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LONDON (Reuters) - The threat of an al Qaeda attack from the sea remains an "absolute concern" and could intensify as operations on land are countered, the U.S. Navy's top commander in the Gulf told Reuters on Monday. Since the September 11 attacks on the United States, governments and security experts have repeatedly voiced fears about the vulnerability of the maritime industry, which carries more than 90 percent of the world's traded goods. "I don't think there is any question that as we thwart their attacks and disrupt their operations on land, that we should expect them to turn to...

To counter terrorists, you need to think like one. That will be the case to thwart terrorists who want to match, if not exceed, the devastating September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. September 11 came from the sky in a somewhat unconventional way. Terrorists turned fully-fueled airplanes with passengers into cruise missiles, crashing them into the symbols of U.S. economic and military strength: the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In their desire to at least match the destructive effect of those attacks, terrorists will look for another "creative," unconventional approach. This time, it could come from the...

<p>Adam Housley reports a ship from Guatemala had written in the hold "This Nitro is for you George Bush."</p>

PORT HUENEME, Calif. -- A Southern California port was closed off Monday afternoon while authorities investigated a possible terrorist threat on a cargo ship, a port official said. A dock worker at the Port of Hueneme in Ventura County discovered a possible threat written in the cargo hold of a ship carrying bananas from Guatemala, said Will Berg, the port's marketing director. Berg said the message, scrawled in marker on a metal pillar in the ship, read: "This nitro is for you Mr. George W. Bush and your Jewish cronies." Federal authorities, including the FBI, and local officials were investigating,...

WASHINGTON When the storm erupted several months ago over plans by a United Arab Emirates-based company to take over management of half a dozen American port terminals, one voice resonated in Washington. Stephen Flynn, a retired Coast Guard commander and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, repeatedly told lawmakers and reporters that domestic ports were so vulnerable that terrorists could easily sneak a radioactive device into something as innocuous as a shipment of sneakers. And he offered a solution: a cargo inspection system in Hong Kong that scans every container, instead of the fraction now checked in the...

LOS ANGELES -- Illegal immigration is a hot button political issue these days, but a knowledgeable insider from the Customs and Border Protection agency told NBC4's Kelly Mack that his superiors are increasingly cool to the idea of stopping illegal immigation at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. (Following is a verbatim script from the on-air report.) Kelly Mack: Undocumented aliens slipping across our borders! Politicians are demanding a crackdown. But when it comes to this avenue of illegal entry, one insider tells us, the door is wide open. Whistleblower: The security in the port is extremely lacking...

Under intense pressure from shipping companies concerned about costly delays, the Coast Guard is tipping off some large commercial ships about security searches that had been a surprise, high-ranking Coast Guard officials have said. The searches began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as part of a major revamping of the Coast Guard and its new anti-terrorism mission. But shipping companies say the surprise boardings at sea cause unnecessary delays, costing up to $40,000 an hour. “We're trying to facilitate commerce and keep the port secure – and sometimes the two conflict,” said Capt. Paul Wiedenhoeft, who is in...

WASHINGTON Answering criticism about security gaps at U.S. seaports, the Bush administration said Tuesday it will conduct background checks on an estimated 400,000 port workers to ensure they do not pose a terrorist threat. Names of employees who work in the most sensitive areas of ports will be matched against government terror watch lists and immigration databases, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said. Additionally, the Homeland Security Department will issue tamper-free identification cards to roughly 750,000 workers _ including truckers and rail employees _ who have unrestricted assess to ports.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. has developed a sophisticated system of nets to catch dangerous foreign cargo before it gets into the U.S. The problem, critics say, is that the nets are full of holes. Those holes allowed a cargo container holding 22 Chinese stowaways to land April 4 at the Port of Seattle, unloaded from the M/V Rotterdam. The container likely would have sat for several days before anyone inspected it, said Mike Milne, a Seattle spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agency in charge of such inspections. Of course, long before that, in...

X-ray images of the contents of 1.5 million shipping containers, ripe for intelligence analysis, are sitting on a computer server in Hong Kong unused. The imagery has been collected over the past year in a pilot program run at the Port of Hong Kong, the busiest in the world. It is a program that a shipping executive said Monday proves every container coming in or out of a port can be screened for contraband, narcotics, humans and weapons without slowing down global trade. It could be a treasure trove of data for U.S. Customs, the Defense Department, the Homeland Security...

22 smuggled Chinese arrested at the Seattle seaportICE launches probe into human smuggling scheme SEATTLE - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are continuing to piece together the details this morning of a human smuggling scheme that resulted in the arrest of 22 Chinese nationals at the Seattle seaport overnight. Several of the Chinese were initially spotted by private port security personnel wandering in a cargo area at around 1:00 a.m. today. The port personnel contacted the Department of Homeland Security and ICE agents and officers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) responded. This morning, ICE agents...

SEATTLE (AP) - Twenty-two Chinese nationals were in custody Wednesday after they apparently let themselves out of a 12-metre cargo container that had been used to smuggle them from China, officials said. The 18 men and four women, all believed to be in their 20s and 30s, seemed to be in good physical condition after about two weeks in the container, said Michael Milne, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Port of Seattle security guards spotted the group about 1 a.m. Milne said there was no evidence of "any real criminal or terrorist activity . . . just...

Scare at the Sub Base GROTON -- Police and fire units have set up a perimeter at the Groton Sub Base. Bomb-sniffing dogs have been also called out to the scene. Navy authorities are providing very limited information as to what happened Monday morning. Crystal Lake Avenue and the military highway road along the river have been blocked off by local police. This provides access to Gate #1 where the incident involving a truck took place. A spokesperson for the sub base tells Eyewitness news that at 6:30 a.m. Monday a Navy dog trained to sniff for explosives sensed something...

LONDON -- European Union regulators today approved A.P. Moller-Maersk's $2.8 billion takeover of P&O Nedlloyd (schedules). In return, Copenhagen-based Maersk has agreed to sell P&O Nedlloyd's Europe-South Africa operations and withdraw the Dutch carrier from several liner conferences and consortia. The European Commission, the EU's executive agency, said it was particularly concerned about the impact of the merger on the transport of refrigerated products from South Africa to Europe where the two merging carriers have a market share of more than 50 percent.

PORTSMOUTH — Entering the Virginia Port Authority’s three marine cargo terminals soon will involve a technology similar to the Smart Tag toll collection system. Officials say the new system will better secure the port. E ven with such improvements, many in the maritime industry think the nation’s 360 seaports remain unnecessarily vulnerable to attack because a national transportation worker identification card still has not been developed by the federal government, despite four years of efforts .When the entry system debuts in about a month at Portsmouth Marine Terminal, truck drivers will proceed to an unmanned entry gate. There they will...

Given the extraordinary amount of petro-dollars that Dubai has spent in recent years, much of it with US companies, transforming itself from a desert fiefdom into a centre for tourism, media, technology and finance, the tiny state's commercial interests are inextricably aligned with the West rather than the Jihadis. Dubai's Internet City has attracted leading US technology companies, such as Cisco Systems, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard. American designers are behind the $1bn Burj Dubai development, which includes the world's tallest building. Boeing has been selling fleets of aircraft to Dubai's Emirates airline.

A bomb hidden in a container explodes in a Western port: that is the nightmare of police and terrorism experts, who are turning to new technology to combat the threat. While port security is at the heart of the row in the United States over the controversial proposal to hand over control operations at key US ports to a Dubai company, a consortium of big companies is testing a system which would allow continual checks on the contents and itinerary of a container and above all establish whether it has been opened illicitly. It involves a system of receivers installed...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Dubai's government may formally subscribe to the Arab boycott of Israel, but a state-owned company at the center of a controversy over its bid to take over some U.S. port operations says it routinely works with Israeli firms. It's a contradiction increasingly apparent in the region: Several Persian Gulf states, especially ones entering international markets, mostly ignore the boycott even though they haven't formally ended it and don't recognize Israel. Countries like the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part, have also ended secondary boycotts, meaning Israeli products not shipped directly from Israel...

Myth: Only a small number of the containers that come into the seaports are inspected. Summary of Reality: CBP uses intelligence to screen information on 100% of cargo entering our seaports, and all cargo that presents a risk to our country is inspected using large x-ray and radiation detection equipment. Following 9/11, the Administration developed and implemented a smarter strategy to identify, target, and inspect cargo containers before they reach U.S. ports. Anyone can secure a nation by closing its borders and inspect everything and everybody that enters. Closing the borders is not an option. None of the security measures...

A friend, usually most interested in a newspaper's business section, e-mailed his take on the Dubai Ports World issue and asked, "Is this the international equivalent of driving while black, only shipping while Arab?" Though the ongoing debate is a complex intersection of foreign investment, homeland security and government secrecy issues, it is hard to ignore the suggestion of racial profiling or the wider implications for American policy in the Middle East. After all, 80 percent of the ports in the United States are managed by foreign companies. A stevedorer partially owned by the Chinese government runs operations at Long...