1. november 2004

Terror threat against Norwegian embassy in Latvia Norway received what was perceived as a credible threat to its embassy in Riga, Latvia, and it was closed today Monday. From what I have heard, it was a suspected Ansar al-Islam terrorist in Finnish custody who gave the information that Norwegian authorties acted on. At the same time, but apparently unrelated, the US is warning its citizens against terror threats in the Nordic and Baltic countries. PS: Now what could be the connection between Ansar and Norway? Yup, Mullah Krekar is still here. 8:54:29 PM    comment []  trackback []

Show some imagination with those headlines! Expression of the week (and then some): "too close to call" appears in 4,320 English-language articles currently on Google News. Opinion polls show a spread around a tie, with a small advantage to President Bush. Especially all those Americans who are constantly called by these polling agencies will be so happy when this is over. And so will the rest of us, when the blogosphere eventually returns to normalcy and sanity. I hope. 8:49:28 PM    comment []  trackback []

"Look to Norway" Daniel Gross looks at the Norwegian Petroleum Fund as a possible example for how Iraq should cope with its oil wealth: Avoiding the oil curse - What Norway can teach Iraq. 3:49:46 PM    comment []  trackback []

Bin Laden spotted? This is from Debka, a source that is sometimes very well informed but other times carries stories that prove to be total nonsense, so beware: Bin Laden was actually spotted in the flesh just a few days ago - according to DEBKAfile’s counter terror sources. Between October 17 and October 19, an Indian air force reconnaissance plane picked him up in the Tibet-Laddakh region close to the North-Eastern corner of Pakistan bordering India and China. Additional surveillance aircraft were called in and identified the al Qaeda leader on the move with a 10-vehicle convoy of black Japanese minivans. Four of the vehicles turned up again on October 22 heading east towards the Chinese border. Our sources maintain that the rumored sightings of bin Laden on the Lingzi Thang Plain on the Tibetan border in June may have been true then but are now outdated. In any case, he was not at the time in Pakistani Waziristan or the Afghan-Pakistani border. There were independent claims some time back that Bin Laden was in China. Conventional wisdom seems to still be that he's hiding in the border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan. 8:27:56 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2004 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.12.2004; 07:24:56.