Jihadist Video Shows Boy Beheading Man

The boy with the knife looks barely 12. In a high-pitched voice, he denounces the bound, blindfolded man before him as an American spy. Then he hacks off the captive’s head to cries of “God is great!” and hoists it in triumph by the hair.A video circulating in Pakistan records the grisly death of Ghulam Nabi, a Pakistani militant accused of betraying a top Taliban official who was killed in a December airstrike in Afghanistan.

An Associated Press reporter confirmed Nabi’s identity by visiting his family in Kili Faqiran, their remote village in southwestern Pakistan.

The video, which was obtained by AP Television News in the border city of Peshawar on Tuesday, appears authentic and is unprecedented in jihadist propaganda because of the youth of the executioner.

Captions mention Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban’s current top commander in southern Afghanistan, although he does not appear in the video. The soundtrack features songs praising Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar and “Sheikh Osama”—an apparent reference to Osama bin Laden, who is suspected of hiding along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

The footage shows Nabi making what is described as a confession, being blindfolded with a checkered scarf.

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U.S. Embassy in Germany Warns of Terror Threat

The U.S. embassy in Berlin warned Friday that Germany faced an increased threat of terrorism and that Americans in the country were particularly at risk.

Although the State Department regularly issues warnings about dangers to U.S. citizens in Europe and elsewhere in the world, Germany has rarely been singled out as a potential security problem.

In posting the warning, the embassy in Berlin said U.S. diplomatic and consular offices across Germany had increased their security in response to “a heightened threat situation.” The embassy did not give details, but U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the warning was prompted by increased activity among Islamic extremists in the country instead of a specific plot.

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A Breach in Nuclear Security

New Mexico police got more than they bargained for last fall when they responded to a call about a domestic dispute in a trailer park near Los Alamos National Laboratory. Not only had they stumbled on paraphernalia for making the drug crystal meth; they also found thousands of pages of highly classified documents detailing the designs of U.S. nuclear weapons.

“We’re taking it (the security breach) very seriously,” said a spokesman for the Energy Department, which controls the lab, soon after the incident was made public. He added that Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman “was personally disturbed” by the matter. As well he ought to have been: New details obtained by TIME offer an even more disturbing picture of security at the nation’s nuclear inner sanctum than the one outlined last year in a no-nonsense investigation by the Department’s Inspector General. In fact, according to government documents, the woman who made off with the weapons designs was herself engaged in chronic illegal drug use and other serious security breaches that have never been made public. Documents also show that the DOE is investigating separate drug use by at least 35 other lab workers who received security clearances around the same time.

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36 California Schools Closed Due To Threat

Authorities put all 36 schools in 12 Northern California school districts under lockdown Thursday as police searched for a man who claimed he was planning an armed attack that would “make Virginia Tech look mild.”

Sutter County Undersheriff J. Paul Parker told MSNBC-TV that the man, identified as Jeffery Thomas Carney, 28, telephoned his pastor and family members Wednesday night to say he had an automatic weapon, improvised explosive devices and poison.

Sheriff’s officials said Carney made no specific threat to any particular place. But because of the reference to the massacre of 32 students and professors Monday at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, principals at all 36 of the schools in the county’s 12 school districts shut down their campuses and locked students in for safety, Assistant Superintendent Linda Protine said.

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Annie Jacobsen – Dry Runs and Flying Imams

Annie Jacobsen reveals that at least two of the Syrians she first reported on aboard Northwest Flight 327 were involved in an earlier dry run on Frontier Airlines Flight 577.

“Some security experts suggest the imams’ conduct may have been intended to identify aviation security weaknesses. Their John Doe lawsuit tends to support this theory, as such a complaint can also serve to manipulate our legal system to silence those who might otherwise report suspicious activity.”

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Threats Rattle Schools In 10 states

Campus threats forced lock-downs and evacuations at universities, high schools and middle schools in at least 10 states on Tuesday, a day after a Virginia Tech student’s shooting rampage killed 33 people.

Threats in Louisiana, Montana and Washington state directly mentioned the massacre in Virginia, while others were reports of suspicious activity in Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Dakota, South Dakota and Michigan.

In Louisiana, parents picked up hundreds of students from Bogalusa’s high school and middle school amid reports that a man had been arrested Tuesday morning for threatening a mass killing in a note that alluded to the murders at Virginia Tech.

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How Likely is a Nuclear Terrorist Attack

U.S. policymakers agree that as possible terrorist attacks go, the worst-case-scenario would involve detonation of a nuclear bomb in a major American city. This most catastrophic of scenarios provides ample fodder for the plot of television dramas, but the actual likelihood of such an event is open to debate.

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Virginia Tech Shooter Identified – Cho Seung-Hui

Cho Seung-Hui, a permanent resident of the United States, a Korean national and a Virginia Tech student has been identified as the gunman in the shootings that left 33 people dead on the Virginia Tech campus.

The student left a “disturbing note” before killing two people in a dorm room, returning to his own room to re-arm and entering a classroom building on the other side of campus to continue his rampage, sources said.

Seung-Hui’s identitiy has been confirmed with a positive fingerprint match on the guns used in the rampage and with immigration materials. It is believed that he was the shooter in both incidents yesterday. Sources say Seung-Hui was carrying a backpack that contained receipts for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm pistol, sources said.

AllahPundit at HotAir is covering all aspects of this story

Virginia Tech Shooter Lived In Dorm

Virginia Tech president Charles W. Steger said today that the gunman who rampaged through the campus on Monday leaving 32 dead was a student who lived in one of the school’s dormitories.

The name of the assailant has not been publicly released, but Steger said he was an Asian male who was “a resident in one of our dormitories.”

A range of sources, including federal and local officials with knowledge of the case, have stated that the assailant was of Korean descent. His parents live in Fairfax County, one official there said.

Authorities are expected to identify the gunman at a news conference this morning.

Virginia Tech Shooter Possibly On Student Visa

Police have made a preliminary identification of the shooter

Several news reports are suggesting that the shooter is a particular Facebook member. We have researched the links and while the pictures and profile will certainly stir up some talk. This is most likely not the Virginia Tech shooter. First, the users page has been updated several times today. Secondly, we have found links and posts on this persons other sites dating back to 2005. The suspect is reported to have arrived on a student visa just last year.

Update: The Facebook member mentiooned above has come out and exposed the story as an Internet Hoax.

Here is a link to his site.

He has updated it with the following message.

“Coming out. I am not the shooter. Through this experience, I have received numerous death threats, slanderous accusations, and my phone is out of charge from the barrage of calls. Local police have been notified of the situation.

My original intention was to wait until I got AdSense on my site and donating all the proceeds to Charity. However, this situation has now spiraled out of control. I am now confirming that I am not the shooter. I will be available for interview by a news agency to clear my name, talk about the experience, and give my opinion on how the situation could have turned out better if other students were allowed to be armed. I will only speak with individuals who are interested in donating to charities resulting from today’s events”

Authorities were investigating whether the gunman who killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history was a Chinese man who arrived in the United States last year on a student visa.

The 24-year-old man arrived in San Francisco on United Airlines on Aug. 7 on a visa issued in Shanghai, the source said. Investigators have not linked him to any terrorist groups, the source said.

Police believe three bomb threats on the campus last week may have been attempts by the man to test the campus’ security response, the source said.

Developing…

Virginia Tech University – At Least 33 Dead

At least 30 are dead and several more are wounded after a shooting at Virginia Tech University Monday morning, police said.

Campus police said there was only one shooter and he is now dead. They are unsure if the shooter was a student and it was unclear if he was shot by police or took his own life.

“Today the university was struck by a tragedy we consider of monumental proportions,” Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said during a press conference shortly after noon. “I cannot begin to convey my own personal sense of loss over this senseless, incomprehensible, heinous act.”

Steger said school officials are notifying victims’ next if kin, and state police and the FBI are still investigating the various crime scenes. They are still trying to identify all the victims. The university will set up counseling centers for students and faculty.

Update Editor & Publisher weekly is reporting that police are investigating reports earlier this month that and again last Friday of bomb threats on the campus of Virginia Tech where at least 32 people were shot and killed Monday.

Update Debbie Schussel gives her assessment.

Update Tech Doors Were Chained From Inside

Update He was said to have quarrelled in a dormitory with his girlfriend, whom he believed had been seeing another man. A student adviser was called to sort out the row. But the killer produced a gun and shot dead both his girlfriend and the adviser.

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2 Canadian Men Charged In Firebombings

Two Montreal men have been arrested and charged with arson in connection to a series of firebombings, including attacks on a Jewish school and community centre.

Omar Bulphred, 24, and Azim Ibragimov, 22, were arrested and charged Friday in Montreal.

The pair are also charged with uttering threats and possession of arson materials.

They’re scheduled to return to court next week for a bail hearing.

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New Terror Term – Clean-skin Terrorist

Definition: clean-skin ter•ror•ist n. A potential attacker with a spotless record whose documents don’t arouse suspicion

Context: U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told a British newspaper that the U.S. fears its next major terrorist attack could be carried out by “clean-skin terrorists” in Europe who feel they are treated as second-class citizens. He warned that the visa-waiver program, which allows citizens from some European countries to enter the U.S. without a visa, could be an open door for the terrorists.

Origins: The term clean-skin, once used to describe drug traffickers without a record, morphed in the late 1990s to characterize potential terrorists who weren’t on any watch lists. But several have already proved their deadly capabilities: the British government classified the four July 2005 London train bombers as clean-skins. Richard Reid, the would-be shoe bomber, was a clean-skin as well. Following the London transit attacks, Britain began to crack down on the threat by doubling its élite police antiterrorist squad and stepping up efforts to recruit spies within Muslim communities.

Navy Shows Off Terror Fighting Dolphins

Koa, an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin, will do anything for a fresh fish including alerting her U.S. Navy handlers to potential terrorists.

Koa is one of about 100 marine mammals housed at Naval Base Point Loma, located on a scenic peninsula jutting into San Diego Harbor.

Officials at the base briefly opened their doors to the media Thursday for the first time since the start of the war in Iraq. The demonstration came a few weeks after the Navy announced plans to ship up to 30 dolphins and sea lions to patrol the waters of Washington state’s Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, home to nuclear submarines, ships and laboratories.

Even in today’s high-tech world of underwater robotics and unmanned vehicles, the Navy says animals like Koa are its best line of defense against attacks from the sea.

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