Venezuela Says Suspect Under Arrest is U.S. Drug Agent

There has been no confirmation of this story from U.S. sources.

Venezuela said on Thursday it arrested a man who identified himself as a U.S. anti-drugs agent, which if confirmed could inflame tensions between the United States and one of its biggest oil suppliers.

President Hugo Chavez in 2005 ended cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), saying the agency was spying on him. The United States denied the charge and says Chavez does too little to stop trafficking from neighboring Colombia, the world’s largest cocaine exporter.

Gen. Gabriel Oviedo said the man was acting suspicious when he was detained close to the border with Colombia while bearing Canadian and French passports and a Venezuelan identity card.

“The official at the scene proceeded to interrogate him and he said he was a DEA agent,” Oviedo told state television.

The U.S. Embassy in Caracas said it had no knowledge of the arrest.

Relations have deteriorated since a failed 2002 coup against Chavez that Washington initially welcomed.

Multi-Agency Anti-terrorism Task Force Conducts Investigation In French Quarter

The Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of a multi-agency anti-terrorism task force that includes the IRS went to “multiple locations” in the French Quarter on Wednesday morning “in furtherance of an ongoing criminal investigation,” said FBI spokeswoman Sheila Thorne.

No one was arrested Wednesday morning, said Thorne, who declined to provide information about whether anyone had been detained or records had been seized. Thorne further declined to detail the reason an anti-terrorism task force conducted the raids, which she said started at about 9 a.m.

U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, though, noted “it is not a matter that poses any danger to the public.”

Other members of the task force include the New Orleans Police Department, the Harbor Police, the Sheriff’s Offices in St. John, Plaquemines, St. Charles and St. Bernard parishes, the State Police, the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Border Patrol and the United States Marshals Service.

Thorne declined to provide information about which of those agencies went with the FBI to the various French Quarter locations.

Gordon Cates, patrol agent with the New Orleans office of the Border Patrol, said his agency assisted the FBI in an investigation Wednesday morning in the French Quarter. He said two people were detained.

Source

Terror Attack Kills Three At Edwin Andrews Air Base in Philippines

Three people were killed and at least 18 others injured on Thursday when suspected terrorists detonated a bomb outside an airforce base in the southern Philippines, the military said.

The blast struck soldiers and their families waiting near the main gates of the Edwin Andrews air base in Zamboanga, said Colonel Darwin Guerra, a senior counter-terrorist commander. Read more

Border Security USA – New Reality Based TV Show To Debut on ABC

A new ABC unscripted series will take an unprecedented look behind the scenes at the government’s fight against terrorism.

The network has ordered 11 hours of “Border Security USA” from executive producer Arnold Shapiro (”Big Brother”). Shot on location throughout the United States, the series will focus on the efforts of border protection agencies to halt illegal smuggling and immigration. Read more

Nuclear Company Apologizes For ‘Hot Spot’ On Truck

The world’s largest builder of nuclear reactors apologized to regulators Wednesday over a shipment of equipment that contained a radiation “hot spot” that exceeded federal guidelines and traveled more than 400 miles from Virginia to Tennessee.

A team of inspectors said the quarter-sized spot, which was located on cleaning equipment in an Areva NP Inc. shipment, measured 10 times higher than the level of radiation allowed by federal regulators for transport. Areva said its own tests showed that the “hot spot,” or concentrated area of radiation, was four times higher than the federal limits.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Areva both concluded the radiation didn’t pose a threat to the truck’s driver, employees or the public. But company leaders conceded the incident exposed “weaknesses” in Areva’s shipping procedures.

“It was a deep disappointment to us. We regret that it ever took place,” Dominique Grandemange, an Areva nuclear fuel plant site manager, told an NRC panel.

“My commitment to you today is we’ll continue to monitor the progress to make sure we don’t have a recurrence,” he said.

The radiation was found on the bottom of a box of fuel cleaning equipment located on an open flatbed truck that made a seven-hour trip from Areva’s Mount Athos Road facility near Lynchburg, Va. to the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant north of Chattanooga, Tenn.

The equipment arrived on Feb. 3. The next morning Watts Bar plant employees found a spot at the bottom of the truck they measured at 2,000 millirem per hour — 10 times higher than the commission’s guidelines of 200 millirem per hour. A millirem is a unit of measurement of radiation. A chest X-ray usually is about 10 millirem, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

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Two Men Arrested In Terror Raids – London

Two men have been arrested in separate raids on suspicion of supporting terrorism overseas.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said the men, aged 32 and 31, were arrested at about 0600 BST on Wednesday at homes in Leicester and east London. Read more

U.S. Intelligence Group Dismisses al Qaeda Nuclear, WMD Report

A U.S.-based intelligence group dismissed a media report that al-Qaeda may release a video recording calling on militants to attack the West with biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.

ABC News cited unidentified intelligence officials as saying the tape may be released on the Internet within 24 hours and that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation sent a bulletin to 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country. Read more

Two Men Charged With Separate Hoax Threats

Two area men are charged in separate indictments returned Wednesday by a federal grand jury in Sacramento with making hoax threats against an airline and an American embassy.

Apun Mahapatra, who lives in North Natomas, is charged with an Internet hoax threat against an international Delta Airlines flight and with threatening to destroy the aircraft. He faces a maximum five years in prison on each court. Read more

Iranian Engineer Guilty of Taking Software From Palo Verde Nuclear Plant

An engineer from Iran was convicted Tuesday of illegally accessing a protected computer in the United States to use training software he obtained at a former job at a nuclear power plant in Arizona.

The jury deadlocked on two other counts against Mohammad Reza Alavi: stealing protected software and illegally exporting the software in violation of the U.S. trade embargo with Iran. A retrial was set for Aug. 1. Read more

Mexico Killings Include Several From U.S. Training Program

When Mexico’s acting federal police chief was gunned down inside his home this month, U.S. law enforcement officials took special note. The U.S. ambassador called him a hero.

Edgar Millán Gómez, it turns out, had been part of a little-known U.S. training program to create special investigative units, or SIUs. From 2002 to 2006, as many as 298 special agents have been vetted by Mexico and trained and equipped by the U.S. government at an estimated cost of $1.4 million, according to a report issued last year by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

But in killings dating to last year, at least three high-ranking federal agents who had received U.S. training have been gunned down, U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The killings dealt a blow to both governments’ efforts to battle powerful drug cartels and are designed to discourage other agents from cooperating with U.S. law enforcement, U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza said in an interview.

“If … they continue to target those individuals that have been effective, and with which we have worked closely, you’ve got to ask yourself, how are they [Mexican officials] going to find good people to take on these cartels in the face of these assassinations?” he said. “I get concerned that we’re on a slippery slide towards our own folks being exposed.

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Mexico’s War Against Drugs Is Killing Its Police

The assassination was an inside job. The federal police commander kept his schedule secret and slept in a different place each night, yet the killer had the keys to the official’s apartment and was waiting for him when he arrived after midnight.

When the commander, Commissioner Édgar Millán Gómez, the acting chief of the federal police, died with eight bullets in his chest on May 8, it sent chills through a force that had increasingly found itself a target.

The police say that the gunman had been hired by a disgruntled federal police officer who worked for a drug cartel in Sinaloa State, and the inside nature of the killing underscored just how difficult it is for President Felipe Calderón to keep his vow to clean up police corruption and end the drug-related violence racking Mexico.

Since coming to office in December 2006, Calderón has sought to revamp and professionalize the federal police force, using it, with the army, to mount huge interventions in cities and states once controlled by drug traffickers.

The result has been mayhem: a street war in which no target has been too big, no attack too brazen for the gangs.

Source

Pilot Reports Rocket Fired Near Passenger Jet – Joint Terrorism Task Force Investigating

A Continental Airlines pilot told air traffic controllers that an object with a flaming tail and a trail of smoke flew in front of the plane shortly after takeoff, FBI officials said.

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is involved in the investigation, but officials said they believe the object seen by the pilot just east of Houston’s airport on Monday was a model rocket. Read more

al-Qaeda Call For Nuclear Or Chemical Weapon Attack Against West – Threat, Attack Signal or Hoax?

Every once in awhile we come across a story that is difficult to make heads or tails of. Need an example? Keep reading…

Yesterday we received a tip on a story about a new al Qaeda video that was about to be released online. The video called “Nuclear Terrorism” was reportedly calling for jihadists around the world to use nuclear or chemical weapons to strike the west. Read more

New ‘AQIM’ Terror Cell, ‘Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’ A Growing Threat To U.S.

The new faces of terror are militants inside an emerging al Qaeda cell, which U.S. officials warn presents a clear and growing threat to America.

Based in North Africa, the group calling itself “Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb” specializes in kidnappings and suicide attacks. Read more

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