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"CHICAGO (AP) - A would-be terrorist tries to board a plane, bent on mass murder. As he walks through a security checkpoint, fidgeting and glancing around, a network of high-tech machines analyzes his body language and reads his mind. Screeners pull him aside. Tragedy is averted. As far-fetched as that sounds, systems that aim to get inside an evildoer's head are among the proposals floated by security experts thinking beyond the X-ray machines and metal detectors used on millions of passengers and bags each year. On Thursday, in the wake of the Christmas Day bombing attempt over Detroit, President Barack Obama called on Homeland Security and the Energy Department to develop better screening technology, warning: "In the never-ending race to protect our country, we have to stay one step ahead of a nimble adversary." The ideas that have been offered by security experts for staying one step ahead include highly sophisticated sensors, more intensive interrogations of travelers by screeners trained in human behavior, and a lifting of the U.S. prohibitions against profiling. Some of the more unusual ideas are already being tested. Some aren't being given any serious consideration. Many raise troubling questions about civil liberties. All are costly. "Regulators need to accept that the current approach is outdated," said Philip Baum, editor of the London-based magazine Aviation Security International. "It may have responded to the threats of the 1960s, but it doesn't respond to the threats of the 21st century." Here's a look at some of the ideas that could shape the future of airline security:"

"The national identity card is linked to people's national insurance number, the government hasconfirmed. Home secretary Alan Johnson said NI numbers are one of several data items that are part of the national ID card database but not the passport database. Johnson was responding to a written question from shadow home secretary Chris Grayling. More than 2,400 had applied voluntarily for a card, he said. Johnson said the information in the UK passport database is "very similar" to that held on the National Identity Register. In addition to NI numbers the register also held fingerprint biometrics, which will be required for passport issue "in due course", he said. Johnson said the NI numbers help identity verification checks for identity cards, and in time, passports. The government admitted in 2007 that it had lost nine million NI numbers, some of which were suspected of being used fraudulently."

"On Christmas Day, a Nigerian-born terrorist named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound passenger airplane. Only the bravery of a fellow passenger prevented the catastrophe. President Obama called the terror attempt a "systemic failure" on the part of American national security agencies. In particular, he blamed the CIA for the foul-up. There is no doubt that the CIA should have done something more to prevent this attack. But, then again, President Obama has been keeping them busy-with global warming. Seriously. According to the New York Times on Jan. 5, just a few days after Obama excoriated the CIA publicly, "The nation's top scientists and spies are collaborating on an effort to use the federal government's intelligence assets-including spy satellites and other classified sensors-to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change." This project, the Times reported, "has the strong backing of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the last year, as part of the effort, the collaborators have scrutinized images of Arctic sea ice from reconnaissance satellites in an effort to distinguish things like summer melts from climate trends …" While missing a potentially catastrophic terror attack is problematic, it's good to know that we've got the inside dossier on the mating habits of polar bears. This isn't a shock coming from the "watermelon" Obama White House-green on the outside, red on the inside. The simple truth is that the Obama administration believes that the solution to global warming is the same as the solution to terrorism: Marxist-style global redistributionism."

"LOS ANGELES - The second in a series of powerful storms roared into Southern California on Tuesday, bringing heavy rains and winds that smashed windows, submerged cars and flipped an SUV along a stretch of coastline. Forecasters said the thunderstorm was likely part of a tornado that surged ashore with fierce, rotating winds in southern Los Angeles County beach towns and areas of Orange and San Diego counties. Kimmara Acosta, 51, a saleswoman at Castle Tile in Costa Mesa, was sitting at her desk in a showroom when she saw palm trees outside blowing horizontally. "The wind kind of whipped through the parking lot and the window blew in," she said, still breathless a half-hour later. "It was like an explosion. My mind said 'earthquake!' and I ducked under the desk." The wind threw shards of glass across the room, but tile displays and a desk protected Acosta. No one was hurt. Niki Mojica, 31, a waitress at Woody's Diner in Seal Beach said, "It was crazy because the wind was coming down. The sky turned dark gray and then a huge gust of wind just blew open our front door.""

"It has been a bleak winter for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The credibility of the UN body came under attack days before the opening of the Copenhagen climate summit in December, when leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia appeared to show manipulation of temperature data used by the panel. Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, was forced to spend much of his time at the conference defending the integrity of the science contained in the panel's reports. Now it has been forced to apologise for including a highly alarmist claim in its most recent report that Himalayan glaciers were very likely to vanish by 2035. Most glaciologists believe the melting would take hundreds of years and some doubt that it will ever happen, pointing to evidence of glaciers advancing in the neighbouring Karakoram mountain range. The IPCC reports underpin every country's decisions about climate change. If the panel cannot be trusted, it becomes much more difficult to justify the global effort to cut greenhouse gases. That is why it is vital to place the allegations against the IPCC in context. While it is alarming that none of the 2,500 scientists who contributed to its 2007 report spotted the error, this is explained partly by it appearing in a single sentence on page 493. Climate sceptics around the world have spent two years scrutinising every claim made by the panel. So far they have identified one serious error; it seems unlikely that they will find many more. The IPCC should now re-check all the sources of statements in its report, but this process will not alter its conclusion that man-made emissions are very likely to be the main cause of global warming. "

"U.S. says Yemen group one of many al Qaeda branches Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON Wed Jan 20, 2010 9:02pm EST Related News * Yemen strikes at al Qaeda, Britain stops flights Wed, Jan 20 2010 * Yemen says strikes house of al Qaeda militant Wed, Jan 20 2010 * U.S. citizens in Yemen may pose threat, report says Tue, Jan 19 2010 * Qaeda denies fighters killed, Yemen vows more strikes Mon, Jan 18 2010 * Yemen in war with al Qaeda, urges citizens to help Thu, Jan 14 2010 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Yemen has made progress in its U.S.-backed fight against al Qaeda, but the extremist group continues to spread elsewhere and has some two dozen affiliates across a swathe of the globe, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. World At congressional hearings, U.S. officials painted a picture of an al Qaeda that has expanded from Afghanistan to Iraq, the Arabian peninsula, Africa and southeast Asia. "Al Qaeda is now difficult to define," Admiral Eric Olson commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, told a House of Representatives Armed Services subcommittee. "More than two dozen associated ... groups have established themselves in Iraq, the Arabian peninsula, the Horn of Africa, the trans-Saharan region, the Maghreb of north Africa, west Africa and southeast Asia, and there are several different groups now operating within and from Afghanistan and Pakistan," Olson said. Olson said al Qaeda's forces have been regenerated in part by extremists who had been detained, were released and then joined militant groups. He said officials estimate about one fifth of former detainees are "somehow re-engaging in activity ... against our interests." Critics of Obama's call to close the prison at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have cited the movement of former detainees to militant groups as reason to keep the facility."

"The raids carried out by at least 10 gunmen, including suicide bombers, were well coordinated and bold even for Afghanistan and paralyzed the capital for several hours. However, while the militants spread out across a strategic area near government ministries and a luxury hotel, they failed to seize any of their declared targets and instead holed up in a poorly defended shopping center. "They just want to show their power, it was an 'attack show' from the Taliban, not a military-based action. I think there was not a military goal," said Wahid Mudjah, a Kabul-based writer and political analyst. "They just wanted a show for the international community." The attacks were perfectly timed. They came as Afghan President Hamid Karzai was swearing in cabinet members inside the presidential palace only hundreds of meters away, and after days of media chatter about a new "reintegration" drive to lure insurgents away from the battlefield. They were also dramatic, with an exploding ambulance adding to compelling images of a city under siege. Gunfire and loud explosions shook Kabul as black smoke billowed from the shopping center where fighters battled security forces for hours."

"President Obama came to a Fairfax County elementary school Tuesday morning to announce that he will seek a $1.35 billion expansion of his signature Race to the Top initiative for improving public education, including provisions that will allow individual school systems to compete for the coveted federal grants. "We're going to raise the bar for all our students and take bigger steps toward closing the achievement gap," Obama said, speaking to a group of sixth graders at Graham Road Elementary, a Falls Church school where a heavy concentration of students from immigrant and low-income families achieves high standardized test scores. Race to the Top was launched last year to raise student performance by offering $4.35 billion to states and the District in exchange for adopting elements of the president's reform program. Those include more challenging academic standards; better testing to measure what students know; rigorous evaluation systems for teachers and principals; plans for turning around failing schools; and cutting edge data systems to track progress. "

Reform Program?

"A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it. Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035. In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report. It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. Related Internet Links * Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on Himalayan glaciers * How New Scientist reported the row Related Links * Global warming blamed for rise in malaria * Experts clash over sea-rise 'apocalypse' Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change. "

"PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday proposed setting up a group of 28 countries to guide global negotiations on climate change and avoid a repetition of last year's chaotic talks in Copenhagen. In a New Year address to the diplomatic community, Sarkozy said United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December had failed because of the huge number of countries involved in preparing the accord. "The main lesson from Copenhagen is that you can't negotiate in a round of 192," Sarkozy said, arguing that national leaders had arrived in the Danish capital to sign the accord only to find an illegible text full of disputed clauses. He proposed forming a "balanced, representative" group of 28 countries that would provide ideas and prepare for the next round of negotiations in Cancun. He did not name any of the proposed participants. "The wisest option would be to pursue a twin strategy -- talks among the 192, as that involves the whole international community, and among ministers and sherpas from the Group of 28," he said. Sarkozy said he wanted the Group of 28 to hold monthly meetings, starting in March, in New York or Bonn. Last month's Copenhagen talks ended with a bare-minimum agreement when delegates "noted" a deal struck by the United States, China and other emerging powers that fell short of the conference's original goals. Mexico will host the next talks in Cancun in November/December, building on the Copenhagen deal which seeks to limit the rise in temperature to 2 Celsius above the average recorded in pre-industrial times. The Copenhagen accord did not spell out how to achieve that goal."

"PORTLAND, Ore.-Oregon voters approved two special tax measures Tuesday designed to close a $733 million state budget gap. With 80% of the expected vote tallied, the Associated Press reported "yes" voters for Measures 66 and 67 garnered about 54% of Oregon's mail-in ballots. Elections here are by mailed ballot only. Tuesday was the last day ballots could be cast. Measure 66 increases Oregon's personal-income-tax rate by two percentage points for households earning over $250,000 a year. Measure 67 calls for an increase in the state's minimum corporate income tax, currently $10 a year, and imposes a tax on gross revenues for corporations that do not report a profit. The Oregon Legislature approved both tax increases last year, however opponents of the measures-chiefly business groups-sponsored a referendum campaign to put them to a statewide vote. Voters in this heavily Democratic state supported the legislators. "Passage of these measures means we keep core services of education, health care and public safety that Oregon families, businesses, and communities count on," said Oregon House Speaker Dave Hunt, a Democrat who represents Clackamas County. Defeat, he said, would have forced the state to cut nearly a billion dollars more from such services. The twin ballot measures also served as a gauge of anti-business populism and highlighted a nationwide debate over whether to fix state budgets by targeting the affluent. But they also fueled resentment of "tax and spend" legislators, as well as public-employee unions whose members enjoy job security at a time when thousands here have lost jobs. "

"The world's largest Internet search company and the world's most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity. Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google -- and its users -- from future attack. Google and the NSA declined to comment on the partnership. But sources with knowledge of the arrangement, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google's policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans' online communications. The sources said the deal does not mean the NSA will be viewing users' searches or e-mail accounts or that Google will be sharing proprietary data. The partnership strikes at the core of one of the most sensitive issues for the government and private industry in the evolving world of cybersecurity: how to balance privacy and national security interests. On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair called the Google attacks, which the company acknowledged in January, a "wake-up call." Cyberspace cannot be protected, he said, without a "collaborative effort that incorporates both the U.S. private sector and our international partners." But achieving collaboration is not easy, in part because private companies do not trust the government to keep their secrets and in part because of concerns that collaboration can lead to continuous government monitoring of private communications. Privacy advocates, concerned about a repeat of the NSA's warrantless interception of Americans' phone calls and e-mails after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, say information-sharing must be limited and closely overseen.

"LONDON (Reuters) - China and India sharply raised defence spending in 2009 despite the economic crisis but most European NATO members face a squeeze on defence budgets as they rein in gaping deficits, a report said on Wednesday. The impact of the global financial crisis on defence and security spending varied across regions and countries, the International Institute for Strategic Studies thinktank said in its annual report "The Military Balance". U.S. defence spending almost doubled under former President George W. Bush but President Barack Obama had signalled that the need to tackle a big budget deficit would require "a dramatic reprioritisation within defence spending," it said. Obama asked Congress this week to approve a record $708 billion in defence spending for fiscal 2011 -- including a 3.4 percent increase in the Pentagon's base budget -- but said he would continue his drive to eliminate wasteful programmes. A sharp recession had led the Russian government effectively to abandon a comprehensive military re-equipment plan due to run from 2007-15 and to replace it with a new 10-year plan starting in 2011, the report said. "In contrast to developments in advanced economies, both India and China have maintained their recent trend of double-digit increases in defence spending," it said. India boosted defence spending by 21 percent in 2009 after the 2008 Mumbai attacks killed 166 people, it said."

"BEIJING (Reuters) - "Ride on a tiger and it's hard to climb down," goes a Chinese saying that is proving apt for Beijing's quarrels with Washington this year, when swollen ambitions at home are driving China on a harder tack abroad. China | COP15 China's outrage over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and President Barack Obama's planned meeting with the Dalai Lama has shown that, in the wake of the global financial crisis, Beijing is growing pushier in public. In past decades, a poorer, more cautious China greeted U.S. weapons sales to the disputed island with angry words and little else. Not now, as China enters the Year of the Tiger in its traditional lunar calendar cycle of talismanic animals. The Obama administration last week announced plans to ship $6.4 billion of missiles, helicopters and weapons control systems to the self-ruled island Beijing calls its own. China threatened to downgrade cooperation with Washington and for the first time sanction companies involved in such sales. Beijing this week also condemned Obama's plan to meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader reviled by China. China's loud ire adds to signs the country is becoming surer about throwing around its political weight, growing along with an economy soon likely to whir past Japan's as the world's second biggest, though it will still trail far behind the United States. Behind this assertiveness are domestic pressures likely to make it harder work for China's leaders to cool disputes with Washington and other Western capitals. "There is this paradox of increasing confidence externally and lack of confidence domestically," said Susan Shirk, a professor specializing in Chinese foreign policy at the University of California, San Diego. "There's also what I consider a serious misperception of the country's economic strength and how that translates in power.""

"A military strike on Iran could have the unintended consequence of stirring nationalist sentiment to the benefit of Tehran's hard-line government, U.S. General David Petraeus told Reuters. Iran's June election gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term but sparked the worst internal crisis in the Islamic Republic's history, putting internal pressure on a government already facing the threat of more sanctions over its nuclear program. "It's possible (a strike) could be used to play to nationalist tendencies," Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command region, which includes Iran, said in an interview this week. "There is certainly a history, in other countries, of fairly autocratic regimes almost creating incidents that inflame nationalist sentiment. So that could be among the many different, second, third, or even fourth order effects (of a strike)." Tensions over Iran's nuclear program have set off speculation that Israel could make good on veiled threats to hit its arch-foe pre-emptively. But Israel's envoy to Washington said in December the U.S.-Israeli dialogue on Iran has not reached the point of discussing the military option. U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have warned that any strike on Iran would not stop the Islamic Republic from pursuing nuclear weapons. Instead, it would only delay Tehran, an opinion Petraeus said he shared. Dennis Blair, the U.S. director of national intelligence, told Congress on Tuesday that Iran was keeping open the option of developing nuclear weapons but that it remained unclear whether Tehran had the political will to do so. Petraeus, commenting on advances of Iran's nuclear program, said: "On the one hand, there is no question that there has been a continuation of various aspects of the nuclear program but I'm not sure it has always proceeded as rapidly as has been projected at various times." GRADUAL BOOST IN DEFENSES Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday Iran was ready to send its enriched uraniu

"The US army is training a crack unit to seal off and snatch back Pakistani nuclear weapons in the event that militants, possibly from inside the country's security apparatus, get their hands on a nuclear device or materials that could make one. The specialised unit would be charged with recovering the nuclear materials and securing them. The move follows growing anti-Americanism in Pakistan's military, a series of attacks on sensitive installations over the past two years, several of which housed nuclear facilities, and rising tension that has seen a series of official complaints by US authorities to Islamabad in the past fortnight. "What you have in Pakistan is nuclear weapons mixed with the highest density of extremists in the world, so we have a right to be concerned," said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA officer who used to run the US energy department's intelligence unit. "There have been attacks on army bases which stored nuclear weapons and there have been breaches and infiltrations by terrorists into military facilities." "

"(CNSNews.com) - The new federal hate crimes law has all the potential to be a major attack on religious liberty and freedom of speech, according to top religious liberty attorneys. The law was chosen the number one anti-Christian act of 2009 by the Christian Anti-Defamation League. Attorneys who defend religious rights agree: The recently enacted hate-crimes law is a threat to religious liberty. "The very fact that this law elevates 'sexual orientation' and 'gender identity' to the same protected status as race - that in and of itself is a cataclysmic shift in policy," said Mathew Staver, president of the religious liberty law firm Liberty Counsel and dean of the Liberty University Law School. "That will have a ripple effect far beyond the specific words of this bill," he added. "That is contrary to our Judeo-Christian heritage and beliefs, far beyond any particular disclaimer that it is not going to affect speech." Erik Stanley, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, which is based in Scottsdale, Ariz., said the hate-crimes law is not about punishing crimes. It's about punishing beliefs and ideas. "It is actually a thought-crimes law," Stanley said. "There is no difference between, say, an assault that is already punishable, and an assault that is punishable as a hate crime, other than the belief of the perpetrator." "

"World|Wed, Jan. 27 2010 11:45 AM EDT Islamic Militants in Somalia Murder Christian Leader By Simba Tian|Compass Direct News * Single Page * * E-mail * * Print * * RSS * * digg Facebook Twitter Stumble Reddit del.ico.us Buzz Share * * Text * G-bookmarks * Live * Technorati NAIROBI, Kenya (Compass Direct News) - Islamic extremists shot the leader of an underground church to death outside the capital city of Somalia this month and have threatened to kill his wife, his tearful widow told Compass. Having learned that he had left Islam to become a Christian, Somali militants from the Islamic extremist al Shabaab murdered 41-year-old Mohammed Ahmed Ali at about noon on Jan. 1, Amina Ibrahim Hassan said. He was killed sometime after leaving his home in Hodan, on the outskirts of Mogadishu, she said. She and other family members were not immediately aware that he had been killed. "We waited for him that day, but he did not turn up," said Hassan, who has since fled to Nairobi. "The following day, on Jan. 2, I was informed by the fellowship that my husband had been killed." Ali led an underground church. Christian sources said members of al Shabaab, said to have links with al Qaeda terrorists, had been monitoring Ali and his wife for indications that they had left Islam. Ali had organized New Year's Day festivities for Christians to take place in Medina, about 15 kilometers (nine miles) outside of Mogadishu. Al Shabaab extremists killed him after word of the planned party leaked to them, Hassan said. Hassan, who worked for a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) before leaving the country, said she received threatening calls from members of al Shabaab on Jan. 3. "We know who you are working for," Hassan said one extremist told her. "We also know your home and that you are a follower of the Christians, and we are going to kill you the way we killed your husband." Aware of the Islamic extremist

"PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- Desperate Haitians scrambled Sunday to find food and water and guarded their meager possessions against the advance of looters as the U.S. and other nations struggled to jump-start a sluggish relief effort. Even as Navy and Coast Guard ships arrived offshore, a round-the-clock airlift intensified and additional dignitaries appeared, the frantic victims of Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude earthquake were growing more fearful as they pleaded for help and security in a lawless city. With massive amounts of aid promised but not yet delivered because of the difficulty of operating in the crippled country, amid what U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called "one of the most serious crises in decades," the living banded together outdoors without shelter, sustenance or protection. There was widespread apprehension that, unless the pace of aid distribution quickens, there could be mass violence as hundreds of thousands of people suddenly lacking food, water and electricity begin to compete for scarce resources."

"As Barack Obama enters his second year in office amid an enduring economic downturn, voters are less optimistic about his ability to succeed and no longer clearly favor keeping the Democrats in control of Congress, according to the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. A surprising win by Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts has the Democratic Senate majority. The News Hub parses the implications for the Obama administration's agenda. The trends point to an increasingly difficult political climate for President Obama as he hopes to push his domestic agenda beyond health care this year and preserve his party's majorities in the House and Senate. The severity of that climate, in fact, was promptly underscored by Democrats' surprising loss of a Senate seat in Massachusetts Tuesday. The seat of the late Edward Kennedy went to a conservative Republican, Scott Brown, in one of the nation's bluest states. That may not be an anomaly. Nationally, the new survey finds, voters now are evenly split over which party they hope will run Capitol Hill after the November elections-the first time Democrats haven't had the edge on that question since December 2003."