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Tribal
Troops Mass to Attack bin Laden
Excerpts
from articles detailing efforts to attack forces suspected to
be defending bin Laden somewhere in the neighborhood of the
Tora Bora caves southwest of Jalalabad:
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An
army of Afghan tribesmen was advancing yesterday on the mountainous
Tora Bora cave complex where Osama bin Laden is thought to have
taken refuge, amid reports that his deputy may have been killed
or wounded by a US airstrike.
Tribal
leaders in Jalalabad said 2,000 men had set off to attack the
complex 35 miles southwest of the city, where the world’s
most wanted man and hundreds of fanatical followers are believed
to be preparing for their last stand.
The
advancing tribesmen fought a brief skirmish with al-Qaeda gunmen
at the foot of the mountains last night. There were no casualties
and the gunmen retreated.
...
Haji Mohammad Zaman, the military chief for Nangarhar province,
said Ayman al-Zawahiri, the 50-year-old Egyptian doctor who
is bin Laden’s mentor, had been caught in an airstrike
near Tora Bora.
“I
am not sure whether he is injured or he died,” Mr Zaman
said. US television networks reported that Dr al-Zawahiri’s
wife and children had been killed while he had probably escaped.
Dr
al-Zawahiri — the world’s second most wanted man —
is widely regarded as the real power behind the al-Qaeda terrorist
network.
The
lifelong Islamic militant led Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the group
that assassinated Anwar Sadat, the President of Egypt, in 1981.
He met bin Laden while fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan
in the 1980s and they merged their followers into the al-Qaeda
organisation in the late 1990s.
He
persuaded bin Laden to direct his “holy war” against
America and helped to mastermind the September 11 attacks.
Mr
Zaman said his forces had also begun to encircle the Tora Bora
complex with its escape routes, where the Afghan Mujahidin held
out for years against Soviet forces.
American
helicopter gunships and special operations forces have arrived
in Jalalabad to play a support role but Pentagon officials insisted
that US commandos would not participate directly in what could
be an extremely bloody hand-to-hand battle.
...
Washington would prefer not to mount an assault using American
troops against one of the most formidable fortified complexes
in Afghanistan.
Afghan
and Western military analysts contend that the base offers ideal
guerrilla defences and would be an extremely difficult target
for ground troops to attack if the Arab fighters decided to
fight to the death.
Al-Qa'eda
fighters inside the base are armed with sophisticated weaponry
and have been improving defences in recent weeks. ...
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Sources:
Israel
War on Terrorism
Flash
graphic presentation describing the recent islamic extremist
suicide bombing attacks and the Israeli response:
(click for Flash presentation)
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Inside
IT
Excerpts
from an article with details on Dean Kamen's new IT / Ginger
/ Segway personal transporter:
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Inside
IT
(click for interactive presentation)
...
Could this thing really change the world?
...
Kamen explains, "the big idea is to put a human being into
a system where the machine acts as an extension of your body."
On first inspection, balancing on Ginger seems only slightly
more feasible than balancing on a barbell. But what Kamen is
talking about is the way Ginger does the balancing for you.
Lean forward, go forward; lean back, go back; turn by twisting
your wrist. The experience is the same going uphill, downhill
or across any kind of terrain--even ice. It is nothing like
riding a bike or a motorcycle. Instead, ... "it's like
skiing without the snow."
Exactly
how the Segway achieves this effect isn't easy to explain; Kamen's
first stab at it involves a blizzard of equations. Eventually,
though, he offers this:
"When
you walk, you're really in what's called a controlled fall.
You off-balance yourself, putting one foot in front of the other
and falling onto them over and over again. In the same way,
when you use a Segway, there's a gyroscope that acts like your
inner ear, a computer that acts like your brain, motors that
act like your muscles, wheels that act like your feet. Suddenly,
you feel like you have on a pair of magic sneakers, and instead
of falling forward, you go sailing across the room."
...
Pulling off this trick requires an unholy amount of computer
power. In every Segway there are 10 microprocessors cranking
out three PCs' worth of juice. Also a cluster of aviation-grade
gyros, an accelerometer, a bevy of sensors, two batteries and
software so sophisticated it puts Microsoft to shame.
...
The possibility that the segway will be viewed as simply a high-end
toy, a jet ski on wheels, is one of Kamen's greatest concerns,
especially after Sept. 11. He wants his machine taken seriously,
as a serious solution to serious problems.
...
With the Segway, Kamen plans to change the world by changing
how cities are organized. To Kamen's way of thinking, the problem
is the automobile. "Cities need cars like fish need bicycles,"
he says. Segways, he believes, are ideal for downtown transportation.
Unlike
cars, they are cheap, clean, efficient, maneuverable. Unlike
bicycles, they are designed specifically to be pedestrian friendly.
"A bike is too slow and light to mix with trucks in the
street but too large and fast to mix with pedestrians on the
sidewalk," he argues. "Our machine is compatible with
the sidewalk. If a Segway hits you, it's like being hit by another
pedestrian."
By
traveling at three or four times walking speed, and thus turning
what would have been a 30-minute walk into a 10-minute ride,
Kamen contends, Segways will in effect shrink cities to the
point where cars "will not only be undesirable, but unnecessary."
...
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Source:
Nukes
by bin Laden?
Excerpts
from an article describing the latest information on the threat
posed by a terrorist "dirty nuke":
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Osama
bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist network may have been closer
to making a crude radioactive weapon than United States intelligence
agencies thought, according to US and foreign sources.
Captured
al-Qaeda members or associates have given information under
interrogation and other evidence has come from CIA agents and
US Special Forces who have examined al-Qaeda facilities in Afghanistan.
Recent
US intelligence reports describe a meeting within the last year
at which bin Laden was present when one of his associates produced
a canister that allegedly contained radioactive material and
waved it in the air as proof of al-Qaeda's progress in building
a nuclear device.
The
US Government has asked some of its allies to keep a look-out
for the bin Laden associate and warned he might be trying to
smuggle in radioactive material.
There
is no conclusive evidence that bin Laden or his associates have
built a radiological bomb or even have the capability to do
so, these sources emphasised. But for years bin Laden has said
publicly he was working towards capability. ...
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Source:
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