Fears that al-Qaeda is planning a wave of suicide attacks with syringe bombs have been heightened after it emerged that a Somali man tried to board an aircraft last month carrying the same type of device as that used by the Detroit bomber.

Police in Somalia said the terrorist was caught “red handed” in Mogadishu trying to take powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe onto a commercial airliner bound for Dubai. The suspect had 1kg of chemical powder – more than 12 times as much as the Detroit bomber – though the exact composition of the chemicals is not yet known.  Read more... (561 words, 1 image, estimated 2:15 mins reading time)

President Barack Obama on Monday promised to track down all those behind an attempt to bring down a US airliner on Christmas Day, ending three days of silence on the attack.

Mr Obama told Americans his administration was doing all it could to ensure security after a Nigerian man managed to smuggle explosives onto a Detroit-bound flight, an incident that was a “serious reminder of the dangers that we face and the nature of those who threaten our homeland”.  Read more... (293 words, 1 image, estimated 1:10 mins reading time)

On the heels of [Monday's] announcement that Afghanistan is forming a new crime unit to address the pervasive corruption in the country after insistent calls from international leaders that President Hamid Karzai improve governance, a watchdog group has ranked Afghanistan the world’s second-most corrupt country, surpassed only by Somalia (AP, Al Jazeera, AP, BBC, Reuters). The full results of the 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index, which measures perceived levels of public sector corruption by drawing on surveys of businesses and experts, are available from Transparency International (TI).