Tuesday, February 27, 2007
VISALIA, California: David Bradshaw has endured countless stings during his life as a beekeeper, but he got the shock of his career when he opened his boxes last month and found half of his 100 million bees missing.
In 24 states across America, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation's most profitable.
"I have never seen anything like it," Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. "Box after box after box are just empty. There's nobody home."
The sudden mysterious losses are highlighting the critical link that honeybees play in the long chain that gets fruit and vegetables to supermarkets and dinner tables across the country. Beekeepers have fought regional bee crises before, but this is the first U.S. national affliction.
In a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie, bees are flying off in search of pollen and nectar and simply never returning to their colonies. And nobody knows why.
Researchers say the bees are presumably dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or ...   more »

By Erick Stakelbeck
CBN News
February 27, 2007
CBNNews.com - TULSA, Oklahoma - As the world searches for answers in the war on terror, one big question is this: where are all the moderate Muslims?
It seems that all too often, terrorist attacks are met with silence by the Muslim community, especially here in America.
CBN News spoke to one American Muslim who did speak out -- and was threatened because of it.
There was a time after 9/11 when the release of an al-Qaeda videotape would create a major stir among Americans. These days, many dismiss the tapes as little more than propaganda.
But not Jamal Miftah -- he's seen the effects of jihad firsthand.
Miftah lived in the tribal region of Pakistan, a major terrorist stronghold. When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, radical clerics recruited thousands of young men from this region to fight American troops.
Many of them never made it back home.
"The most unfortunate part was -- I saw all those leaders come back safe and sound, without being harmed," said Miftah. "And almost 700 or 800 of the innocent, ignorant Muslims -- who were not aware of the real motives -- died there ...   more »

By Caroline B. Glick      
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The general tendency of Westerners is to view global jihad as a foreign policy issue. But today it is clear that it is also a domestic policy issue.
Over the weekend The Sunday Telegraph reported that a recently circulated British intelligence report warned: "The terrorist threat facing Britain from home-grown al-Qaida agents is higher than at any time since the September 11 attacks in 2001."
After foiling the jihadist plot to down US-bound British passenger aircraft last summer, MI5 director Eliza Manningham-Buller claimed that there are some 1,600 British Muslims actively involved in plotting attacks against Britain. According to the intelligence report cited in the Sunday Telegraph, today that number exceeds 2,000. As one senior British political source told the newspaper, "The Security Services have constantly warned that the task of countering Islamic terrorism is a daunting one. There will be more attacks in Britain."
It is not surprising that Britain faces the specter of mass attacks carried out by its own citizens in the name of Allah. Repeated exposes of the goings-on in British mosques and in supposedly "moderate" British Muslim communal organizations have shown unequivocally that they are being used as ...   more »

March 5, 2007 issue - Increasing tensions between Washington and Tehran have revived New York Police Department concerns that Iranian agents may already have targeted the city for terror attacks. Such attacks could be aimed at bridges and tunnels, Jewish organizations and Wall Street, NYPD briefers told security execs last fall, according to a person with access to the briefing materials who asked for anonymity because of the sensitive subject matter.
NYPD officials have worried about possible Iranian-sponsored attacks since a series of incidents involving officials of the Iranian Mission to the United Nations. In November 2003, Ahmad Safari and Alireaza Safi, described as Iranian Mission "security" personnel, were detained by transit cops when they were seen videotaping subway tracks from Queens to Manhattan at 1:10 in the morning. The men later left New York. "We're concerned that Iranian agents were engaged in reconnaissance that might be used in an attack against New York City at some future date," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly told NEWSWEEK. A spokesman for the Iranian Mission in New York said he was aware of the allegations but had no immediate comment.
Original Source
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LONDON – New concerns for Prince Harry's safety have emerged with MI6's discovery that the Iran-backed Mahdi army has obtained a version of the super-sensitive, U.S.-created Promis software, according to a breaking report in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
The software provides access to databases on specific targets. It is equipped with artificial intelligence, which can analyze tens of millions of snippets of information in seconds to create a sophisticated overall picture that can both identify and predict the actions of a target.
The software was originally sold by a renegade FBI agent, Robert Hanssen. For years he had been a KGB spy inside the FBI. Before he was arrested in 2001, he had passed the FBI version of Promis to his handlers in Moscow. Hanssen is now serving a 20-year sentence for espionage in America's top security prison at Florence in Colorado.
Bill Hamilton, the creator of the software and head of the company, Inslaw, which markets it to U.S. intelligence agencies, said the acquisition by terrorists of Promis through the Soviets "is a matter of deep concern."
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Hanssen's handlers sold a copy of Promis to Semyon Mogilevich, the head of Europe's notorious ...   more »