Read the Advisory Special Advisory April 15, 2013 – Boston Bombing .

Five British nationals who were part of an aid convoy passing through Libya on the way to Gaza were briefly kidnapped by an armed group, and one was sexually assaulted, security officials said on Thursday.

The incident happened in the eastern city of Benghazi early on Wednesday morning and the group was released several hours later. They were now with the Turkish consul in Benghazi, Libyan security officials said.

“They were on their way to Benghazi airport when they were stopped shortly after passing a checkpoint manned by the national army. They were then led to a place where the crime happened,” said a police official investigating the incident.

The official, based in Benghazi, said that one of the three women in the group had been sexually assaulted.

Read the entire article here .

KARACHI, Pakistan — This seaside metropolis is no stranger to gangland violence, driven for years by a motley collection of armed groups who battle over money, turf and votes.

But there is a new gang in town. Hundreds of miles from their homeland in the mountainous northwest, Pakistani Taliban fighters have started to flex their muscles more forcefully in parts of this vast city, and they are openly taking ground.

Read the entire article here .

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — A British man abducted in Nigeria’s largest city has been released by his kidnappers, a police spokeswoman said Thursday, as other foreigners have been kidnapped in the country’s commercial capital in recent days.

The release of the British citizen comes after three Lebanese citizens were also kidnapped. Abductions of foreigners remains common in Nigeria for political reasons or cash ransoms, but such kidnappings remain rare in Lagos and could spark more fears among investors and workers in a nation facing increasing insecurity with extremist attacks across its north.

The man, who authorities said was abducted Saturday likely while coming home from a nightclub in Victoria Island, was freed unharmed, said Ngozi Braide, a Lagos state police spokeswoman. Braide said she did not have any information on whether a ransom had been paid for the man’s release. However, it is likely a ransom was paid as police did not make any arrests for the kidnapping.

Read the entire article here .

(Reuters) – Algerian Djamel Okacha has been named as a new commander in al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), replacing Abdelhamid Abou Zeid who was killed in fighting in northern Mali, Algerian Ennahar TV said on Sunday.

An Algerian security source said Okacha, 34, was very close to AQIM’s leader Abdelmalek Droukdel as both belonged to the Group of Algiers, made up of militants born in the region around the Algerian capital.

The source also said that he was confident that al Qaeda commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar, whose death was reported shortly after that of Abou Zeid, was dead.

“Okacha is Droukdel’s right-hand man,” he said. Okacha’s priority would be to reorganize AQIM after it registered the losses of two heavyweight commanders.

France said last week that it had confirmed “with certainty” the death of Abou Zeid, saying that he had been killed in fighting led by French forces in the Adrar des Ifoghas region of northern Mali at the end of February.

It made no comment on Belmokhtar, presumed mastermind of an attack in January at the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria in which more than 60 people were killed, including foreign hostages.

Read the entire article here .

NIAMEY, Niger — The newest outpost in the U.S. government’s empire of drone bases sits behind a razor-wire-topped wall outside this West African capital, blasted by 110-degree heat and the occasional sandstorm blowing from the Sahara.

The U.S. Air Force began flying a handful of unarmed Predator drones from here last month. The gray, mosquito-shaped aircraft emerge sporadically from a borrowed hangar and soar north in search of al-Qaeda fighters and guerrillas from other groups hiding in the region’s untamed deserts and hills.

Since taking office in 2009, President Obama has relied heavily on drones for operations, both declared and covert, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia. U.S. drones also fly from allied bases in Turkey, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines.

Read the entire article here .

The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we’re being tracked all the time. Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to. Facebook does the same; it even tracks non-Facebook users. Apple tracks us on our iPhones and iPads. One reporter used a tool called Collusion to track who was tracking him; 105 companies tracked his Internet use during one 36-hour period.

Read the entire article here .

A member of The Church on the Way in Valencia is now back home uninjured with his family in Granada Hills after being kidnapped Thursday in Mexico.

Kyle Bauer, who is reportedly a grandson of the founder of The Church on the Way in Van Nuys, was not harmed during the kidnapping and ransom, according to Pastor Gary Howse, who’s a member of the church.

Bauer was kidnapped Thursday evening some time after he left the house he was staying at, Howse said. He wasn’t sure of the exact circumstances of the incident.

However, shortly after Bauer was noticed to be missing, the group he was with received a ransom note.

They contacted the church, Howse said, which has a series of protocols, because such incidents are not unheard, although this was the first time it happened to the Valencia church during a mission in Mexico.

“Americans are sometimes targeted,” he said.

The church contacted the proper authority, including the state department and the FBI, which helped negotiate the ransom for Bauer, Howse said.

After the kidnappers were paid off, Bauer was returned to the group unharmed.

Read the entire article here .

WASHINGTON, March 13, 2013 – The terror threat is still potent, but it is much more dispersed than it once was, the director of national intelligence told the Senate yesterday.

James R. Clapper told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that terror threats are in a transition period as jihadist movements become decentralized.

Al-Qaida as a name brand remains potent, but the core organization — the original terror group — is fading in capabilities and influence, he said. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, still maintains clout even though it is under assault in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, he said, and it still wants to launch attacks on American soil and against American interests in the region.

Read the entire article here .

(Reuters) – Residents who slipped into a non-descript mud-brick house after Islamist fighters fled Mali’s desert town of Timbuktu uncovered a trove of arms, ammunition and documents – the workings of the local al Qaeda recruitment office.

“We found lots of IDs, passports and birth certificates,” said El Hadj Garaba, who searched through the house with neighbors before French intelligence officers arrived.

The documents – from Mali, nearby African nations and distant countries like Saudi Arabia and Britain – suggest the Islamist groups used their 10-month occupation of northern Mali to stretch their tentacles across West Africa and beyond.

Read the entire article here .