September 21, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asked to “be permitted to visit ground zero when he attends the opening of the United Nations General Assembly next week,” reports the New York Times. His request “to lay a wreath at the former site of the World Trade Center” was rejected because of construction at the site and concerns about security. [View article]

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September 21, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

“Because of a continuing software glitch, the first high-tech ‘virtual fence’ at the nation’s borders remains unused, three months after its scheduled debut,” reports the Associated Press. “Nine 98-foot towers laden with radar, sensors and sophisticated cameras have been built across 28 miles close to the Arizona-Mexico border near Sasabe, southwest of Tucson, in an area heavily trafficked by illegal immigrant and drug smugglers. The towers, each a few miles apart, are intended to deter or detect border-crossers and potential terrorists and to enhance the ability of Border Patrol agents to catch them.” [View article]

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September 21, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

“The Federal Emergency Management Agency and Sandia National Laboratories … began small-scale implementations of the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) in several Gulf Coast states in August … and other small-scale implementations [are] planned for next year,” reports Federal Computer Week. The emergency alert system “now operates through a cascade arrangement, in which messages are sent to a single, primary point. Then local authorities pick up those messages and retransmit them. Other authorities then pick up the messages, transmit them and so on. By contrast, IPAWS messages can be broadcast to all recipients simultaneously. IPAWS enables officials to send messages to various Internet-connected devices, including personal digital assistants [and] cell phones.” [View article]

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September 21, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

(Government Computer News) “A group of smart-card technology companies have formed a consortium” (Tiers of Trust; see the Website of the Week) “to put affordable smart identification cards into the hands of first responders at the state and local levels,” reports Government Computer News. “The companies will provide hardware, software and services free or at steep discounts to cut the cost of deploying interoperable cards by as much as 75 percent.… The program is open to first-responder organizations such as law enforcement, fire, hazmat, rescue and public health agencies in the United States and its territories, in addition to private-sector utilities, communications and transportation companies that operate critical infrastructure. Organizations should register for the program at www.TiersofTrust.com by Dec. 31. Priority will be given to the first 500 organizations to register.” [View article]

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September 21, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

http://dcema.dc.gov/dcema/site/default.asp

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September 21, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

“Chinese officials have been tracking a mysterious illness in pigs since summer 2006, when more than 2 million pigs fell ill and 400,000 of them died,” reports the Washington Post. This year China confirmed “that blue ear pig disease was the cause.” China is moving to stop the epidemic “by quarantining and slaughtering the affected pigs.” (See the Stats of the Week.) The “reproductive and respiratory illness … is highly fatal in pigs but … so far does not seem to pose danger to humans.” [View article]

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September 21, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

Conventional wisdom says that “illegal immigration can best be stemmed by promoting legal immigration and development in poorer regions” and “Spain is trying to pass from word to deed, reforming its immigration policy in a way that has won praise from experts,” reports the Indo-Asian News Service. Spain’s plan is “to strengthen local entrepreneurial structures and to qualify Africans for the Spanish labour market. About 1,000 people are to be trained annually in nine countries.” Spain “has signed agreements with several [African] countries, pledging financial aid, training and legal emigration in exchange for cooperation against illegal emigration and readmitting illegals” and “has opened, or plans to open, embassies, other diplomatic representations or cooperation offices in more than 10 [African] countries.” [View article]

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September 21, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

(London Telegraph) “Mohammed Atif Siddique, 21, from Alva, Clackmannanshire [Scotland], provided training material on bomb making and threatened to become a suicide bomber,” reports the London Telegraph. “A jury at the High Court in Glasgow took more than eight hours to convict him of possessing and distributing a range of terrorist material via websites and providing instructional material about guns and explosives over the internet.” [View article]

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September 21, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

“Religious converts are playing an increasingly influential role in Islamic militant networks, having transformed themselves in recent years from curiosities to key players in terrorist cells in Europe, according to counterterrorism officials and analysts,” reports the Washington Post. “… Religious converts are sometimes more prone to radicalization because of their zeal to prove their newfound faith, analysts said. They are also less likely to attract police scrutiny in Europe, where investigators often rely on outdated demographic profiles in terrorism cases.… In Germany, government officials estimated that 4,000 people converted to Islam last year, compared with an annual average of 300 in the late 1990s. Less than 1 percent of Germany’s 3.3 million Muslims are converts.… The trend is not limited to Europe. In Florida, U.S. citizen and convert Jose Padilla was convicted last month on conspiracy charges for participating in an al-Qaeda support cell.” (See the August 17 newsletter.) “In March, David M. Hicks, an Australian convert, became the first prisoner at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be convicted on terrorism charges.” (See the March 30 newsletter.) [View article]

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September 21, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

“Iranian engineers were among those killed in a blast at a secret Syrian military installation two months ago, defense group Jane’s said, claiming the base was being used to develop chemical weapons,” according to Agence France-Presse. “The July 26 explosion in Aleppo, northern Syria, was reported at the time. The official Sana news agency said 15 Syrian military personnel were killed and 50 people were injured, most of them slightly from flying glass. The agency said only that ‘very explosive products’ blew up after fire broke out at the facility, and that the blaze was not an act of sabotage. But in the September 26 edition of Jane’s Defence Weekly, Syrian defense sources were quoted as saying the explosion happened during tests to weaponize a Scud C missile with mustard gas, which is banned under international law.” [View article]

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