Terrorism

The security guard is probably the pedophile.

A father was stopped from taking a photo of his son on a children’s train ride after an over-zealous security guard accused him of being a paedophile.

Kevin Geraghty-Shewan, 48, was approached by the guard after he took the picture of his four-year-old son Ben on the toy engine outside a shop.

He was then threatened with arrest after refusing to hand his mobile phone containing the picture after a row with a policeman.
Kevin Geraghty-Shewan

Mr Geraghty-Shewan said: ‘Ben saw a children’s ride which had a train on it and wanted to have a go because he’s obsessed with trains.’

Moments later, he was apprehended by the security guard.

The father-of-one, who was in the North East visiting family, said: ‘He said “you can’t take pictures in here”. I asked why and he told me it was because for all he knew I could be a paedophile.

‘I told him Ben Was my son. But he said I couldn’t prove it.

Source/Full Story: Mail Online

A medium sized-bomb exploded Tuesday at a building housing offices of J.P. Morgan, the financial services firm, Greek police said.

A warning was phoned to a Greek newspaper 30 minutes before the explosion, and police evacuated the building, police spokesman Takis Papapetropoulos told CNN.

No one was hurt. The callers did not identify themselves, he said.

The warning call “means they don’t want to have victims,” he said. “They never say who it is when they call. They claim it after.”

The call came about 7:15 p.m. (12:15 p.m. ET), he said.

Source/Full Story: CNN.com

Video available at abc7news.com

Dozens of teenagers saw it happen in broad daylight, but no one has come forward to identify the mob of young people who beat up a Vallejo city worker. Police have released surveillance video to generate tips.

The attack happened in front of two cameras on Feb. 1 at approximately 3:19 p.m.

Surveillance video from Britton’s Mini Mart near Vallejo High School shows the 46-year-old city of Vallejo worker in a back hoe being hit with rocks by some kids. He then drives back to the location at Nebraska and Broadway streets to confront the kids who begin attacking the man. The city worker gets knocked down and eventually a crowd of up to 40 people begin beating the man while he is on the ground.

The victim, a 20-year city employee, was transported to Kaiser Permanente Medical Center Vallejo where he is being treated for his injuries. Police say the mob fractured his skull, broke his jaw and collarbone, and knocked several teeth out of his mouth.

On top of it all, they went through his pockets and stole his wallet, all while people cheered in front of another camera from a bystander who shot video. Police have already identified several suspects in the video, but they are also offering $1,000 for the arrest and conviction of any other suspects who took part in this mob beating.

‘I saw some punches thrown, but that’s about it,” said a witness who believes there were close to 40 people in the area.

Source/Full Story: abc7news.com

…
Rebecca Solomon is 22 and a student at the University of Michigan, and on Jan. 5 she was flying back to school after holiday break. She made sure she arrived at Philadelphia International Airport 90 minutes before takeoff, given the new regulations.

She would be flying into Detroit on Northwest Airlines, the same city and carrier involved in the attempted bombing on Christmas, just 10 days before. She was tense.

What happened to her lasted only 20 seconds, but she says they were the longest 20 seconds of her life.

After pulling her laptop out of her carry-on bag, sliding the items through the scanning machines, and walking through a detector, she went to collect her things.

A TSA worker was staring at her. He motioned her toward him.

Then he pulled a small, clear plastic bag from her carry-on – the sort of baggie that a pair of earrings might come in. Inside the bag was fine, white powder.

She remembers his words: “Where did you get it?”
…
Answer truthfully, the TSA worker informed her, and everything will be OK.

Solomon, 5-foot-3 and traveling alone, looked up at the man in the black shirt and fought back tears.

Put yourself in her place and count out 20 seconds. Her heart pounded. She started to sweat. She panicked at having to explain something she couldn’t.

Now picture her expression as the TSA employee started to smile.

Just kidding, he said. He waved the baggie. It was his.

And so she collected her things, stunned, and the tears began to fall.

Another passenger, a woman traveling to Colorado, consoled her as others who had witnessed the confrontation went about their business. Solomon and the woman walked to their gates, where each called for security and reported what had happened.
…

Update: Ann Davis, the TSA spokeswoman, said this afternoon that the worker is no longer employed by the agency as of today. She said privacy laws prevented her from saying if he was fired or left on his own.

Source/Full Story: Daniel Rubin

A white powder was mailed to three United Nations foreign missions in Manhattan office buildings on Monday, but no one was harmed by it, the police said.

The powder, delivered in envelopes, was reported by workers at the Uzbekistan Mission, at 801 Second Avenue, near 43rd Street; the French Mission, at 245 East 47th Street, near Second Avenue; and the Austrian Mission, at 600 Third Avenue, near 40th Street, between 4 and 4:30 p.m. The missions are all within a few blocks of the United Nations building.

Hazardous-materials workers took the powder to a laboratory to determine whether it was toxic. Twenty-five people who were exposed underwent a procedure to remove the powder.

A Police Department spokesman said that the powder at the Uzbekistan Mission, where two people were exposed, initially tested negative for anthrax or any other dangerous substance.

Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said that as an officer was handling one of the envelopes at that mission, the officer saw a note with the words Al Qaeda on it. The Associated Press reported that the envelopes were mailed in Dallas.

A person answering the phone at the French Mission, who declined to be identified, said that a letter with powder had been sent through the mail.

Source/Full Story:   NYTimes.com

So we have another thrice-named gunman. What happened to the initial reports of two gunmen, one dead and the other on the run?

A soldier suspected of fatally shooting 12 and wounding 31 at Fort Hood in Texas on Thursday is not dead as previously reported by the military, the base’s commander said Thursday evening.

A civilian officer who was wounded in the incident shot the suspect, who is “in custody and in stable condition,” Army Lt. Gen. Robert Cone told reporters.

“Preliminary reports indicate there was a single shooter that was shot multiple times at the scene,” Cone said at a news conference. “However, he was not killed as previously reported.”
…

A soldier who asked not to be identified told CNN that an e-mail went out to all base personnel instructing them not to speak to the media.

Source/Full Story: CNN.com
Technorati Tags: Nidal Malik Hasan

Contaminated fresh ground beef caused a possible E. coli outbreak that killed two people and sent 16 others to hospitals, federal health officials said Monday.

Twenty-eight people may have become ill after eating beef produced by Fairbank Farms of Ashville, N.Y., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. All but three of the suspected infections are in the northeastern U.S. and 18 are in New England, said CDC spokeswoman Lola Scott Russell.

Fairbank Farms recalled almost 546,000 pounds of fresh ground beef that had been distributed in September to stores from North Carolina to Maine. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recall notice, dated Saturday, said the possibly tainted meat had been sold in numerous ways, from meatloaf and meatball mix to hamburger patties.
…
Some of the ground beef was sold at Trader Joe’s, Price Chopper, Lancaster, Wild Harvest, Shaw’s, BJ’s, Ford Brothers and Giant stores in packages that carried the number “EST. 492″ on the label. Those products were packaged Sept. 15-16 and may have been labeled with a sell-by date from Sept. 19 through Sept. 28, meaning they’re no longer being sold as fresh product in supermarkets, Fairbank Farms said.

The rest of the ground beef, packaged in wholesale-sized containers under the Fairbank Farms name, was distributed to stores in Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. That meat was likely repackaged for sale and would likely have differing package and sell-by dates.

The USDA was urging customers with concerns to contact the stores where they bought the meat.

Ron Allen, Fairbank’s CEO, urged consumers to check their freezers for the recalled ground beef.

Companies subject to such recalls are allowed to cook tainted meat to kill the bacteria and then use it in other products, a common practice in the food industry.

That won’t happen in this case, the company said.

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com
Technorati Tags: E. coli

Last Friday, the ACLU and the ACLU of Texas submitted a brief to the Texas Attorney General’s office arguing that a District Attorney in East Texas should be barred from using money unfairly taken from motorists under Texas’s asset forfeiture law to defend herself from a lawsuit brought by motorists who claim that their property was taken illegally.

The District Attorney, Lynda K. Russell, is accused of participating in a scheme in which police officers routinely pulled over motorists in the vicinity of Tenaha, Texas without cause, asked if they were carrying cash and, if they were, ordered them to sign over the cash to the town or face felony charges of money laundering or other serious crimes. The seizures were purportedly made under Texas’s asset forfeiture law, which enables authorities to seize the profits of crime without a conviction. However, authorities had no evidence that plaintiffs were engaged in any criminal activity. None of the plaintiffs was arrested or ever charged with a crime. In a CNN.com article, David Guillory, one of two lawyers representing the plaintiffs, estimates that authorities in Tenaha seized an astounding $3 million between 2006 and 2008, and that in about 150 cases – almost all of which involved African-American or Latino motorists – the seizures were illegal.

District Attorney Russell argued that she should be able to use these funds for the “official purpose” of defending herself from charges that she threatened motorists with criminal charges if they didn’t hand over their money. The irony is rich, given that the purpose of the asset forfeiture law is to make sure that criminals don’t benefit from their crimes. Furthermore, Texas law prohibits the D.A. from using forfeited assets for this purpose.

According to state legislator John Whitmire, police agencies across Texas are wielding the asset-forfeiture law more aggressively these days to shore up their shrinking operating budgets. In Tenaha, the facts show that it was African American motorists who were forced to pay the price for the economic shortfall. Similarly, near the Mexican border, Hispanics allege that they are being singled out by local law enforcement. Yet again, it looks like people of color have come to bear the brunt of unfair and illegal enforcement of policy. What’s more, this is not the first time that the use of asset forfeiture as a law enforcement tool has been criticized. The practice received considerable attention in 2000 and 2001.

Although the ACLU opposes the use of forfeited assets to pay for District Attorney Russell’s defense, the ACLU has also argued that she should receive skilled government legal representation. In a disturbing refusal to accept responsibility for the D.A.’s actions, the Attorney General and the county both refused to represent Russell. Left unchallenged, this position is a threat to the civil and constitutional rights of all citizens. When a public official violates constitutional rights, the government must be held accountable. Otherwise, a dangerous precedent is set whereby government may excuse itself from overseeing the people it empowers and finances to act on its behalf. Either the county or the State must step up and take responsibility for Russell’s actions in Tenaha.

Source/Full Story: Blog of Rights
Technorati Tags: Lynda K. Russell, Tenaha

It’s one of the New York Police Department’s most dangerous assignments–battling organized terrorists, and gangs. And now, an elite group of police officers is in training on Rodmen’s Neck in the Bronx to learn how to deal with these scenarios.

The heavy arms classes and training sessions became a necessity following the 2006 terror attacks in Mumbai, India where the suspects were blowing up commuter trains and were using their weapons in a controlled manner. The tactical lessons from that horrifying attack have been studied in hopes of preventing a similar tragedy here at home.

“We have protocols in place ah 24/7 if a situation like that occurred. We also learned from that situation that there could be multiple locations at one time that you have to be prepared for,” said Captain Anthony Maida with the NYPD.

The skills the officers employ could eliminate the confusion that ensued in Los Angeles when armed gunmen in full body armor held th Los Angeles Police Department at bay for hours.

“We conduct our own drills here to see how we would respond to those situations,” said Capt. Anthony Maida.

As many as 350 NYPD members from various special services train for the most dangerous assignments. The goal is to be prepared for any potential crisis where a rapid response and direct force are the only ways to bring chaos under control.

Source/Full Story: 7online.com

The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office on Friday released a second sketch of a man believed to have fatally shot four people in less than a week near Gaffney, South Carolina.

Police say the suspect may be driving a light-gray or champagne tan 1991-1994 two-door Ford Explorer.

“Let me say that, under the FBI’s definition of a serial killer, yes, we have a serial killer,” Sheriff Bill Blanton told reporters in Gaffney, a town in the county of about 54,000 residents some 50 miles southwest of Charlotte, North Carolina.

He would not detail what has led investigators to conclude the shootings are linked or how they received the description of the suspect that has led to the two sketches. In addition, he said he did not know whether the shooter knew his victims or whether he may have chosen them at random.

Police said he may be driving a light-gray or champagne tan 1991-1994 two-door Ford Explorer.

Source/Full Story: CNN.com

The Food and Drug Administration said yesterday that it had confirmed the presence of E. coli 0157, a deadly strain of bacteria, in samples of Nestlé Toll House refrigerated cookie dough produced at the company’s plant in Danville, Va.

Investigators did not find the bacterium inside the factory or on equipment but in a tub of chocolate cookie dough made at the site in February, said David Acheson, assistant commissioner for food safety at the FDA. The dough had a June 10 expiration date.

Nestlé voluntarily recalled 30,000 cases of its refrigerated cookie dough on June 19 after officials at the FDA and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suspected that dozens of cases of E. coli-related illness were linked to the product.

Nearly all the victims, most of whom are female and younger than 19, reported eating raw cookie dough in the days before the onset of symptoms.

Health officials still do not know how E. coli 0157, a bacterium that lives in cattle intestines, ended up in a product that seems so unlikely to contain it. The risk usually associated with cookie dough is salmonella, a bacterium that can be found in raw eggs. None of the ingredients in the dough — eggs, milk, flour, chocolate, butter — is known to host E. coli 0157.

Federal investigators spent more than a week at the Danville plant and did not detect contamination in the equipment or among workers, Acheson said. “It raises the likelihood that it was an ingredient,” he said. “And it really means that industry has to be constantly vigilant, because foods we think of as low risk could be contaminated with a deadly pathogen.”

Source/Full Story: washingtonpost.com

I don’t care for Chomsky’s solutions at all, but in terms of spotting the mechanisms by which the Beast System operates he is usually right on target.

Left-wing social critic and political activist Noam Chomsky is not surprised that Americans felt “shock and indignation” when the Bush administration torture memos were released — but he is surprised that anyone would consider them surprising.

“Torture has been routine practice from the early days of the Republic,” Chomseky writes in Z Magazine’s June issue. “Accordingly, it is surprising to see the reactions even by some of the most eloquent and forthright critics of Bush malfeasance: for example, that we used to be ‘a nation of moral ideals’ and never before Bush ‘have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for’ (Paul Krugman). To say the least, that common view reflects a rather slanted version of history.”

To rebut claims that American ideals are the reality and “the distortions of the American idea” a temporary falling-away from that reality, Chomsky offers a brief review of the history of American imperialism, focusing on the 20th century.

Source/Full Story: Raw Story

A 23-year-old man upset about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan opened fire from his truck at two soldiers standing outside a military recruiting station here on Monday morning, killing one private and wounding another, the police said.

Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, 23, was escorted from the Little Rock police headquarters in Arkansas on Monday. Muhammad is the suspect in the killing of a soldier in a targeted attack on a military recruiting center, police said.

The gunman, identified by the police as Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad of Little Rock, fled the scene and was arrested minutes later a short distance from the recruiting station, in a bustling suburban shopping center. The police confiscated a Russian-made SKS semiautomatic rifle, a .22-caliber rifle and a handgun from his black pickup truck.

…

The dead soldier was identified as Pvt. William A. Long, 23, of Conway, about 30 miles north of Little Rock. The other victim, Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, 18, was in stable condition at Baptist Medical Center, Chief Stuart Thomas of the Little Rock Police Department said.

In a lengthy interview with the police, Mr. Muhammad said he was angry about the killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, Chief Thomas said. Previously known as Carlos Bledsoe, Mr. Muhammad told investigators that he had converted to Islam as a teenager, Chief Thomas said.

Chief Thomas said investigators believe that Mr. Muhammad acted alone. He seemed to be familiar with the Army recruiting office because it was not far from his home, the chief said, but might have been on the prowl for anyone in uniform.

Source/Full Story: NYTimes.com

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The FBI is investigating a computer intrusion at a large Texas power company that crippled the firm’s energy forecast system for a day in March, costing it over $26,000.

Early Thursday morning FBI agents raided the home of a former employee of Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings — the corporate parent of three large Texas electric companies, including Luminent, which has over 18,300 megawatts of generation in Texas, and operates the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant.

The ex-employee, Dong Chul Shin, was fired from the company March 3 for performance reasons, and escorted off the premises, according to court records. But the company failed to immediately shut off his VPN access. That afternoon, someone using Shin’s account began logging onto the corporate network, e-mailing out proprietary data to a personal Yahoo account linked to Shin, and modifying and deleting files, according to a search warrant affidavit by Dallas FBI agent Robert Smith.

Company logs showed that the VPN connection originated at Shin’s home IP address, Smith writes.

While logged into the VPN, the intruder sent an e-mail to the engineering group operating the Comanche Peak nuclear reactor. The message asked questions about the safety of the reactor, in particular wondering what would happen if the load were to be “increased to 99.7 percent of capacity.” While at EFH, Smith notes, “Shin was responsible for programming the models which controlled the management of EFH power generation facilities, including Comanche Peak.”

No charges have apparently been filed, but the FBI is treating the case as a suspected violation of federal computer crime laws, including a rarely-used statute prohibiting breaking into a computer and creating “a threat to public health or safety.”

Source/Full Story:  Wired.com

A 12-year-old Denver-area boy was stopped at Denver International Airport this morning when security screeners found an “incendiary device” in his backpack.

Authorities described it as resembling a homemade road flare.

Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson said the boy is from metro Denver and was traveling with family members to California when he was stopped about 6:45 a.m. as he passed through a TSA screening.

The boy, who is not named because he is a juvenile, was released to his parent’s custody after questioning.

The Denver Police Bomb Squad was called to the airport as a result of the discovery.

Jackson said no planes or passengers were jeopardized. Because the boy is a juvenile, the case will be handled by the Denver district attorney’s office rather than federal officials.

He could face felony charges of possession of an incendiary device and transportation of an incendiary device.

Source/Full Story: The Denver Post