Security Official

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas fired several security chiefs for failing to halt lawlessness in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, two days after gunmen fired at his Ramallah, West Bank, compound. The head of Palestinian national security in the West Bank, Haj Ismail, also quit, but Abbas has not approved the resignation, a security official said.

KANO, Nigeria - Local government officials and a military spokesman in Nigeria agreed that security forces and Islamist militants had battled in recent days in the country's far northeast. But they offered widely varying accounts Monday of how many people, including civilians, had been killed. Some officials said about 185 people were slain in the clashes, with some residents blaming government troops in part for the deaths. Security officials put the number lower. The fighting began Friday in Baga, a fishing community near Lake Chad, but news of the violence reached Abuja, the capital, only late Sunday.

Hoping to end a public relations nightmare, Target Stores announced Tuesday that it wants to rehire a security official who says he was fired for his role in the successful search for Ventura murder victim Sherri Dally. The Minneapolis-based department store chain also apologized for firing John Avila, 35, Friday as head of security at its Ventura store after an outpouring of customer and community support for the worker.

WASHINGTON - Scientists who helped pioneer BioWatch, the government's system for detecting a biological attack on the U.S., knew from the start that it was prone to false alarms, records show. Between 2003, when the nationwide network of air samplers was first deployed, and 2006, officials at the federally funded Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory filed five patent applications aimed at improving BioWatch's reliability. "The existing methods for detecting" a release of disease-causing organisms into the environment were "inadequate," according to a patent application filed on behalf of Livermore scientists in December 2006.

Notra Trulock, the intelligence official who triggered the federal government's investigation into suspected Chinese espionage at Los Alamos National Laboratory, resigned Monday amid growing controversy about his handling of the case. Trulock said in an interview he quit because the Department of Energy's inspector general last week issued a report that failed to back him up and hold senior Clinton administration officials accountable for security failures at Los Alamos.

Gunmen have killed the No. 2 security official in the home state of Mexican President Felipe Calderon, where drug cartels have launched their biggest offensive yet against the government. State officials say assailants in two cars intercepted the vehicle that Jose Manuel Revuelta was driving and opened fire. The officials say Revuelta, two bodyguards and a bystander were killed. Revuelta was the deputy public safety secretary of Michoacan state.

George Mitchell is right: The culture of gift-giving and special favor that permeates the Olympic site-selection process is a mess in need of immediate custodial care. The bigger the broom the better. But what about what happens after the bid has been won and the Games are underway and the International Olympic Committee is in town, rolling up its sleeves for three weeks of wining, dining and free tickets to swimming, gymnastics and track and field?

A U.S. diplomat was shot to death in the former Soviet republic of Georgia in a murky incident that Georgian authorities Monday attributed to banditry or possibly just a stray bullet. In Washington, U.S. officials said the diplomat, identified as Fred Woodruff, 45, of Stillwater, Okla., was a CIA officer on temporary assignment in Georgia. They said he had been due to leave Aug. 20, but they declined to provide specifics about his business there.

Suspected Al Qaeda militants opened fire on a convoy of tourists in a remote mountain valley, killing two Belgian women and their Yemeni driver. The victims were in a convoy of five vehicles passing through a desert valley in the eastern Hadhramaut region when the gunmen attacked, a security official said. At least 10 suspects were taken into custody.

Three Americans traveling in Yemen were kidnapped by tribesmen demanding the release of 25 suspects detained in an attack on an oil pipeline, a security official said. The Americans--a teacher based in Sana, the Yemeni capital, and her visiting parents--were abducted by gunmen as they returned to Sana from a trip to the south Tuesday, the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity. The teacher, Marta R. Colburn from Portland, Ore.

Two people familiar with the NFL's investigation of bounties paid to New Orleans players say former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams will meet with league security officials Monday. The people, who spoke on condition of anonymity Sunday because details of the continuing investigation are not being disclosed, could not specify where in the New York area the meeting will take place. The NFL revealed its findings Friday that showed Saints players being paid for knocking opponents out of games.

A loaded and undeclared .38-caliber handgun tumbled from a checked bag at Los Angeles International Airport Sunday, prompting police to detain the gun owner temporarily. A luggage ramp crew discovered the weapon after it fell from an unzipped compartment in a duffel bag they were loading onto Alaska Airlines Flight 563, according to police and the airlines. The plane was leaving the terminal at 8:15 a.m. Sunday, bound for Portland, Ore. Workers called Los Angeles Airport Police to report the discovery.

China's “predatory” campaign of intellectual property theft through cyber attacks against the United States and other Western nations has reached “an intolerable level” that is harming U.S. national security, the chairman of the House intelligence committee said Tuesday. In the most explicit public criticisms of Chinese cyber spying by a senior American official, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said the U.S. and its allies must confront Beijing, which he said is waging “a massive trade war against all of us,” resulting in a slow and destructive transfer of military and technological secrets from the West to China.

Newly obtained emails show that the White House was better informed about a failed gun-tracking operation on the border with Mexico than was previously known. Three White House national security officials were given some details about the operation, dubbed Fast and Furious. The operation allowed firearms to be illegally purchased, with the goal of tracking them to Mexican drug cartels. But the effort went out of control after agents lost track of many of the weapons. The supervisor of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation in Phoenix specifically mentioned Fast and Furious in at least one email to a White House national security official, and two other White House colleagues were briefed on reports from the supervisor, according to White House emails and a senior administration official.

Elite units controlled by Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's military office are ignoring members of parliament and the government's own directive by operating a clandestine jail in Baghdad's Green Zone where prisoners routinely face torture to extract confessions, Iraqi officials say. Iraqi legislators and security officials have been joined by the International Committee of the Red Cross in expressing concern about the facility, called Camp Honor....

The cyber-security industry is on Defcon 1 high alert. The recent rash of attacks on dozens of websites including those of the CIA, the FBI and even PBS is roiling the security industry and increasing demand for cyber-defense experts. "Every time one of these breaches makes the news, I will tell you, my phone rings off the hook," said Chris Novak, a manager of Verizon Communications Inc.'s Investigative Response Team, which now has nearly 100 members, more than double from a year ago. With the surge in attacks in recent months, Novak sees the team tripling in size this year.

A feared former security official in the Haitian dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier made a bold public appearance at a convention of 2,000 loyalists of the ousted regime in Port-au-Prince. Flanked by military men, Roger Lafontant, a former interior minister and the reputed head of the notorious Tontons Macoutes secret police created by the Duvalier family, was cheered at the convention, which is expected to nominate a presidential candidate today.

The detention of Pakistanis suspected of supplying information to the CIA in advance of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden reflects the deep embarrassment within their country's military and intelligence circles over the unilateral U.S. operation, analysts said Wednesday. Pakistan's military has faced intense domestic criticism in recent weeks from lawmakers and commentators over its failure to detect the secret helicopter-borne U.S. commando team that slipped into the military city of Abbottabad on May 2 and killed the Al Qaeda leader.

A woman who was beaten and carted away by plainclothes security officials after she told journalists she had been brutally gang-raped by Moammar Kadafi's militiamen remained missing Sunday even as she became a worldwide symbol of defiance against the regime. A government official said Iman Obeidi was safe, free and with her family but provided no proof to back up his statement. The Libyan official, Musa Ibrahim, described the woman as a single mother and alleged she was a prostitute with a long criminal record.