The federal government recently took over security at airports, promising to make the system safer. But Dan McKinnon, the 68-year-old president of charter service North American Airlines and former chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, says that's no reason for Americans to let down their guard. While security at airports has improved significantly in recent months, terrorism in the skies is still a possibility and everybody who flies should be prepared to respond to an attack. McKinnon, who has written a pocket-size guide to staying safe when flying, the Safe Air Travel Companion (McGraw-Hill, $12.95), tells USA TODAY's Gene Sloan how fliers can avoid becoming a hijacking victim.
A senior Taliban official reportedly said a new offensive against U.S.-led coalition troops would be opened in May, when 300 suicide bombers would be unleashed on American installations.
Fireproofing, sprinkler systems and the water supply for hoses were all disabled in the twin towers on Sept. 11 in the face of a blaze so intense that it drove temperatures as high as 2,000 degrees and generated heat equivalent to the energy output of a nuclear power plant, a federal report on how the towers fell has concluded.
Hamas, one of the militant groups at the vanguard of the Palestinian uprising, on Thursday rejected the Arab peace initiative to Israel and vowed to continue "all kinds of resistance."
Three million dollars in ransom funds have been sitting in banks on Basilan Island in the Philippines for over a week while officials of the Philippine Armed Forces, President Gloria Arroyo's Malacangang Palace, and Abu Sayaaf terrorist kidnappers haggle over how to split it up between them.
A Virgin Atlantic flight attendant was arrested for allegedly writing a bomb threat aboard a plane in January, forcing the London-to-Orlando flight to be diverted to Iceland.
A Delta Air Lines plane about to take off from Logan Airport was forced to halt Thursday after a passenger stood up and made a threat, authorities said.
via The Washington Post So... is this a full moon or something? All the crazies seem to be popping up at airplanes. Or maybe it's Orlando...
Pietro 12:31 PM
Wearing their best dresses and shirts, hats and polished shoes, about 250 people, many of them elderly, headed slowly into the seaside Park Hotel for the Passover Seder, the ritual meal at the start of the weeklong Jewish holiday.
With deadly timing, a Palestinian man carrying 40 pounds of explosives studded with metal scraps followed five minutes later.
The Bush administration is not running roughshod over civil liberties as it works to prevent another terrorist attack, the Justice Department's No. 2 official said Wednesday.
As the flags surrounding the Washington Monument snapped smartly in the wind Tuesday, the line of tourists waiting to ascend the capital's most visible symbol of democracy kept growing longer.
An Arabic language newspaper said today that it had received an e-mail claiming to be from Osama bin Laden that attacked a Saudi peace plan for the Middle East and urged the region's Muslims to revolt against their leaders.
A Bridgeview-based Muslim charity, whose assets have been frozen, had ties to the former personal secretary to Osama bin Laden and sold books by bin Laden's mentor, new government filings alleged Wednesday.
Continuing with its drive against terrorism, the US has imposed stringent sanctions on three West Asia radical groups, including the Palestinian militia group al- Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which Washington designated as foreign terrorist organisations.
Security is being stepped up at American diplomatic and business interests in Italy following warnings that they could become terrorist targets over Easter.
Two Americans and three others were killed in the attack in Islamabad earlier this month, which is suspected to have been carried out by Islamic extremists. In a series of sweeping raids overnight, Pakistani security officials engaged in heavy gun-fighting in a bid to capture the suspects.
The Justice Department told a court Thursday it will seek the death penalty against Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person to be charged in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against New York and Washington.
Pakistan's government says it is confident that fugitives Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar are not in the country, and it would not allow U.S. troops to look for them here.
Pakistani police released a sketch Wednesday of a clean shaven young man with curly hair they suspect lobbed grenades into an Islamabad church during a service killing five people, including two Americans.
The Energy Department cannot fully account for small amounts of potentially dangerous plutonium provided under a 1954 Atoms for Peace program to 33 countries including Iran, Pakistan and India, according to an inspector general report released yesterday.
An armed group with links to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network could be responsible for the recent string of murders in southern Thailand, the military said.
In a setback for the government, a superior court judge ruled on Tuesday information on people held in two New Jersey jails after the Sept. 11 attacks must be disclosed, including their names and the reasons why they were detained.
Of all the dramatic images to emerge in the hours and days following the September 11 attacks, one of the most haunting was a frame from a surveillance-camera video capturing the face of suspected hijacker Mohamed Atta as he passed through an airport metal detector in Portland, ME. Even more chilling to many security experts is the fact that, had the right technology been in place, an image like that might have helped avert the attacks.
via Technology Review Note: there is a small charge to read this article in its entirety OPINION: I'm a terrorist - color me purple by Bill Press
Phone wires are color-coded. So are smog alerts. And now, thanks to Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge, even terrorist alerts are color-coded.
Federal immigration officials have arrested and are seeking to deport a young Pakistani immigrant who they say plotted last spring to blow up power plants and other sites in South Florida, law enforcement officials said today.
Families of passengers and crew members aboard United Flight 93, the hijacked plane that crashed outside Shanksville, Pa., on Sept. 11, will hear nothing to resolve crucial questions about their loved ones' last minutes when they listen to the cockpit voice recorder next month, say officials who have heard the tape or read transcripts of it.
Two Norwegian observers from an international force in Hebron were shot and killed when Palestinians opened fire on their car in the West Bank on Tuesday, the Israeli military said.
Two men under federal investigation for possible ties to terrorist groups were denied entry to Israel in December after one was carrying a letter that the FBI believes indicated they planned to commit a suicide attack there, according to sworn court papers.
Suspected al Qaeda and Taliban fighters planned to kill international peacekeepers by setting off car bombs in Afghanistan's capital, authorities said yesterday.
In the mountains and gorges of eastern Afghanistan, U.S. aircraft are hunting for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters after local Afghan commanders reported sightings of al-Qaida's second in command.
A bipartisan U.S. congressional delegation called Tuesday on Pakistan to stop Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from taking sanctuary in that country. They also said America is committed to helping rebuild war-ravaged Afghanistan.
"The US military is warning the al-Qaida network remains capable of carrying out terrorist acts. They say they have scored significant victories against al-Qaida but that the global terrorist organization is far from being wiped out.
Hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters who sought refuge in Pakistan across the border from this eastern Afghan town are holding weekly meetings in mosques to try to pump recruits into a new holy war against U.S. forces in Afghanistan, according to two Afghan commanders.
Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network remains a major threat more than six months after the security crackdown triggered by the Sept. 11 attacks, the director of Canada's intelligence agency warned yesterday.
Federal investigators are examining whether terrorist operations by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and other Islamic groups were indirectly financed by at least two wealthy, well-connected Saudis through a maze of foundations, companies and financial institutions.
The U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo reopened after shutting down last week amid fears that Al Qaeda terrorists were planning an attack on Americans in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
As the government waged a "zero tolerance" policy against aviation security lapses after the Sept. 11 attacks, investigators were able to get knives, guns and fake bombs past airport baggage- and passenger-screening checkpoints, a government source said Monday.
Clearer guidelines must be introduced to establish which religious organisations will be permitted to take up the running of state-funded faith schools, a teachers' union says.
Military tribunals proposed by President Bush, to try people accused of terrorist acts against the United States, have been in use since the American Revolution and are supported by Supreme Court case law, lawyers for a grassroots legal foundation said.
A car carrying explosives blew up Tuesday during a security check near Jerusalem's largest mall in what police said was a thwarted attack by Palestinian militants. Two men in the car were killed.
Pentagon officials confirmed Monday that U.S. troops found a laboratory near the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar that could have been used in the production of anthrax.
Hundreds of health officials descended on Atlanta this week for an annual conference on emerging infectious diseases and were warned that terrorists might try to spread deadly germs through the food supply.
Security at the nation's civilian nuclear power plants is so poor that terrorists could already be secretly working at reactors, a congressman alleges in a new report on homeland security.
