Terrorism Watch

The CIA is planning a radical overhaul, ramping up its capability to deal with cyber threats while boosting integration between departments. Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan outlined the proposed changes to the agency in a message to staff on Friday described as a 'Blueprint for the Future' covering four key areas. Brennan said the US espionage agency would set up a new 'Directorate of Digital Innovation' to reflect the rapidly evolving cyber landscape. 'We must place our activities and operations in the digital domain at the very centre of all our mission endeavours,' Brennan wrote. 'To that end, we will establish a senior position to oversee the acceleration of digital and cyber integration across all of our mission areas.' The changes reflect the increasing emphasis on cybersecurity by the United States after a series of high-profile digital breaches in recent years, such as the Sony Pictures hack blamed on North Korea. D

CINCINNATI – A judge says a Cincinnati TV station can broadcast an interview with an Ohio man accused of plotting to attack the U.S. Capitol. Christopher Lee Cornell is charged with attempted murder of U.S. officials and other counts. WXIX-TV interviewed him by telephone Thursday from the Kentucky jail where he awaits trial in Cincinnati. Cornell's attorney says the interview could violate his defendant's right to a fair trial. The attorney argued an earlier court order prohibits any outside contact with Cornell without his attorney's approval. But a federal judge said Friday that she wouldn't prevent the broadcast. The station's attorney said prohibiting the interview's release would violate the media's right to free speech without prior restraint. Source:  http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/03/06/judge-interview-with-ohio-man-accused-in-terror-plot-can-be-broadcast-by-tv/

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Bamako: Three  Europeans were shot  dead at a nightclub in Mali`s capital early Saturday, in a suspected terror attack that came with the government at a key stage of peace talks with militants in the restive north. At least one gunman entered the club in an area of Bamako popular with expatriates shortly after midnight and opened fire, according to police and an AFP correspondent on the scene in the aftermath. "This is a terrorist attack, although we`re waiting for clarification. Provisionally, there are four dead -- one French national, a Belgian and two Malians," a policeman told AFP, adding that the dead included a police officer who had been passing the restaurant. A source at the Gabriel Toure hospital in Bamako said a third European, whose nationality was not immediately clear, had died on arrival, while eight people were wounded. Firefighters carried the body of the French national from La Terrasse, a restaurant and nightclub in Bamako`s lively Hippodrome dis

MANILA - Philippine soldiers killed 14 Muslim guerrillas in an overnight battle to capture a rebel position in the south, an army spokesman said on Saturday, as the number of displaced from the military offensive rose to 80,000. The military has mounted air and ground assault on the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), a small but violent splinter group of the largest Muslim guerrilla force in Mindanao, after 44 police commandos were killed in January. The predominantly Christian Philippines has been battling Muslim rebels in the south of the archipelago for decades and while negotiations with the biggest group have raised hopes for peace, fighting with smaller factions erupts regularly. Local officials have appealed for a stop to the fighting, but the army has asked for three more days to achieve its goal of crippling the rebel capabilities to spoil the government's peace efforts in Mindanao. Army spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Harold Cabunoc said 13 soldiers were

Egypt-based al-Azhar institution, the Sunni Islam's leading authority, condemned on Friday  the bulldozing  of Iraq’s ancient city of Nimrud by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In a statement Al-Azhar said: “what the Daesh terrorist's destruction and demolition of monuments in areas under its influence in Iraq, Syria and Libya …by claiming they are idols is a major crime against the whole world.” “Al-Azhar stresses that the destruction of cultural heritage is forbidden in Islam and rejected in total,” the statement said. "What Daesh is doing is a war crime that history would never forget," it added, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS. Al-Azhar also urged "everyone concerned in the countries where Daesh and other extremist groups exist, to cooperate and eradicate them and save our Arabic and Islamic nations from their evils." ISIS began bulldozing the ruins of Nimrud on Thursday, in what the U.N. termed a "war crime." Last month

BEIJING:   The government of the Chinese border province of Yunnan has not played host to an ethnic Chinese Myanmar rebel leader and does not support him in fighting Myanmar's government, the province's top official said today. Myanmar has accused Chinese mercenaries of fighting with the rebels, and has urged China to cooperate to prevent "terrorist attacks" being launched from Chinese territory. A rebel force known as the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) emerged from the remnants of the Communist Party of Burma, a powerful Chinese-backed guerrilla force that battled the Myanmar government before splintering in 1989. Led by ethnic Chinese commander Peng Jiasheng, the MNDAA struck a truce with the government which lasted until 2009, when government troops took over their Kokang region in a conflict that pushed tens of thousands of refugees into Yunnan. Peng is believed to have then fled into exile in China, and analysts think his recent return to Kok

A suicide bomber in a tricycle taxi blew himself up outside a busy Saturday fish market and killed at least 10 people in Maiduguri, the biggest city in northeastern  Nigeria , according to witnesses and a security officer. "I saw many dead bodies lying on the ground, many dead, and several others badly injured," said fish seller Idi Idrisa. People are still counting the dead but a security officer said the explosion at Baga fish market was massive. He said he counted at least 10 corpses. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to reporters. No one claimed responsibility but the attack bears all the hallmarks of the  Boko Haram  Islamic extremist group. It has increased suicide bombings and village attacks recently as forces from Nigeria and Chad have driven the insurgents from a score of towns along Nigeria's border with Cameroon . Boko Haram also has attacked villages in Cameroon and Niger as Nigeria's neighbors are forming

BEIJING:   "Under the Dome," a searing documentary about China's catastrophic air pollution, had hundreds of millions of views on Chinese websites within days of its release one week ago. The country's new environment minister compared it to "Silent Spring," the landmark 1962 book that energized the environmental movement in the United States. Domestic and foreign journalists clamored to interview the filmmaker, a famous former television reporter, though she remained silent. Then on Friday afternoon, the momentum over the video came to an abrupt halt, as major Chinese video websites deleted it under orders from the Communist Party's central propaganda department. The startling phenomenon of the video, the national debate it set off and the official attempts to quash it reflect the deep political sensitivities in the struggle within the Chinese bureaucracy to reverse China's environmental degradation, among the worst in the world. The drama over the

WASHINGTON:   Wisconsin police fatally shot an apparently unarmed African-American teenager on Friday, prompting dozens of people to protest at the site of the killing, according to police and videos published on social media. Madison Police Chief Mike Koval told reporters that an officer responded to a disturbance at around 6:30 pm local time and later forced his way into an apartment that the 19-year-old, who was also suspected of a recent battery, had gone into. Koval said that a struggle between the suspect and the officer ensued and the teen was fatally shot, according to a recording of the news conference published by broadcaster WKOW. "The initial finding at the scene did not reflect a gun or anything of that nature that would have been used by the subject," Koval said. The shooting comes at a time of heightened scrutiny of police violence against minorities across the country. Protests have been held in Los Angeles and Washington state in recent days over police kil

HONG KONG:   China said Britain had "no right to interfere" in Hong Kong on Friday following a report by British MPs that warned of an erosion of freedoms in the city. Britain's influential Foreign Affairs Committee report released late on Thursday said the country's former colony could face a "crisis of governance" unless tensions over how it is ruled are resolved. The committee's chairman Richard Ottaway said the "real concern is that a high degree of autonomy is being eroded," particularly over political reforms and press freedoms. However Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that Hong Kong's return to China under a "one country, two systems" deal had been "a great success". "Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China. Its affairs are China's domestic affairs. The UK has no right to interfere," she said at a briefing Friday. Under the Joint Declaration signed in 1984 which

LOKOJA, NIGERIA:   An American woman kidnapped by masked gunmen in central Nigeria last month was released on Friday and handed over to US government officials, police told AFP. Phyllis Sortor, a missionary with the Free Methodist Church, was seized on February 23 in the village of Emiworo in Kogi state. "She has been rescued and given to the American authorities," Kogi state police spokesman Collins Sola Adebayo said, adding that no ransom was paid "as far as police are concerned." An AFP journalist at the handover in the state capital Lokoja said the 71-year-old Sortor appeared unharmed with no visible signs of abuse. Kogi's police chief Adeyemi Ogunjemilusi said she was dropped by her captors in the bushlands outside the village of Eru and "raised an alarm which attracted the villagers." Police deployed to the area and brought Sortor to Lokoja. Her church confirmed the release but declined to provide details on the circumstances. "As a matter

BAMAKO:   A gun attack on a restaurant in the capital of Mali has killed four people including two Malians, a citizen of France and a citizen of Belgium, a senior intelligence official told Reuters today. Two people have been arrested over the attack at the popular La Terrasse restaurant. The motive is not known, the source said. "The zone where the shooting took place is under the control of the security forces. Two Europeans and two Malians have been killed. The security forces are conducting an operation to ensure there are no other surprises," the source said. Mali's desert north sees regular political violence but the capital Bamako is largely peaceful. French forces wrested control of the north from separatist rebels and militants linked to Al Qaeda two years ago but the insurgents continue to mount attacks. Mali's government signed a preliminary peace proposal on Sunday meant to end fighting with northern separatists, but the Tuareg-led rebels demanded more t

NEW YORK:   Syria's envoy to the United Nations says it's time for the United States and other Western powers to accept that President Bashar al-Assad is here to stay, and to abandon what he suggested was a failed strategy of trying to split the Middle East into sectarian enclaves. Speaking to Reuters on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Syrian war, Assad's long-serving UN ambassador Bashar Ja'afari said his president was ready to work with the United States and others to combat terrorism in the Middle East. "We don't want any vacuum in the country that would create chaos such as happened in Libya and Iraq and ... Afghanistan," he said. "President Assad can deliver because he is a strong president. He rules over a strong institution, which is the Syrian army. He has resisted pressure for four years." "He is the man who can deliver any solution," he added. Britain and France have rejected calls to restore ties with the Assad gov