Don't PANIC!

According to a Grauniad headline, of all papers, al Qaeda is determined to nuke Britain.
They just need a bomb, and a way to get it there, and someone who actually knows how to set it off.
And a pony.
But there is a lot of "chatter" out there. So that's ok. Journamalism (read to the end about amplifying noise).

And inside, Max Hastings, of all peope, has a sensible steady on, chaps sort of opinion column.

Weird shit.

In the mean time, back in the real world.
A 20 car convoy of thugs, in interior ministry police uniforms, in Iraq kidnapped all the male staff and visitors of an entire research institute of the Ministry of Higher Education. 150 people. The institute apparently handles study abroad scholarships and PI funding for faculty. All Iraqi universities have been closed so more professors won't be murdered. At least not wholesale.

In an unrelated note, the Higher Education Minister is Sunni, while the Interior Minister is Shia.

On a different note, apparently Ahmadinejad claims Iran will be fully nuclear by the end of the year (March 20th). I suspect that also means Bushehr's reactor fuel will be delivered by Russia by then.
The US has completed rotation of carriers and Marine amphibious groups out of the Persian Gulf. The Enterprise group is out of the Med to the Atlantic heading home, and so is the Iwo Jima group; with the Eisenhower and Boxer groups taking their place.
Should the US want to do anything, it'd be hard for them to concentrate forces before spring, at least without being too obvious about it. Early March there should be another rotation with a couple of carriers free to scoot over surreptitiously, should anyone want to do that.