Al-Qaida (al Qaeda)

In the wake of Sept. 11, the U.S. government spent years, and billions of dollars, fortifying various industries against possible terrorist attacks. Now,…

Janet Hamlin was the only courtroom sketch artist allowed at the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals in 2006. Her work has been collected in a new book, Sketching Guantanamo — and she tells NPR's Renee Montagne that getting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's nose right ended up being a challenge.

Omar Hammami was a bright Alabama kid who turned into a self-described terrorist in Somalia. In the months preceding Hammami's sudden death, journalist J.M. Berger struck up a conversation with him on Twitter.

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has talked about the looming threat of a U.S. military strike in an interview with CBS News' Charlie Rose. Officials in the U.S. and its allies are debating how to respond to the conflict in Syria.

Pakistani intelligence officials say Sangeen Zadran, a commander of the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network, was killed in North Waziristan.

The strikes killed at least 12 suspected militants, bringing to 31 the number killed since drone attacks were stepped up at the end of July.

A Daily Beast story this week led readers and other news organizations to believe that intelligence officials were saying that 20 al-Qaida operatives had been chatting on the phone. But the reporters who broke the story say it was a "virtual meeting space," not a phone call.

A government spokesman tells the BBC that terrorists had hoped to blow up oil pipelines and attack some cities. Yemen remains at the center of concerns about possible terrorist attacks. Those concerns have led to the temporary closings of some U.S. diplomatic posts.

Already on alert across the Middle East and North Africa because of intelligence about possible terrorist attacks, the U.S. has now issued a very specific warning about travel in Yemen.

The international police agency says that it's important to determine if jailbreaks in Iraq, Libya and Pakistan were linked, and to capture the escapees.