WASHINGTON – Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced Thursday that al-Qaida is “moving forward” with plans for a “large-scale attack” in the United States aimed at disrupting the November elections. Ridge said he doesn’t know when, where or how an attack would occur, and said he was not raising the color-coded threat level. A senior U.S. intelligence official hinted that New York remains a target because of “strong indications that al-Qaida will continue to try to revisit past targets – those that they were able to attack as well as those they were unable to attack.”
The Federal Aviation Administration has launched an investigation into how two Chicago city trucks were able to stray onto a runway at O’Hare International Airport, forcing two planes to abort landings. On June 27, the Department of Aviation trucks came within 3,000 feet of a Northwest Airlines DC-9 passenger jet and a Polar Air Cargo 747, an FAA spokeswoman said Wednesday. Radar showed the aircraft were traveling about 160 mph at 200 to 300 feet when pilots noticed the trucks on the runway, officials said. Five similar errors have occurred at O’Hare in the last 21/2 years, the FAA said.
A meteor shower Wednesday lit up the sky from Texas to western Tennessee, prompting a flood of reports to law officers throughout a five-state region. The lights flashed across the sky shortly after 9 p.m. in parts of Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Tennessee. A Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said the spotting was a meteorite, probably several. “The front part was fiery red and it had a greenish glow behind it and a long red tail,” a witness in Louisiana told Shreveport television.
An electrician was sentenced in Painesville to 30 days in jail for causing an 8-year-old boy’s death by improperly installing wires on a bumper car ride at a county fair. Nick Rock, 81, also was sentenced Wednesday to two years probation. He was convicted of reckless homicide and involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors said Rock failed to properly ground an electrical wire to the ride. “A message has to be sent to those entrusted with hooking up 200 volts where kids are congregated, that they do it safely,” the judge said.
A man who was accused of plotting to fire bomb abortion clinics, churches and gay bars was sentenced in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday to five years in federal prison. Stephen Jordi, 36, pleaded guilty in February to a single charge of attempted arson of an abortion clinic. Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Jordi under a federal terrorism law and sought seven to 10 years. The judge refused, saying federal sentencing rules require that plots have an international component to be considered terrorism.
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