions designed to address issues of health inequity and environmental public health from local to global perspectives. [View conference website] (July 17-19; Oak Brook, IL) This is a multidisciplinary conference of public health professionals involved in bioterrorism planning and response, including public health administration, environmental health, nursing, communicable disease, laboratory services, food protection, immunization, hospital emergency services, and allied health. The conference includes over 30 concurrent and plenary sessions, roundtable discussions, a networking reception, and an exhibit hall. [View conference website]

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