“To underscore growing U.S. concerns over its aging polar icebreaking fleet and suspect capacity for Arctic surveillance, DHS director Michael Chertoff slipped quietly into Alaska on Friday to assess the Coast Guard’s northern operations,” CanWest News Service’s Randy Boswell leads. Old, short-range Scud ballistic missiles could be launched with nuclear or biological warheads from large container cargo ships from outside U.S. territorial waters, United Press International’s Martin Sieff suggests.

Feds: DHS swept aside evaluations of government experts and named Mississippi — home to powerful U.S.lawmakers with sway over the agency — as a top location for a new $451 million bio-lab, The Associated Press’ Larry Margasak learns from internal documents. FBI Director Robert Mueller apologized Friday to the editors of The New York Times and The Washington Post for a recently uncovered breach of their reporters’ phone records during a 2004 terror investigation, The Raw Story’s John Byrne reports. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., takes exception to Chertoff’s view that creating a legal standard for searching Americans’ electronics at the border would just lead to too much litigation, Threat Level’s Ryan Singel posts.

O’Cain: Al Qaeda “has developed a predictable pattern of behavior . . . that provides important insights into what we can expect in the next six months. Brace yourselves,” Barack Obama adviser Bruce Riedel advises in the Post. “Is it possible that the campaign of the first American presidential candidate with Kenyan heritage missed the 10-year anniversary of the al Qaeda attacks on the embassies?” National Review’s Jim Geraghty wonders. While Obama’s cybersecurity plan is what you would expect, “the devil is always in the details — and, of course, at this point there are few details,” Bruce Schneier comments in Wired Magazine — while CNET News’ Declan McCullagh marks a D.C. think tank’s launch of an official-sounding “Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency.”

McBama: That John McCain opined in 2001 that Iraq might be responsible for the anthrax mailings underscores his “central role in what may go down as one of the biggest strategic blunders in U.S. military history,” an Al Jazeeracontributor prods. “Despite the recent prominence of Afghanistan in the presidential campaign, McCain continues to only want to talk about Iraq,” a Guardian op-ed observes. The GOP contender “has his facts wrong” when he claims a just-convicted Guantanamo detainee was found guilty of “supplying weapons to al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan,” Think Progress protests. “If things get worse in Pakistan, the traditional Republican lead on national security could hand John McCain the advantage,” The National Interest analyzes.

State and local: Some $4.5 million in federal funding for the Maryland State Police is imperiled by a probe into its use of a criminal database to track peaceful activists, The Washington Times tells. Florida is more ready for a hurricane and other disasters than ever before, The Tallahassee Democrat has its governor and top emergency managers proclaiming last week — while The Maple Valley (Wash.) Reporter sees DHS monies buying a $3.4 million chopper for the King County sheriff’s shop. The local Institute for Security Studies has put together a DVD, “The Seven Signs of Terror,” for people such as school police who could help spot terrorist activity, Las Vegas’s CBS 4 News notes. San Antonio stands ready to support scientists and protect public safety if DHS chooses to site its planned $500 million high-security agricultural disease lab there, the Express-News relays.

Bugs ‘n bombs: A man who pleaded guilty in Las Vegas on Friday to possessing ricin said he distilled the toxin in 1998 from the beans of a backyard castor plant and carried it around for a decade, AP reports. The nation’s water supply has “long been recognized as being potentially vulnerable to terrorist attacks of various types, including physical disruption, bioterrorism/chemical contamination, and cyberattack,” the CRSreports. Pandemic flu is a bigger threat to Britain than terrorism or flooding, Sky News has a new government “risk register” revealing. Explosions at a Toronto propane facility forced thousands of people to evacuate early Sunday in the glow of an enormous fireball, The Toronto Star tells.

Amerithrax: The Bruce Ivins/anthrax affair is “devastating,” not only to his own U.S. Army bio-warfare lab, “but pretty much all government research,” a colleague tells AP — while CNN relays word of an Army expert team assigned to review security at Ivins’s old stomping ground, and check Slate on “The Best and Worst Anthrax Conspiracy Theories.” Federal prosecutors on Friday officially “excluded” Steven J. Hatfill from guilt in the 2001 anthrax mailings, ending an episode that sidetracked the FBI’s search for the real culprit for nearly five years, the Post reports. For some of the scores of researchers who drew the bureau’s attention during the probe, “the cost was high: lost jobs, canceled visas, broken marriages, frayed friendships,” The New York Times adds — and the Los Angeles Timesraises the curtain for “investigation of the investigation.”

Air turbulence: Newly released Transportation Department polling figures “found that we’re not really all that confident that airport security screeners are keeping us safe while we fly,” a Kansas City Star blog says. “We should be all for protecting against [terror]. But there’s also staying leery of invasive, even humiliating, government measures,” a St. Petersburg Times columnist writes in re: revealing new body scanners — while The Arizona Republic gives Phoenix a shout-out as the air hub where TSA first tested the virtual strip-searchers. Miami airport embarkees are in for a break when a bustling central checkpoint closes and a more-convenient interim screener station opens, the Herald relates.

Coming and going: In the wake of last week’s Canadian beheading, Greyhound insists bus travel is the safest mode of transportation, even though bus stations do not have metal detectors and other airport-style security measures, CBC News notes. Greyhound passengers in the United States are subject to random security checks, but there’s no such system in Canada, The Edmonton Sun adds — as Schneier on Security cautions against the inevitable overreaction. After terrorism, a huge rise in metal thefts has been described as the most serious threat to Britain’s railways, The Daily Telegraph tells — while a Halifax (N.S.) Chronicle Herald rail security update bemoans the fact that “passengers can carry smaller items such as backpacks directly onto the train without being searched.” The New York Naval Militia, meantime, ran a three-day port security exercise last week, readMedia relays.

Bar chat: With new jailhouse recordings possibly prompting additional charges, Naveed Haq won’t face retrial for the 2006 Jewish Federation attack until early March, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer says. Legal experts question use of an anti-terror law against three defendants accused in downtown San Diego pipe bombings, the Union-Tribune tells. Guantanamo’s only convict was moved to a prison wing all by himself hours after U.S. military jurors found him guilty of driving Osama, Reuters reports — while AP terms the Yemeni “a low-level player without a proven record of terrorism . . . like the majority of the 265 prisoners at Guantanamo.” The Pentagon is engaged in high-level discussions about what to do with the convict when his sentence expires in January, the Post adds. Lawyers for Omar Khadr are suing to compel a demand from P.M. Stephen Harper that the Canadian citizen be repatriated from Gitmo, The Toronto Star says.

Rights and wrongs: “A central question about the war-crimes system remains unanswered after its first trial: Is it fair enough and open enough to meet Americans’ concept of justice?” The New York Times analyzes. “Regular courts could have convicted and sent to prison more truly dangerous terrorists,” an L.A. Times columnist counsels — as USA Today says the split verdict suggests the trial was “neither a model nor a debacle.” The contempt trial of Sami al-Arian, previously exonerated on terror support charges, has been postponed by “new doubts about whether prosecutors have been overzealous,” The International Herald Tribune relays.

Over there: Pakistani diplomats have met with a woman described as a possible fixer for al Qaeda who is being detained in New York, The PakTribune tells. Five North Africans were busted in Italy on Saturday as part of an alleged international terrorist ring allegedly head-hunting suicide bombers for Iraq and Afghanistan, APreports. The military junta in North Africa’s Mauritania will repress both al Qaeda militants and moderate Islamists more firmly than did the civilian government ousted in last week’s coup, Reuters reports. Recent high-profile blasts have highlighted India’s difficulty in coming up with an effective strategy to fight terror, BusinessWeekspotlights. The Philippine military attacked Muslim rebels holed up in Catholic farmlands in the south yesterday, Reuters also relates. Seven bombers and a security guard were left dead yesterday after several bombings that targeted police and government offices in western China, Bloomberg recounts — while Xinhua has eight killed and 19 wounded in a suicide car bombing in Algeria late Saturday.

A self-cleaning oven: “After responding to a fire at elite nightclub Tech-Noir, all 20 members of Ladder Company 24 were denied entrance and forced to stand behind the velvet rope guarding the A-list inferno as it raged on well into early Sunday morning,” The Onion reports. “‘There was no way I could let them in dressed like that,’ said bouncer Ken Hess, who asked emergency personnel to step aside while he allowed a group of good-looking, scantily clad women directly into the blaze. ‘If they had brought some ladies with them, then maybe. But we have to maintain some standards here.’ While the firefighters were reportedly saddened by the sight of 63 people burning to death, on the way back to the firehouse they agreed the club was probably just full of stuck-up bitches anyway.” See also, in The Onion: “Al Gore Places Infant Son in Rocket to Escape Dying Planet.”