Paul Foer at Annapolis Capital Punishment:

We are friends with local Chabad Rabbi Nochum Light and his wife Hindi and because Rabbi Light was a schoolmate and friend of the murdered Rabbi Holzberg and his wife,the horror there has a connection to our lives here. Not only that, but because Jews were specifically targeted among the hundreds randomly murdered, Jews everywhere, including in Annapolis of course, feel an uncomfortable connection with this most recent act of terrorism. Whatever was the motive of the perpetrators of this violence, and whatever there reasons were for looking for Americans and British, we must never forget that when the antidemocratic, anti-Western, anti-secular terrorists go on a rampage, they specifically target Jews–not just Israelis, but Jews of any nationality. And that is when many of us ask, could it happen here?

WBAL.com

A foundation in Virginia is confirming the deaths of a man and his teenage daughter in the terrorist attacks in India.

A spokeswoman with the Synchronicity Foundation said Friday Alan Scherr and his 13-year-old daughter, Naomi, were killed while they were in a cafe in Mumbai.

Bobbie Garvey says the 58-year-old father and his daughter were identified by colleagues.

The two lived at the Nelson County foundation, about 15 miles southwest of Charlottesville, which promotes a high-tech form of meditation.

Garvey said Scherr is a Maryland native and a former college professor.

Scherr was a faculty member at the University of Maryland and a professor at Loyola.

Garvey said four other members of a 25-member delegation from Synchronicity were injured and are recovering.

Baltimore Sun

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff today unveiled a new checkpoint screening system being tested at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and announced other measures to make the process of providing identification at check-in less hectic for travelers.

The $2.1 million pilot at BWI, called “Checkpoint Evolution,” includes enhanced X-ray machines to better scan carry-ons and whole-body imaging machines that show potentially hazardous objects that may be concealed under a passenger’s clothing. The checkpoint makeover also includes more than $300,000 in aesthetic improvements – soft lighting, calming music, better signage and an automatic bin return system – to create order to allow Transportation Security Administration officers to better detect jittery perpetrators trying to pass through the line.

“Everyone who’s been through a checkpoint knows it’s not a relaxing experience,” Chertoff said, showing off the new system at BWI. “It’s a dramatic improvement in the experience. It’s a dramatic improvement for the screening officers.”

To prepare for the pilot, TSA officers have completed a 16-hour training course on explosives detection and how to calmly engage passengers that all 43,000 screeners across the country will soon undergo. Most travelers passing through Southwest Airlines’ Terminal B checkpoint at BWI will experience the new system, which was set up Friday.

Chertoff also announced a new policy to help innocent travelers remove themselves from the TSA’s terrorist watch list. Each airline will create a new system to verify and confidentially store a passenger’s date of birth to clear up any watch list misidentification, he said. Previously inconvenienced customers will then be able to check in online or at airline kiosks, something those on the watch list are now barred from doing.

“It will reverse 100 percent of the false positives in the past, which has been a major hassle,” Chertoff said.

Frederick News-Post:

The National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center is one of several labs planned or being built for the National Interagency Biodefense Campus.

Construction on the $143 million project is on schedule at 60 percent complete, and should be finished by the end of 2008, said Kevin Anderson, the center’s acting science director.

WBAL.com:

A new Department of Homeland Security biodefense center at Fort Detrick should be open by the end of this year.

Officials tell the Frederick News-Post that labs at the center should be operating by the end of 2009.

Administrative staff will move into the building’s office spaces once construction is done, but it will take the Centers for Disease Control several months to certify the labs.

The National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center is one of several labs planned or being built for the National Interagency Biodefense Campus in Frederick.

A cabbie from Gwynn Oak who pleaded guilty in April to aiding a terrorist organization (Lashkar-e-Taiba from Pakistan) was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison today. Mahmud Faruq Brent Al Mutazzim went to Pakistan in 2002 to a terrorist training camp run by the group. Mutazzim could have received 30 years under sentencing guidelines had he not agreed to the plea on the charges that he pleaded guilty to. He was arrested in 2005 in a case that also saw arrests of other individuals in other states.