NPR (USA) 14/01/2010

The Obama administration's plan to protect air travelers from terrorists is counting on a technology that is powerful but imperfect, experts say.

The plan will place hundreds of full-body scanners in airports around the country. These scanners use a technology called backscatter X-ray to create images that can reveal weapons or explosives hidden beneath a person’s clothing.

But they don't detect everything, and they won't be in every airport.

President Obama announced the wide deployment of these scanners two weeks after a Nigerian man allegedly tried to blow up an airplane using plastic explosives concealed in his underwear on Christmas Day.

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Associated Press 14/01/2010

WASHINGTON - Bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded his Christmas Day flight in Amsterdam to frigid Detroit with no coat - perhaps the final warning sign that went unnoticed leading up to what could have been a terrorist attack.

Congress got its first behind-the-scenes look yesterday at the attempted airline bombing, and officials said the security failures were even worse than President Obama outlined last week. It remains unclear, however, how those failures will be fixed.

“He was flying into Detroit without a coat. That’s interesting if you’ve ever been in Detroit in December,’’ Representative Bill Pascrell, Democrat of New Jersey and a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said after a briefing by John Brennan, presidential counterterrorism adviser.

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The Times (UK) 12/01/2010

The order banning the Islamist group which planned to march through Wootton Bassett carrying empty coffins is to be extended, the Home Secretary announced today.

As of Thursday it will be a criminal offence to be a member of Islam4UK, punishable by up to ten years in prison.

Alan Johnson said that the group – which is already banned under two of its other aliases – had tried to escape proscription by changing its name, but that the updated banning order would extend to the group's most recent titles.

“I have today laid an order which will proscribe al-Muhajiroun, Islam4UK, and a number of the other names the organisation goes by," Mr Johnson said.

“It is already proscribed under two other names – al-Ghurabaa and The Saved Sect.

“Proscription is a tough but necessary power to tackle terrorism and is not a course we take lightly. We are clear that an organisation should not be able to circumvent proscription by simply changing its name.”

Al-Muhajiroun was founded in the 1980s by the radical cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, now exiled from Britain, and by its current leader, Anjem Choudary. The tiny group has a history of threatening to carry out controversial demonstrations, but calling them off before they take place, content with the publicity it has gained.

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Associated Press 12/01/2010

SAN'A, Yemen - Yemen's most influential Islamic cleric, considered an al-Qaida-linked terrorist by the United States, warned Monday that the U.S.-backed fight against the terror group could lead to "foreign occupation" of the country.

Sheik Abdul-Majid al-Zindani's comments illustrate the pressure Yemen's government is under to limit the U.S. role here even as Washington ramps up counterterrorism aid and training to help combat al-Qaida's offshoot in the country.

Al-Zindani is emblematic of how - unlike in Afghanistan and Iraq, whose governments are bitter enemies of al-Qaida - Yemen's beleaguered regime has built alliances with Islamic extremists to hold onto power. Some have al-Qaida connections, complicating the fight.

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