A major financial institution this week will receive a report outlining the extent to which its Web site exposes it to potential attacks by Osama bin Laden`s al-Qaeda organization and other terrorists. The audit, produced by security consulting firm Stroz Associates LLC, is one of the first of its kind in the private sector. It…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health must drastically revamp the way they do business if they are to best utilize the record amounts of funds being poured into their bioterrorism programs, one of the nation’s leading bioterrorism scholars said Wednesday. Both the CDC and the NIH need to…

While the e-mail messages sent by kidnappers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl offer investigators many clues about their origins, tracking down their senders is far from simple. Full Story

The unusual announcements from three of the technology industry`s most powerful men came just weeks apart. Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates declared that making his company`s software less vulnerable to security breaches would take precedence over adding new features. Oracle Corp.`s Larry Ellison pledged to make his company`s database programs “unbreakable.” Cisco Systems Inc.`s John…

Key financial systems run by the Treasury Department`s Financial Management Service are vulnerable to security breaches. The service is at significant risk of fraud, unauthorized disclosure and modification of sensitive data and applications, misuse or damage to computer resources, and disruption of critical operations, according to a report made public Monday. The new vulnerabilities have…

President Bush said today that he envisioned a broad emergency alert system to warn the country of biological attacks, calling for an updating of the cold war`s Distant Early Warning system for an age of terrorism. Full Story

In naming Tom Ridge to head the newly created Office of Homeland Security last fall, President Bush essentially asked the nation to make a leap of faith that the former Pennsylvania governor could bring order to the multitude of federal, state and local agencies that play a role in protecting the home front from attack.…

Four months into his tenure as director of homeland security, Tom Ridge is facing significant doubts about his authority and ability to do his job. The law enforcement agencies he is supposed to coordinate remain fiercely protective of their own power and independence. Mr. Ridge does not have direct authority over any of the agencies,…

The newly created Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is scurrying to meet strict deadlines mandated by an aviation and transportation security law enacted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. John Magaw, the head of TSA, told the House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee on Wednesday that requirements already met by the Transportation Department include the federalization of baggage…

One bright afternoon in June 1981, Israeli F-16 jets streaked low across the Iraqi desert. Spotting the gleaming domes of the unfinished Osiraq nuclear reactor, the pilots decimated it with bombs – a bold preemptive strike in the name of self-preservation. The world reaction to the strike was swift and critical, with the United States…

Tamil Tiger rebels “appeared to be willing” to give up their long-standing demand for a separate homeland following approaches from peace-broker Norway, the Norwegian Prime Minister said in an interview broadcast yesterday. Full Story

Philippine police have arrested a Malaysian man at Manila international airport who was carrying 104 passports and $50,000 in cash. The man arrested, Azmi Bin Salleh, said he was a travel agent based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Full Story

A heated diplomatic campaign waged by the United States and Israel against Iran and its Lebanese protege, Hizbullah, could have an unintended and potentially destabilizing backlash. Instead of cowing Tehran and its Islamist allies, the verbal salvoes and Israel`s hardline policies against the Palestinians are providing encouragement and inspiration to Hizbullah and radical Palestinian groups…

At least two masked Arab gunmen opened fire on people strolling on a popular hilltop promenade in south Jerusalem on Friday, police sources said. Police chased the attackers and shot at them in the Forest of Peace downhill from the promenade, wounding one lightly, officials said. Full Story

The government, which has come under strong criticism from human rights activists for reviving the Aceh military command just this week, is now set to give a new mandate to the military to crush the separatist movement in Aceh. Full Story

One of the three Hizbul Mujahideen militants holed up inside a mosque in Totigund village in Kupwara has been killed in a fierce encounter with 21 and 24 Rashtriya Rifles toops. However, two villagers, who were trying to persuade the militants to surrender, have been taken hostages. Full Story

U.S. planes bombed suspected Taliban and al Qaeda positions in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday as a missile attack by a pilotless CIA drone triggered speculation that Osama bin Laden himself had been killed. < a href=http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020207/ts_nm/attack_afghan_dc_7&cid=578>Full Story

A passenger tried to force his way into the locked cockpit of a United Airlines flight halfway from Miami to Argentina on Thursday, but pilots hit him with an ax and subdued him, the airline said. The man was arrested when the Boeing 777 landed safely in Buenos Aires. United Airlines spokesman Joe Hopkins confirmed…

Israeli jets launched a late night retaliatory strike after a Palestinian dressed in an Israeli army uniform entered the Jewish settlement of Hamra on Wednesday and killed three Israelis before being killed himself. “Due to the horrible terrorist attack that took place tonight at Hamra, the Israeli air force bombed a terrorist target in Nablus,”…

CIA Director George Tenet on Wednesday defended the intelligence agency against congressional criticism that it failed to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks and said further plots were being hatched by al Qaeda. Intelligence will never give you 100 percent predictive capability on terrorist events,” Tenet said in his first public testimony to Congress since the…

Government officials said Wednesday they did not know when computer systems that provide everything from oil and gas royalty payments to information on wildlife management programs would be up and running again. Interior Department officials said at a congressional hearing that they were working long hours to bring their computers back online, but had no…

Russian law enforcement, with help from the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), arrested a computer hacker who had attempted to extort $10,000 from a U.S. bank, according to a Secret Service agent. The hacker, whose name was not revealed, was arrested after breaking into a server owned by financial ASP…

President Bush said today that he envisioned a broad emergency alert system to warn the country of biological attacks, calling for an updating of the cold war`s Distant Early Warning system for an age of terrorism. Mr. Bush, pushing his budget requests for sharply increased spending for domestic defense, came here to draw attention to…

On the floor of Montana`s Bitterroot Valley, so far, far away from lower Manhattan, Jane Ellis finds herself on the front lines of a war she never contemplated, trying to prepare for attacks she can barely imagine. Ellis directs the county Office of Emergency Management in Missoula. On a fine, crisp day, she showed a…

Surrounded by armed federal marshals, John Walker Lindh was taken back to a courthouse Wednesday, where a U.S. magistrate will decide whether the so-called American Taliban should remain in custody or be released pending trial. On Tuesday, a federal grand jury returned a 10-count indictment charging Lindh with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals abroad. Full…

In an exclusive interview with MSNBC’s Ashleigh Banfield, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said he remains committed to the peace process, though it is difficult for him to take action against militants while the Palestinians are under seige. Since mid-December, Israel has surrounded Arafat’s West Bank headquarters with tanks, keeping him a virtual prisoner and demanding…

Saudi Arabia said for the first time 15 of the 19 hijackers behind the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. were Saudi citizens, the Associated Press cited Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz as saying. “The names that we got confirmed that,” Nayef said in an interview with AP. “Their families have been notified.”…

Gunmen abducted a South Korean national and a Filipino businessman Wednesday on the politically volatile southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Police said between eight to 10 gunmen blocked a vehicle carrying the pair on the border between Sarangani and Sultan Kudarat provinces and took them away as well as their driver. A police source said…

At least 16 policemen have been killed in the bloodiest attack by Maoist rebels since Nepal`s government declared a state of emergency late last year, the home ministry revealed. Seven guerrillas also died in the three-hour battle after the Maoists attacked a police post at Bhakundabesi in Kabhre district, 120 kilometres (75 miles) east of…

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that there was no question that al-Qaeda terrorists have taken refuge in Iran and that the Iranian government has failed to cooperate with the United States. “There`s no question but that there`s al-Qaeda and folks that are in there,” Rumsfeld told reporters when asked whether Iran was harboring terrorists.…

A powerful bomb made up of wrapped fireworks exploded at the Engjaskoli school in Grafarvogur, a suburb of Reykjavik, yesterday morning. According to local police it seems that the bomb was placed in a drawer in a teacher?s desk. The desk blew up when the bomb exploded and the nearby bookshelves caught fire. Classes were…

France`s highest court upheld on Wednesday a three-month jail sentence for anti-globalization activist Jose Bove over his ransacking of a McDonald`s restaurant to protest U.S. trade barriers. The ruling announced by the court means the sheep farmer and left-wing campaigner has exhausted all means of appeal against his conviction for the 1999 assault on the…

Pakistani investigators on Wednesday said they had narrowed the search for kidnapped U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl to a banned Islamic militant group suspected of having ties to Osama bin Laden. Full Story

Government computers that handle trillions of dollars in tax refunds and Social Security benefits remain vulnerable to cyber attacks despite previous warnings, a government report released on Monday said. The report by the General Accounting Office, Congress` investigative arm, found that computer-security controls at the Treasury Department`s Financial Management Service remain lax, despite warnings dating…

Increasing concerns about the potential for hackers to manipulate critical back-end administrative systems through security holes commonly found in corporate Web sites have prompted at least one major airline to take preventive measures. “We are trying to defend our Web sites,” said David Yaacobi, information systems security manager at El Al Israel Airlines at Ben-Gurion…

As federal agencies work to improve their information security programs, the central organization for incident warnings and analyses recently announced a series of tools that will be available this year to help them do so. The Federal Computer Incident Response Center (FedCIRC) is enhancing its resources to decrease the government`s vulnerability to cyberattacks, said Sallie…

Here’s a tip for Treasury Department agents tracking al-Qaida’s finances: You might want to pay a visit to the volume discount department at Dell Computer. Al-Qaida, it seems, has been an avid consumer of computers over the last several years, and is especially fond of laptops. It isn’t hard to understand why. With his hectic,…

Iran has supplied Hezbollah guerillas in Lebanon with 8,000 missiles capable of striking Israeli cities, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said yesterday. Mr Peres, in New York for the World Economic Forum, told the International Herald Tribune that Israel would not tolerate any missile attack from Lebanese territory. Full Story

A day after Tehran warned of an “unimaginable” response if Israel attacked an Iranian nuclear power plant, Israel on Tuesday dismissed suggestions that it was planning such a strike. The latest exchange deepened a war of words between the two after Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Iran was turning Lebanon into a “ball of…

After five months without an official spokesman, the Earth Liberation Front again has a public face. Portland student Leslie James Pickering, 23, says he will answer questions about the ELF and explain the militant environmental group to the public. In a statement issued Saturday, Pickering said the ELF would “not be intimidated” by the war…

American Airlines grounded a 757 jet plane on Maui late Saturday, after a flight attendant discovered a white powdery substance aboard when it arrived from San Jose. Full Story

Pakistani police said Tuesday they were hunting for three men involved in arranging meetings for U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped in the southern city of Karachi almost two weeks ago. Full Story

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld conceded on Monday that U.S. troops may have killed “friendly” Afghan forces in a raid north of Kandahar last month but declined to comment on reports that U.S. troops had already apologized and paid compensation. Full Story

A new report reveals that most local public safety agencies initially responding to the attack on the Pentagon Sept. 11 had little difficulty communicating with one another. Full Story

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced Jan. 31 that $1.1 billion in federal funds had been earmarked for states to strengthen their bioterrorism preparedness, with $200 million being released immediately so state officials can start planning. Full Story

President Bush has been keeping a “war on terrorism scorecard” in his desk drawer and using it to cross off photographs of al-Qa`eda and Taliban leaders as they have been killed or captured. “Early on, I said, `I`m a baseball fan. I want a scorecard`,” Mr Bush explained in an interview with Bob Woodward of…

The ads by the President’s Office of National Drug Control Policy aired during last night’s Super Bowl marked an escalation in the selling of the administration’s war on drugs — for the first time, the illegal narcotics trade is linked to terrorism. Full Story

Police in Pakistan expanded their search for kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl into Karachi’s murky criminal underworld and to other regions of the country on Monday, after leads into Islamic extremist groups looked to go nowhere. After a spate of hoaxes and an erroneous report that the journalist’s body had been found in…

Freighters carrying payloads of fuel could be hijacked and used in terror operations similar to the 11 September attacks on America, according to a new report. The study, by a global piracy watchdog, says ships transporting liquified natural gas could be used by terrorists “to undergo suicide missions for their cause”. Full Story

Protests against US condemnation of Iran are growing. Iran on Monday warned the US to stop accusing it of supporting terrorism after American Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed it was harbouring al-Qaeda members. Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi dismissed Mr Rumsfeld`s charges and those of President George W Bush, who last week said Iran…

Four Palestinian militants were killed when their car was blown apart in the Gaza Strip on Monday in an explosion which Palestinian officials said was caused by an Israeli missile attack. Full Story

A car bomb rocked the eastern city of Cucuta on Friday, just hours after Colombia`s government pledged a concerted effort against a wave of terrorist violence. No one was injured. A stolen taxi loaded with explosives was detonated in front of a warehouse at 1:30 a.m. (0730 GMT), wrecking it and several buildings nearby, police…

A suicide bomber killed a senior policeman and injured two other officers yesterday in the capital of the tense Muslim-majority Xinjiang region, local officials said. The explosion happened outside a department store in Urumqi, the biggest city in the far western region, an Urumqi police spokeswoman said. Full Story

Among the documents found on an al-Qaida computer in Afghanistan was a U.S. Government Accounting Office report on shortcomings in security in and around Washington, D.C., U.S. officials told NBC News. The report detailed how undercover agents easily penetrated two airports and 19 federal buildings, including CIA headquarters, the Pentagon and Ronald Reagan National Airport.…

Utah law enforcement and Olympic security officials on Saturday confirmed the discovery of a .50-caliber rifle stashed in a box in the woods of Wasatch County, reportedly in the mountains surrounding the Soldier Hollow cross country skiing venue. The rifle, a high-powered weapon that can be used on targets, including vehicles, from more than a…

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines caused a stir last month by inviting American Special Forces to her country to fight the Muslim terrorist group known as Abu Sayyaf (Bearer of the Sword&). Left-wing Filipinos warned of a new Vietnam, and at least one senator accused Arroyo of treason. But Arroyo has withstood the…

The excavation of endless geological grief called the World Trade Center dig has now lasted nearly five months. Digging is the kind of job you hope never to do in the first place. This isn`t digging ditches, or digging for pipe, or digging to plant bulbs that will bloom in the spring. The diggers lift…

An invisible cyber assault has cut off access for the second day running to the Web site of the World Economic Forum, organizers of the gathering of the world`s political and business elite confirmed on Friday. Full Story