Egyptian authorities have arrested 25 al-Qaida-linked terrorists on suspicion of plotting attacks on oil pipelines and ships crossing the Suez Canal. On Thursday, a Palestinian-led cell planning terror attacks on ships crossing the Suez canal was nabbed in Egypt.

The Egyptian Interior Ministry said the new cell was led by a Palestinian and included 24 Egyptians, mostly engineers and technicians.

They planned to use mobile phones to detonate explosives against ships crossing the Canal, the statement said.

The group learned how to make car bombs through communicating with al-Qaeda terrorists on jihadist websites, according to an Interior Ministry statement.

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A top member of a breakaway Mormon sect was dragged from his home by marauders and killed early Tuesday in a village founded and named for the American families that settled the remote community in the northern Mexican desert.

Benjamin LeBaron, 31, and Luis Widmar, 29, a brother-in-law who tried to help him, were grabbed by at least 15 commandos shortly after midnight in Colonia LeBaron, which is about 200 miles southeast of El Paso, witnesses said.

The bodies of the men, both naturalized U.S. citizens with five children each, were found nearby shortly afterward, each shot several times in the head, Brent LeBaron, a cousin of Benjamin who lives in the village, said by telephone.

Benjamin LeBaron had led successful protests earlier this year to free his kidnapped brother and demand police protection for their isolated rural community.

[...]

Attacked cousin’s house

The attackers struck his cousin’s house as the family slept trying to knock down the front door and smashing its windows, Brent LeBaron said. A panicked Benjamin LeBaron phoned two brothers-in-law for help.

But after the attackers threatened to throw a grenade into the house, LeBaron opened the door.

The gangsters beat Le-Baron and one threatened to rape his wife in front of their children before carrying their victims away, Brent LeBaron said.

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Secretaries Kathleen Sebelius (HHS), Janet Napolitano (DHS), and Arne Duncan (ED), along with Homeland Security Advisor John Brennan, will host an all-day H1N1 Flu Preparedness Summit with states to further prepare the nation for the possibility of a more severe outbreak of H1N1 flu in the fall.

Federal, state and local officials, emergency managers, educators and others will discuss lessons learned during the spring and summer H1N1 wave, and discuss best practices and preparedness priorities.

Plenary sessions will air live from 8:30 AM – 12:30 PM EDT and from 2:45 PM – 4:00 PM EDT.

Watch live here.

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A logging truck rigged with explosives detonated near Afghanistan’s capital, killing 25 people Thursday morning, local officials said.

The attack near Kabul seemed to be targeted at NATO troops in the area, but there were no reports of casualties or injuries to coalition troops, said Deen Mohammed Darwesh, a spokesman for the governor of Logar province.

Twenty-one civilians and four policemen were killed in the attack, said Zamarai Bashari, spokesman for the Interior Ministry.

Ten other people were wounded in the attack. Many of the wounded were students going to school, the Interior Ministry spokesman said.

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Consumers are being warned about two U.S.-made brands of energy drinks after both were found to have been subject to tampering.

Health Canada issued a warning about Hardcore Energize Bullet liquid energy drink, which is manufactured in Pennsylvania and sold in Canada in vials.

The reason for the recall was because one vial was found to have been subject to tampering, Health Canada said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, meanwhile, is also warning about Hardcore Energize Bullet, and about New Whey liquid products, as well. New Whey items are also sold in test-tube vials and consumed in a single shot.

A utility knife blade was found in one vial of each product, the FDA said.

No injuries have been reported, the U.S. agency said.

Hardcore Energize Bullet is packaged in 85.7-millilitre vials and comes in two flavours, Blue Rage and Black Rush, Health Canada reported on its website.

New Whey liquid products are manufactured and sold in the United States. The manufacturer for both liquid products, Protica Inc., of Whitehall, Pa., is investigating the tampering, the FDA said.

Consumers requiring more information in Canada can contact Health Canada’s public enquiries line at 613-957-2991, or toll free at 1-866-225-0709.

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South Korean intelligence officials believe it was North Korea or pro-Pyongyang forces that committed cyber attacks that paralyzed major South Korean and U.S. government Web sites, aides to two lawmakers said Wednesday.

Read the related stories.

Government Agencies, Washington Post Targeted in Cyberattack

Cyber Attack Hits South Korean Web Sites

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A widespread and coordinated cyberattack during the past few days has targeted Web sites operated by major government agencies, including the departments of Homeland Security and Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Trade Commission, according to several computer security researchers.

The attacks involved thousands of computers around the globe infected with rogue software that told them to repeatedly attempt to access the targeted sites, a tactic aimed at driving up traffic beyond the sites’ normal capacity and denying access to legitimate users, according to the researchers, many of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they are helping with the investigation.

Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said that the agency was aware of ongoing attacks and that the government’s Computer Emergency Response Team had issued guidance to public and private sector Web sites to stem the attacks.

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A number of South Korean government Web sites were inaccessible on Wednesday, apparently taken offline by a large cyber-attack that had earlier hit U.S. government sites.

The Web site for South Korea’s president, the Blue House, and those for the National Assembly and Ministry of National Defense were all offline at Wednesday lunchtime. Also inaccessible was the home page of the Grand National Party and the Chosun Ilbo national newspaper

The Korea Internet Security Center’s security index was set at “substantial,” which is the middle of its five levels and signifies regional Internet security problems and advises all Internet users to take urgent security measures.

Local press reports said around 25 sites had been hit since late Tuesday including those of major banks including Shinhan Bank and Korea Exchange Bank and major portal Naver. All three appeared to be operating normally at Wednesday lunchtime but a prompt on the page of Shinhan Bank referenced a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack and advised users to download security software.

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The police agency in charge of protecting thousands of federal buildings nationwide has failed to keep bomb-making materials out of several high-security facilities in the past year, according to a Government Accountability Office report released today. In the past year, investigators successfully smuggled bomb-making materials into ten high-security federal buildings, constructed bombs and walked around the buildings undetected, exposing weaknesses in security provided by the Federal Protective Service.

[...]

Investigators carried liquid explosives and low-yield detonators — materials investigators note are not normally carried into federal buildings. The GAO said security concerns prevent it from revealing the exact locations or cities of the affected facilities, but that eight of them were government owned, while two were leased. They included offices of a U.S. senator and House member, as well as offices for the departments of Homeland Security, Justice and State, the GAO reported. In one instance, the GAO obtained a building security tape showing an investigator walking through a security checkpoint with bomb making materials.

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The top U.S. military officer warned on Tuesday that time is running out for dialogue with Tehran to avoid either a nuclear-armed Iran or a possible military strike against the Islamic Republic.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it is critical for diplomatic efforts to reach a solution before Iran develops a nuclear weapon or faces an Israeli or U.S. strike to turn back its nuclear program.

“That window is a very narrow window,” Mullen told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

“There’s a great deal that certainly depends on the dialogue and the engagement,” he said. “I’m hopeful that that dialogue is productive. I worry about it a great deal if it’s not.”

Mullen noted that some forecasters believe Iran could be as little as a year away from developing a nuclear bomb, adding: “The clock has continued to tick.”

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Western anti-terror agencies have warned that a large group of 15-20 al Qaeda terrorists, trained in Pakistan and Algeria to hijack and blow up airliners, deployed secretly in at least six European and Middle East countries in early July. They are reported to be standing ready to carry out multiple terrorist attacks.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report the first specific red alert on Saturday, July 4, referred to the possible hijack of Turkish Airways planes taking of from Turkish airports for US destinations or Tel Aviv.

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Last week, German authorities discovered that groups of terrorists may have been dispatched from training bases in Pakistan to launch crippling attacks.

In April, U.S. intelligence officials warned Germany about possible terror attacks. Since that time German security officials have reportedly been preparing for massive, multi-layered attacks for which al-Qaida has become known.

Shortly after the April warning, German Ambassador Klaus Scharioth said in an unrelated interview, “You will understand that I can’t go into the details of the terrorist threat, but I can only tell you that we all know that we have to be vigilant and that we have to continue to work very hard on that, but I do not want to go into details.”

Intelligence suggests al-Qaida operatives are planning to plant multiple explosive devices in several locations and detonate them either in a simultaneous or sequential fashion.

U.S. and German intelligence sources say that strategy is designed to emulate the ones employed Bali in 2002 and Madrid in 2004. The idea is to draw in first responders to the scene after the first explosion, and then the subsequent explosions are set off in the same location to inflict maximum casualties.

A U.S. intelligence source with knowledge about the situation says “it is a credible threat, which also includes Germans in North Africa.

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Lahore Pakistan – Twenty-five explosive-laden vehicles have reportedly entered various major cities of the country, as the intelligence services launched search operations across all four provinces, a private TV channel reported on Monday.

According to the channel, the vehicles could target sensitive government installments and other important buildings.

The channel cited a notification issued by the Interior Ministry stating that suicide bombers along with the vehicles had entered Peshawar, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Quetta and Karachi.

The ministry ordered provincial authorities to immediately conduct search operations and impound the vehicles before any terrorist incident took place. The channel said the explosive-laden vehicles included a Shehzore pick-up van, an ambulance, a blue Pajero and seven Toyota Corollas.

This report has not been confirmed by Pakistan authorities.

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The man arrested for carrying a bomb in a backpack on Saturday had a police badge and a police uniform with a Hudson Falls patch in his western Pennsylvania home when it was searched after his arrest, officials said.

Hudson Falls Police were trying Monday to determine from where the uniform came, said Police Chief Randy Diamond. The uniform was being sent to Hudson Falls by police in Washington Township, Pa., who found it in a home rented by Jason A. Babson.

The metal police badge apparently was not from the Hudson Falls Police Department, Diamond said. It’s possible Babson acquired a Hudson Falls Police uniform patch (patch collecting and trading is common) and affixed it to a uniform he acquired elsewhere, Diamond said.

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An Everett man and his wife were injured on the Fourth of July when someone hurled a pipe bomb at them, according to our news partners at KING-TV. The couple was walking along 124th Street Southwest to view fireworks when the pipe bomb exploded.

“One of the doctors who operated on my daughter said it was the equivalent of a hand grenade,” the injured woman’s mother told KING-TV. “It just blew her basically through the air and she hit the ground and tore up her arm and the shrapnel went into her right foot.”

The wife suffered injuries and her arms and legs and her husband also sustained leg injuries. There have been no arrests.

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A computer programmer working for Goldman Sachs was arrested last week on charges that he stole proprietary source code for software his employer uses to make sophisticated, high-speed, high-volume stock and commodities trades.

Sergey Aleynikov, who earned nearly $400,000 a year in his job, allegedly stole 32 megabytes of data over four days in June and transferred it to a website hosted in Germany before trying to erase his tracks from Goldman Sach’s network. He neglected to take into account, however, that the company kept a backup record of its command logs. On at least two occasions, he transferred the data remotely while logged into his company’s network from his home computer.

Aleynikov, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Russia, was arrested on July 3 at the Newark Airport in New Jersey as he exited a flight and is being held on charges related to theft of trade secrets until he posts $750,000 in bond, pays $75,000 in cash and surrenders his travel documents.

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