Shorts (right)
Man charged with terrorism plot abroad
NEW YORK — A man who prosecutors said was an overseas operative of al-Qaida during the years following the Sept. 11 attacks was charged in Brooklyn with a host of terrorism charges, in the latest example of a foreigner accused of acts of terrorism abroad being extradited to American courts.
The man, Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Adam Harun, who was from Saudi Arabia and a citizen of Niger, traveled to Afghanistan shortly before the attacks, training in al-Qaida camps and then fighting U.S. and coalition forces during the early years of the Afghan war, prosecutors said. Harun, 43, is accused of traveling to Nigeria next to plot attacks against American diplomatic facilities in that country.
The charges include conspiring to murder U.S. citizens, conspiring to bomb U.S. government facilities and providing material support to al-Qaida. Court papers do not indicate whether he took steps to carry out attacks. Harun, who is known by the Pashto nom de guerre Spin Ghul, or White Rose, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. He is scheduled to make his first appearance in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn on Friday.
—Mosi Secret, The New York Times
Reaching those on the wrong side of the digital divide
The Advertising Council and Connect2Compete, a nonprofit group whose goal is to eliminate the digital divide in the United States, are introducing a public service campaign to help those who are not digitally literate find free training to obtain these skills.
In remarks prepared for a speech in Washington last month about Connect2Compete’s efforts, the Federal Communications Commission chairman, Julius Genachowski, said approximately 1 in 3 Americans, or 100 million people, still do not have broadband in their homes, with low-income Americans and minorities “disproportionately on the wrong side of the digital divide.”
This matters, he continued, because “over 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies post job openings exclusively online. Over half of today’s jobs require technology skills, and nearly 80 percent of jobs in the next decade are projected to require digital skills.”
According to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, 1 in 5 U.S. adults — about 62 million people — do not use the Internet. The 2012 Pew Internet and American Life Project said the main reason these people “don’t go online is because they don’t think the Internet is relevant to them.”
To reach adults who share this sentiment, Connect2Compete approached the Advertising Council last year for help creating a public service campaign “with messages that get at the relevance of the Internet, how you can do something, or do something better that you may already do, by being online,” said Zach Leverenz, chief executive of Connect2Compete.
—Jane L. Levere, The New York Times