CNN reports that 10 Yemeni police and civilians were killed when "suspected al Qaeda insurgents disguised as security forces launched an attack on the U.S. Embassy" in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. According to the NY Times, one car drove up, and "several attackers got out...firing rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles" while a second car "drove into the compound’s gate and exploded in what appeared to be a suicide bombing." No U.S. Embassy employees were......

Photograph of a vacant lot on the Lower East Side by p0psharlow on Flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bicyclist struck on Queens Blvd. and 55th St. a smoke condition at the Heartland Brewery & Rotisserie At 350 5th Ave & East 34th St. Your name is Leila. You're a Verizon customer. You are receiving every text msg. addressed to Leila across the planet. A science teacher at a Staten Island H.S. along......

A Mighty Heart (directed by Michael Winterbottom) If you ever turn on the TV, your computer or glance at a newspaper, you're probably aware that mother/humanitarian/human clothes hanger Angelina Jolie has a new movie coming out this weekend. You've also probably gathered that it's produced by her hunky paramour and co-parent Brad Pitt and that it highlights Angie's "good person-ness" by having her depict the tragic life of journalist Mariane Pearl shortly after the kidnapping......

Even though a Sunni insurgent group claimed yesterday that two captured U.S. soldiers had been killed, one of the soldiers' mothers hoping that her son is still alive. Maria Rosario Duran spoke to reporters outside her Corona, Queens home. She said, "I can't even imagine that he's not going to return alive, that I will never see him again." The insurgents, who have been linked to Al Qaeda, allegedly captured Duran's son, Specialist Alex Jimenez,......

WNBC 4's Jonathan Dient reports that the feds have arrested four men plotting to blow up a jet fuel pipeline at JFK Airport today. From WNBC 4:Four people have been charged. One is in custody in New York. Three suspects are thought to be overseas. Sources said one suspect is thought to be a former parliament or government official in Guyana... ...Law enforcement officials said the plot may involve a former airport worker.There will be......

Last night, parents of students who attend public schools at 345 Dean Street in Brooklyn convened for an emergency meeting with the Department of Education. The emergency was the fact that the DOE wants to move an Arabic-themed specialized school, named after the poet Khalil Gibran, into the building. Parents generally stuck to arguing that another school would overcrowd the school. The Post quoted Janet Filemyr, whose child attends sixth grade at the Math and......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an EMT was assaulted on Hazen St. at Rikers Island, a dead body in the water off Emmons and Ocean Aves. in Brooklyn, and another dead body in the water off Manhattan's Pier 11. The doctor taped swearing allegiance to Al Qaeda claims that his trip to Saudi Arabia to treat injured terrorists was actually just a ruse. He wanted to go to the Middle East to find out......

Yesterday, six men were arrested for plotting to attack Fort Dix in NJ and other targets in the area. The men, Muslims from (the former) Yugoslavia, Turkey and Jordan, were apprehended after the FBI conducted 14 months of surveillance and infiltrated their group. The arrests came after two of the men tried to buy, per the Post, "AK-47 assault weapons, M-16s and grenade launchers" in their attempt to kill "as many American soldiers as......

About 53 miles outside of New York City, FBI agents were working with state and local authorities to track down a group that had robbed a series of banks in central New Jersey. Yesterday afternoon, during a confrontation with the automatic weapons-carrying robbers outside a PNC Bank in Readington, NJ, an FBI agent was killed by gunfire. And it seems the gunfire was from other federal agents. The FBI only confirmed that 52-ear-old Special......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A shooting in Brooklyn, a power outage in Queens, and scaffolding that fell on the 5 tracks - subway service on the 2 and 5 is messed up! A Bronx man pleaded guilty to terror plotting; Tarik Shah will serve no more than 15 years for offering to teach Al Qaeda operatives "how to wage jihad with hand-to-hand combat" New lawsuit to stop the Atlantic Yards lawsuit, on the......

EVENT: Upstairs at the Square, the bookstores series featuring musicians and authors in conversation & performing their work, is happening tonight. This one will be featuring musician Badly Drawn Boy and author Dana Spiotta, with host Katherine Lanpher. 7pm // Barnes & Noble [33 East 17th St] // Free THEATER: The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by New Yorker scribe Lawrence Wright, was one of The New York Times Book Review's "Top......

Think of it as a force field for New York. The Department of Homeland Security is going to spend almost $50 million on radiation detectors that will be placed in secret locations around the City. This is in response to intelligence suggesting that Al Qaeda would like to set off a nuclear or dirty bomb in this country. The detectors will be up and running later in the year, giving terrorists a nice window of......

Gothamist reader Seth wrote in on Sunday: A friend of mine was at St. John the Divine today. She was walking along with a tour when they got to the section with the busts of famous Americans. She looked over, and one bust was missing. In its place was a dollar bill. The missing head: George Washington. The tour guide was freaked out. Security was notified. Apparently this happened between yesterday afternoon and this......

Today in the Gothamist newsmap: a fatal subway accident near Wall Street, several stabbings, and two bank robberies. Curbed has some more insane renderings from the New York Aquarium design competition. If this ever gets built, we're going to have some very confused fish on our hands. If Al Qaeda ever invades New York City via the Staten Island ferry, we're totally safe. Apparently Hevesi isn't alone in cheating on chauffeur privileges-- the Post......

After a day of the world could not afford to take. The world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. And now the challenge is to help the Iraqi people build a democracy that fulfills the dreams of the nearly 12 million Iraqis who came out to vote in free elections last December. Al Qaeda and other extremists from across the world have come to Iraq to stop the rise of a......

Yesterday, the NYPD's counterterrorism head Richard Falkenrath said that the city is still viewed as "a prime target for another terrorist strike." The AP reports that Falkenrath was briefing security executives in prepartion for the UN General Assembly. And what do you know, a Al Jazeera airs a tape of Osama bin Laden and some September 11 hijackers (well, supposedly September 11 hijackers - their faces are masked). While the President sought to point out......

The announcement of yesterday's foiled terror plot still has the world reeling, especially in airports. Lines at Newark Airport spanned the length of terminals as news revealed the plot was to blow up 10 planes bound from England to the U.S., using liquid explosives in carry-on luggage. British authorities have arrested two dozen suspects, and what's more, the Bank of England released the names of 19 suspects, after freezing their bank accounts. While Mayor......

Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Kelly, and representatives from the Port Authority and FBI gave a press conference about the tunnel terror plot a few hours ago. This morning, the Daily News revealed that officials had "foiled" a plot to flood the city Katrina-style (no matter how technically unfeasible it would be), sending people into a tailspin, both the "crap, no" and the "the government is making this too big a deal" kinds. From the......

English film director Michael Winterbottom and the three subjects of his most recent film, The Road to Guantanamo, were on hand last night for a post-screening discussion about conditions inside the Cuban base sponsored by the ACLU. Hosted by the IFC Center as a part of their ongoing Q&A series, the panel led by ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero brought home the responsibility of all people who care about human rights to speak out against......

Mayor Bloomberg's momentary visit with President Bush yesterday at JFK Airport is being analyzed backwards and forwards. The Daily News says Bloomberg "blinked" in not chastising the President enough over the lack of Homeland Security funding for the city. The Mayor recounted his conversation for reporters:"I welcomed him to New York, took credit for the great weather... I did thank him for his efforts to make all homeland security moneys ... distributed based on......

If there's one thing the revelation that Al Qaeda was planning a cyanide attack on NYC subways is good for, it's making New York City and State politicians foam at the mouth over the Department of Homeland Security's NYC anti-terror fund slashing. Al Qaeda did not end up attacking the subways because security was increased and there wouldn't be enough fatalities. Senator Charles Schumer said, "This is just more evidence that what Homeland Security......

A new book claims that Al Qaeda was 45 days away from attacking the NYC subway system with cyanide gas, but then, for an unknown reason, decided not to. Um, phew? The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind is being excerpted in Time magazine this week, and yesterday, Time teased the excerpt with a "web exclusive" (Ali is an Al Qaeda operative/nformant to the U.S.; Ayeri is "Yusuf al Ayeri, "bin Laden's top operative......

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he spoke to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff Thursday night and told him "for sure" that he disagreed with the urban area funding. On his radio show, the Mayor said, "I just think the ways they went about it was wrong. I think some factual things were wrong -- forget about the fact that they didn't have the right number of financial institutions or didn't know there were any significant targets......

- Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn lines up an exceptional boardof Brooklyn stars and intellects for its efforts to fight the Atlantic Yards; does this mean Bruce Ratner will make Jay-Z line up his friends? Imagine Beyonce vs. Rosie Perez! - More proof the Moussaoui life sentence was good: Now he claims he lied about his Al Qaeda connection - It looks like there will only be one greenmarket on the Upper East Side as......

With alleged terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui awaiting his formal sentencing this morning, the focus is on how the jurors decided to give him life in jail over the death penalty. The NY Times has a helpful graphic showing the mitigating factors that led the jury its sentence: The biggest factors seemed to be that he had a terrible childhood, with two abusive parents, and that he seemed to be, at best, a fringe member of Al......

This week, the film festival that Bobby De Niro and Jane Rosenthal built after September 11th has taken over most of downtown New York and some of uptown with its eclectic programming line-up. But there's more to do in town, movie-watching wise than just at Tribeca. So get out your TFF schedules, some snacks and some comfortable shoes to walk between screening spaces, there's movies to be seen this weekend. United 93, the narrative retelling......

The cockpit recording from United Flight 93 on September 11 was played in the courtroom of Zacarias Moussaoui's death penalty trial. The 31 minute tape details, as the Daily News puts it, "the charge toward the cockpit, yelps of pain, groans, crashing sounds and the panic of the hijackers as the Americans tried to shove their way in," as well as hijackers yelling "Sit down!" and someone saying, "I don't want to die." The hijackers......

Yesterday, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani testified at the death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, telling jurors about what he saw, thought and felt on September 11, 2001. He described seeing people jump from the World Trade Center towers and said, "By the time the second plane hit, we knew it was a terrorist attack. This was war. This was a battle." Giuliani didn't look at Moussaoui much, but Moussaoui did watch Giuliani. Family members......

- Jury selection starts for Moussaoui's terrorism trial and he yells "I am Al Qaeda!" - Betty Friedan's funeral was held today at Riverside Chapel; she is now buried in Sag Harbor - There is a suspect in the Dunkin' Donuts shooting - Trader Joe's looks underwhelming at this point - Oh, snap - reference Office Space and get called Miss Piggy - NY magazine looks at Charles Grodin's one-act play about a Fifth......

The Port Authority is adding bomb shields to the George Washington Bridge. And we say "All right!" because when the bombs hit, we'll be fleeing to NJ and expect the tunnels to be flooded. The Daily News says that these are "first such bulwarks to appear on a New York-area bridge" - they will be shields around parts of the bridge's cables. The NYC Department of Transportation and MTA have made plans to reinforce other......