DHS “has never pursued security bracelets for airline passengers . . . In short, this seems to be an urban myth that has taken a life of its own,” a U.S. embassy official writes The Irish Independent in refutation to Gemma O’Doherty’s earlier piece stating that “all travelers entering the United States [w]ould wear a so-called ‘safety bracelet’ which doubles as a stun device.” But Europeans traveling visa-free to the United States can register beginning next month for an online screening check that will become mandatory in January, The Associated Press’ Constant Brand adds.

Feds: TSA is threatening to fine airlines up to $25,000 when they erroneously tell passengers they are on a terrorist watch list, USA Today’s Thomas Frank tells. The latest — and as yet unreleased — Pentagon strategy statement says the fight against al Qaeda and other terrorists should be the nation’s top military priority over the coming decade, The Washington Post’s Josh White writes. A British hacker who invaded Pentagon and NASA hard drives, leaving critiques of U.S. foreign policy, has lost his last British court appeal against extradition to the United States, The Daily Telegraph’s John Bingham relates. Why would DHS “announce an increase of millions of dollars in grants for ‘anti-terror programs’ to illegal alien ‘sanctuary cities [such as] New York, Houston and San Francisco?” Debbie Schlussel.com demands.

McBama: U.S. leaders “have made similar promises in the past, the latest one the current president, who told the Palestinians they would have an independent state by the time he left office,” Claude Salhani observes wryly in a Khaleej Timesop-ed on Barack Obama’s Arab-Israeli peace pledges. “Jews can’t vote for Obama and be pro-Israel at the same time,” Ted Belman insists, meantime, in Global Politician. “It’s kind of astonishing that John McCain continues to be taken seriously on Iraq when his closest adviser has a track record on the issue as atrocious as Randy Scheunemann’s,” TPM Muckraker’s Zachary Roth rips. McCain “could help his chances enormously by committing to fix U.S. Visit” exit procedures, Bill West and Andrew C. McCarthy comment in National Review.

Job 1, or at least 2: Security issues have divided “Washington into two warring camps. All of us — Congress and the president, Democrats and Republicans — bear some blame,” Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., admits in a Politico endorsement of McCain. “Given the current wave of terrorism will plague us for decades to come, where are the candidates’ 20-year plans to combat this scourge?” a Savannah Morning News contributor asks. “The next president’s support for the creation of a global anti-terrorism body would show that the call for more partnership, dialogue and cooperation in fighting terrorism is not merely rhetoric,” a Baltimore Sun op-ed asserts. “Whatever his disagreements with Bush on detail,” the new president will have to stop radical Islamists from gaining WMDs because “he knows they will use them,” The Observer’s Nick Cohen contends.

State and local: Among the facilities now on heightened terror alert through next summer is the Port of Los Angeles, The Torrance (Calif.) Daily Breeze whispers. One in 10 Rhode Island bridges is posted with weight limitations that hobble emergency vehicle response, The Providence Journal reports. Colorado state legislation would impede agency bids to close off local roads for security reasons, The Rocky Mountain News notes. Dolly has South Texans “talking about the construction of a border wall for a new reason: the security and stability of border towns during hurricane season,” The Daily Texan tells. Poke fun at Northeastern Pennsylvania’s unhipness, but “this region dare not trail its U.S. peers on issues of homeland security and emergency preparedness,” The Wilkes-Barre Times Leader avows.

Ivory (Watch) Towers: “Aspiring Kennedy School graduates looking for professional involvement in the ‘long war’ will probably have their newfound expertise” shaped, not necessarily for the best, by what has come before, a Christian Science Monitor op-ed observes. It is up to North Carolina public colleges whether they admit illegal immigrants, The Chronicle of Higher Education cites from a DHS letter to the state’s A.G. A University of Maryland research center has a $12 million, three-year DHS contract to study homegrown terrorist groups, The Baltimore Sun relays. A think tank alleges that two key passages in a controversial University of Pennsylvania Press book about terror networks are plagiarized, Inside Higher Ed informs.

Bugs ‘n bombs: “FEMA is not here . . . Where is my free stuff? Can’t I at least get a trailer?” a self-confessed “earthquake virgin” jibes in Human Events of Tuesday’s temblor. As a DHS official addressed Tuesday’s public hearing on the possible siting in North Carolina of its massive planned agro-bio lab, “two children and their mother sang protest songs accompanied by a violin,” The Raleigh News & Observer observes. The first mustard gas leak in three years was confirmed Tuesday at a chemical weapons depot in Kentucky, not long after a separate leak of deadly nerve agent, FOX News relays. “It would blow your mind if you knew what people could do to you,” a Canadian hacker-genius tells The Saskatoon Star Phoenix of the industrial world’s cyber susceptibilities.

Coming and going:Jerry Lewis was briefly held by TSA security officers and then charged for trying to board a flight in Las Vegas with a .22 Beretta — not a prop — in his carry-on, Hollywood Today tells. Pulling out a laptop in the TSA screening line “can often feel like an endless task. Now Aerovation wants to make those minutes easy, with the Checkpoint Friendly Laptop Bag,” Electronic Housereviews — and see Rochester’s News 10 on a local firm hoping to get rich on a similar product. In Britain, all new recruits in key airside posts will be “properly checked before the end of the year to tackle the ‘insider threat,’” The Liverpool Post reports. As a security precaution, Philippines authorities are installing cell phone jammers around airport immigration counters, ABS-CBN News notes.

Courts and rights: A driver for Osama bin Laden lacked the education and skills for admission to the al Qaeda leader’s inner circle,Reutershas a defense witness testifying to the Guantanamo tribunal yesterday — while AP has the defendant denying having sworn a loyalty oath to the al Qaeda chief, and The Washington Post sees 9/11 architect Khalid Sheik Mohammed as unlikely to testify for the defense. The most riveting testimony at the tribunal thus far came from FBI flack John Miller, who described his 1998 interview with Osama bin Laden as an ABC News correspondent, the Post also profiles. Conditions for the 265 detainees still at the terror jail have improved since it opened in 2002, but the prisoners’ ultimate fate remains uncertain, Reuters reports — while a Wall Street Journal op-ed tells “how the American left feted and freed a Guantanamo inmate who then killed in Iraq.”

Over there: The leader of al-Qaeda-in-Iraq and top lieutenants have recently left Iraq for Afghanistan, the Post learns. Libya would pay hundreds of millions of dollars to compensate U.S. victims of terrorism under a tentative agreement that hinges on action by the U.S. Congress, Reuters reports. The U.S. Embassy in Uganda says Americans in East Africa may be at an increased terror risk as the 10th anniversary of the embassy bombings approaches, AP reports.“Since the tide of the war turned last winter, thousands of al Qaeda jihadists have fled Iraq [and] North Africa appears to have attracted the largest number of returnees,” a Times of London op-ed spotlights. “In at least one respect India remains more a basketcase than a potential great power; [it] is singularly ill-equipped to deal with the scourge of terrorism, The WSJ, again, surveys.

Over here: “Come on America! Let’s talk about it. Let’s stop being politically correct!” Charlotte’s WBTV 3 News quotes firebrand Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., on “the fact terrorists are infiltrating American society, often through the Internet.” Almost a third of British Muslim students say killing in the name of Islam can be justified, The Sunday Times of London cites a new poll — while The Observer has an ex-member of a banned Islamist group terming universities a fertile breeding ground for extremists. That poll “is unrepresentative and above all serves only to undermine the positive work carried out by [campus] Islamic Societies,” Asian Image quotes a Muslim student group’s counterattack. If control of U.K. police authorities — the local oversight bodies — is handed to directly elected members, some worry, far-right activists or hardline Islamist groups could seize control, The Daily Mail frets.

Holy Wars: Three Islamic militants awaiting execution for the 2002 Bali bombings will challenge the legality of death by firing squad, calling it “torture,” Voice of America reports. Execution, in any event, “may backfire. The bombers are looking forward to martyrdom and the death penalty would be a betrayal to the teachings of Islam,” &New American Mediacomments. Iraq’s Christians have taken up arms in a desperate effort to defend their beleaguered communities from an onslaught by Islamic extremists, The Daily Telegraph leads. So great is Christian-Muslim mistrust, a few terrorist attacks could trigger dramatic and violent religious tensions, Reuters has a Jordanian prince telling a New Haven interfaith conference. “Disparate Muslim nationality movements of Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya are being clubbed with fringe pan-Islamic militant movements like al Qaeda and seen as part of a putatively wider ‘Global Islamic Jihad’,” a Countercurrents essayist complains.

Spending down: “President Bush announces he has been conducting a campaign to destroy the U.S. economy in order to combat illegal immigration and terrorism,” Unconfirmed Sources reports. “Bush claimed that a shrinking dollar, rising interest rates, increased government spending, huge personal debt, the war in Iraq, a depressed housing market and negative cash flows are discouraging would-be illegal immigrants from entering the U.S.,” Nick Fun writes. “’We need to stop illegal immigration at the source,’ Bush said ‘The reasons people are sneaking across the border are because they are seeking better jobs, more financial security and a better quality of life. If we eliminate these incentives then illegal immigration will become a thing of the past.’” Check also, on Onion Radio News: “Blackwater Security Hired To Protect U.S. Climate.”