Two deadly explosions ripped through a crowd at the Boston Marathon on Monday, killing at least three people and injuring about 140, once again raising the specter of terrorism on American soil.
At about 2:50 p.m., some three hours after the winners had crossed the finish line but while thousands more runners still were on the streets, two bombs exploded 50 to 100 yards apart near the course's end in the city's crowded Back Bay section, Boston Police said.
Read more: Wall Street Journal
Syrian opposition activists say they are worried that Islamist terrorists are hijacking the Syrian revolution after Jordanian authorities thwarted a plot to attack targets such as the U.S. Embassy using weapons reportedly designated for Syrian rebels.
"Al-Qaeda is hijacking the revolution and diverting it from its original purpose, which was toppling the regime" of President Bashar Assad, said Abu Chin Orwa'a in Idlib province. Orwa'a is a member of the National Unity Battalion, a group fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which says it is resisting involvement by extremist foreign fighters.
"They are manipulating it by hitting the religious nerves of the people," Orwa'a said.
Read more: USA Today
Minutes after a deadly bomb ripped through a calm and urbane neighborhood in the heart of Beirut, the city's silent majority shuddered.
The car bomb rocked the main Christian area of Lebanon's capital, a populous stretch replete with shops, churches and office buildings. The massive blast killed eight people and wounded more than 90 others, leaving a huge crater of rubble near Sassine Square in East Beirut's Ashrafiyeh district.
While it's still too early to determine who was behind the attack, it unearthed fears that Lebanon's bad old days are back again.
The neighborhood traditionally has not endured this kind of violence, residents say.
Read more: CNN
The CIA is urging the White House to approve a significant expansion of the agency’s fleet of armed drones, a move that would extend the spy service’s decade-long transformation into a paramilitary force, U.S. officials said. The proposal by CIA Director David H. Petraeus would bolster the agency’s ability to sustain its campaigns of lethal strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and enable it, if directed, to shift aircraft to emerging al-Qaeda threats in North Africa or other trouble spots, officials said.
Read more: Washington Post
Many in the strategic community across the Western hemisphere continue to believe, despite a rising mountain of evidence, that the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which orchestrated and carried out the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, is a local, at worst a regional, terrorist group and is not likely to harm the Western countries in general. The recent arrest of two Chechen terrorists and their Turkish facilitator from Gibraltar in Spain should give a shake down.
The two Chechens were former commandoes in the Russian Army and were planning a major terrorist attack in Spain or any other European country when they were arrested. The Spanish police believe that the terrorists were planning to target British citizens living in Gibraltar to coincide with the London Olympics held in the second week of August. The terrorists also told the investigators about their plans to bomb the US-Spanish Naval Base at Rota.
Read more: Russia & India Report
Colombia's second-biggest guerrilla group says it is willing to hold unconditional peace talks to end five decades of war, but refuses to end its kidnapping, bomb attacks and extortion of foreign oil and mining companies before negotiations start.
Nicolas Rodriguez, leader of the National Liberation Army, known as the ELN, told Reuters in a rare interview that he is open to negotiate an end to the bloodshed with President Juan Manuel Santos' conservative government.
"We are open; it's exactly our proposal, to seek room for open dialogue without conditions and start to discuss the nation's biggest problems," Rodriguez said in a video filmed at a hidden jungle camp in response to questions from Reuters.
Rodriguez' comments come as rumors swirl of behind-the-scenes peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's biggest rebel group, and pressure builds for Santos to seek an end to the war.
Read more: Reuters
Britain has seen a credible terrorist attack plot about once a year since the Sept.11 attacks — a worrying pattern as security officials brace for an array of threats ahead of next month’s summer Olympics, the head of the country’s domestic spy agency says. Although Britain’s threat level is a notch below what it has been for much of the past decade, it is still at substantial. The level means an attack is a strong possibility, “Our assessment is that Britain has experienced a credible terrorist attack plot about once a year since 9/11,” MI5’s Director General Jonathan Evans said in a rare public speech Monday to the Lord Mayor’s annual defense and security lecture in London. “The (Olympic) games present an attractive target for our enemies and they will be at the center of the world’s attention in a month or so,” he said. “But the games are not an easy target, and the fact that we have disrupted multiple terrorist plots here and abroad in recent years demonstrates that the UK as a whole is not an easy target for terrorism.”
Not so long ago, 75 percent of the terror threats prioritized by MI5 had links to Afghanistan or Pakistan. But Britain’s efforts, along with those of its international partners, has brought that percentage down to below 50 percent, Evans said. MI5 has grown since the 2001 terror attacks in the United States, going from 1,800 to 3,800 staff — some of whom joined after Britain’s own homegrown suicide bombings that killed 52 people in 2005. Since then, several international terror plots have been hatched in the United Kingdom, including the 2006 trans-Atlantic airliner plot to down several planes using liquid explosives. A handful of terror trials are also underway.
Read more: Washington Post
Islamist Mohammed Morsi was declared the winner Sunday in Egypt's first free presidential election in history, closing the tumultuous first phase of a democratic transition and opening a new struggle with the still-dominant military rulers who recently stripped the presidency of most of its powers. Many are looking now to see whether Morsi will try to take on the military and wrestle back the powers they took from his office just one week ago. Thousands vowed to remain in Tahrir to demand that the ruling generals reverse their decision.
In his first televised speech, the 60-year old U.S.-trained engineer called on Egyptians to unite and tried to reassure minority Christians, who mostly backed Morsi's rival Ahmed Shafiq because they feared Islamic rule. The White House congratulated Morsi and urged him to advance national unity as he forms a new government. Pro-democracy leader Mohammed ElBaradei urged unity after the results were announced.
Read more: Fox News
There is no "specific" terror threat to the London 2012 Olympics, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has said. He said an elaborate military exercise carried out in London last week was to prepare for any threats that might arise in a dangerous world. And he told the BBC's Andrew Marr show he now wanted the military to "fade into the background".
The exercise included tests of air defence missile systems at six sites across London, using dummy armaments. Typhoon jets, based at RAF Northolt in west London, also took to the skies over south-east England with Lynx, Sea King and Puma helicopters. Exercise Olympic Guardian, which ran until 10 May, also saw HMS Ocean sail to Greenwich in the capital. Under the Air Security Plan, 30 miles (48km) of airspace surrounding the Olympic Park would become a restricted flying zone. On the ground, the RAF will provide mobile ground radar systems, while the Army deploys air observers and high-velocity missiles.
Read more: BBC
Detailed leaks of operational information about the foiled underwear bomb plot are causing growing anger in the US intelligence community, with former agents blaming the Obama administration for undermining national security and compromising the British services, MI6 and MI5. The Guardian has learned from Saudi sources that the agent was not a Saudi national as was widely reported, but a Yemeni. He was born in Saudi Arabia, in the port city of Jeddah, and then studied and worked in the UK, where he acquired a British passport.
Mike Scheur, the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, said the leaking about the nuts and bolts of British involvement was despicable and would make a repeat of the operation difficult. The name of the British passport-holder has not yet been released but may come out through al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. He is reported to have spent time at at language school in Sana'a, the Yemeni capital, and been recruited by al-Qaida as a suicide bomber.
Read more: The Guardian
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