Jihad Jane

A Pakistani student who last week became the youngest terrorism suspect indicted in the United States pleaded not guilty today to charges that helped plot a violent attack overseas. In a brief hearing in federal court in Philadelphia, 18-year-old Mohammad Hassan Khalid uttered just two words - "not guilty" - before being ushered back into custody. The two-count indictment unsealed Thursday said Khalid, a legal permanent U.S. resident from Maryland, conspired with others, including Colleen R. LaRose, the Montgomery County woman known online as "JihadJane," to plot attacks in Europe and South Asia.

Absolutely not. Swedish artist Lars Vilks has no regrets about his 2007 drawing depicting the prophet Muhammad as a stray dog. "It's a part of the game you play when you are an artist," he said yesterday while visiting Philadelphia. "Now there would be a terrorist waiting around every bush. I don't know if I can ever live my life as I had done. " His work, however, has come with a hefty price: A fatwah was declared on the 64-year-old Vilks and $150,000 is said to be promised to the assassin who uses a knife to end his life, the artist said.

KURT GORMAN had no idea that his Texas girlfriend of four years was on the Internet calling herself JihadJane. Colleen R. LaRose, whom he met in Ennis, Texas, left the couple's Montgomery County apartment Aug. 23, the day after his father's funeral, without telling him, he said. "I came home and she's gone. She packed up and left. Didn't see it coming, didn't know," Gorman told the Daily News last night. "I was upset, worried. Maybe something happened to her. You don't know.

Gov. Christie delivered a spirited, impromptu defense last week of a Muslim lawyer he had nominated for a judgeship. On the face of it, the comments weren't extraordinary. But given the way some Republicans have recently characterized Muslims, what he said was remarkable to hear from a GOP darling. Consider these statements by other Republicans, all likely to run for president next year: "I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they [his grandchildren]

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - A Norwegian man has received terrorist training from al-Qaeda's offshoot in Yemen and is awaiting orders to carry out an attack on the West, officials from three European security agencies told the Associated Press on Monday. Western intelligence officials have long feared such a scenario - a convert to Islam who is trained in terrorist methods and can blend in easily in Europe and the United States, traveling without visa restrictions. Officials from three European security agencies confirmed Monday the man is "operational," meaning he has completed his training and is about to receive a target.

Lars Vilks, a conceptual artist from Sweden with a $100,000 bounty on his head, could be found secreted away in a room at the Rittenhouse Hotel Thursday morning, receiving carefully screened visitors from the media. Vilks is on a weeklong tour of the United States and Canada, speaking about freedom of expression. He had been scheduled to hold forth at the Union League Thursday, but late Wednesday, the event was abruptly called off. Craig Snider, a Union League member who was hosting the speaker, said that after he realized the visit would require extraordinary security measures to protect Vilks, his associates, and anyone in attendance, "I voluntarily canceled it. I was not prepared to ask the league to take that kind of risk.

Lawyers for 18-year-old Mohammad Hassan Khalid say it took a lot of anger to turn him into the youngest person ever charged in a U.S. terror plot. On Monday they posed what they called a unique proposal to a federal judge in Philadelphia: transfer Khalid from a federal lockup in Center City to a secure Pennsylvania juvenile treatment facility near Harrisburg and order the federal government to pay for therapy to turn around his troubled psyche. The alternative, say Khalid's lawyers, is to let the admitted teen terrorist's anger ferment until the day he finishes his prison term and is deported to Pakistan.

Special Agent John Kirk exemplifies the new FBI. A hybrid agent, he is one part crime-fighter, one part intelligence operative. Posted full-time at Philadelphia International Airport, Kirk has an office just steps from a one-way mirror through which he can view travelers entering the country. His primary job is not to make arrests, but to make friends and build sources among airport, airline, and other law enforcement employees. It helps that he happens to be a former pilot. That the FBI would post a man at a desk full-time at an airport, a most-favored terrorist target, would seem to be a no-brainer.