Iran & the Middle East

• The Bush administration has indicated it is prepared to form an independent coalition to freeze Iranian assets and restrict trade if the U.N. Security Council fails to penalize Tehran for its nuclear enrichment program, The Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday.

• The kidnapping of a 2-man Fox News television crew in Gaza has the hallmarks of an al-Qaida operation, terrorism experts tell ABC News. The U.S. reporter and New Zealand cameraman were taken at gunpoint Aug. 14, and nothing was heard of them until Tuesday when a videotape and note were given to the Arabic media.

• Terrorists fighting to bring down the government will be spared if they surrender, Saudi Arabia's interior minister said in comments published over the weekend.

• Four militants arrested in the Saudi city of Jeddah this week were part of a group of 34 men rounded up in an effort to prevent a resurgence of al Qaeda violence, the Saudi interior ministry said on Saturday.

• Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said in a TV interview that he would not have ordered the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers if he had known it would lead to such a war.

• A group of 40 prisoners incarcerated in Jordan have launched a hunger strike in protest of their conditions in jail. One of the strikers' leader was Azmi Jerusi, an associate of Abu Musab Zarqawi who was the head of al-Qaida in Iraq.

• Iran tested a new anti-ship missile fired by a submarine during war games Sunday, raising worries it could disrupt vital oil tanker traffic in the Gulf amid its standoff with the West over its suspect nuclear activities.

• Four separate bombs at a popular Turkish coastal resort and in the country’s commercial hub Istanbul wounded at least 27 people, including 10 British tourists.

• Top leaders of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party on Friday gave Abbas the go ahead to begin forming a unity government with the militant Hamas in an effort to end internal feuding and international isolation.

• An explosive device was thrown at IDF soldiers in Nablus and no injuries were reported. Earlier in the day, gunfire broke out when IDF forces were operating in Jenin. No damage or injury was reported.

• Two Fox News journalists were released on Sunday nearly two weeks after being seized in Gaza. Gateway Pundit has more commentary and links.

• Jordan’s lower house of Parliament yesterday approved with majority of votes a controversial “terrorism prevention” draft law despite warnings by Arab and Jordanian human rights bodies that the bill posed threats to personal and public freedoms.

• A Hamas member was killed when the Israeli army launched another airstrike against Palestinian militants in the Shajaiyeh neighbourhood of Gaza.

• It would appear that Israel is preparing to improve it’s own version of the strategic deterrent system which served the U.S. so well during the Cold War, our own Triad Defense plan, which presumed that our national survival rested on our ability to survive a nuclear first strike and still maintain the ability to launch a debilitating retaliatory nuclear strike. It seems that Israel is seeking to do the same, in light, of the current state of nuclear affairs in Iran. The purchase of two additional Dolphin Submarines would give Israel a total of five.

• Egyptian police arrested 16 members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood on Friday, a member of the organization said.

America Domestic Security & the Americas

• Authorities on Thursday announced the arrest of a man on charges that he conspired to violate federal laws by providing customers in the New York area with satellite broadcasts of a television station operated by Hezbollah. Javed Iqbal, 42, of Staten Island, was arrested Wednesday on charges that he enabled the broadcasts of al Manar, which was designated by the U.S. government this spring as a global terrorist entity, according to a release from U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia.

• Money to bribe a U.S. official - traced during an international anti-terrorism probe aimed at the Tamil Tigers - came from Montreal, the FBI said Thursday. And two of the men arrested in the bribery case are former Montreal residents, adding more Canadian connections to a widening probe that has seen six other men from Canada arrested on charges of aiding a foreign terrorist organization, including money laundering, smuggling equipment and people, and trying to purchase anti-aircraft missiles, machine-guns and other military equipment.

• The Department of Homeland Security will be naming a new Assistant Secretary for Cyber and Telecommunications in the very near future, a DHS spokesperson has told eWEEK. "That is to ensure that cyber and national communications issues stay highly visible within department operations," a spokesperson said.

• The Homeland Security Department has gaps in the security controls for its Radio Frequency Identification systems, according to a new report from the agency Inspector General Richard Skinner.

• A passenger's stick of dynamite on a flight from Argentina to Houston exposed a weak link in aviation security: International airports are not always as secure as those in the United States. The head of the Transportation Security Administration said the government is aware of the potential problem posed by international airports and is taking steps to fix it.

• The Pentagon said Saturday it had transferred five detainees from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Afghanistan. A written statement did not say why the detainees were released and did not disclose their identity or home country.

• Umer Hayat was jailed for a year, branded a liar by federal prosecutors and forced to sell his house to his brother to pay his legal bills. Still, the naturalized U.S. citizen said he loves his adopted country and harbors no grudge against a justice system he claims was coercive in its pursuit of a terrorism case that could send his oldest son to prison for three decades. The Lodi ice cream vendor was released from federal custody Friday.

• A Pakistan-born resident of the US state of Maryland was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison for supporting a terrorist group blamed for an attack in Mumbai, India, that killed 180 people, justice officials said. Ali Asad Chandia, 29, who taught third-graders at an Islamic school in College Park, Maryland, was found guilty in June of providing material support and resources to Lashkar-e-Toiba.

• A college student's checked luggage on a Continental Airlines flight to Houston from Argentina on Friday contained dynamite, and federal authorities are investigating why he had it and what he intended to do with it, an FBI spokeswoman said.

• Three Canadian residents accused of supporting Sri Lanka's separatist Tamil Tiger rebels were arrested this week at the cusp of a joint Canada-US anti-terror sweep and face extradition to the United States, police said. Ottawa and Washington brand the movement a foreign terrorist organization.

• Authorities seized several U.S. diplomatic bags at Venezuela's main airport on Thursday, prompting protest from embassy officials and a probe into the Americans' actions by prosecutors. Attorney General Isaias Rodriguez said prosecutors would investigate U.S. officials for allegedly sidestepping official regulations and checkpoints when bringing the diplomatic bags into the South American country.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• Militants in the North Caucasus region have increased attacks in areas neighboring Chechnya, where government forces have been fighting separatist rebels for more than a decade, a top Russian security official said on Friday.

• The Belarus KGB emphasizes that in the territory of Belarus' not one terrorist organization is functioning.

• Dagestani warlord Gadzhi Melikov was killed in the Republic of Dagestan in Russia's troubled North Caucasus region, the local interior ministry said Sunday.

• Police surrounded a home in Russia's Dagestan region Saturday and exchanged gunfire with suspected militants, killing four and wounding a woman who was with the gunmen, authorities said.

• A total of 163 militants, a number described as "significant," in the North Caucasus have already used the right to amnesty offered by the Russian government.

• Police have found a cache full of ammunition in the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria in Russia's troubled North Caucasus region.

• Police found two weapons caches in Chechnya, according to law enforcement sources.

• Russia's defense minister denied that he had received any instructions to prepare a new national military doctrine. Sergei Ivanov, who is also a deputy prime minister, commented on media reports that Russia was drafting a new military doctrine.

• Three police officers were killed and five wounded in a series of attacks on police in Russia's North Caucasus regions over the weekend, police said.

Afghanistan & Southern Asia

• A pre-dawn operation by U.S. and Afghan forces in eastern Afghanistan killed seven suspected Al Qaeda operatives and a child, a U.S. spokesman said. Four other men were detained following a clash at a compound in the Asmar village of Kunar province that also wounded one woman, said Lt. Col. Paul Fitzpatrick.

• At least seven Taleban are reported killed in a clash between militants and Nato-led troops and police in the southern Afghan region of Helmand. Nato forces used artillery against an insurgent convoy, killing at least seven fighters, a military spokesman told the Associated Press.

• The Taliban on Friday denied secretly talking with the Afghan government and NATO to lay down their arms in the volatile south, rejecting such reports as propaganda by weakened foreign forces. The guerrillas' military commander, Mullah Dadullah, told Reuters by satellite phone NATO and U.S.-led forces were trying to sow dissent among Taliban fighters and supporters.

• Two French soldiers have been killed in an ambush in Afghanistan, the French Defense Ministry said on Saturday, the latest casualties in the bloodiest period of Afghan violence since the Taliban were overthrown.

• Insurgent attacks in southern Afghanistan left one NATO-led coalition soldier dead and wounded seven others Sunday, while police killed 10 suspected Taliban militants who struck a government compound, officials said.

• One of seven suspected Al Qaeda facilitators killed by troops was a key operative for the group who helped move Arab fighters into Afghanistan, the US-led coalition said on Sunday.

• Gen. John Abizaid, commander of the U.S. Central Command, said militants are using Pakistan as a base to infiltrate into Afghanistan, but he said the Pakistani government is not conspiring with them. "I think that Pakistan has done an awful lot in going after al-Qaida and it's important that they don't let the Taliban groups be organized in the Pakistani side of the border," he said in Bagram, where the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan is located.

• Economic development in Afghanistan is more important than military action, with the efforts of Taliban rebels unlikely to be the deciding factor, a top US general said. The Taliban, with their outside sources of income from groups such as Al-Qaeda, have the capacity to continue fighting, said General John Abizaid, head of the US Central Command that covers parts of Africa and the Middle East. But Abizaid said during a short visit to Afghanistan: "I don't believe that any of the fighting that the Taliban is capable of generating will be decisive in and of itself."

• Pro-Taliban militants in Pakistan warned today they would behead some 30 tribal elders if they continued "spying" for US forces in neighbouring Afghanistan, officials said. "This is the last warning. They must stop spying for the Americans or we will behead them,'' read a letter distributed in the border town of Angoor Ada in the semi-autonomous tribal region of South Waziristan, an official said.

• Two weeks after an alleged plot to blow up U.S.-bound airliners was thwarted in Britain, Pakistani authorities have screwed tight the faucet that had trickled intriguing details from their investigation.

• Here are the daily updates from the South Asia Terrorism Portal for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

• Two bombings near a government office in the south-western Pakistani city of Quetta wounded at least 10 people today. Umar Draz, a local police chief, said the explosions occurred seven minutes apart. The first bomb was planted in a car outside the office of the state broadcasting regulator, and the second went off on a plot of land nearby, he said.

• Police on Saturday found a large weapons cache hidden in a house on the outskirts of the Sri Lankan capital, and arrested 17 people suspected of planning a major attack. The weapons haul came as the government carried out a third day of airstrikes on rebel positions in northern Jaffna Peninsula and six soldiers died in a mine blast blamed on separatist Tamil insurgents.

• The first foreign nationals and aid workers to be evacuated from Sri Lanka's besieged north sailed into this eastern port on Sunday, only to be met by volleys of rockets and artillery amid fresh fighting. The military said it fired artillery and mortar bombs at rebel positions south of the Tiger-held town of Sampur after the Tigers fired at a patrol near an army camp. Seven soldiers were injured.

Far East & Southeast Asia

• Faheem Khalid Lodhi, a Pakistan-born architect who was convicted in June of planning various attacks on Sydney's power grid and military installations, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

• China started the second phase of its joint anti-terror dill with its western neighbor Kazakhstan at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday in Yining, western China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

• The United Nations Security Council has established a new peacekeeping mission in East Timor with an initial mandate for six months. The new force will replace the current smaller mission and will include more than 1,500 police and up to 35 military liaison officers, but no troops.

• Fighting in Jolo between Filipino security forces and Abu Sayyaf fighters left 2 commandos dead and 17 others wounded.

• A radical group with alleged links to the London bombings is reportedly distributing pamphlets through suburban Sydney calling for a holy war. The leaflets, from the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahir, call for a jihad to destroy Israel and use key dates in the Muslim calendar to signal the coming destruction of the Jewish state,

• South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon has warned North Korea that a nuclear test would pose a serious international threat.

Europe

• According to Pakistani officials, al Qaeda operative Rashif Rauf could be deported to Britain if UK officials requested such a move.

• German police arrested a third suspect Friday in connection with a failed attempt to blow up two trains, while Lebanese authorities picked up a fourth man believed to have been involved, officials said. More commentary and links from Jeff Kouba.

• A British online poll says 53 percent of respondents see Islam as a threat to Western liberal democracy. That figure compares to less than one-third of those who said they felt that way after Sept. 11, 2001.

• The first group of 240 French soldiers arrived at Beirut airport yesterday. They will help the Lebanese army in rebuilding bridges destroyed or damaged by Israeli airstrikes during fighting.

• A grenade attack on a Serb cafe in the ethnically divided Kosovo town of Mitrovica has injured nine people including a British UN policeman.

Africa

• Sudanese Islamist leaders say they will take up arms against United Nations peacekeepers if they deploy to Darfur, and some have warned they will also fight the Khartoum government if it agrees to the force.

• Chad handed over five Darfur rebels to African Union mediators on Thursday as part of a new diplomatic agreement to improve relations with Sudan, officials said.

• At the Counterterrorism Blog, Bill Roggio outlines the progress the Islamic Courts Union is making in Somalia in consolidating their power.

• Somalia is on the brink of a new conflict that could plunge the Horn of Africa into a bloody regional war, diplomats have warned. Fighters from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Eritrea have entered the war-torn country in support of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) who now control the capital, Mogadishu, and much of southern Somalia.

• Two Italian citizens seized in Niger after an ambush on their off-road touring group are being held by rebels, one of the pair told his wife by phone.

• Algeria's Islamists are making a modest political comeback after failing to win with the bullet what they once sought with the ballot. With an armed insurrection long in decline, most Islamists these days want to work in the political mainstream, using peaceful means to build Islamic rule in the oil exporting nation. It is an approach that is winning them powerful friends.

• Daveed Gartenstein-Ross writes about the the new Taliban, the Islamic Courts Union's in Somalia.

The Global War

• Drifting in the wind, it may appear to be a harmless seagull — but the small unmanned aircraft is packed with electronics for intelligence and reconnaissance missions. The CyberBug represents a class of unmanned aircraft finding growing acceptance with police and military officials.

• US President George W Bush is sending a senior envoy to Khartoum to try to persuade Sudan's ruling party to accept a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur.

• Eighteen nations are preparing for a weeklong series of maneuvers off Panama's coast designed to safeguard the country's famous canal from terror attacks, a U.S. military chief said on Thursday.

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