FEMA has proposed a new disaster housing strategy that includes a mix of solutions tried after Katrina, while leaving major blanks to be filled by the next president, The Washington Post’s Spencer S. Hsu reports — while The Associated Press’ Michael Kunzelman has FEMA seeking immunity from lawsuits filed on behalf of Gulf Coast hurricane victims claiming exposure to dangerous fumes while living in DHS-issued trailers. “A series of reports and hearings in Washington last week, reported in CQ Homeland Security, were discouraging indications of how unprepared the United States. still is in so many areas, almost seven years after the 9/11 attacks,” The Counterterrorism Blog’s Andrew Cochran leads.

Poly-ticks: In what has become a dominant meme in the campaign thus far, The Carpetbagger Report’s Steve Benen raps John McCain for fretting on ABC News on Monday over “the situation on the [non-existent] Iraq-Pakistan border.” Even though 65 percent of members say McCain would better fight terrorism, the International Association of Fire Fighters, representing 288,000 first responders, is poised to endorse Barack Obama, U.S. News’ Liz Halloran relates — while McCain tells CBS News’ Katie Couric that Obama “would rather lose a war than lose a campaign.” A GOP South Carolina state senator is being rapped for a blog posting that shows photos of Obama and Osama bin Laden wearing similar clothing, terming the difference between the two “a little B.S,” The Columbia State says. A Palestinian rampaged with a bulldozer near the Jerusalem hotel where Obama was supposed to stay yesterday, AP’s Laurie Copans recounts.

The water’s edge: “The world is watching the U.S. election race, but none more keenly than those in the Middle East, where American foreign policy — or the lack of it — has massive repercussions,” Bahrain’s Gulf Daily News leads. “On the three most important security issues the next president must confront — Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan — expect U.S. demands on Europe to become greater, not less,” whoever wins in November, The Guardian’s Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier forecast. “Germans might want to read the foreign-policy chapter in Obama’s book ‘Hoffnung wagen’ (‘The Audacity of Hope’). There are paragraphs in there that are pure Bush doctrine,” Die Zeiteditor Josef Joffe warns his idolizing countrymen in Newsweek. “If only all Americans realized, like Obama, that priority number one is to get the world to like America again. Europe is yearning to lend America the benefit of their vastly superior expertise in world matters,” Nancy Morgan waxes sarcastic for Canada Free Press.

State and local: Days after Illinois’ governor offered state police to help curb Chicago’s “out of control” crime rate, “one of his most vocal critics in law enforcement chastised the idea as unrealistic,” The Arlington Heights Daily Herald relates.Since last month, at least 84 suspected illegal immigrants have been arrested throughout Rhode Island, and advocates want to know who and where they are, The Providence Journal reports. The mosaic of laws passed by state legislatures this year reveals a country grappling with threats of all stripes, Stateline.org surveys. An Arizona appeals court has upheld a three-year-old state law authorizing the prosecution of smuggled persons as well as the coyotes who brought them across the border, The Arizona Republic reports.

Follow the money: U.S. experts helped lead an Algiers workshop this week on the “financial support mechanism of al Qaeda [and] methods of drying terror financing sources,” Algeria’s El Khabarrecounts — while Agence France-Presse has Treasury sanctioning four leaders of al Qaeda’s northwest Africa branch. “Credit card fraud has become an ever-present tool for funding terror networks while Digital Gold Currency has never even been mentioned during the prosecution of a terror crime,” an OpEdNews.com feature insists. Palestine’s P.M. “has the chutzpa to claim the [Palestinian Authority] shouldn’t pay U.S. judgments to families of victims, because this may have an adverse effect on potential contributions by international donors,” a Terror Finance Blog op-ed objects. A Massachusetts software engineer will serve 11 months for concealing the nature of a tax-exempt charity that allegedly published newsletters promoting jihad, The Boston Globe reports — while CNN sees a Spanish court clearing two Syrian-born men of terror finance indictments.

Bugs ‘n bombs: A Virginia firm is urging securicrats to take a closer look at a new technology that can detect suicide bombers before they strike, The Washington Times spotlights. The hesitation of a crowd member to come to a victim’s aid is part of something known as “the bystander effect,” a phenomenon explored in a Newsweek Q&A. In last week’s speech in Washington on environmental issues, ex-Veep Al Gore said global warming, not terrorism, is the No. 1 threat to America, ABC News spotlights. A U.K. Islamist who caused panic when he left a hoax bomb on a bus received a seven-year sentence last week, The Daily Mirror mentions — and see The Times of London on the little-covered topic of IEDs in Afghanistan, and AFP has China denying any Olympic terror link bus explosions that killed two people in a southwestern city.

Air warfare: Passengers going through security at Indianapolis’s new terminal “will be greeted by a mural of flowers, blue-lit panels and ambient music . . . nothing like the often chaotic, cramped, institutional-feeling checkpoints of old,” The Indianapolis Star says — and see the Tacoma News Tribune’s Q&A with TSA’s Kip Hawley. “I have no idea what TSA screeners get paid. It can’t be enough to screen the luggage of the most privileged people in the world, some of whom want to board airplanes with handguns and bombs,” a Salt Lake Tribune columnist contends. “Fliers who find themselves attempting to fly without identification should prep themselves on what their old addresses were, when their wedding anniversary is and their children’s addresses,” Threat Watch advises.

Coming and going: Brunswick County responders are already training for potential emergencies at the proposed North Carolina International Port, The Wilmington (N.C.) Star News notes — while Voice of America says the Navy’s reactivation of the Fourth Fleet after six decades is meant “to improve maritime security in the Americas.” Forty of the nation’s largest business and trade associations are asking Congress to delay a DHS cargo security mandate, CongressDaily recounts. British police are to use “the latest technology” — mobile X-ray equipment — to prevent terrorists targeting train stations, The Sunday Sun spotlights. Border Patrollers credit a decline in border-crosser deaths to “advanced security measures that deter immigrants from taking their chances in the sweltering desert or the rushing river,” Yuma’s KSWT 13 News notes.

Terror tech: DHS says drug traffickers have used self-propelled semi-submersibles at least 45 times so far this year, McClatchy Newspapers notes. The Olympics-related no-fly order issued by Beijing’s public security bureau also includes model airplanes and hot-air balloons, Bloomberg adds. Raytheon’s Universal Control System, featuring hardware from the gaming world, will shorten training time and help prevent crashes of the expensive drones used for border surveillance and terrorist interdiction, The Press Association reports. Pursuing the perfect “robotic security system,” the Army wants its droids “to start sorting through images more like human beings,” Danger Room relates. A Florida anesthesiologist who has devised a radiation- and biochemical-proof material hopes to “find a receptive audience in a post-9/11, security-conscious world,” The Miami Herald profiles. The inventor of a shock bracelet DHS has considered for using on all airline passengers, meantime, confidently tells WorldNetDaily “it’s either his device or a tab of $14 billion a year.”

Cyberia: Global infotech experts “know that the major threats to our stable way of life do not come from an apartment full of al Qaeda operatives with laptops plotting to blow up an airliner,” The Terre Haute (Ind.) Tribune Star quotes a cyberterror maven. President Bush’s single largest request for funds in the fiscal 2009 intel budget is for the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, the Post reports. “Did you know there are men and women who monitor traffic of government computers 24 hours a day, seven days a week detecting any form of cyberterrorism?” South Africa’s Pretoria News asks. Children as young as 14 have been recruited by Australian police to help fight online threats, because they have more Internet skills than agents, The Melbourne Herald Sun says. The presidential campaign is focusing on cyberterrorism, with Barack Obama unveiling plans for a “national cyber adviser” post and updated standards for protecting computer-based infrastructures if elected, TechNewsWorld notes.

Courts and rights:Salim Hamdan was either a vital part of Osama bin Laden’s jihad or a mere cog in the motor pool, going by prosecution or defense arguments as his Guantanamo trial opened yesterday, The New York Times tells. Justice attorneys say they should not be forced to drop references to al Qaeda from the indictment of five men accused of plotting to attack Fort Dix soldiers, AP reports — while The Philadelphia Inquirer says the government’s case will rest on recordings of “dozens of conspiratorial conversations.” A standoff between a public library and Vermont State Police investigating a missing child highlights the post-USA Patriot Act sensitivity of library records and patron privacy, AP spotlights.

Obamamania: “Barack Obama landed in Afghanistan amid much fanfare and girlish screaming early Saturday,” Ridiculopathy reports. “This dangerous and highly secretive fact-finding trip might not have happened at all if rival candidate John McCain had not double-dog dared him to do so a few weeks ago. As it turns out, the Middle East was McCain’s second choice. Apparently this is the wrong time of year to ask Obama to touch his tongue to a frozen flagpole. Upon meeting Obama over the weekend, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki excitedly phoned his best friend to brag that at that very moment he was standing next to the celebrated Senator. ‘He just shook my hand,’ said al-Maliki giddily. ‘That’s right, Barack Obama shook my hand. I know it sounds gross, but I’m never washing this hand again.’”