Man indicted for allegedly plotting attack on Pentagon, US Capitol - CNN

A federal grand jury has indicted a man for an alleged plot in WashingtonRezwan Ferdaus allegedly planned to use model aircraft filled with explosivesSource: Ferdaus posed no immediate danger

Boston (CNN) -- A federal grand jury in Boston has indicted a 26-year-old man for allegedly plotting to use model airplanes to attack the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday.

Rezwan Ferdaus, a U.S. citizen from Ashland, Massachusetts, was arrested Wednesday. Authorities said he planned to use large, remote-controlled model aircraft filled with C-4 plastic explosives against the targets.

As a result of an undercover FBI investigation, Ferdaus, who has a physics degree from Northeastern University in Boston, was charged with attempting to provide material support and resources to al Qaeda for attacks on U.S. soldiers overseas, authorities said.

A law enforcement official said Ferdaus posed no immediate danger to the public because undercover operatives kept in close contact with him.

There is no information suggesting he was connected to a foreign terrorist organization, the source said, adding he was apparently radicalized by watching videos on the internet.

The investigation also involved a cooperating witness, and authorities began recording conversations between that witness and Ferdaus in January, authorities said.

Ferdaus began planning a violent "jihad" against America in early 2010, authorities said, and he began supplying the FBI undercover agents with cell phones rigged to act as electric switches for improved explosive devices, intended to be used to kill U.S. soldiers overseas.

Undercover federal agents gave Ferdaus 25 pounds of fake C-4 explosives. Only a very small amount of it was the real thing, the source said.

The FBI agents also gave Ferdaus six AK-47 assault rifles and three grenades, but they weren't functional, the source said.

Between May and September, Ferdaus also ordered and acquired a $6,500 remote-controlled aircraft, an F-86 Sabre, that he kept under a false name in a rented storage facility in Framingham, Massachusetts, authorities said. He also planned to use other remote-controlled models of military aircraft, authorities said.

The models he planned to use are about one-tenth the size of the actual aircraft.

A detention hearing for Ferdaus, who is not married and has no children, is scheduled for Monday.

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Grim predictions say 9 more years of Texas drought possible - Reuters

A general view of Lake Travis as water recedes during a drought in Austin, Texas September 10, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Joshua Lott

By Jim Forsyth

SAN ANTONIO | Thu Sep 29, 2011 6:06pm EDT

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - A devastating Texas drought that has browned city lawns and caused more than $5 billion in damages to the state's farmers and ranchers could continue for another nine years, a state forecaster said on Thursday.

"It is possible that we could be looking at another of these multiyear droughts like we saw in the 1950s, and like the tree rings have shown that the state has experienced over the last several centuries," State Climatologist John Nielson-Gammon told Reuters.

Some 95 percent of the state is listed as being in either "severe" or "exceptional" drought by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Drought Monitor, and Nielson-Gammon said the last 12 months have been the driest one-year period on record in the Lone Star State.

The state's worst recorded drought lasted from 1950 through 1957 and prompted the creation of artificial lakes all across Texas to supply water to a state that at the time had a population of 15 million - a whopping 10 million fewer than today.

The long-term weather patterns, including La Nina currents in the oceans, mirror records from the early 1950s, Nielsen-Gammon said. The current drought, which he said began in earnest in 2005, could wind up being a 15-year stretch if patterns hold, he said.

"We're very lucky that we had 2007 and 2010, which were years of plentiful rain," he said. "2010 was the wettest year in record. Were it not for last year, we would be in much worse shape even than we are today."

Conditions in Texas now are far from good. The drought has dried up many lakes built after the drought of the 1950s, and more than 23,000 separate wildfires fueled by dried brush and trees have destroyed 3.8 million acres and with that 2,800 homes, according to the Texas Forest Service.

Nielson-Gammon said Texas was now 10 to 20 inches of rainfall behind where it should be at the end of September, usually one of the state's wettest months.

Rather than being the exception, severe drought could become the rule in Texas going forward, with wet years being more noteworthy.

"We've had five of the last seven years in drought, and it looks like it is going to be six out of eight," he said.

The month is going out the same way it came in, with Texas firefighters on edge. Friday will be another extremely dangerous day for wildfires, with conditions similar to those over the Labor Day weekend when 60 fires erupted across the state, Holly Huffman of the Texas Forest Service said.

On September 4, a gust of wind blew a dead pine tree into power lines east of Austin, sparking the deadly Bastrop Complex Fire. That blaze killed two people, destroyed 1,600 homes, and is now the costliest fire in terms of lost property in Texas history.

The Forest Service this week called in two air tankers from Canada to fight wildfires that continue to burn around Texas, citing a shortage of enough planes to fight the state's fires.

(Edited by Karen Brooks and Cynthia Johnston)

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