At Least 12 Killed After Islamist Gunmen Attack Office of French Magazine, Assailants Still At Large

Editors of a popular French magazine and three local police officers were killed when masked gunmen stormed the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris on Wednesday and opened fire. The magazine was firebombed a few years ago after they had published cartoon images of the Islamic prophet Mohammed and chief editor Stéphane Charbonnier was assigned a police bodyguard. Both Charbonnier and his police bodyguard were killed after shortly after the gunmen had forced their way into the building. Eyewitnesses and survivors said that the attack inside the Charlie Hebdo office lasted five minutes and that the three masked gunmen spoke French fluently but also called out "Allah Akhbar!". As local police responded to reports of gunfire in the area and the gunmen opened fire on two officers [both reportedly unarmed- NANESB!]- one of the attackers was videotaped walking up to a wounded policeman laying on the sidewalk and shooting him point blank before getting in a car and driving off with his accomplices. By Wednesday night, the youngest suspect in the attacks had turned himself in to authorities in suburban Paris.

The two suspects still at large have been identified as two brothers- Said Kourachi, 34, and his younger brother Cherif Kourachi, 32. Both suspects were known to both US and French officials- both of them were placed on Homeland Security's No-Fly list while Cherif was jailed for 18 months for attempting travel to Syria in order to aid Islamist fighters fighting US troops in Iraq. More recently, both brothers are said to have travelled to Yemen in 2011 and received training with Al Qaeda affiliates in the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula.

September 11th Memorial Bookends Attacks with Exhibit Featuring Part of Navy SEAL's Uniform From Bin Laden Raid

The uniform shirt a US Navy SEAL wore during the 2011 raid on the compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan where Osama Bin Laden was hiding went on display this week at New York's September 11th museum earlier this week.

The shirt joins a specially made coin awarded to a CIA operative after the mission and a brick from Bin Laden's compound that go on display at the National September 11th Memorial and Museum this week. The coin was struck after the successful completion of the Abbotabad raid and was reportedly issued to the participating SEALs and an agent known as Maya, who was the basis of the main character portrayed in the 2012 movie Zero Dark Thirty.

"The death of Osama bin Laden is a huge part of the history, and we have an absolute obligation to tell it," National Sept. 11 Memorial Museum President Joe Daniels said Saturday. The display, he said, "allows millions of visitors the chance to recognize the extraordinary bravery of the men and women who sacrifice so much for this country at home and abroad."

The uniform shirt, tan with camouflage sleeves and an American flag patch on the right shoulder — stars forward to invoke the historical role of a flag-bearer leading a charge into battle — belonged to a now-retired member of SEAL Team Six, which put an end to the long manhunt for the world's most wanted terrorist. The garment "connects us in a powerful and immediate way to that operation," Museum Director Alice Greenwald said.

The red, white and blue coin was made to commemorate its conclusion. The coin bears the date — May 1, 2011, in U.S. time — on one side and a red "X'' on the other.

Opened to the public in May, this would mark the first time that the September 11th Museum is open on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. A memorial for the people killed in the September 11th attacks was opened in 2012.

Even before the museum opened, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) petitioned the museum to edit a video presentation on Al Qaeda, urging them to remove phrases like 'jihad' and 'radical islam' from the presentation. The museum's board reportedly declined any such edit.

Popes John Paul II and John XXIII Canonized by Catholic Church

Pope John Paul II and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa Meet in Poland in 1981.

Two 20th Century popes were Canonized by the Vatican in a ceremony this Sunday that was presided over Pope Francis and had Pope Emeritus Benedict in attendance. Born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli in northern Italy in 1881, Pope John XXIII served as pontiff from 1958 until his death in 1963 and was a former cardinal of Venice, reportedly saving thousands of Jews from the nazis and their allies during WWII by issuing baptismal certificates.

One of Pope John XXIII's lasting legacies as pontiff was the opening up of Mass in languages besides Latin. He also strived for more openness between the faithful and the Vatican and establishing better relations with the Jewish community and other Christian denominations.

Pope John Paul II served as the Catholic Church's patriarch much more recently [for most of my life, basically- NANESB!] and was also canonized this weekend. Born Karol Józef Wojtyła in the southern Polish town of Wadowice in 1920, the future papal candidate was attending college in Krakow when the Germans invaded and occupied Poland in 1939. While attending an underground seminary in Krakow, Karol was struck and injured by a German truck, but by early 1945 he and other students moved back in to the remains of their seminary. By 1958, Wojtyła was selected to be the auxiliary Bishop of Krakow.

Within 20 years, Karol Józef Wojtyła would be elected by a papal conclave to become Pope John Paul II. Well versed in many languages, he would become the most well-travelled Pope in the church's history, visiting more than 120 nations and becoming the first pope to visit the White House in 1979.

Just months after being named Pope, John Paul II returned to his native Poland. Officials in Poland's communist controlled government were reportedly anticipating that the Papal visit might stoke an uprising and were preparing to blame him for any insurrection that would be put down. However, Pope John Paul II's visit instead stoked the fires of the burgeoning pro-democracy Solidarity movement- which engaged in a campaign of civil disobedience and anti-government protests that eventually forced Poland's communist government into negotiations with Solidarity.

However, Poland's Soviet benefactors (rightly) feared a ripple effect throughout eastern Europe and in 1981, while on his way to St Peter's Square Pope John Paul II was shot four times with a 9mm handgun fired by a Turkish convict thought to be working on behalf of Bulgaria's intelligence agency and the Kremlin [documents released from East Germany's Stasi and Poland's SB since the end of the Cold War seem to confirm the Kremlin sanctioning the attempt on the Pope's life- NANESB!].

This would not be the last time John Paul II was in the crosshairs of a murderous ideology- in January 1995, the Pope was scheduled to address a huge crowd in the Philippines for World Youth Day celebrations. Less than a week before the pontiff's scheduled arrival, firefighters in Manila were called to an apartment fire after neighbors reported smoke and a suspicious odor. Although the two middle-eastern occupants of the apartment said they had extinguished the fire, a suspicious policewoman obtained a search warrant and bomb-making components were discovered inside along with a laptop, crucifixes, rosaries and the Pope's schedule for the upcoming World Youth Day events. Local police in Manila had stumbled upon a plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II using a suicide bomber dressed as a priest- but even more alarming was that the Pope's assassination would be a distraction from an even more ambitious plot to simultaneously target nearly a dozen trans-Pacific commercial flights. About a month earlier, then-Al Qaeda bomb-maker Ramsi Yousef had managed to successfully smuggle a smaller bomb on board a Philippine Airlines flight from Manila to Japan. Yousef got off the plane when it make a scheduled stop in Cebu and the bomb detonated while the plane was flying over Okinawa. Although a Japanese businessman was killed by the blast, the pilots were able to successfully land the damaged aircraft at Naha airport in Okinawa.

Despite the complex terror plot that was supposed to be initiated with his assassination, Pope John Paul II's appearance at Youth Day not only went off without incident, but the closing mass at Luneta Park in the Manila drew 5 million- the largest Papal gathering in the Church's history. This also marked the last time John Paul II visited the Philippines; although he was scheduled to travel there in 2003, his deteriorating health prevented him from making the trip.

In 2000, John Paul II became the first Pope to visit the nation of Israel during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and in 2001 he met with Archbishop Christodoulos, the then-head of the Greek Orthodox Church in Athens. The two recited the Lord's Prayer on a spot where Saint Paul preached to Athens' early Christians, breaking an Orthodox taboo against praying with Catholics that had been in place since the Great Schism.

John Paul II's last trip out of Italy was to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Loudres in France in 2004. In April 2005, Pope John Paul II passed away at the age of 84 from heart failure and circulatory collapse

At Least 23 Reported Killed In Twin Bombings of Iran's Embassy in Lebanon

Hussein Mala/ AP

More islamist-on-islamist violence; almost certainly a spillover from the Syrian civil war.

Iran's cultural attaché to Lebanon was among more than 20 people reported killed in a terrorist attack targeting Iran's Embassy in the Lebanese capital of Beirut. Beirut is considered a stronghold of the Iranian-backed Islamic militia Hezbollah and their political arm collapsed the Lebanese government as recently as 2011.

A lesser-known Al Qaeda affiliated group called the Abdullah Azzam Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack, claiming the bombings were retaliation for Hezbollah and Iran's support for the government of Bashr Al-Assad in Syria. Forces loyal to Assad have been fighting deserters from the Syrian army and Al Qaeda-aligned militants in a grinding, prolonged insurgency that has dragged on for nearly two years.

A Lebanese security official said the first suicide attacker was on a motorcycle that carried two kilograms (4.4lbs) of explosives. He blew himself up at the large black main gate of the Iranian mission, damaging the three-story facility, the official said.

Less than two minutes later, a second suicide attacker driving a car rigged with 50 kilograms (110lbs) of explosives struck about 10 metres away, the official said.

Iranian Ambassador Ghazanfar Roknabadi identified the dead diplomat as Sheikh Ibrahim Ansari. Speaking to Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV, he said Ansari took his post in Lebanon a month ago and was overseeing all regional cultural activities.

Lebanese Health Minister Ali Hassan Khalil said 23 people were killed and 146 wounded in the blasts.

Syrian officials indirectly blamed Saudi Arabia.

'Each of the terrorist attacks that strike in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq reek of petrodollars,' a Syrian government statement said, in a clear reference to oil-rich Gulf Arab countries that have sided with the Syrian rebels.

'People aren't sacred anymore. We aren't safe,' said a mechanic whose store windows were shattered by the blasts.

He declined to be identified because he did not want to be seen as involved in sectarian tensions that have split the Lebanese over Syria's conflict.


'People fight outside (Lebanon), but send their messages through Lebanon. With bombs. It's their SMS service,' he added.

Lebanese security officials confirmed the two bombings were both suicide attacks. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Earlier this year, a car bombing in a Hezbollah-controlled suburb of Beirut killed 27 people and injured more than 300. Syrian troops had occupied Lebanon as recently as 2005 until the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri triggered a wave of mass protests dubbed the Cedar Revolution that ultimately put pressure on the Assad to withdraw his army from Lebanon.

US Special Operations Raids in Africa Target Terrorist Leaders

Members of the US Navy's SEAL Team 6 carried out a raid at a compound in southern Somalia that was believed to be housing senior members of the Al Shabaab islamist terrorist group over the weekend. Experts said the raid was aborted midway when the SEALs were spotted and a firefight broke out, negating the chances of taking their intended target alive.

As the mission progressed, the SEALs came out of the Indian Ocean in small boats before dawn, but they were spotted as they moved toward a seaside compound. A firefight broke out.

With the element of surprise gone, the SEALs lost their chance to take him alive. The SEAL commander decided not to call in air strikes because of women and children in the compound. Instead, he ordered his men to withdraw to a Navy ship offshore.

The raid comes less than two weeks after gunmen from Al Shabaab massacred at least 68 people in a shopping mall in the Kenyan capitol of Nairobi.

On Monday, the Kenyan military released the identities of the mall attackers who were killed when the portion of the mall they were in collapsed in an explosion. They include an American Somali known as Khattab al-Kene, who may have been living under a different name in Minnesota. Other assailants identified included a Sudanese national with purported Al Qaeda ties and couple of Kenyan muslims from Mombassa- including Omar Nabhan who is said to have a role in the 1998 twin bombings of the US Embassies in Nairobi and the Tanzanian capitol of Dar Es Salaam as well as a 2002 attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa and a failed attempt to shoot down a chartered Israeli passenger plane.

The intended target of the Somali raid is reportedly an al Shabaab operative known as Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir or Ikrima. Kenya's intelligence agency has implicated Abdulkadir in a thwarted plot to attack Kenya's parliament and UN Offices in Nairobi.

The mall attacks represent a dramatic shift for al Shabaab, which got its start in the Horn of Africa a few years ago with the stated goal of implementing islamic shari'a law and overthrowing Somalia's provisional government.

Last month, the Toronto Star obtained documents from one of Abdulkadir's predecessors that highlighted detailed plans for an attack against civilian targets in London using tactics reminiscent of the 2008 Lashkar-e-Taliba terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India that targeted upscale hotels, cafes and Mumbai's Chabad House. The documents were discovered in a Toyota where al Shabaab commander Fazul Abdullah Mohammed was shot an killed by Somali troops while attempting to run a roadblock northwest of Mogadishu in 2011.

Also over the weekend, an Al Qaeda operative under indictment for the 1998 twin embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania was arrested in Tripoli, Libya

The Pentagon said senior al Qaeda figure Anas al Liby was seized in the raid in Libya [....]

Liby, believed to be 49, has been under U.S. indictment for his alleged role in the East Africa embassy bombings that killed 224 people. The U.S. government has also been offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture, under the State Department's Rewards for Justice program. "As the result of a U.S. counterterrorism operation, Abu Anas al Liby is currently lawfully detained by the U.S. military in a secure location outside of Libya," Pentagon spokesman George Little said without elaborating. Liby, also known as Nazih al-Ragye, was arrested at dawn in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, as he was heading home after morning prayers, a neighbor and militia sources said. "As I was opening my house door, I saw a group of cars coming quickly from the direction of the house where al-Ragye lives. I was shocked by this movement in the early morning," said one of his neighbors, who did not give his name, "They kidnapped him. We do not know who are they." Two Islamist militia sources confirmed the incident. CNN reported in September last year that Liby had been seen Tripoli. It quoted Western intelligence sources as saying there was concern that he may have been tasked with establishing an al Qaeda network in Libya. That CNN report quoted counterterrorism analysts as saying that Liby may not have been apprehended then because of the delicate security situation in much of the country, where former jihadists hold sway. It quoted one intelligence source as saying that Liby appeared to have arrived in Libya in the spring of 2011, during the country's civil war.

Al Liby was spotted in the Libyan capitol shortly after Ghdaffi's downfall and is believed to be establishing a foothold for Al Qaeda in post-Ghdaffi Libya.

Hundreds of Civilians Reported Dead After Chemical Attack in Suburban Damascus

An international aid group operating in Syria reports that at least 355 people were killed and more than 3000 critically injured after purported nerve gas attacks on civilian neighborhoods in the Damascus area this week.

Doctors Without Borders said three hospitals it supports in the eastern Damascus region reported receiving roughly 3,600 patients with "neurotoxic symptoms" over less than three hours on Wednesday morning, when the attack in the eastern Ghouta area took place. Of those, 355 died, said the Paris-based group.

The report provides some of the clearest evidence yet by an independent organization that chemical weapons have been used in the conflict between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime and rebels fighting to oust him.

Although Doctors Without Borders said in its statement that it could not definitively confirm that chemical weapons were used, and if so, by whom, its report raises the pressure on the international community to respond.

The patients in the three hospitals the organization supports near the reported attack were given atropine that it had supplied. Atropine is a drug used to treat neurotoxic symptoms, including exposure to chemical weapons. Doctors Without Borders said it is now trying to replenish the facilities' stocks of atropine.

"The reported symptoms of the patients, in addition to the epidemiological pattern of the events—characterized by the massive influx of patients in a short period of time, the origin of the patients, and the contamination of medical and first-aid workers—strongly indicate mass exposure to a neurotoxic agent," the organization said.

The attack came nearly a year to the day after the White House warned the Assad regime that the use of chemical weapons or other weapons of mass destruction would constitute a 'red line' that would change its outlook on directly intervening in the 36-month civil war.

However, it remains unclear who actually launched the attack with Syria's military accusing Al Qaeda affiliated rebels and western governments convinced the Al-Assad regime carried out the attack. Both sides have been accused of using chemical weapons and nerve agent on each other earlier this year. The rebels, which include defectors from the Syrian Army and the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nursa Front reportedly seized a Saudi-owned chemical plant outside of Aleppo towards the end of 2012. In June, Iraqi officials raided an alleged Al Qaeda workshop that was manufacturing sarin and mustard gas outside of Baghdad. Although Syria officially denies that it has a WMD program, it's also a possibility that the rebels could have captured chemical weapons or precursors from a Syrian installation.

If this attack was indeed launched by the Assad regime, it not only comes nearly a year to the day from President Obama's 'red line' warning, but also just days before the arrival of UN weapons inspectors as Syrian ground forces makes considerable gains against the rebels. In short, while I wouldn't put it past Al-Assad to gas his own citizens, to do so soon just miles outside of his capital before a visit from UN weapons inspectors would benefit his regime very little.

Of course, if the Assad regime isn't to blame then this raises the even more disturbing possibility that Al Qaeda-linked Islamists now have access to chemical weapons and could be using Syrian neighborhoods as a proving ground as a test-run for future attacks.

US Diplomatic Posts Shuttered Throughout Middle East as Lawmakers Cite 'Specific', 'Serious' Threat in Region.

In light of a number of what lawmakers called credible and serious threats, the State Department announced that they were keeping some of their embassies and consulates in the Middle East and Africa closed through Saturday. The State Department's closing of the diplomatic missions coincides with the end of the muslim holy month of Ramadan and a series of high-profile jailbreaks last week in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Pakistan where Taliban and Al Qaeda inmates were being held.

The State Department has announced that it will keep several embassies in the Middle East and Africa closed throughout the week “out of an abundance of caution” in the wake of terror threats that shut them down.

Posts in Abu Dhabi, Amman, Cairo, Riyadh, Dhahran, Jeddah, Doha, Dubai, Kuwait, Manama, Muscat, Sanaa, Tripoli, Antanarivo, Bujumbura, Djibouti, Khartoum, Kigali and Port Louis have been instructed to close for normal operations from Monday through Saturday, department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

The State Department also said some of those embassies were already going to be closed in accordance with local customs marking the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Those authorized to reopen Monday are in Dhaka, Algiers, Nouakchott, Kabul, Herat, Mazar el Sharif, Baghdad, Basrah and Erbil.

Capitol Hill lawmakers, including top-ranking members of intelligence committees, on Sunday described the terror threat that closed 22 U.S. embassies and consulates across the Muslim region as the most serious one since before the 9/11 attacks and related to specific act or plot.

The sources said the chatter included Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri demanding that key leaders of the terror network in the Arabian Peninsula step up their activities in the wake of recent killings of top terrorists.

A Mideast diplomat said al-Zawahiri’s “pressuring” of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to launch new terrorist attacks on American and other Western targets is “unprecedented.”

The sources also said the U.S. outpost closings and the travel alert were prompted in part by a series of recent Al Qaeda-led prison breaks that have freed hundreds of operatives over the last month, including one this weekend in Aleppo, Syria. Other recent breaks have been orchestrated in Iraq, Libya and Pakistan and Abu Ghraib, in Afghanistan.

Canada has also shut down their diplomatic mission in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka amid growing unrest in that nation while the UK, France and Germany closed down their respective embassies in Yemen.

On Saturday, a car bomb detonated outside of the Indian consulate in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. The explosion killed nine, including children from a nearby mosque. A spokesman for India's Foreign Ministry said that no Indian officials were harmed in the attack.

Al Qaeda Detainees Among Hundreds Freed in Deadly Jailbreak of Two Iraqi Prisons

Marwan Ibrahim/AFP

Senior members of Al Qaeda in custody were among hundreds of inmates who were set free from multiple jails- including Baghdad's infamous Abu Grahib prison- in a pair of brazen nighttime raids that was carried out earlier this week.

According to Iraqi officials, suicide bombers drove vehicles into the front gates and detonated before a second wave of gunmen swarmed into the prison, opening fire on the guards with mortars, RPGs and machine guns and setting inmates free. Meanwhile, accomplices positioned themselves on the road leading to the jail and ambushed reinforcements as they were on their way to aid the besieged guards. The Abu Grahib and Taji prisons were only re-taken after Iraqi officials sent in helicopter gunships and special operations soldiers.

One security official told Reuters on condition of anonymity: "It's obviously a terrorist attack carried out by al Qaeda to free convicted terrorists with al Qaeda."

A simultaneous attack on another prison, in Taji, around 20 km (12 miles) north of Baghdad, followed a similar pattern, but guards managed to prevent any inmates escaping. Sixteen soldiers and six militants were killed.

Although officials said some of the escapees were quickly recaptured, the majority of the Al Qaeda commanders in custody are said to be at large. Interpol has issued a regional alert for the escapees, saying its working with Iraqi police to obtain pictures of photographs of the fugitives.

Al Qaeda-allied Sunni insurgents have stepped up attacks on Iraqi civilians, policemen and soldiers in recent weeks, killing hundreds. Perhaps the single deadliest single attack in Iraq this month occurred on July 12th, when a suicide bomber blew up a café in Kirkuk as patrons were marking the end of the day's fast for Ramadan, killing at least 38 people.

On Thursday, Sunni gunmen reportedly had set up a roadblock on a highway outside of Kirkuk and executed 14 Shi'ite truck drivers.

Standoff Between Algerian Army and Al Qaeda Terrorists At Natural Gas Facility Comes to Bloody Conclusion

Algerian Military truck seen on the road to Ain Aminas. Anis Belghoul- AP Photo

A standoff between the Algerian Army and Al Qaeda terrorists who took foreign hostages at a natural gas field in eastern Algeria came to a violent end when Algerian Special Operations Forces stormed the facility on Saturday.

Algerian special forces stormed a natural gas complex in the Sahara desert on Saturday to end a standoff with an Al Qaeda-linked terror group that left at least 23 hostages dead and killed all 32 militants involved, the Algerian government said.

The siege at Ain Amenas transfixed the world after radical Islamists stormed the complex, which contained hundreds of plant workers from all over the world, then held them hostage surrounded by the Algerian military and its attack helicopters for four tense days that were punctuated with gun battles and dramatic tales of escape.

Algeria's response to the crisis was typical of its history in confronting terrorists, favoring military action over negotiation, which caused an international outcry from countries worried about their citizens. Algerian military forces twice assaulted the two areas where the hostages were being held with minimal apparent mediation -- first on Thursday, then on Saturday.

"To avoid a bloody turn of events in response to the extreme danger of the situation, the army's special forces launched an intervention with efficiency and professionalism to neutralize the terrorist groups that were first trying to flee with the hostages and then blow up the gas facilities," Algeria's Interior Ministry said in a statement about the standoff.

In the final assault, the remaining band of militants killed the hostages before 11 of them were in turn cut down by the special forces, Algeria's state news agency said. The military launched its Saturday assault to prevent a fire started by the extremists from engulfing the complex and blowing it up, the report added.

A total of 685 Algerian and 107 foreigner workers were freed over the course of the four-day standoff, the ministry statement said, adding that the group of militants that attacked the remote Saharan natural gas complex consisted of 32 men of various nationalities, including three Algerians and explosives experts.

The military also said it confiscated heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, missiles and grenades attached to suicide belts.

The facility at Ain Aminas is run by Sonatrach, the Algerian state oil company- along with BP [NYSE: BP] and Norway's Statoil [NYSE: STO]. Sonatrach officials said the entire refinery had been mined with explosives, and that the process of clearing it out is currently under way.

Algerian officials believe the raid on the Ain Amenas facility and subsequent seige was done with inside help.

At least some of up to 70 Islamist guerrillas who stormed in before dawn on Wednesday launched their operation hours earlier, barreling over smugglers tracks across the Libyan border just after midnight, an Algerian security official told Reuters, citing evidence from mobile phones traced to the militants.

The ease with which they entered the fortified housing compound and nearby natural gas plant also left Algerians in little doubt the gunmen had allies among people at the site.

"They had local cooperation, I'm sure, maybe from drivers or security guards, who helped the terrorists get into the base," said Anis Rahmani, editor of Algeria's Ennahar newspaper and a writer on security issues who said he was briefed by officials.

Officials from Algeria's Interior Ministry said troops had moved in to prevent the terrorists from moving the captured hostages across the border to more lawless areas of Libya or Mali. An Algerian hostage said that some of the foreign hostages were forced to wear explosive vests or belts and that the Algerian hostages were more loosely guarded by the attackers. At least one American and one Briton were confirmed killed in the seige while another American and five Norweigans are unaccounted for.

Algeria has taken a hard line against terrorists and Islamic militants since a prolonged civil war in the 1990s between the military and jihadists killed an estimated 100,000 people.

Benghazi Update- Secretary of State Clinton Accepts Responsibility For Lack of Security; Congressional Panel Interviews Witnesses; FBI Spends Only 12 Hours in Benghazi; British Weapons Unaccounted For

During an official visit to Peru on Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that she accepted responsibility for the security lapses leading up to the deadly terrorist attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans last month.

"I'm responsible for the State Department, for the more than 60,000 people around the world," she said. "The decisions about security are made by security professionals. But we're going to review everything to be sure we're doing what needs to be done in an increasingly risky environment."

She also addressed the question of a June explosion at the consulate in Benghazi that some have argued should have raised a red flag about security.

"I can't speak to who knew what," she said. "We knew there were security breaches and problems throughout Libya. That's something that came about as the aftermath of the revolution to topple Qaddafi, with so many militias formed, so many weapons loose. ... It was taken into account by security professionals as they made their assessments."

Clinton also seemed to dismiss accusations that the State Department and White House intentionally pushed a false narrative about a spontaneously-forming protest over a YouTube video serving as a catalyst for the deadly September 11, 2012 attacks for nearly two weeks- in spite of the fact there were no protests in Benghazi that night and the assailants used heavy weaponry such as mortars and RPGs.

While some have viewed this as President Obama 'throwing Hillary under the bus', Da Tech Guy makes the case that this was a shrewdly calculated move by Secretary of State Clinton that undermines Obama while heading off a number of stories about security breaches leading up to last month's attacks from a normally compliant media that was starting to get curious on the issue. The decision can also be viewed through the prism of a possible 2016 Presidential run by Clinton.

Meanwhile, US security and military officials testified before the House Oversight Committee last week, claiming that requests for additional security in Libya were rebuffed by higher-ups at the State Department. Lt Col Andrew Wood of the Utah National Guard commanded a 16-member Special Forces security detail responsible for protecting American officials in Libya after the collapse of the Ghdaffi regime- the team departed the country about a month before the attacks in Benghazi.

Wood told CBS News that he met daily with Stevens to discuss security.

"He was constantly concerned about the threats to not just himself but the entire staff there," Wood said.

Over the six months leading up to the attack on Stevens, Wood says the security situation in Libya deteriorated.

There were 13 threats or attacks in Tripoli and Benghazi, including two attempted assassinations of the British ambassador to Libya.

Wood said Stevens and his staff made the case for tightened security in emails and diplomatic cables. One by one, they lost three State Department security teams, their only airplane and, eventually, his squad too.

Wood said some of the security teams would have been in Benghazi on Sept. 11 to if they had been allowed to remain in Libya, and the four deaths might have been avoided.

Earlier this month, an FBI forensic team arrived at the site of the attacks in Benghazi- nearly three weeks after the attacks took place- and examined the area for a grand total of 12 hours. The site of the attacks had been left unsecured for nearly three weeks and the trek out to Benghazi was expected to yield little in the way of actionable information.

Britain's Foreign Office also reported that British weapons and vehicles left at the grounds of the US Consulate in Benghazi were unaccounted for after the September 11 attacks. The UK's envoy to Libya, Sir Dominic Dominic Asquith, survived an RPG attack that wounded two of his bodyguards in June and the Foreign Office decided to withdraw all British diplomats from the area shortly thereafter. According to testimony from Lt. Col Wood, the UK Foreign Office made arrangements with the US Consulate in Benghazi for safekeeping of the weapons and vehicles and retrieve them incrementally through multiple low-profile trips back to the area.

UPDATE- 10/15- AP is reporting that the White House is inexplicably announcing preperations to send a strike team into Libya.....yes- basically announcing a 'covert' mission to the public via mass media, apparently.

Benghazi Update: As Obama Addresses UN, White House And State Department Change Stories on Benghazi Attacks; Brazilian Court Orders Anti-Islam Video Removed From You Tube

One day after President Obama delivered a harsh rebuke of those who would insult Islam while offering a tepid- if nonexistent- defense of free speech, The Daily Beast published an in-depth article detailing how within a day of the September 11th, 2012 attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya that killed the Ambassador and three diplomatic and security staff, US intelligence officials knew that Al Qaeda affiliated operatives in Eastern Libya were behind the attacks.

The intelligence officials who spoke to The Daily Beast did so anonymously because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press. They said U.S. intelligence agencies developed leads on four of the participants of the attacks within 24 hours of the fire fight that took place mainly at an annex near the Benghazi consulate. For one of those individuals, the U.S. agencies were able to find his location after his use of social media. “We had two kinds of intelligence on one guy,” this official said. “We believe we had enough to target him.”

Another U.S. intelligence official said, “There was very good information on this in the first 24 hours. These guys have a return address. There are camps of people and a wide variety of things we could do.”

A spokesman for the National Security Council declined to comment for the story. But another U.S. intelligence official said, “I can’t get into specific numbers but soon after the attack we had a pretty good bead on some individuals involved in the attack.”

It’s unclear whether any of these suspected attackers have been targeted or arrested, and intelligence experts caution that these are still early days in a complex investigation.

The Daily Beast article was published days after an unnamed Libyan source claimed that there was no protest in front of the US Consulate just prior to the bloody assault.

An intelligence source on the ground in Libya told Fox News that there was no demonstration outside the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi prior to last week's attack -- challenging the Obama administration's claims that the assault grew out of a "spontaneous" protest against an anti-Islam film.

"There was no protest and the attacks were not spontaneous," the source said, adding the attack "was planned and had nothing to do with the movie."

The source said the assault came with no warning at about 9:35 p.m. local time, and included fire from more than two locations. The assault included RPG's and mortar fire, the source said, and consisted of two waves.

The account that the attack started suddenly backs up claims by a purported Libyan security guard who told McClatchy Newspapers late last week that the area was quiet before the attack.

"There wasn't a single ant outside," the unnamed guard, who was being treated in a hospital, said in the interview.

A spokesman for Libya's nascent post-Ghdaffi government said local eyewitnesses claimed that the attack came in two waves- RPG and machine gun fire directed at the consulate followed by mortar fire directed at one of the safehouses. The eyewitness accounts directly contradict statements from the Obama Administration and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the consulate was torched as a result of a spontaneous protest or heavily-armed Al Qaeda operatives blending in among a massive demonstration in front of the US consulate.

US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice had made the Sunday morning talk-show circuit repeating the White House claim that there was a spontaneous demonstration- directly contradicting a number of reports to the contrary.

Despite sending FBI agents and forensic teams to Libya to examine the crime scene and interview local witnesses, the FBI agents still hadn't reached the city of Benghazi more than 2 weeks after the consulate attacks took place- meaning that the scene of the assault has been compromised and even if forensic teams were arrived today, there would be little evidence of value remaining. In fact, a stringer for CNN reportedly discovered Ambassador Stevens' diary in a charred hallway in the Benghazi consulate- CNN subsequently came under harsh criticism for not mentioning their find earlier and using the journal as a source without notifying the ambassador's family or the State Department, although they eventually returned the diary to the Stevens family after transcribing information they thought was pertinent.



Since June of this year, there had been at least four previous attacks targeting foreign diplomats or NGOs in Benghzai, including an IED targetting the US Consulate and an RPG fired at a British diplomatic convoy. Ambassador Stevens reportedly expressed a growing concern in his journal about the deteriorating security situation in the eastern part of Libya.

Another indicator that the attack in Libya required a considerable amount of advanced planning was the fact that CIA documents regarding post-Ghdaffi contacts in Libya and detailed dossiers on Islamist militias were missing from the consulate after the attack. As one analyst put it "We got our eyes poked out".

The missing intelligence along with the timing of the attack and use of heavy weapons- as well as reports from local eyewitnesses that there were no massive protests leading up to the attack- would give even the most casual observer every indication that the murder of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans were the result of a calculated, well planned raid- not a random gaggle of Muslims irate over a YouTube clip who just happened to have heavy weapons on them when they decided to lash out at the USA.

ELSEWHERE- The Obama Administration's insistence that a YouTube trailer somehow provoked the violence that led to Ambassador Steven's has spread to Brazil, apparently. Not only that, it reportedly has the weight of a Brazilian court ruling behind it.

Sao Paulo-based judge Gilson Delgado Miranda gave the site 10 days to remove video clips from "Innocence of Muslims," which has angered many Muslims around the world by its depiction of the Prophet Mohammed and his followers as thugs. After the 10-day window, Google will face fines of $5,000 a day for every day the clips remain accessible in Brazil, according to the statement on the court's website.

The company did not respond to requests Wednesday for comment about the case.

The "Innocence of Muslims" ruling resulted from a lawsuit by a group representing Brazil's Muslim community, the National Union of Islamic Entities, which claimed the film violates the country's constitutional guarantee of religious freedom for all faiths.

In a statement on the group's website, Mohamad al Bukai, the head of religious matters for the Sao Paulo-based organization, hailed the ruling.

"Freedom of expression must not be confused with giving disproportionate and irresponsible offence, which can provoke serious consequences for society," al Bukai said.

Attempts by courts and officials in several countries to remove the clips have revived the debate over freedom of expression.

The judge in the Brazilian case acknowledged that banning content from sites like YouTube is a thorny issue, according to excerpts of the ruling cited in the National Union of Islamic Entities' statement.

"This type of jurisprudence cannot be confused with censorship," Miranda is quoted as writing. In the excerpts, the judge defines censorship as "the undue restriction of the civic consciousness."

YouTube routinely blocks video in specific countries if it violates laws there. It also removes video deemed to infringe copyrights, show pornography, contain hate speech or violate other guidelines. However, none of those restrictions had been applied in Brazil to the "Innocence of Muslims."

Google is now selectively blocking the video clips in countries that include Libya and Egypt. Google has said it made the decision to block the video in such places due to "the sensitive situations" there.

Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation questioned whether a ban was really necessary in Brazil, which has seen no protests or rioting that have swept the Muslim world in recent weeks.

"The notion that there's a need to take it down to prevent violence is ludicrous," she said.

Miranda's ruling came on the same day that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff addressed the United Nations and urged an end to prejudice against Muslims.

In a separate ruling, a top official for Google Brazil was ordered detained and fined due to a breach of Brazilian electoral law. The arrest of Fabio Jose Silva Coehlo by federal police in Brazil was initially reported as stemming from the Innocence of Muslims short film.

Earlier this month, the White House had requested Google remove the movie.

US Ambassador to Libya, 3 Other Americans Murdered in Attack on Consulate in Benghazi

Charred vehicle on the grounds of the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The diplomatic compound was overrun by a mob of roughly 1,000 people before gunmen in the crowd opened fire on the consulate and vehicles with on Tuesday, September 11th

US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens was among four Americans murdered on Tuesday night after a rampaging crowd managed to break in to the grounds of the US Consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi. Heavily armed terrorists moving within the crowd then opened fire on the consulate and diplomatic staff with AK47s and rocket-propelled grenades.

The crowd had reportedly paraded around Ambassador Stevens' corpse while taking photos. A local media report quoted a Libyan official in Benghazi said that the ambassador had died of suffocation. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, an avid online gamer, had reportedly left a message a few hours prior to the attack on the Benghazi facility that read ”Assuming we don’t die tonight. We saw one of our ‘police’ that guard the compound taking pictures.”. Smith was also fatally injured in the attack.

A report from CBS earlier on Wednesday quoted an official from Libya's Interior Ministry who claimed that after the consulate's Libyan security detail evacuated the Ambassador and diplomatic staff, some of the security staff had reportedly tipped the crowd off to the Ambassador's new and supposedly secure location.

Wanis al-Sharef, a Libyan Interior Ministry official in Benghazi, said the four Americans were killed when the angry mob, which gathered to protest a U.S.-made film that ridicules Islam's Prophet Muhammad, fired guns and burned down the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

He said Stevens, 52, and other officials were moved to a second building - deemed safer - after the initial wave of protests at the consulate compound. According to al-Sharef, members of the Libyan security team seem to have indicated to the protesters the building to which the American officials had been relocated, and that building then came under attack.

Although the short film had been blamed for inciting angry mobs in both who breached US Diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt on Tuesday, intelligence agencies say the fact that the murders took place on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks it's increasingly likely that the attack was planned well in advance by an Al Qaeda offshoot. Intelligence and media reports indicate that a Libyan jihadist group operating under the name of Ansar Al Sharia is behind the attacks. Stevens was the first US Ambassador to be killed while on assignment since Adolph Dubs- the US Ambassador to Afghanistan- was killed in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in 1979.

Benghazi is the eastern city that's considered the cradle of the uprising that ultimately toppled Mummar Ghdaffi's 42-year reign in Libya. Ghdaffi's Army was on the cusp of crushing the uprising and seizing Benghazi before the international community intervened in the form of NATO air strikes in February 2011. After months of fighting, Ghdaffi was captured and killed in a pitched battle near his hometown of Sitre. Ambassador Steven's had reportedly worked closely with Libya's transitional council after the Ghdaffi regime fled the capitol at Tripoli. The property was reportedly a temporary location that wasn't as secure as a number of permanent facilities.

The Benghazi assault came just hours after protestors in Egypt breached the walls of the American embassy there and tore down the American flag, replacing it with a black flag with white arabic script used by Al Qaeda.

However, instead of immediately condemning the provocation from the Egyptian crowd, the US Embassy released multiple statements criticising the producers of the movie the protestors were supposedly upset with and a series of tweets that bordered on apologetic. The official US Embassy in Cairo statement reads as follows [empasis mine].

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims - as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.

The White House distanced themselves from the Cairo Embassy's statements while Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney criticized the statements coming from the Cairo Embassy as 'an apology for American values' and the Obama Administration's repudiation of the statements as an example of mixed signals the President has been sending to the international community. In Cairo, police and protestors clashed for a second straight night.

A team of about 50 Marines has been dispatched to Tripoli to secure the US Embassy in the Libyan capital while two guided missile destroyers have been deployed off of the coast of Libya.

Thunder on the Mountain- A Look At the Pennsylvania Town Thrust onto World Stage on September 11, 2001

Plume of smoke from Flight 93 crash in rural Somerset County, PA on September 11, 2001. Housewife Val McClatchey caught the image with a new digital camera just moments after impact.

Even before the September 11th terrorist attacks, cities like Washington DC and New York were in the crosshairs of terrorist and dangerous extremists. However, on America's darkest day an unassuming town of just over 200 people became etched in history as the final resting place for the first Americans to fight back against Al Qaeda.

For those of you unfamiliar with United Flight 93, the Newark to San Francisco flight took off on time that morning with four hijackers on board. At 9:28 AM- nearly 45 minutes after the first hijacked airliner slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center- Air Traffic Control in Cleveland, OH received a Mayday call from Flight 93 amidst what sounded like a struggle in the background. When Cleveland attempted to reach the flight crew by radio, they received no reply. The widow of Captain Jason Dahl believes that her husband took measures to interfere with the hijackers such as redirecting the planes radio frequency so that the hijacker's orders to the crew and passengers were instead transmitted to Air Traffic Controllers before he was stabbed.

Within five minutes of the hijacking, passengers were using in-flight phones or their own cellphones to contact family members or the authorities. By that point, the wife of passenger Tom Burnett had told him about watching the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon from their California home. Burnett- a medical device company executive from San Ramon, CA told his wife Deena "Don't worry, we're going to do something". Marketing executive Jeremy Glick told his wife in West Milford, NJ that the passengers had voted to try and storm the cockpit and re-take the plane.

Todd Beamer, an executive with Oracle Inc from Highstown, NJ attempted to call his wife from one of the in-flight GTE phones. However, his call was instead rerouted to a GTE supervisor named Lisa Jefferson. Beamer became apprehensive at one point as the plane changed direction, but he and his fellow passengers had decided they were going to overpower their hijackers and try to take back the plane. Beamer told Jefferson that one of the hijackers claimed to have a bomb, but at this juncture the passengers figured it was a ruse to get them to comply with their orders before they realized they were going to be killed anyway. Jefferson and Beamer also recited the 23rd Psalm before the passengers and crew reportedly counterattacked with scalding water, a drink cart and their bare hands. The line was left open after Beamer was done talking to Jefferson and he was heard in the background urging on fellow passengers with "Let's roll!".

Audio from the black box recorded the sounds of a struggle between the hijackers and passengers in the cockpit before the plane crashed into a field outside of Shanksville, PA at 10:03 AM. Flight 93 was no more than 20 minutes away from Washington DC at the time of the crash. Subsequent Al Qaeda documents seized in Afghanistan and Pakistan seem to indicate that the US Capitol Building was the most likely target, although the White House was seriously considered as well.

Within minutes, firefighters and Pennsylvania State Troopers arrived at the Flight 93 crash site. Unlike the attacks on the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and the Pentagon in northern Virginia, there was considerably less debris to sift through in the Shanksville meadow and a number of documents and evidence could be recovered by investigators- including remnants of the hijackers' passports.

A monument to Flight 93 passengers and crew erected by Newark-based flight attendants adjacent to a chapel south of Shanksville, PA.

In the ensuing weeks, investigators and media descended on the rural community. Flight 93 was carrying an estimated 5000 lbs of mail, and NTSB officials had recovered undamaged pieces of mail, in-flight magazines, a bible and even a business card from one of the hijackers identifying other accomplices in the attacks. The planes black boxes were reportedly recovered from a 15-25 foot deep crater in the ground.

Close-up of the monument

The immediate aftermath of the crash was caught by a Shanksville housewife named Val McClatchey who was watching the horror unfold in lower Manhattan and northern Virginia on TV when she heard a loud roaring overhead followed by what she described as a ground shaking boom. The image shows an ominous plume of smoke rising over a hill with a bucolic farmhouse and red barn in the foreground.

Thunder on the Mountain- the Flight 93 Memorial Chapel south of Shanksville, PA.

However, McClatchey's photo was also viewed by 9/11 'Truthers' [basically, unhinged conspiracy theorists who insist that the 9/11 attacks were singlehandedly orchestrated by the US government, Jews or the illuminati NANESB!] as an open invitation to harass and stalk the Pennsylvania housewife and real-estate agent.

The real estate agent has recently become a target of bloggers calling themselves "9-11 researchers," who are seeking to prove that the U.S. government was complicit in the attacks that brought down the Twin Towers, pierced the Pentagon and crashed United Airlines Flight 93. "The End of Serenity" has turned out to be their smoking gun.

They have visited Mrs. McClatchey's office and called her at home, posting satellite maps of her property and accusing her of digitally altering her photo to insert a fake smoke plume. The bloggers have picked apart her story, highlighting inconsistencies in different news accounts and questioning her motives. Others have described her as "surly," "hostile," "irate" and "defensive." People have called her at home, accusing her of being anti-American and of "holding the photo hostage."

[Gosh- only somebody with something to hide would be upset at random unhinged loons showing up on their doorstep out of the blue and accusing them of treason and complicity in a shadowy plot to murder thousands Americans- NANESB!]

A look at the recently-opened Flight 93 Memorial at the crash site north of Shanksville, run by the National Parks Service.

The field that Flight 93 crashed into had actually been reclaimed from a strip coal mining operation. Almost immediately after 9/11, people began leaving flowers and mementos at a chain link fence at a temporary memorial near the crash site.

Within a year, Congress had approved funding for a permanent memorial at the Shanksville crash site. The early design of the memorial was fraught with controversy when one of the finalists- Crescent of Embrace- was revealed and critics and relatives of those killed on Flight 93 thought it too closely resembled the crescent moon symbol popular with numerous Islamic groups. The Crescent was later modified into a semicircle bisected by the flight's path.

Marble panels engraved with the name of the 40 passengers and crew members of Flight 93 at the permanent memorial in Somerset County, PA

Stage one of the permanent memorial opened to the public on September 10th, 2011 and is operated under the National Parks Service. Currently, a gently sloping black wall accompanies a walkway and benches that stretch out to a memorial plaza where the names of the passengers and crew are inscribed on a marble wall. There are no plans for a memorial garden of any kind- National Park officials said that the Memorial would be better served by allowing the native wildflower species to bloom in the areas surrounding the plaza. Earlier this year, crews were planting trees along the road leading into the Flight 93 Memorial from US Highway 30 to the north

Even before the National Flight 93 Memoral opened up, the field had seen as many as 150,000 visitors per year. USA Today's Travel Section has even gone so far to reccommend including the recently opened memorial as part of an itinerary for visiting Southwestern Pennsylvania along with Pittsburgh (about 80 miles away), Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water (about 50 miles away) as well as the Rolling Rock Brewery in Latrobe and Horsehoe Curve in Altoona [OK- I just threw the last two in there- NANESB!]. Signs were recently posted on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and US Route 219 to direct people to the memorial.

Future plans for the Memorial call for additional structures to house permanent exhibits and artifacts from passengers and their families to be completed sometime in 2013- currently there is just the one structure before the Memorial plaza where visitors can sign in. Plans also call for a tower with 40 seperate wind chimes to be built near the Memorial entrance- one for each passenger and crew member. Since the meadow is near high mountain peaks, there's a near constant wind or breeze blowing through the site.

Through a series of odd coincidences, a wind turbine farm overlooking the entrance to the Flight 93 Memorial opened up a little over a month after the 9/11 attacks. The executive who made the Somerset County wind turbines possible- Nicholas Humber- was killed in the 9/11 attacks. Humber was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11 when it slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

The US Navy has also christened the USS Somerset- a San Antonio class amphibious transport dock named after Somerset County where Flight 93 went down. A bucket from a nearby power shovel that had been used in coal mining was melted down in 2008 to form the bow stem for the Somerset and she was christened in July of this year in Avondale, LA. Sister ships USS New York and USS Arlington had incorporated steel from the World Trade Center site and Pentagon respectively.

Pakistani Doctor Who Helped USA Confirm Bin Laden's Location Recieves 30+ Year Prison Sentence For Treason Against Pakistan

A Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA and US Navy SEAL commandos pinpoint the whereabouts of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden recieved a 33 year prison sentence for treason against the state of Pakistan on Wednesday.

Dr Shakil Afridi ran a vaccination program in which he was able to collect DNA from the fugitive Al Qaeda leader and confirm that he was hiding at a compound in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbotabad. Bin Laden, his son and an al Qaeda courier were killed and three of his wives were captured along with a treasure trove of intelligence after President Obama authorized the Navy SEAL raid on Bin Laden's Abbotabad compound in May 2011.

The unilateral raid was considered an international embarrassment for Pakistan, since Bin Laden's compound was located less than a kilometer from the front enterance to Pakistan's military academy. While senior Pakistani officials claimed to not know of Bin Laden's whereabouts, many analyists speculate that the Pakistani Interservices Intelligence Directorate (ISI) aided in harboring the fugitive Al Qaeda leader.

Afridi's conviction comes at a sensitive time because the U.S. is already frustrated by Pakistan's refusal to reopen NATO supply routes to Afghanistan. The supply routes were closed six months ago in retaliation for American air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

Afridi was detained sometime after the May 2, 2011, raid, but the start of his trial was never publicized.

He was tried under the Frontier Crimes Regulations, or FCR, the set of laws that govern Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal region. Human rights organizations have criticized the FCR for not providing suspects due process of law. There is no right to legal representation, to present material evidence or cross-examine witnesses.

The verdict was handed down by a Khyber government official in consultation with a council of elders, according to Nasir Khan, a government official in the Khyber tribal area, where the doctor was arrested and tried.

A senior U.S. official with knowledge of counter-terrorism operations against al-Qaeda in Pakistan said the doctor was never asked to spy on Pakistan.

In addition to the lengthy prison term, Afridi was also fined the equivalent of $3500 and may get an additional three years added to his sentence if he is unable to pay his fine.

One can't help but come to the conclusion that the plight of Dr. Afridi serves as a powerful disincentive for foreign nationals to provide the CIA with critical intelligence now that he has been identified and imprisoned by his home country. I'm also wondering why the Obama Administration and the State Department weren't prepared to whisk Afridi and his family out of Pakistan at a moment's notice.

Documents Seized From Bin Laden's Compound Show Al Qaeda's Media Adviser Disappointed After Keith Olberman Fired From MSNBC

According to documents seized by US Navy SEALs during the raid of Osama Bin Laden's hideout in Abbotabad, Pakistan, Al Qaeda hates FOX news with a passion and was dismayed to learn of Keith Olbermann's dismissal from MSNBC last year.

When MSNBC discarded Keith Olbermann, al-Qaida mourned.

So reports David Ignatius, the Washington Post columnist who has gained exclusive access to some of the documents recovered from Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

In his Wednesday column in the Washington Post, Ignatius reported on the details of a 21-page letter to bin Laden written by al-Qaida media adviser Adam Gadahn. Though the letter was undated, Ignatius says that it was likely written sometime after November 2010.

Laying out the current media landscape for the now waterlogged terrorist kingpin, Gadahn, an American-born Jewish convert to Islam, lamented the “firing” of Olbermann from MSNBC.

“In the letter, the media adviser focuses on ‘how to exploit’ the 10th anniversary of 9/11 on television,” Ignatius writes.

“He worries that CNN ‘seems to be in cooperation with the government more than the others,’ though he praises its ‘good and detailed’ Arabic coverage. ‘I used to think that MSNBC channel may be good and neutral a bit,’ he continues, but then notes the firing of Olbermann.”

Olbermann was fired from MSNBC and his Countdown show was cancelled shortly after Comcast completed the purchase of a majority stake in MSNBC's parent company, NBC-Universal, from General Electric in early 2011. Since being ousted from MSNBC, Olbermann wound up with his own show on Current TV, a cable network that has the financial backing of former Vice President Al Gore.

Toulouse School Shooter Killed By French Authorities After 32-Hour Standoff, Had More Shooting Attacks Planned

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Toulouse Massacre Update- Neo-Nazi Former Soldiers Cleared; French Authorities Corner Algerian al Qaeda Operative

In the hours after yesterday's killing spree in front of a Jewish school in southwestern French city of Toulouse, investigators had focused their attention on three former soldiers in the French Army who were neo-Nazis and had also served in the same unit as the three soldiers who were gunned down at an ATM earlier this month.

According to reports published Monday, French police investigating the fatal shootings of a teacher and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse were searching for the three soldiers, who were dismissed from the army a few years ago after being photographed while giving Nazi salutes in front of a Swastika flag.

Monday's deadly shooting came just days after three soldiers — from the same 17th Parachute Engineer Regiment with which the dismissed trio served — were shot dead in broad daylight in Montauban 30 miles away last Thursday. Two of the murdered soldiers were Muslim.

But France Info's report, published Tuesday, said the three neo-Nazis were located by police and cleared of any suspicion. A police official told the website that two of the former troops were interrogated after the shooting attack on the Jewish school, while the third was questioned after the attack in Montauban.

Ynet's correspondent in Toulouse added that according to reports in France, one of the three neo-Nazis voluntarily reported to a police station to be interrogated.

Investigators from the DRCI (Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence) were focusing on 24 year old Mohammed Mera, a French national of Algerian descent who had reportedly travelled to the tribal area in Pakistan's North West Frontier province to fight alongside the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Merah was reportedly arrested by authorities in Afghanistan for planting bombs and sentenced to 3 years in prison, but was part of a massive April 2011 jailbreak that freed hundreds of inmates and captured Taliban fighters.

The DRCI had reportedly found Mera after checking e-mail correspondence from the first known victim. Mera was reportedly exchanging e-mails under a false account with a French soldier who was gunned down in a residential area of Toulouse earlier this month. Investigators traced the e-mails to a computer using the IP address of Mera's brother. Ballistics experts also conclusively matched bullets used in the school shooting as coming from the same one used to shoot the paratroopers.

On Wednesday morning, Mera exchanged gunfire with heavily armed police officers as they moved in to raid his Toulouse home- which was near the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school. Three officers were wounded and Mera barricaded himself inside his residence as he attempted to negotiate his surrender as the neighborhood was cordoned off.

CCTV footage from the schoolyard massacre also showed the shooter appeared to have some sort of digital camera around his neck to film the attack as it took place. DRCI investigators believe that Mera was ultimately going to post the footage of his attacks online at a jihad website.

Also on Wednesday morning, funeral services were held in Jerusalem for the four victims slain at the school. Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, 30, his sons Arieh, 5, and Gabriel, 4, and 7 year old Miriam Monsonego were laid to rest with at least 2000 mourners present at the massive Gavit Shaul cemetary west of Jerusalem.

Horn of Africa Update- Somali, Ethiopian Troops Seize Al-Shabaab Stronghold; US Airstrike Kills Foreign Fighters; Somaliland Open for Business?

Somali troops seen on the move outside of Baidoa

SOMALIA- Backed by Ethiopian troops, the nascent Somali army captured one of al Shabaab's strongholds in the central part of the country last week.

AFP - Truckloads of Ethiopian and Somali troops on Wednesday captured the strategic Somali city of Baidoa from Al-Qaeda allied Shebab insurgents, who vowed to avenge the loss.

"We have taken control of Baidoa without a single shot, it is a great day for the people who are now welcoming us warmly," said Muhidin Ali, a Somali government military commander in Baidoa.

Baidoa, 250 kilometres (155 miles) northeast of the capital Mogadishu, is one of the main bases of the hardline Shebab, and its capture deals a major blow to the insurgents, who control large parts of southern and central Somalia.

Sporadic shooting was reported on the outskirts of the town, but residents said the city was largely calm.

"We are at the centre now and moving towards every corners of the town, to ensure that we are in full control," Ali added. "The enemy fled the city before our army has reached the town empty."

Ethiopian troops, who moved into southern and western Somalia in November, began a major push Tuesday towards Baidoa, which hosted the transitional parliament before Islamist rebels seized the town in 2009.

"There was no fighting, the Somali troops and the Ethiopian forces entered the town, setting up their base at the police station and the main crossroads in town," said Abdulahi Hassan, a resident.

"People are out in the streets watching the soldiers who are gradually moving into the different parts of the city."

Witnesses had said earlier that Shebab fighters and their families were seen fleeing Baidoa towards rebel-held Afgoye.

"Many people, most of them Al-Shebab families and supporters, are fleeing Baidoa," said Hussein Ali, a resident. "They are heading towards the Afgoye."

An al Shabaab commander confirmed the retreat, calling it a strategic withdrawl and promising more bloodshed and attacks against the Somali transitional government and African Union peacekeepers.

In recent years, forces from Somalia's transitional government controlled little more than a few blocks within the capital city of Mogadishu as the Islamic militia al-Shabaab swept through the countryside.

Less than a week before al Shabaab forces fled Baidoa, an al Shabaab commander and 13 other fighters were killed in clashes with Kenyan security forces in the southern part of Somalia.

Then Kenyans reportedly ambushed al Shabaab financier Mohamed Asmaya in Somali territory near the Kenyan border and seized a number of areas that provided the islamic militia with the bulk of its financial support.

On Friday, two foreign members of al-Shabaab were killed in an airstrike by a US drone about 60km south of Mogadishu.

Somali militants say that a Moroccan was killed in a strike that a U.S. official said was carried out by an American drone.

The statement Saturday on an al-Shabab website named the dead Moroccan as Sheik Abu Ibrahim. The statement said two others - including a second foreigner - were killed in the overnight Friday attack.
A U.S. official told The Associated Press the attack was carried out by a drone. Somali officials identified another of the militants killed in the attack as a Kenyan citizen.

Local reports claim that the total number killed in the airstrike was 4.

PUNTLAND- While under pressure from troops from Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia's transitional government as well as African Union peacekeepers in the South, Al Shabaab made its way north into the semiautonomous Puntland region, reportedly joining forces with a previously unaffiliated militia.

An Islamist militia group in Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland region has merged with the al Shabaab rebel group, said the insurgents on Saturday, a union which threatens to destabilize the relatively secure area targeted by oil explorers.

Al Shabaab said it wanted to scrap the licenses of Western oil and gas firms drilling in Puntland. The al Qaeda-backed insurgents used social media site twitter to declare all oil and gas exploration and drilling licenses nullified.

While they do not hold the administrative control in the region needed to enforce their demand, the militants could try to target installations operated by Western oil companies.
The union comes as the insurgents are being weakened, relinquishing ground to African Union troops around the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and losing territory to Kenyan and Ethiopian forces in parts of southern and central Somalia.

Puntland security officials have previously said the Islamist militia camped out in the Golis hills outside the port city of Bosasso is led by Yasin Khalid Osman.

"I ... the leader of Golis ranges Islamists have signed an agreement with al Shabaab leader Sheikh Muktar Abu Zubeir. We are now al Shabaab," a voice identifying itself as Osman said in an audio recording on al Shabaab's website.

"I urge residents to take part in the jihad against the Christian invaders and the Somali infidels that work with them," he said, referring to the foreign troops inside Somalia.

Osman rarely makes statements and it was not immediately possible to verify his voice.

Al Shabaab's announcement comes a month after western companies began drilling an exploratory well in Puntland- the first to be sunk since the 1991 collapse of the Said Barre regime that left Somalia without a functioning government for more than 20 years.

Canadian-based Africa Oil Corp [TSX- AOI.V] along with Australian-based Red Emperor Resources [LSX: RMP] and Range Resources [ASX: RRS] are targetting what could be 300 million barrels worth of recoverable oil.

Somaliland moneychanger with stacks of Somaliland shillings in the capital city of Hargeisa- photo; Phoenix of Somalia

SOMALILAND- In the hopes of attracting foreign investment to the relatively stable breakaway region of Somalia, Somaliland has established a UK-linked development corporation to circumvent concerns over potential problems arising from the fact that it is not recognized as an independent state.

President Ahmed Mohamed Silanyo told Reuters that the purpose of the Somaliland Development Corporation was to "to attract companies and institutions which want to invest in our country."

"Since we are not a recognised country, insurance is always a difficult problem in Somaliland so if this can help with that, it would be useful."

Silanyo did not indicate what economic sectors he wished investors to target. But energy and mining minister Hussein Abdi Dualeh said in November the northern enclave had hydrocarbon potential with a geology similar to basins containing 9 billion barrels across the Gulf of Aden.

A number of big oil companies with permits to operate there left what is now Somaliland in the late 1980s and declared force majeure during Somalia's escalating civil conflict.

Several foreign banks have expressed interest in operating in Somaliland where they are keen to capitalise on its untapped market potential. Somaliland has no formal banking sector and its people rely heavily on remittances from diaspora communities in Europe, North America and the United Arab Emirates, as there are no ATMs or loan facilities.

Somaliland was briefly independent from Britian in 1960 before joining the rest of Somalia. However, with the 1991 collapse of the Barre regime, Somaliland once again declared independence. Despite establishing the rule of law as well as trading with Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and a number of Gulf States, circulating its own currency and aiding international navies in combatting piracy, Somaliland's independence remains unrecognized by most nations as well as the UN and a number of international agencies.

Currently, Somaliland's economy depends heavily on remittances from Somalis overseas, but the breakaway nation has been doing a robust business in exporting cattle and camels

Some speculate that if Somaliland gains internationally recognized independence from Somalia, it could trigger a number of similar secssionist movements throughout Africa.

MOGADISHU- The director of a Mogadishu radio station that was once shut down by al Shabaab was shot and killed by two unknown gunmen at his home this week, becoing the third journalist to be slain since December 2011.

Radio Somaliweyn is an independent radio station operating in northern Mogadishu.

The National Union of Somali Journalists has condemned the killings. Union Secretary General Mohamed Ibrahim said it is not clear why Mohamoud was targeted, but noted that in recent times he was involved in civil society activities.

“He was planning to bring the radio on air again. The reason is yet unclear, though he was very involved in civil society activism, such as youth in Banadir region in recent days. This is a really worrying trend for the journalists working in Mogadishu and the government has not done enough to investigate and bring suspects for prosecution,” said Ibrahim.

The killing came just a month after another journalist, Radio Shabelle Network Director Hassan Osman Abdi, was gunned down outside his house in Mogadishu. The Transitional Federal Government promised to investigate the murder and arrested two suspects.

In December, a government soldier killed journalist Abdisalan His at a checkpoint in the capital.

A number of media-rights groups say that due to the prolonged lack of any form of government, Somalia is the most dangerous country in Africa for journalists.

INDIA- Due to a steep decline in the number of pirate attacks off the western coast of India from Somali-based pirates, India plans on petitioning the International Maritime Organization to de-list their territorial waters from a list of high-risk nautical areas.

Citing the noticable dip in pirate attacks as well as increased patrolling by the Indian Navy off the west coast, India is hoping that the de-listing would lower insurance premiums on vessels operating through that area and possibly decrease demand for armed guards on some ships. The increased costs of both the insurance and armed protection means that the cost of shipping goods would be passed along to consumers worldwide.

Following aggressive expansion by the pirates further off the coast of Somalia and closer to Indian territorial waters, the Indian Navy stepped up patrols off the Western coast in 2011 resulting in the capture of a number of pirates and sinking a captured pirate 'mothership' which the pirates would use to launch smaller vessels to stage attacks on ships.

However, as recently as December 2011, Indian Navy officials warned that Somali pirates remained within striking distance of the southwestern archipelego of Lakshadweep.

UK- During an international conference on Somalia last week, Britain announced that it would pledge £20 million for a rapid reaction force to train police in areas retaken from al Shabaab.

Under the plans, Britain will contribute £20 million to a 'stability fund' for Somalia to help its new government secure the territory it has won from the al-Qaeda backed insurgency.

This will pay for a civilian force of “chino-clad warriors” who will be sent into vulnerable areas to help establish a police presence, health care facilities, schools and basic services before the militants can return.

The fund would target areas where either al-Shabaab had been driven out completely, or reduced as a fighting force. Its experts would be trained in forging local peace deals as well as overseeing government services in battle-ravaged regions. Andrew Mitchell, the International Development Secretary, said Britain hoped to attract further backing from around the world for the scheme. Somalia has had no functional government for two decades and has been described by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, as “the world’s most failed state”.

In addition to the 40-nation conference in London, the United Nations security council is expected to take up a resolution regarding increasing the number of peacekeepers in the Horn of Africa. Currently, the African Union is combatting al-Shabaab in Somalia with soldiers from Uganda, Burundi and Djibouti while Ethiopian and Kenyan troops operating seperately from each other and the AU force have opened up a second and third front against al Shabaab elsewhere in the country.