To kill the snake - you cut off the head.

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Security forces in Afghanistan have killed or captured more than 30 high-level militants, including many accused of participating in roadside bomb attacks, military officials said.

Twenty-six militants have been captured, and eight have been killed, with most of them senior leaders in the Taliban and the Haqqani network, according to a news release issued by NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

The militants -- "known for leading the planning and undertaking of deadly attacks" against civilians, government officials and soldiers -- were captured or killed between August 20 and October 17, the force reported. The insurgents also facilitated the "trafficking of fighters, weapons, explosives and money to support their terrorist activities," the force said.

The force did not explain under what circumstances the militants were killed or detained.

Among the dead are Mullah Farid Fazil Lang, who is accused of planning and participating in attacks against Afghan and ISAF soldiers, the force said.
Lang, who commanded a cell in charge of preparing roadside bombs, was involved in the kidnapping of New York Times reporter David Rohde in November 2008, the force said.

Rohde was snatched outside Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, but was later held in Pakistan. He escaped in June after seven months in Taliban captivity.
Among the detained were Karim Shakan and Matiullah, the force said.
Shakan, a Taliban commander, assisted in the "movement and use of IEDs," or improvised explosive devices. He recruited local Afghans for the insurgency and preached anti-government messages," according to the force.
Matiullah served as an Afghan national police officer in Parwan province, just north of Kabul, when he was linked to insurgents, the force said. He was accused of passing on information to the insurgency.

Spies like them ...

Washington (CNN) -- A former State Department employee and his wife, accused of illegally aiding the government of Cuba for nearly 30 years, pleaded guilty Friday to federal charges.

Walter Kendall Myers, 72, pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit espionage and two counts of wire fraud. He agreed to forfeit $1.7 million related to the two counts of wire fraud and to serve a life prison sentence.


His wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to gather and transmit national defense information. She agreed to serve a sentence of between 6 and 7½ years in prison.
The couple, who appeared in U.S. District Court on Friday, were captured June 4 after an FBI agent posing as a Cuban intelligence officer managed to coax them into offering information on U.S. government personnel, authorities said.

In a diary quoted in the federal affidavit released in June, Myers expressed his opinions on the flaws of the United States and the appeal of Cuba. "The abuses of our system, the lack of decent medical system, the oil companies and their undisguised indifference to public needs, the complacency about the poor, the utter inability of those who are oppressed to recognize their own condition ...," he wrote of the United States.

"Have the Cubans given up their personal freedom to get material security? Nothing I have seen yet suggests that," he wrote. "I can see nothing of value that has been lost by the revolution. The revolution has released enormous potential and liberated the Cuban spirit."

The indictment said Kendall Myers, known to Cuban intelligence as Agent 202, and Gwendolyn Myers, known as Agent 123 and Agent E-634, engaged in activities "which spanned nearly three decades."
Conviction on the wire fraud charge would carry a sentence of up to 20 years, illegally acting as an agent of a foreign government would carry a sentence of up to 10 years, and the conspiracy charge would carry a sentence of up to five years.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

Houston - we don't have a problem - so why is that alarm sounding?

(CNN) -- Astronauts aboard the international space station and space shuttle Atlantis woke up to a worrying sound -- alarms indicating a fire and dangerous loss of pressure, NASA said Friday.

However, a check revealed no serious trouble.

Depressurization-caution alarms sounded just after 8:30 p.m. ET Thursday, waking the shuttle and station crew, NASA said. The flight control teams on the ground determined there was no depressurization and shut off ventilation fans.

The crew was never in any danger, NASA said, and teams on the ground are looking into the cause of the false alarm.
Flight control teams at Mission Control in Houston, Texas, were bringing the station back to normal soon after the alarms, but it was 10:15 p.m. by the time the crew was able to go back to sleep because they had to wait for the station's ventilation system to be reactivated, NASA said.

Crew members go back to work Friday when they'll be focusing on preparations for Saturday's spacewalk, NASA said. They'll have to recharge batteries, switch out spacesuits and review procedures.
They also will use the shuttle's robotic arm to grab a second cargo pallet of spare equipment Atlantis brought up in advance of its transfer to the space station Saturday, NASA said.

FAA Glitch Impacts Military Air Defense?

ABC NEWS:

Since 9/11, the military's air defense network over the U.S. has had the ability to monitor commercial airline traffic via Federal Aviation Administration radars. So today's F.A.A. computer glitch that caused widespread flight delays across the country, also affected the military's ability to see some of the information from the F.A.A.

But, but military officials tell ABC News, the interruption did not affect its ability to take emergency action, like scrambling fighter jets to intercept aircraft acting in a suspicious manner, what the military calls "tracks of interest."

"At no given time was our ability to execute our air sovereignty mission affected nor our ability to respond to a track of interest within the United States," says Lt. Col. Susan Romano, a spokesperson for CONR. the Continental U.S. division of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Romano says that within seconds of the glitch, the F.A.A. notified military authorities that there was an interruption in the military's ability to see some of the flight information on radars.

This is the same 24 hour conference call-like network involved in the incident where the NorthWest passenger jet overshot its intended destination of Minneapolis last month. In that instance, the F.A.A. was criticized for not getting the informing the military in a timely fashion that a plane had overshot its destination.

Within minutes of today's notification Romano says, the CONR operations center and the two air defense sectors that have watch over the entire U. S. had worked out solutions for the four hours that the system was out.

The Eastern Air Defense Sector, based in Rome, N.Y., and the Western Air Defense Sector, based at McChord AFB, in Washington state monitor air traffic for CONR. If they detect tracks of interest their information is used to scramble fighter jets.

Utah meteor caught on security cam.

NBC -- A stunning sight lit up the sky over Utah and several western states Wednesday.

The Willard Eccles Observatory in Utah shot video of a meteor early Wednesday morning, just after midnight.

Witnesses say it was very bright and lit up the sky for eight to ten seconds.

People reported seeing it in Utah, Idaho, Nevada and California