Terrorist

In the years since their daughter Marla was killed by a Hamas suicide bomber in Jerusalem, Michael and Linda Bennett have had somewhat differing reactions. Linda Bennett has been back twice to Israel, to look at the memorials for her daughter and the other victims of the July 31, 2002, attack at Hebrew University and even to see the cafeteria where it took place. Not to go, she said, would be to surrender to terrorism. Michael Bennett cannot bring himself to visit Israel because he will sense Marla's presence everywhere and his pain will only increase.

It sounds like the setup for a comic sketch: two Middle Eastern American guys launch a comedy festival to dispel those cabdriver-terrorist stereotypes and show Hollywood that "Prince of Persia" star Jake Gyllenhaal isn't the only one who can play a likable Arab. But festival co-founders Ronnie Khalil and Ryan Shrime not only launched the Middle Eastern Comedy Festival last week with four sold-out nights of stand-up and sketch comedy at the Laugh Factory and Acme Comedy Theatre, they also populated the audiences with casting agents and TV executives and persuaded the Disney/ABC Television Group to co-sponsor, with KPCC-FM (89.3)

Using e-mail, YouTube videos, phony travel documents and a burning desire to kill "or die trying," a middle-aged American woman from Pennsylvania helped recruit a network for suicide attacks and other terrorist strikes in Europe and Asia, according to a federal grand jury indictment unsealed Tuesday. Colleen R. LaRose, who dubbed herself "JihadJane," was so intent on waging jihad, authorities said, that she traveled to Sweden to kill an artist in a way that would frighten "the whole Kufar [nonbeliever]

Federal authorities on Tuesday charged two Chicago men with plotting terrorist attacks against targets in Western Europe, including the "facilities and employees" of a Danish newspaper that printed cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that sparked riots in the Muslim world. David Coleman Headley, 49, a U.S. citizen born in Pakistan, was charged with conspiracy to commit terrorist acts. Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a 48-year-old Canadian citizen also from Pakistan, was accused of supporting him. Both men remain in federal custody, officials said.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg spoke bluntly as he stood in Times Square at 2:30 a.m. last Sunday, his red bow tie and black tux testament to the haste with which he had left a White House dinner upon learning of a car bomb in Midtown Manhattan. If anything showed that New York deserves more federal funding for security, this was it, the grim-faced Bloomberg said as lights blazed in the background from bomb experts, firefighters and police scouring the scene. "Homeland Security funds should come to where there is a threat," the mayor said after what police said was the 11th attempted terrorist strike on New York City since Sept.

The whiff of evil lingers in a nondescript apartment in Hollywood, Fla. There, in a second-floor walk-up, terrorists Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi briefly shared lodgings before their Sept. 11, 2001, odyssey of destruction. Now the building faces a wrecking ball. Hollywood's unhappy connection to the nation's worst terrorist attack soon will be transformed into a parking lot and pool. "I feel like no one will be upset about that, considering who used to be a tenant there," said Bryan Grosman, the investor who recently bought the 13-unit apartment building.

Seventeen senators have signed a letter denouncing an effort to cut billions in funds for drugs and vaccines intended to thwart bioterrorism. At issue is a House budget bill that would cut up to $2 billion from the Project BioShield special reserve fund to buy drugs and vaccines in the event of a biological attack. The funds were set aside as a guarantee to private companies that if they produced the medicines, government money would be available to buy them. The White House has not objected to the cut and has criticized the fund.