According to the UK Telegraph, Pakistani and US sources say there is evidence that mobile phone calls were exchanged between Major Adnan Ejaz and the suspected would-be bomber, Faisal Shahzad, who was arrested on May 3 as he attempted to fly out of New York.
A Pakistani law enforcement sources said that the major had mobile phone contact with Shahzad on the day of the attempted bombing, including one conversation at the same time the bomber was allegedly parking his car loaded with propane tanks and explosives.
He had also met the naturalized American in Islamabad, he claimed.
Shahzad, the son of a retired Pakistani Air Force officer, has told interrogators he received training from the Pakistan Taliban in its rugged mountain stronghold of Waziristan.
Pakistan’s military and intelligence services have a long history of working with Jihadi organisations as an instrument of foreign policy.
However, the major’s detention marks the first time someone in the country’s military establishment has been directly linked to the Times Square plot. Read Full Article.
Coinciding with Attorney General Eric Holder telling ABC News this week that “the American people would be surprised by the depth of the [homegrown terrorist] threat” while discussing his growing concern about Americans becoming radicalized and turning to terrorism, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told the Council on Foreign Relations that it is incumbent that citizens pay attention to their surroundings for anything suspicious and out of place, and to report it to proper authorities. It might just prevent a domestic terrorist attack, she said.
“With respect to individuals and the private sector, we’re taking a much closer look at how we can support and inform our greatest asset, individual citizens, and with them the private sector. You are the ones who know if something is not right in your communities, such as a suspicious package or unusual activity,” Napolitano said.
What To Do If You Spot Suspicious Terrorist Activity
If you see suspicious behavior, do not confront the individuals involved.
Take note of the details:
S – Size (Jot down the number of people, gender, ages, and physical descriptions)
A – Activity (Describe exactly what they are doing)
L – Location (Provide exact location)
U – Uniform (Describe what they are wearing, including shoes)
T – Time (Provide date, time, and duration of activity)
E - Equipment (Describe vehicle, make, color etc., license plate, camera, guns, etc)
Suspicious activity is often recalled after an event. We must train ourselves to be on the lookout for things that are out of the ordinary and arouse suspicions.
Napolitano said “three years ago, it was an attentive store clerk who told authorities about men trying to duplicate extremist DVDs. This led federal agents to eventually round up a plot to kill American soldiers at the Fort Dix army base here in New Jersey.”
And “just last month, a passenger saw two employees exchange a bag at the Philadelphia airport that had not been properly screened. That passenger’s vigilance ultimately stopped a gun from getting onto the plane.”
“For too long, we’ve treated the public as a liability to be protected rather than an asset in our nation’s collective security,” Napolitano confessed.
“There’s actually an important role we can play in educating even our very young about watching for, and knowing what to do, if you’re in an airport and you see a package left with no one around,” Napolitano said.
This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for homeland security news and information.
War
Wondering how many nukes are within range of your location? Find out with the Nuk-O-Meter There are 6344 nuclear warheads are within range of San Jose CA, US
More Info By country
2347 from USA
3684 from Russia
192 from UK
121 from China
By delivery
2490 from long range ICBMs
0 from short range missiles
1083 from bomber aircraft
2771 from nuclear submarines
Flooding
Anderson Dam could fail after major earthquake
City officials and residents downstream from Anderson Lake were not surprised to learn that Morgan Hill could flood if a major earthquake occurs on a fault that runs under the reservoir.
A new preliminary study released this week by the Santa Clara Valley Water District says the 240-foot-high dam holding back the county's largest reservoir could turn to liquid if a quake of 6.6 magnitude or higher is registered on the Calaveras fault directly beneath the lake, or a 7.2 quake occurs within a mile or two on the same fault.
In such an event, the top of the dam could slump and allow water to spill over, the study says, potentially sending a 35-foot wall of water rushing to downtown Morgan Hill, flooding Gilroy, San Martin and the entire valley floor up to San Jose within a couple of hours.
District officials say that because the reservoir is currently only about 64 percent full, the risk of flooding is low. Read More Jan 6, 2009
By Michael Moore - Staff Writer
Another reason to PREpare source
Tsunami
Tsunami advisory issued for Bay Area
September 30, 2009|By Victoria Colliver, Chronicle Staff Writer
(09-29) 17:42 PDT SAN FRANCISCO — A tsunami advisory has been issued for tonight along the Bay Area oceanfront and the rest of coastal California because of an 8.3 earthquake that struck American Samoa.The National Weather Service's tsunami warning center issued the advisory for the coast from the Mexican border to the Oregon-Washington border. The center said no widespread inundation was expected for any of the areas under the advisory, but that large waves and strong currents could lead to dangerous conditions.
(CNN) -- A 4.5-magnitude earthquake struck Southern California on Tuesday evening, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
The quake was downgraded from an earlier magnitude of 5.1.
The temblor was centered 18 miles west-southwest of El Centro, California, just north of Mexicali in Mexico's Baja California, the USGS said. It struck at a depth of 6.3 miles.
"This earthquake is within the aftershock zone of a magnitude 7.2 (earthquake) that occurred on April 4" near Mexicali, said Susan Potter of the USGS, adding "this is an area that was exposed to many large earthquakes in the past."
At least two people were killed and 100 injured in the April 4 quake.
(CNN) -- Lava and ash from Ecuador's Tungurahua volcano forced the closure of Guayaquil Airport until Saturday afternoon, an airport spokesman said Friday.
The glacier-capped, 16,478-foot (5,023-meter) volcano has erupted periodically since 1999, with major eruptions occurring in August 2006 and February 2008, the government's emergency management agency said.
Officials evacuated the towns of Cusua and Juive Grande in central Ecuador, the emergency agency said, but no injuries or fatalities had been reported. No further evacuations were planned, the agency said.
The eruption sent a large ash cloud into the air, the Geophysical Institute of Peru said. The height could not be determined because of cloudiness in the area.
Before the long-term eruption beginning in 1999 that caused the temporary evacuation of the city of Banos at the foot of the volcano, the last major eruption had occurred from 1916 to 1918, and minor activity continued until 1925, the Smithsonian Institution said on its volcano website.
The volcano is 87 miles (140 km) south of Quito, the nation's capital.
Tungurahua means "throat of fire" in the native Quechua language.
It was the second volcanic eruption reported in Latin America in the past few days. The Pacaya volcano erupted Thursday in Guatemala, killing at least three people.
Residents survey the damage to a building after a magnitude 7.2
earthquake Monday in Mexicali, Mexico.
(CNN) -- Yes, it seems as if there have been a lot of strong earthquakes this year. And no, it's not a signal that the planet is coming apart at the seams, seismologists say.
The difference this year is not the frequency or strength of earthquakes, but their occurrence in or near population centers, the scientists say.
Major earthquakes in 2010 have caused death and destruction in Haiti, Chile, Mexico and Indonesia, and smaller ones have rattled nerves elsewhere.
"Natural processes become disasters only when they interact with people," said Seth Stein, a distinguished faculty member at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
"There are lots of earthquakes every year, but most of them don't do anybody any harm. And even big earthquakes don't necessarily do anybody any harm unless a lot of people live there," said Stein, the William Deering professor of geological sciences in Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
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Earthquakes the size of the magnitude 7.0 temblor that struck Haiti on January 12 occur 15 to 20 times a year, but almost all occur in oceans or sparsely populated lands, he said.
"Earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have remained fairly constant throughout this century and, according to our records, have actually seemed to decrease in recent years," the U.S. Geological Survey, which measures and tracks earthquakes all around the world, says on its Web site.
The USGS attributes our heightened awareness of earthquakes to a number of factors, including larger populations in more places, better global communication and media reporting, and a wider network of seismic detection devices.
Kurt Frankel, an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told CNN after the magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile on February 27 that there's nothing unusual going on.
"I'm sticking by my story," he said Wednesday. "It may be possible there's been a little bit higher frequency of these slightly larger earthquakes this year, but it's such a random process that there's not a connection between them."
The geologic record suggests lulls and increases in seismic activity -- at specific faults, not globally, he said.
"I really think that part of it is just our heightened sense of awareness given what happened in Haiti, with all the death and destruction there, and then the fifth-largest earthquake on record just a month later in Chile," he said.
"I would be cautious in trying to say there's an uptick in earthquake activity or anything like that."
However, he's open to scientific persuasion, noting that instruments have been measuring earthquakes for only about 100 years, "less than the blink of an eye over the geologic time scale."
"This is science, right?" he said. "We need to keep testing that hypothesis and other hypotheses, and maybe I will be wrong and my mind will change if these things keep happening."
1. Conclusions of a Panel of Experts
In 1987, the National Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council convened a panel of experts for the first time to evaluate the likelihood for future earthquakes in California. In a report published in 1988, the panel concluded that there was a 50 percent probability for an earthquake of magnitude 7 or larger within the San Francisco Bay Area in 30 years or less. The panel also said there was a 30 percent probability for a 6.5 to 7 magnitude earthquake in the Santa Cruz Mountains within 30 years. This was the highest probability they assigned to any single fault segment in the Bay Area. The 7.1 Loma Prieta earthquake struck in the Santa Cruz Mountains only one year later in 1989.
After the Loma Prieta earthquake, the panel of experts was again convened to determine whether they should change the estimate of the probabilities of future large earthquakes in the San Francisco Bay Area because of the earthquake and other new data. Their report, issued in July 1990, was endorsed by the National Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council and the California Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council.
The panel identified four fault segments in the Bay Area along which they now believe large earthquakes are most likely: the peninsula segment of the San Andreas fault between Los Gatos and Hillsborough; the Hayward fault between Fremont and San Leandro; the Hayward fault between San Leandro and San Pablo Bay; and the Rodgers Creek fault between San Pablo Bay and Santa Rosa. They estimated that the probability is about 25 percent for a large earthquake on each one of these fault segments within 30 years.
More importantly, when the probabilities of earthquakes on all of these segments are combined mathematically, there is a 67 percent chance for at least one earthquake of magnitude 7 or larger in the San Francisco Bay Area between 1990 and 2020. Such an earthquake could strike at any time, including today.
The panel also concluded that:
There could be more than one earthquake of magnitude 7 or larger in this 30-year period.
Major earthquakes on all four fault segments are likely within the next 100 to 150 years.
Each earthquake is likely to be of magnitude 7. If two fault segments slip during the same earthquake, for example along the Hayward fault, then the anticipated magnitude could be as large as 7.5.
Earthquakes of magnitude 7 are considered possible, but not as likely, on other Bay Area faults such as the Calaveras, Concord, and San Gregorio.
A repeat of the magnitude 8.3 San Francisco earthquake of 1906, which broke several segments of the San Andreas fault from south of San Jose to Cape Mendocino (a distance of more than 270 miles), is not likely during the next few decades.
Numerous earthquakes with magnitudes of about 6 are also likely; these smaller earthquakes could cause some damage, especially near their epicenters.
About Probabilities
We do not know what will happen in the future, but with the information we now have, we can estimate the likelihood that something will happen. We express the likelihood by using probabilities.
A probability of 50 percent means that it is just as likely to happen as not to happen.
A probability of 67 percent means that it is twice as likely to happen as not to happen.
A probability of 75 percent means that it is 3 times more likely to happen than not to happen
Customer Safety Call 911 for Downed Lines Your safety is our first concern. If you see a downed power line, assume it is energized and keep yourself and others away. Call 911 immediately to report the location of the downed line then call your locate service provider.
( In Northern Ca ) 1-800-743-5002, PG&E's 24-Hour Emergency and Customer Service Line.
Source
GoBag.org Website purpose: To make emergency preparedness easier by providing one place to find links to a lot of the best information.
Reveiws & Thank You's
If you have a page suggestion or idea, I'd love to hear your thoughts Email your ideas to AllyKat10851@yahoo.com
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Thank You Beth from GoBag.org
Let Your Family Know You’re Safe,
If your community does flood, register on the American Red Cross Safe and Well Web site available through redcross.org to let your family and friends know about your welfare
If you don’t have internet access (https://disastersafe.redcross.org/default.aspx
call 1-800-RED CROSS to register yourself and
your family.
During these tough economic times, many states and cities are facing major cutbacks to First Responders so it is more important than ever for businesses and consumers to know what they should plan for and do during an emergency situation.
One way to help is to get copies of IT'S A DISASTER! for your family, friends, employees and customers.
Disaster Alert Display (DAD)
Many disasters can cause you to evacute at a moments notice
This network was created to promote
emergency preparedness through
awareness, education, community
involvement and partnerships between
individuals, groups and organizations.
