Interpol issues arrest warrant for 'white widow' eyed in Kenya terrorist attack

PARIS –  Interpol has issued an arrest notice for the British woman known as the “white widow” who is being eyed as one of the key players in a terrorist attack on a Kenyan mall last week that left 72 dead.

The notice, issued at the request of Kenya, said Samantha Lewthwaite is wanted on charges of possessing explosives and conspiracy to commit a felony in Kenya in 2011. 

Authorities believe Lewthwaite, 29, was involved in an alleged plot to attack restaurants and hotels inside the country, according to Reuters. They suspected she had rented several houses in upmarket areas in Mombasa to assemble a bomb.

Lewthwaite was once married to a suicide bomber who killed 52 people in an attack on the London subway system in 2005.

Kenya’s foreign minister has said Lewthwaite took part in the mall siege alongside the Al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab terrorist group.

Law enforcement sources told Fox News this week that they have seen no hard evidence yet to confirm Lewthwaite's participation in the attack, but it has not been ruled out.  

A British security source told Reuters that “it is a possibility” that she was involved.

Lewthwaite is also reportedly believed to have been using the alias ‘Natalie Faye Webb’ to live in South Africa for several years.

She used the identity to take out bank loans and rent property in Johannesburg, the AFP reports, citing local media there.

Credit records released by eNews Channel Africa listed that she lived in Johannesburg’s predominantly South Asian neighborhood of Mayfair for four years, rented at least three properties and ran up debts of $8,600.

Kenyan anti-terrorism police suspected Lewthwaite was working with Musa Hussein Abdi -- who was shot dead with an Al Qaeda boss in Somalia in June 2011 -- in the alleged 2011 Kenya attack plot.

In December 2011, authorities found a woman they believed to be Lewthwaite in Abdi's house but let her go after she showed them a South African passport.

Police later realized the passport was fraudulent and returned to the house, but she was gone.

Lewthwaite originally criticized her late husband — Jermaine Lindsay — for taking part in the London bombing, but later apparently embraced the jihadi cause.

Lewthwaite told The Sun newspaper in September 2005 that her husband had fallen under the influence of radical mosques.

"How these people could have turned him and poisoned his mind is dreadful," the newspaper quoted Lewthwaite as saying. "He was an innocent, naive and simple man. I suppose he must have been an ideal candidate.

"He was so angry when he saw Muslim civilians being killed on the streets of Iraq, Bosnia, Palestine and Israel — and always said it was the innocent who suffered."

She converted to Islam — reportedly while in her teens — and went on to study religion and politics at the School Of Oriental and African Studies in London. It was around that time she met Lindsay, first in an Internet chat room and later at a London demonstration against the war in Iraq.

The coupled married in an Islamic ceremony on Oct. 30, 2002, and moved back to Aylesbury a year later.

Local city councilor Raj Khan, who knew Lewthwaite's relatives in Aylesbury, recalled her as "an average, British, young, ordinary girl."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Camera takes dramatic shot of Russian eagle attack

LONDON (AP) — Remote cameras set up to track Siberian tigers in Russia have caught a golden eagle attack on a sika deer, snapping three photos as the massive bird digs its talons into the distressed animal's back.

Golden eagles typically eat small birds or mammals, but they've also been known to target deer. It's rare for a camera to catch such an attack in progress.

The Zoological Society of London's Linda Kerley said in a statement Thursday that she couldn't believe the pictures when she saw them.

The society said they were shot in the Lazovsky State Nature Reserve in the Primorye region of Russia's Far East in December 2011.

The eagle vs. deer photos were published this month in the Ohio-based Journal of Raptor Research and have since grabbed attention online.

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UN experts tour site of attack as Assad gives warning to West

United Nations experts were in the eastern suburbs of Damascus Thursday for a third day of inspections of areas struck by a purported chemical weapons attack, as Syrian President Bashar Assad said that his country "will defend itself against any aggression," signaling defiance to mounting Western warnings of a possible strike.

Chemical weapons inspectors toured stricken rebel-held areas, ahead of a weekend departure that could clear the path for military action against Syria.

All the evidence gathered by the U.N. team will be brought to the Hague, Netherlands, where it will be separated into categories in an Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) laboratory. Samples will then be sent to undisclosed, OPCW-designated and certified laboratories in Europe for analysis. The U.N. refuses to disclose where the labs are located, apparently to safeguard the integrity of the investigation.

The evidence will be transported to the Hague inside special OPCW containers that are sealed for safety and to ensure that the samples themselves are not compromised. Chain of custody during the transportation process is said to be impeccable, with state of-the-art logging and chronicling of every step taken.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Western powers to hold off on any decisions until his experts can present their findings to U.N. member states and the Security Council.

Ki-moon will be given a briefing by the head of the inspection team, “in the coming days,” a U.N. spokesman told Fox News.

A formal written report could take many days and up to a couple of weeks.

The suspected chemical weapons attacks took place Aug. 21 in suburbs east and west of Damascus. The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders has said the strikes killed 355 people.

The Syrian regime has denied a role in the attacks, suggesting instead that anti-government rebels carried them out to frame Assad.

The Syrian president struck a tough tone Thursday. His comments, from a meeting with a delegation from Yemen, were reported by the state news agency SANA.

"Threats to launch a direct aggression against Syria will make it more adherent to its well-established principles and sovereign decisions stemming from the will of its people, and Syria will defend itself against any aggression," Assad said.

It's not clear if Assad would retaliate for any Western strikes or try to ride them out in hopes of minimizing the risk to his own power.

Already, the conflict has sparked growing anxiety among civilians in neighboring countries.

Israelis stood in long lines Thursday for government-issue gas masks. Turkey's government crisis management center said officials had designated bunkers at seven areas along the border. And Lebanon's foreign minister, Adnan Mansour, warned that international military action against Syria would pose a "serious threat" to the security and stability of the region, particularly in Lebanon.

In one of the videos, the inspectors stood next to their U.N. vehicles, and the accompanying caption indicated Thursday's date and the location. In another video, the U.N. convoy was seen driving through a street, accompanied by armed rebels in pickup trucks.

On two previous tours this week, the inspectors visited a western suburb of the city as well as Zamalka where they took biological samples from suspected victims.

In countries neighboring Syria, governments began taking precautions against possible Syrian retaliation.

Israel has called up reservists and deployed missile defense batteries in preparation for a possible Syrian response to an American attack.

In Turkey, the government's crisis management center said on Twitter that a team of 100 chemical weapons experts were sent to the border area, which was being screened for any signs of chemical attacks.

Turkey is Assad's strongest critic and has backed Syria's opposition and rebels. The country said this week it would take part in any international coalition that would move against the Syrian government.

Fox News’ Jonathan Wachtel and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Security at nation's nuclear facilities vulnerable to terrorist attack, report says

Security at the nation’s nuclear facilities is vulnerable to terrorist attack, a Pentagon-commissioned study reported Thursday.

What’s more, it said potential terrorist theft of enough nuclear material to construct an improvised fission bomb “is a real possibility."

The study by researchers at the University of Texas stands in profound contrast to what the nuclear industry says about its own safeguards.

The Nuclear Energy Institute says that in the aftermath of 9/11, the industry undertook a massive re-assessment of its plant security and bolstered protections. It reports the typical plant features a fenced outer security perimeter, which is heavily patrolled; an inner double fence topped with razor wire, also heavily patrolled; and a third layer of protection surrounding vital equipment.

The containment vessel itself has its own protection with multiple layers of steel and concrete.

One NEI official told Fox News that after 9/11, computer testing was done simulating the direct impact of a Boeing 767 into a containment vessel. The tests found that concrete was broken, but there was no radiation release.

Prof. Alan Kuperman, one of the authors of the University of Texas report, says a study by the U.S. National Laboratory in 1982 produced different results. "It found an impact of an airliner would breach the containment, which could lead to a loss of coolant and therefore a meltdown, and therefore a release of major levels of radiation," he said.

He added that while the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said its reactors could withstand such an impact, the industry lobbied against requiring such standards.

"So on the one hand, the industry says, "Oh, our facilities can withstand an airplane impact," but on the other hand, they say, "no, no no, don't regulate and require us to be able to withstand  that impact," he said.

The new study acknowledged a history of widely divergent research about the likelihood of a terrorist attack on nuclear facilities. 

 One skeptic puts the likelihood that a terrorist group will acquire a nuclear weapon at "very substantially less than one in a million," it said. But another researcher "estimates a 50 percent chance of a nuclear terrorist attack on U.S. soil in the next decade."

The report found tremendous variation in how facilities are protected, and calls for greater uniformity of security at all nuclear facilities, whether power plants, places where nuclear weapons are stored, or where fissile material is stored.

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