Raid in Northern Mexico Rescues 43 People Held by Kidnappers

Federal agents and soldiers raided three safe houses in this sprawling Mexican border city, rescuing 43 people who had been kidnapped and making at least three arrests, the president’s spokesman said Monday.

The victims were testifying before state and federal authorities in Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, Ruben Aguilar, a spokesman for President Vicente Fox, said in Mexico City.

Since January, many foreigners – most Americans – have been kidnapped in Mexican border cities. The federal Attorney General’s office said preliminary reports indicated that all those rescued Sunday were Mexican citizens, however.

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Al-Zawahiri Tape Slams U.S.

Al Qaeda’s No. 2 leader released a new video, broadcast on Al-Jazeera television Friday, in which he disparaged the U.S. concept of reform in the Middle East and said armed jihad is the only way to bring change in the Arab world.

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Feds Probe Possible California Terror Cell

Federal law enforcement officers are trying to determine whether they have uncovered a network of Al Qaeda supporters in Northern California.

Two law enforcement sources have confirmed that there is a connection between Umer and Hamid Hayat, the father and son arrested over the weekend in Lodi, Calif., on criminal charges, and two Pakistani citizens currently being held on immigration violations. Lodi is an agricultural community 40 miles south of Sacramento.

The son allegedly received terrorist training and funding from the father, an ice cream truck driver, so he could carry out attacks on hospitals and large food stores in the United States.

Hamid Hayat, 22, and his father, Umer Hayat, 47, are charged with lying to authorities about the son’s alleged training at an Al Qaeda camp in 2003 and 2004 and money sent for training. Charges for terrorism could come soon.

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Two Lodi men arrested for suspected al Qaeda ties

Federal officials believe they have broken up an al Qaeda terror cell operating in Lodi and have arrested two men and detained two others as part of a wide-ranging investigation, authorities said Tuesday.

One of the men arrested, 22-year-old Hamid Hayat, is accused in a federal criminal complaint of training in an al Qaeda camp in Pakistan to learn how to kill Americans and then lying to FBI agents about it.

His training included explosives and weapons instruction and using photographs of President Bush as targets, court documents indicate.

His father, 47-year-old Umer Hayat, a Lodi ice cream truck driver, is charged in the complaint with lying about his son%u2019s involvement and his own financing of the terror camp.

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Gov’t: Terrorists Could Target School Food

The government has been looking at the possibility of terrorists targeting food destined for school cafeterias, a federal food safety official said Monday.

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Two arrested after target practice

Gunfire in a remote part of Multnomah County has sent up red flags at the sheriff’s department.

Deputies say Abdullah Shabbaz and a man who calls himself Yassin Abdurahman were shooting assault rifles on Larch Mountain over the weekend. Deputies gave both tickets for trespassing, bt now they’ve gotten the attention of federal law enforcement.

Officers say they had a duffle bag sitting next to them loaded up with semi-automatic assault rifles, handguns, clips and a gas mask.

Federal agents would not say if they’re investigating further.

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Mesa Arizona man caught making ricin

A Mesa man was caught manufacturing the deadly poison ricin for use as a weapon, authorities said Sunday, but it remains unclear who or what the man was targeting with the dangerous toxin.

Casey Cutler, 25, was arrested Saturday evening after a two-day investigation. He stands accused of possessing a biotoxin for use as a weapon and will be formally charged this week, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

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IRAQ: Fallujah Sheik Says A–Zarqawi Died On Friday

The Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq – died on Friday and his body is in Fallujah’s cemetary, an Iraqi Sunni sheikh, Ammar Abdel Rahim Nasir, has told the Saudi on-line newspaper Al-Medina. He claims that gunfights which broke out in Fallujah in the last few days involved militants trying to protect the insurgency leader’s tomb from a group of American soldiers patrolling the area.

During a telephone conversation from the city of Fallujah with the Saudi newspaper, Nasir said al-Zarqawi was taken there after being injured in the city of Ramadi around three weeks ago, and may have been treated by two doctors who had worked with his aides in Baghdad. He said the two doctors had stopped a serious haemorrhage in al-Zarqawi’s intestines, but that after his condition worsened last week, the militant died on Friday.

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Radiation Detectors to Scan Calif. Ports

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will receive radiation detectors to scan every incoming cargo container for nuclear weapons or dirty bombs, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday.

The 20-foot-high devices, already in use in at seaports in Jersey City, N.J., and elsewhere, should be at the Southern California ports by the end of the year, Chertoff said. They are part of the U.S. government’s strategy to prevent a possible attack by terrorists using nuclear or radiological weapons at the nation’s busiest port complex.

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