Whitewater rafting trips popular with corporate executives seeking team-building skills may have been used by London suicide bombers for just that purpose -- a fact that has led investigators to this Welsh town.
Since photographs appeared showing at least two of the July 7 bombers shooting the rapids here -- with one flashing a victory or peace sign -- residents of this playground for rafters and fishermen have been coming to grips with the fact there may have been terrorists in their midst.
Now, investigators are following up clues that the second wave of attackers who unsuccessfully tried to strike two weeks later had links to this same small town.
"They were up here for a bonding weekend to prostrate themselves over their bombs before they died," said innkeeper Richard Fullard, 62.
A restaurant operator in town, Ceri Williams, 55, said the pictures made her realize, "there are extremists everywhere."
Suspected suicide bombers Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shahzad Tanweer rode the rapids in a morning session at the Canolfan Tryweryn National Whitewater Center about a month before detonating explosives on the London subways in attacks that killed 55, including the four bombers.
The revelations have caused many to scratch their heads in this town of 2,000 -- a place where people take part in sheepherding contests and where the Celtic tones of Welsh are heard.
The town is also known for the gwyniad, a prehistoric fish.
But that was before a June 4 rafting trip on the Tryweryn River in Snowdonia National Park gave this town another claim to fame. Many found it chilling that the bombers would go looking for a good time only weeks before what appeared to be a deadly mission.
Some terrorism experts, like Bruce Hoffman of the Rand Corp, said the trip might have been a business-like exercise in team-building -- an effort to help the group coalesce.
In particular, he noted that the London attacks occurred almost simultaneously -- a factor which alone takes discipline and team effort.
"The business parallel explains a lot," Hoffman said. "Why not a corporate-building exercise like whitewater rafting?"
Magnus Ranstorp, at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, recalled that several of the attackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks in the US visited Las Vegas in the weeks before flying passenger jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"Some had been drinking and carrying out, how shall I say it, `un-Islamic behavior,'" he said. "It's almost like a right to do something you wouldn't otherwise do before you depart."
A Canolyn Tryweryn official, Jon Gorman, said neither he nor anyone else remembered Khan and Tanweer as hundreds of rafters of all ethnic groups use the center daily.
Many visitors are "young lads" looking for adventure -- "that doesn't make it an al-Qaeda training center," he said.
Gorman said police asked him not to discuss whether the boat on which Khan and Tanweer rode the rapids was comprised of people in a single group.
He also declined to reveal who else was on the excursion, saying that he gave that information to the police after reviewing forms rafters sign giving emergency contact information.
Each trip costs ?280 (US$490), which Gorman said is usually split by up to six or seven people on the boat, who travel with one instructor. Police have photographs of 18 men who booked three sessions on that day, another official at the center said.
Police have refused to comment on reports that a brochure from the center was found in an explosives-laden backpack that failed to detonate on a bus on July 21.
But police have been combing the town to try to find out more, searching for anyone who might have known the bombers. They've asked to see the guest registers at some local inns for the weekend of June 4.
One hostel owner, Stella Shaw, said police were interested in six "Muslim" guests she had at her hostel on the night of June 6, but said she did not house either Khan nor Tanweer.
And Fullard said the police came and looked at his books for that weekend as well -- even though he says he wouldn't take in a group of single men. But few in the town seem concerned that they are in any danger.
If anything, many seemed defiant and unconcerned that anyone would associate Bala with the bombers.
"They've been and gone," said John Williams, 61, as his wife bustled about to take care of the lunch customers, "and they're not likely to come back anymore."
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
NOTORIOUS JAIL: Even from a distance, prisoners maimed by torture, weakened by illness and emaciated by hunger, could be distinguished Armed men broke the bolts on the cell and the prisoners crept out: haggard, bewildered and scarcely believing that their years of torment in Syria’s most brutal jail were over. “What has happened?” asked one prisoner after another. “You are free, come out. It is over,” cried the voice of a man filming them on his telephone. “Bashar has gone. We have crushed him.” The dramatic liberation of Saydnaya prison came hours after rebels took the nearby capital, Damascus, having sent former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fleeing after more than 13 years of civil war. In the video, dozens of