Italian anti-terror officials have arrested three Algerians involved in planning attacks against US sports stadiums, ships, and railway stations on a level that would have dwarfed 9-11 attacks in New York and at the Pentagon, according to a expose report on today's NewsMax.com (http://www.newsmax.com).

Following the London bombings, Italian officials stepped up anti-terrorism wire taps aimed at terrorist suspects, and got recorded proof of the terrorist plot. The wiretaps were similar to the ones currently being conducted by the NSA under authorization by President Bush.

The shocking part of the report is that the arrests were in November 2005, but while the story was headline material in foreign papers from Europe to China, not a single US mainline newspaper or network carried the story that confirms that the US is still an active target of the terrorists.

More astounding for emergency preparedness professionals is that these arrests go a long way to explaining the heightened security around US railway transportation that was mildly mentioned in the media over the past 30 days. The media never connected the dots to report the link between the arrests, the clear threats, and the stepped-up security focus.

For your next disaster drill, you may wish to consider staging your drill around a terrorist attack on a fully loaded passenger train, a train full of hazardous materials, or a structural collapse at a major stadium if you have one in the area. For port cities, shipping disasters should also be a scenario for planning for both the potential of cruise ships and container and tankers full of hazardous materials.

For more details on the Italian arrests and the implications of the lack of warning from US media, visit NewsMax.com.