Threats

The nation's new intelligence chief warned Thursday that the global economic crisis is the most serious security peril facing the United States, threatening to topple governments, trigger waves of refugees and undermine the ability of America's allies to help in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The economic collapse "already looms as the most serious one in decades, if not in centuries," said Dennis C.

You can drive into this dusty fleck of a town near the Texas-Louisiana state line if you're African American, but you might not be able to drive out of it -- at least not with your car, your cash, your jewelry or other valuables. That's because the police here allegedly have found a way to strip motorists, many of them black, of their property without ever charging them with a crime.

Two Brentwood publicists said they dropped octuplets mom Nadya Suleman as a client Saturday because they have received a slew of death threats. Suleman, a 33-year-old Whittier resident, was unmarried, unemployed and already had six children using a sperm donor when she gave birth to eight children from the same donor Jan. 26 at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Bellflower.

Facebook, the popular social networking website, moved quickly Monday to take down a member's poll asking if President Obama should be assassinated. The question, "Should Obama be killed?" had received 730 responses since its posting on Saturday. The four possible answers: Yes. Maybe. If he cuts my healthcare. No. The Secret Service launched an investigation into the threat against the president. A Facebook spokesman said the Palo Alto-based company was not aware of the poll until early Monday morning and did not know who posted it or who responded to it. "At this time, we don't know," said Barry Schnitt, a spokesman for policy.

A security camera recorded the man wearing dark sunglasses and a hooded sweat shirt as he walked by Boston's Symphony Hall on Feb. 9 and dropped a cardboard tube marked "Anthrax Beware" at the door. Emergency medical crews raced to the site, firefighters cordoned off the area, police halted traffic, and life came to an anxious halt until a hazmat team signaled the all-clear: The tube was empty.

Threatening graffiti found in three men's restrooms led Oakland University to cancel campus classes, sports and cultural activities for two days. The school in Rochester sent out a security alert Saturday after finding one threatening message, and officials said they found similar messages in men's restrooms in two other buildings. The school didn't reveal contents of the threats.

A 15-year-old boy Friday admitted that he posted criminal threats on the website Wikipedia last month that targeted fellow students at Glen A. Wilson High School, officials said. The teen admitted to six counts of making criminal threats, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. A seventh charge was dismissed, Robison said. The teenager was charged in connection with the posting of two threatening messages on the Wikipedia entry for Wilson High on April 16 and 17. In the messages, he threatened to shoot six students and "a good majority" of the school badminton team.

Authorities have arrested a man who they say told bank tellers in Utah that he was on a mission to kill President Obama. Daniel James Murray, 36, was arrested Friday outside a casino in Laughlin, Nev., according to the Secret Service. Murray made bizarre statements last month while opening -- and then closing within two weeks -- an $85,000 savings account at Zions First National Bank in St. George, Utah, the Secret Service said in documents filed Thursday. Asst. U.S. Atty.

Your nation is technically at war with North Korea, among the most hostile countries on Earth. It has long threatened to turn your homeland into "rubble" and is making noises about launching a long-range ballistic test missile any day now. What do you think? Many South Koreans will tell you plainly: baloney.

Residents of an upscale retirement community near here knew Douglas Hoffman was upset that trees were blocking his backyard view of the Strip. But at a hearing Monday, where Hoffman was sentenced to up to five years in prison for killing more than 500 trees, a prosecutor said the retired construction worker had threatened to unleash "chemical, biological, nuclear mass destruction" because of it.