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Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

HEIDELBERG, Germany — German federal police have sent out “wanted” posters for two Germans who they say are training at a Pakistan terrorist camp and planning suicide attacks such as one carried out in Afghanistan last month that killed two U.S. soldiers, according to German media. The two are members of an Islamist cell that German police busted in September when three of its other members were brewing up bombs, authorities said, to kill Americans in Germany. The two men in the posters — one a German, the other born in Lebanon but a resident of Germany — have been...

Attacks on nuclear power stations, oil and gas terminals, Canary Wharf and Heathrow’s control tower were being considered by leaders of the plot to blow up seven transatlantic airliners in mid-flight, a court was told yesterday. Documents found on computer memory sticks at the home of an alleged terrorist ringleader contained a list of targets across Britain – including the gas pipeline between Britain and Belgium. The man, Assad Sarwar, was said to be in contact with terrorist leaders overseas and visited Pakistan a month before his arrest as preparations for the airline attacks were being finalised. Peter Wright, QC,...

The soil on Mars may contain microbial life! Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen, Germany, will declare on Friday the Viking spacecraft may have found signs of a weird life form based on hydrogen peroxide on the subfreezing, arid Martian surface. His analysis of one of the experiments carried out by the Viking spacecraft suggests that 0.1 percent of the Martian soil could be of biological origin. That is roughly comparable to biomass levels found in some Antarctic permafrost, home to a range of hardy bacteria and lichen. Developing....

Cameron Diaz Apologizes for Maoist Bag Jun 24 09:52 PM US/Eastern LIMA, Peru (AP) - Cameron Diaz apologized Sunday for wearing a bag with a political slogan that evoked painful memories in Peru. The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated "Shrek" films visited the Incan city of Machu Picchu in Peru's Andes on Friday wearing an olive green bag emblazoned with a red star and the words "Serve the People" printed in Chinese, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong's most famous political slogan. The bags are marketed as fashion accessories in some world capitals, but in Peru the slogan...

Dramatic film of a fireman confronting one of the alleged July 21 bombers on a Tube train as other passengers fled in panic was shown to a jury yesterday. The CCTV footage showed Ramzi Mohammed, 25, wearing a rucksack and boarding the busy Northern Line Tube at Stockwell, south London. He turned his back towards a mother with a child in a pushchair before detonating his device. The detonator exploded, although the main charge, made up of liquid hydrogen peroxide and chapati flour, failed to go off. As other passengers tried to run, Angus Campbell, an off-duty fireman, stayed and...

The would-be suicide bombers gathered the night before July 21 in a flat in north Kensington in London; everything was ready for an attack that had been planned for weeks and was to be carried out with explosive devices cooked up on a kitchen stove, mixing high-strength hair bleach, nail varnish remover, acid, lightbulbs, batteries and chapati flour, the jury at Woolwich crown court heard. When the five men walked out of 14 Dalgarno Gardens the next day, Ramzi Mohammed left the remnants of a draft suicide note to his two children; evidence found later suggested a suicide video had...

Investigators around the world are in the process of tracking suspects and working to fill in details about the plot to blow up 10 U.S.-bound flights. We have learned that one of the suspects arrested by British authorities in the airline terror plot has just been released. Scotland Yard has not given any further details on which suspect or why they were let go. The material is called acetone peroxide - a deadly explosive. It is believed each terrorist would bring ingredients on board, and assemble them while on the plane. Then someone would use a spark from a disposable...

U.S. law enforcement sources tell ABC News the FBI is investigating new leads that involve a possible connection between people in the United States, in major east coast cities, and the London bomb plotters. In an interview with ABC News this morning, White House Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend said while there is currently no indication of any plotting in the United States, she confirmed, "There are leads that the FBI is running." With at least five, and maybe more, suspects still at large, it is the missing plotters who are the greatest security concern. Among those still at large...

NEW YORK -- The suicide bombers cooked up their explosives using mundane items like hydrogen peroxide. They stored them in a fancy commercial refrigerator that was out of place in their grimy flat. And cell phones likely were used to set them off. Those details from the July 7 London bombing emerged on Wednesday at an unusually wide-ranging briefing given by the New York Police Department to city business leaders. The briefing -- based partly on information obtained by NYPD detectives who were dispatched to London to monitor the investigation -- was part of a program designed to encourage more...