The Obama administration has just handed over five billion dollars to the armed forces to buy more robots. The country's ongoing "War on Terror" employs more unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for its operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan than it does manned planes. Our Observer and expert in robotics tells us that the ethical concerns behind the programme have gone unnoticed. Read more...

Guardians at the Shi’ite Al-Zahra mosque in Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, managed to stop a young suicide bomber on May 1, moments before he could set his explosive belt alight during Friday’s prayer. Read more...

A university administrator in the UK is facing deportation after printing out an al Qaeda training manual for a student studying Islamic extremism. Here, his friends say that the Algerian national, who has lived in England for 13 years, has been targeted because he's Muslim. Read more...

Mohammad Siddique Khan is one of the terrorists responsible for the July 2005 London train bombings. A few months before the attacks, while in training in Pakistan, the young man made this video to explain to his six-year-old daughter why he had to go fight. See the video…

Al Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has completed an open online question and answer session with the public, responding to worldwide enquirers with confirmation that the terrorist organisation does not kill innocent people; Osama bin Laden is alive and kicking; America is on the verge of collapse and that he himself is not "a big star that loves to show off and be famous". Read more...

Osama bin Laden released a new video Wednesday in which he threatened the European Union with a "reckoning" and reignited the Danish cartoon affair. One of our Observers, an al Qaeda specialist, explains why this message could see a new wave of terrorist action in Europe. Watch Bin Laden's message and read the comment from our Observer.

In a speech in Amman, Jordan on Tuesday, John McCain declared that "al Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training". The statement will certainly not help the republican candidate make it to the White House, seeing as al Qaeda, a Sunni terrorist movement, is unlikely to be supported by the Iranian Shiite regime... See the video.

The American military in Iraq released five videos this week which they say show Iraqi children being trained by al Qaeda to capture civilians and to use weapons. The American army, which seized the material during an operation against al-Qaeda in Khan Bani Saad, north Baghdad, says that the videos are being used for propaganda and to recruit young people. Our Observer for Iraq, ‘Treasure of Baghdad’, was shocked by the videos. Here is his reaction. Read more and watch the video...

Californian Adam Yahiye Gadahn, aka "Azzan the American" has really riled Americans on the Web with his latest al Qaeda video calling on followers to arrange an ‘explosive reception' for George Bush's arrival in the Middle-East. The dramatic tearing up of his US passport, followed by a "I don't need it to travel anyway" quip has especially enraged many Americans.

Bloggers have been clogging cyberspace with their own, sometimes rather witty, often rather bitchy, online messages. One of the responses, by an American woman who ironically calls herself a ‘dumb-blonde' has been making the rounds on YouTube. See the videos and read more...

Al Qaida's second most important figure Ayman al Zawahiri has just transmitted a recorded message in which he calls the Annapolis conference ‘treacherous'. The video has so far only been shown on CNN. Here is the unedited version, with excerpts. Read more...