Terrorism, Al Qaeda | featured news

The CIA thwarted an ambitious plot by Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner using a bomb with a sophisticated new design around the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, U.S. officials said.

Steps were being taken to guard against a new threat of "body bombs" planted inside passengers aboard flights heading to the United States from overseas, a government official with knowledge of the threat said Tuesday.

Al-Qaeda it would release hostage Stephen Malcolm if cleric Abu Qatada were freed.

Four admitted terrorists cooperated with prosecutors in the trial of Adis Medunjanin, and their testimony provided an unusually human look at what drew them to Al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda's core organization is likely incapable of carrying out another mass-casualty attack on the scale of September 11, 2001, U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials said on Friday.

Four people in the Philippines hacked into the accounts of AT&T business customers in the United States and diverted money to a group that financed terrorist attacks across Asia, according to police officials in the Philippines.

A guilty plea by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab took a federal court in Detroit by surprise as he admitted he tried to blow up an airliner with a bomb in his underwear for Al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda's Yemeni offshoot confirmed the killing of U.S.-born militant cleric Anwar al-Awlaki late last month.

Most Americans applauded the Sept. 30 strike that killed U.S.-born al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki, but some analysts continue to question the legal reasoning behind an attack on someone who, after all, was an American citizen. There are also questions about the special, secret panel that authorizes kill operations against any terrorist.

The administration has put the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq on a terrorism blacklist and is offering a $10 million reward for information.