Residue On Money Causes Scare At Bank

A teller at a Plainfield National City bank branch became nauseated and dizzy this afternoon after accepting a deposit which had white powder residue on the money, causing an emergency response and closing the bank for the day.

Police said the teller vomited and was treated by paramedics, but did not need to be taken to a hospital.

The teller said she received the deposit money from a customer around 12:20 p.m. and placed the money in a drawer. Within minutes, she began feeling dizzy, according to police.

A Will County hazmat team arrived at the bank, 24821 W. 135th St., and after about three hours determined the bills were not a serious threat. The bank was closed for the day.

The money is being tested to identify the residue, authorities said.

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Stolen Canadian Plane Lands In Missouri

Police captured the pilot of a stolen Canadian plane late Monday night, ending a bizarre pursuit that began in Thunder Bay, Ont., and ended in a small Missouri town.

The pilot took a single-engine Cessna 172 from a Thunder Bay aviation school and soon crossed into U.S. airspace. Authorities scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to track the aircraft as it made its way over Wisconsin and Illinois.

Nearly eight hours later, at about 10 p.m. ET, the pilot landed on a dirt road in the southern Missouri town of Ellsinore and fled on foot.

Officials with the Federal Bureau of Investigation then arrested 31-year-old suspect Yavuz Burke, a native of Turkey who became a Canadian citizen last year. He was formerly known as Adam Leon.

Earlier, the North American Aerospace Defense Command had scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to track the plane.

Lt.-Cmdr. Gary Ross, a spokesperson for NORAD, said the pilot did not respond to radio calls from the jets or the FAA.

He also said the pilot refused to acknowledge the nonverbal communications from the F-16 jets to follow them. It appears the plane only landed as it came close to running out of fuel.

The plane was reported stolen at about 2:30 p.m. ET and was spotted flying erratically.

At about 5 p.m., the state capital building in Madison, Wis., was evacuated before the plane passed near the region. Police cars cordoned off the streets around the building and officers told people to move away from the area.

The small plane belongs to Confederation College’s aviation program and was taken off from the Thunder Bay International Airport.

According to local radio, someone jumped the fence and took off on an unauthorized flight.

City police are at the scene at the college’s hangar. Police spokesperson Chris Adams says officers have little to go on at the time.

According to Cessna’s website, the Cessna 172 Skyhawk is world’s most flown airplane. It has a maximum cruise speed of 233 kilometres an hour and a range of 1,130 km.
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Report: Smart-grid Hackers Could Cause Blackouts

Deployments of smart grids should be slowed until security vulnerabilities are addressed, according to some cybersecurity experts, citing tests showing that a hacker can cause a major blackout after breaking into a smart-grid system.

The idea behind smart grids, a burgeoning energy sector in which even Google is playing a role, is that automated meters and two-way power consumption data can be used to improve the efficiency and reliability of an electrical system’s power distribution. A washing machine in a household hooked up to a smart meter, for instance, could be set up to run only at lower-cost, off-peak hours, and a home sporting solar panels could give power back to the grid.

Through the U.S. economic-stimulus package, the Department of Energy is set to invest $4.5 billion in smart-grid technology. And while many utilities are embracing the initiative by installing smart meters in millions of homes nationwide, security experts and others caution that the technology may not be ready for prime time. According to a CNN report published Friday evening:

Cybersecurity experts said some types of meters can be hacked, as can other points in the smart grid’s communications systems. IOActive, a professional security services firm, determined that an attacker with $500 of equipment and materials, and a background in electronics and software engineering, could “take command and control of the (advanced meter infrastructure), allowing for the en masse manipulation of service to homes and businesses.”

Experts said that once in the system, a hacker could gain control of thousands, even millions, of meters and shut them off simultaneously. A hacker also might be able to dramatically increase or decrease the demand for power, disrupting the load balance on the local power grid and causing a blackout. These experts said such a localized power outage would cascade to other parts of the grid, expanding the blackout. No one knows how big it could get.

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Electromagnetic Pulse E-Bombs Could Go Mainstream

E-bombs, weapons that destroy electronics with an intense pulse of electromagnetic radiation, have been discussed for decades. But despite years of research and development, there is little sign of their deployment. The prospect of knocking out communications and other electronic systems is attractive, but commanders prefer proven weapons with known effects. Now the U.S. Army is developing technology to provide the best of both worlds, by creating munitions that combine conventional and e-bomb effects in one package.

Explosive munitions rely on blast, fragmentation and sometimes armor-piercing shaped charges for their effects. Researchers want to add an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) damage mechanism as well. This is in contrast to previous e-bomb projects that were intended to be nonlethal so they could destroy materiel without causing casualties. The Army program seeks to enhance existing warheads, adding the feature without affecting blast, fragmentation or armor penetration, and with minimal extra weight.

The power supply in traditional e-bomb design is a magnetic flux compression generator with metal coils carrying current. The coils rapidly compress in an explosion, producing an intense pulse of energy. The generator is bulky and cannot easily be integrated into existing munitions.

An alternative approach explored by the Army is a shockwave ferromagnetic generator. This is a magnet that blows up and spontaneously demagnetizes, releasing energy as a pulse of power. The effect is known as pressure-induced magnetic phase transition, and only occurs with some types of magnets in certain situations. In 2005, researchers from the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center (Amrdec), working with contractor Loki and scientists from Texas Tech University, demonstrated an explosive pulsed-power source based on neodymium alloy magnets, a type used in speakers and headphones.

Having proven that the principle works, the researchers moved on to more exotic lead zirconate titanate magnets. This enabled them to reduce the volume of the power generator from 50 cu. cm. (3 cu. in.) to 3 cu. cm., excluding explosives. Army requirements call for assembly of the power generator, power conditioning and aerial in a 1-in. space. Power output will be measured in hundreds of megawatts for microseconds.

The aerial needed to shape and direct the electromagnetic energy is an engineering challenge, due to the intense force of the explosion and the size required. Allen Stults of Amrdec is working on a “conducting aerosol plasma warhead.” A flame conducts electricity due to the presence of charged particles in it. By altering the chemical mixture of a fireball produced by an explosion, Stults aims to turn it into an electrically conductive aerial, a “plasma antenna.”

via E-Bombs Could Go Mainstream | AVIATION WEEK.

Des Moines Police Report Suspicious Activity On Plane

Security officials say they found something suspicious Tuesday night while cleaning a plane at the Des Moines Airport.

Maintenance staff found a 9-volt battery in one of the seats on the plane, ASA Delta Connection flight 5318. The bottom of the battery had been taken off and one of the cells was pulled up, police said.

The battery was tagged as evidence, placed in a bag and stored in a locker as investigators try to figure it out.

Police were called to take a report about 10:30 p.m.

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Commuter Plane Crashes Into Home In Upstate NY – Up To 50 Onboard Flight 3407

New York state police say a 50-passenger commuter plane has crashed into a home in suburban Buffalo.

Unconfirmed reports state this is Flight 3407 from Newark to Buffalo.

State Trooper John Manthey says the plane hit a house in Clarence around 10:10 p.m. Thursday. The house is engulfed in flames.

He says they don’t know whether there were any passengers on the plane. They also don’t know if there were any injuries in the home.

Manthey says the plane may have been headed to Buffalo Niagara International Airport. He says authorities have called the Federal Aviation Administration.

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Man Dressed As UPS Driver Robs Check Cashing Store

The story is not terror related, rather it’s a reminder of why it’s important to be vigilant and ALWAYS  follow security procedures. This time it was a robbery however; the same scenario could just as easily have taken place in a shopping mall, school, government office or any number of other locations with much more serious consequences.

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A man dressed to look like a UPS driver robbed a Peoria check cashing store Monday and got away with about $50,000,police said. Read more

Inauguration – Tips To FBI About Suspicious Activity On The Rise

The FBI said Saturday it is receiving more and more tips about suspicious activities and items as the inauguration approaches, though there have been no specific or credible threats.

“The closer you get to the event, the more threat streams come in. People become a little bit more aware and want to do the right thing and pick up the phone and call us and tell us,” said John Perren, the special agent in charge for counterterrorism at the FBI’s Washington field office.

“Agencies want to forward us everything they have, just to ensure that this inauguration will be the safest inauguration there has ever been,” Perren said.

The FBI is one of 58 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies that are part of the largest inaugural security operation in history.

There is no credible intelligence, at this point, that indicates terrorists plan to disrupt the events. But intelligence officials are concerned about potential attack scenarios, such as a car bomb or other explosive devices.

Should such an incident occur over the next three days, the bureau is ready with emergency response equipment that stretches down a city block on 5th Street.

There is a 40-foot bomb truck to handle suspicious items with a bomb-detecting robot that performs jobs considered too dangerous for a person. The FBI has a separate truck with a 12,000-pound blue steel ball that is strong enough to contain blasts of explosives.

There is also a mobile command center with seven laptops, 15 televisions, six cell phones, a microwave, mini fridge and 12-cup coffee maker; an armored assault vehicle; and evidence response team trucks to process a crime scene.

The FBI will have as many as 1,000 employees helping to secure the inauguration, with 155 two-person intelligence teams dressed in plain clothes and strategically placed to look for specific threats.

“We’re very, very confident that if anything happens, we know how to respond to it,” Perren said.

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Passenger Arrested For Bomb Threat At St. Louis Airport

An airline passenger was arrested after authorities say he made a bomb threat when flight attendants asked him to close his laptop computer before takeoff.

The man was on board a United Express flight to Washington Saturday afternoon at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. Airport spokesman Jeff Lea said that when attendants asked him to close his laptop, “he mentioned a bomb or made a bomb threat.”

Police were called, and the man was arrested. The flight was delayed more than two hours while police searched the plane for explosives but nothing was found.

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Miniature Nuclear Reactors Could Become Terror Risk

Miniature nuclear reactors, once the stuff of science fiction, soon may be coming to a town near you — that is, if terrorists don’t pick them off on the way.

Reactors being developed by Hyperion Power Generation of Santa Fe, N.M.; NuScale Power of Corvallis, Ore., and the giant Japanese conglomerate Toshiba use different nuclear fuels, but all rely on the same basic design: a self-contained cylindrical nuclear reactor that is factory-sealed and produces electricity for years without any human oversight or maintenance.

Each reactor would be transported to a site, buried underground, hooked up to a power grid and started up.

After five to 20 years, depending on the design, the nuclear fuel would exhaust itself and the cool reactor would be dug up and shipped back to the manufacturer.

The companies hope to have their minireactors on the market and running within the next decade, marking what could be the beginning of a nuclear-energy renaissance.

But critics say there are safety and security risks, as well as the possibility that the reactors could fall into the hands of terrorists. And those risks, they say, outweigh any benefits the minireactors may bring.

“Our concern is that it really takes a concerted effort to protect a nuclear power plant from terrorist attack,” said Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s just not plausible that you could deploy these small reactors widely to communities and the developing world with no infrastructure and no experience with operating and protecting a nuclear reactor.”

Michael Greenberger, professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and the director of the University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security, said the minireactors’ size will make them attractive to terrorists.

“Anything that’s portable, provides technology, would assist terrorists in their goal to perfect a nuclear weapon, and it’s very dangerous to the United States,” Greenberger said.

But the companies that are designing the minireactors say they will be safe in every way.

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Feds Warn Of Possible al Qaeda Terror Threat To New York Subway Trains

Feds Warn Of Possible NYC Terror Plot, FBI: “Plausible But Unsubstantiated” Report Of Al Qaeda Plans To Attack Subway System

The FBI has warned New York area law enforcement of a “plausible but unsubstantiated” al Qaeda suicide bomb attack against the area’s commuter rail systems over the holiday.

An internal memo obtained by The Associated Press says the FBI has received a “plausible but unsubstantiated” report that al Qaeda terrorists in late September may have discussed attacking the subway system.

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said the warning was issued as a routine matter, but added that there may be an increased police presence in New York and other large metropolitan areas.

A US official said the FBI report had been issued “out of an abundance of caution” and that “there is nothing concrete to suggest the plot went beyond the talking stage.”

The report indicates that al Qaeda terrorists “in late September may have discussed targeting transit systems in and around New York City. These discussions reportedly involved the use of suicide bombers or explosives placed on subway/passenger rail systems,” according to the document.

“We have no specific details to confirm that this plot has developed beyond aspirational planning, but we are issuing this warning out of concern that such an attack could possibly be conducted during the forthcoming holiday season,” states the warning, which is dated Tuesday.

While federal agencies regularly issue all sorts of advisory warnings, the language of this one is particularly blunt.

Intelligence and homeland security officials are working with local authorities to try to corroborate the information “and will continue to investigate every possible lead,” the memo says.

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Bomb Threats At Power Plant Brings In The FBI

A rash of bomb threats have been directed at Appalachian Power’s John Amos Power Plant, the company said.

The latest threat was made Monday, said Joe Haynes, the plant’s community relations manager.

“Every time it happens we stop work, we evacuate and search the area,” he said.

That’s a big, expensive undertaking: There are about 3,000 workers on site during the day shift. Most are installing a scrubber on Unit 3, the largest of the plant’s three power-generating units. A smaller shift works nights.

Appalachian Power is an operating unit of American Electric Power.

Sgt. K.S. Dickson, commander of the State Police’s Winfield Detachment, said that since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, “places that are deemed critical infrastructure – which AEP falls under – have an enhanced penalty. The FBI comes in and gets involved. Every time there’s a bomb threat there, we’re notified to bring in our bomb dogs and handlers. AEP has to notify the U.S. Coast Guard; they shut down the Kanawha River. The Homeland Security people are notified. A lot of resources get spent because you have to go through and check everything every time.”

AEP is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the threats, Dickson said. The State Police’s Winfield Detachment’s number to call with information is 304-586-2000.

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