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Top Obama administration officials on Wednesday said recent arrests in alleged bombing plots highlight the challenges they face combating ‘self-radicalised, homegrown extremists’ as well as foreigners in the United States determined to carry out attacks.
   Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-born man living legally in Colorado, was charged last week with planning a bombing attack in the United States, and a Jordanian man who overstayed a visa permit was accused of trying to bomb a Dallas skyscraper.
   Those and other recent arrests have prompted alerts to law enforcement agencies to step up vigilance on transit systems, in luxury hotels and at sports stadiums.
   However, authorities have repeatedly said they do not believe an attack is imminent and have declined to raise the threat assessment from the current ‘elevated’ level.
   The officials told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that al Qaeda still poses a threat — although a reduced one — and that they must also focus on affiliated groups and homegrown militants.
    ‘These episodes have shown that the threat of terrorism can come from people in many different areas of the country with a broad range of backgrounds,’ Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told the panel.
   While the case involving the Jordanian man and another bombing plot involving an American who is accused of trying to blow up an Illinois courthouse were sting operations, officials stressed that they are sometimes hard to uncover.
   ‘These cases illustrate not only the threats, but the challenges presented by the self-radicalized, homegrown extremists,’ said FBI Director Robert Mueller.
   He also said that he was concerned that al Qaeda, which was behind the September 11, 2001 attacks, has been trying to draw in people from Europe and other Westerners who could more easily slip into the United States.
    ‘For the last several years, we have picked up intelligence that al Qaeda has made a concerted effort to recruit Europeans and Westerners understanding that they can fly under the radar in terms of passing through border controls,’ Mueller said.
   Mueller and the head of the National Counterterro-rism Centre, Michael Leiter, also expressed concern that militant groups are recruiting individuals like Somali immigrants in the United States to receive weapons training in overseas camps.
   ‘Over the past several years, travel of Westerners, particularly US citizens, to either Pakistan or Somalia has been our single biggest concern,’ Leiter said.

The United States pressed Iran to prove it has peaceful nuclear ambitions ahead of crunch talks with six world powers in Geneva on Thursday aimed at breaking a deadlock.
   Iran meets with the UN Security Council’s five permanent members plus Germany a week after the disclosure of a second Iranian uranium enrichment plant, which heightened concerns about the true nature of the programme.
   Tehran is already under three sets of United Nations sanctions over its repeated refusal to freeze its uranium enrichment activities, which Western powers fear are aimed at building a nuclear bomb. Iran denies the charge.
   US secretary of state Hillary Clinton warned Iran on Wednesday that it risks ‘greater isolation and international pressure’ if it fails to give UN inspectors access to nuclear facilities and freeze sensitive activities.
   Western powers, as well as China and Russia, have urged Iran to give the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, access to the previously secret nuclear site near the holy city of Qom.
   The revelation of the new site has given the six powers a ‘collective sense of urgency and impatience in this issue,’ a senior US official, who requested anonymity, told reporters in Geneva.
   Washington is prepared to enter one-on-one dialogue with Iran at the talks, another senior US official said also on condition of anonymity.
   The official said in the US capital that it was up to chief US negotiator William Burns to decide whether the process could be helped by talking to the Iranian side directly.
    ‘It will also provide for an opportunity, if it’s useful in the talks, for there to be bilateral conversations between members of the P5+1 group and the Iranian group in Geneva,’ the official added.
   Burns, the US undersecretary of state for political affairs, will be authorized to decide on a one-on-one encounter if additional points need to be stressed with the Iranians or messages need to be conveyed, the official said.

The United States will withdraw about 4,000 troops from Iraq by the end of October, the US military commander in Iraq said in testimony prepared for a congressional hearing on Wednesday.
   In his assessment of the war, General Ray Odierno will tell the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee that the United States is on track to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by September 2010.
   ‘We have approximately 124,000 troops and 11 Combat Teams operating in Iraq today. By the end of October, I believe we will be down to 120,000 troops in Iraq,’ Odierno said in an advance copy of the testimony obtained on Tuesday.
   ‘As we go forward, we will thin out lines across Iraq in order to reduce the risk and sustain stability through a deliberate transition of responsibilities to the Iraqi security forces.’
   Odierno said the number of US contractors in Iraq has dropped from 149,000 in January to just over 115,000, saving over $441 million. Nearly 100 U.S. bases also have been closed, the testimony said.
   A Pentagon spokesman said he could not comment on the testimony because it had not yet been released.
   President Barack Obama’s withdrawal timetable calls for the US combat mission in Iraq to end on August 31, 2010. However, a force of 30,000 to 50,000 troops will remain to train and equip Iraqi forces and protect provincial reconstruction teams, international projects and diplomatic staff.

US experts and lawmakers called Wednesday for tough laws to curb distracted driving, blamed for thousands of deaths and half a million injuries in the United States last year.
    ‘Nearly 6,000 people died last year in crashes involving a distracted driver and more than half a million were injured,’ Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told a meeting of experts and families of people killed by distracted drivers.
   Distracted driving involves not only people using their mobile phones while at the wheel of a vehicle but also drivers playing video games, using iPods or Blackberries or even putting on nail polish or make-up, LaHood said.
   It happens ‘every day of the week, in the rain, and with kids’ in the vehicle, said LaHood, calling the phenomenon ‘an epidemic that has overtaken America and is getting worse.’
   And yet, only six states — California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Washington plus Washington DC — have laws banning the use of handheld phones while driving. Eighteen states plus the District of Columbia have banned drivers from sending text messages while at the wheel.
   Experts on Wednesday called for the problem to be met head-on by a federal law ‘with teeth’.
    ‘No text message is so urgent that it is worth dying over,’ said Senator Amy Klobuchar, whose state of Minnesota last year banned texting, sending emails or surfing the Internet while driving. But it stopped short of an overall ban on handheld devices while driving.
    ‘I used to say that when a drunk person gets behind the wheel of a car, it’s like they have a loaded gun in their hand,’ Klobuchar said.
    ‘In the case of someone who’s texting while driving, the loaded gun may be a Blackberry,’ she said.
   New York Senator Charles Schumer, one of the lawmakers who introduced the ‘Avoiding Life-Endangering and Reckless Texting by Drivers Act’ in July, said only tough laws with teeth would get American drivers to change their ways.
    ‘We won’t get drivers to kick this deadly habit simply by appealing to sentiment.
    ‘We know this because even though, as the AAA found, 87 percent of people considered texting while driving to be a serious threat, one in five said they did it anyway,’ said Schumer.
   Under the proposed law — which is backed only by a handful of lawmakers, including Klobuchar — states that do not ban texting at the wheel would lose some of their federal highway funding.
    ‘Only states can outlaw texting while driving but the federal government can and should make it very hard for states that don’t go along,’ Schumer told the gathering.
    ‘We need a ban on texting while driving in every state across the country and we need it now,’ he said.
   For a law to be effective against distracted driving, it would have to ban the use of all handheld wireless devices in a moving vehicle and carry a ‘significant monetary fine and points,’ Tom Dingus, director of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, told the meeting.
   A study by VTTI has shown that text-messaging while driving increased the risk of a crash or near-crash 23-fold.

German chancellor Angela Merkel’s new coalition partners accused her of riding roughshod in the run-up of talks on forming a government, in interviews published Thursday.
   Leading members of the business-friendly Free Democrats slammed the conservative Merkel for staking out policy positions ahead of negotiations on a roadmap for the four-year term, as clear differences emerged.
   ‘It is poor form to say what may not be discussed before the coalition talks have even begun,’ FDP deputy leader Cornelia Pieper told the daily Bild.
   ‘Apparently the Union is quite nervous. Many of them appear to be fixated on what jobs they may get,’ she said.

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison on Wednesday for wiretapping opponents and paying bribes to lawmakers and publishers during his rule from 1990 to 2000.
   Fujimori, 71, is already serving a 25-year sentence for human rights crimes. He will likely spend the rest of his life in jail, unless he receives a presidential pardon.
   He pleaded guilty on Monday to illegally intercepting phone calls and bribing people to cut short a Supreme Court trial in which 60 prominent Peruvians were going to be called to testify against him.

Israel warned on Thursday that the UN Human Rights Council would strike a fatal blow to the stalled Middle East peace process if it passes its damning Gaza war report on to the Security Council.
   ‘The adoption of what is called the Goldstone report would deal a fatal blow to the peace process,’ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, repeating comments he made at the UN General Assembly last week.
    ‘Israel will not be able to take further steps and further risks towards peace if the report is adopted and it is denied the right to self-defence,’ Netanyahu said.
   The Geneva-based Human Rights Council this week has been discussing the results of the probe which accused both Israel and Palestinian militant groups of war crimes.
   The panel also recommends sending the report to the UN Security Council and to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
   Richard Goldstone, the respected South African judge who headed the probe, on Tuesday urged the United Nations to refer Israel and the Palestinians to the ICC if they fail to conduct independent investigations as called for by the report.

Tango was declared part of the world’s cultural heritage by the United Nations on Wednesday and granted the international seal of approval Argentina and Uruguay have long sought for the dramatic dance and its sensual moves.
   The 24 members of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee of Intangible Heritage granted the tango dance and its music protected cultural status at its meeting in Abu Dhabi.
   The designation may make Argentina and Uruguay, which both claim to be tango’s birthplace, eligible to receive financial assistance from a specialized fund for safeguarding cultural traditions. It will also help both governments justify using public funds to preserve their most famous export after to beef.
    ‘We are very proud,’ Hernan Lombardi, the minister of culture of the autonomous city of Buenos Aires told the Associated Press on the phone from the Emirates’ capital. ‘We hope this decision will help spread the tradition of tango all over the world.’
   Tango emerged as a dance style in the late 1800s in the suburbs of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, Uruguay. It is popular in Europe, Japan and the United States.

President Barack Obama is confronting a split among his closest advisers on Afghanistan, reflecting divisions in his own party over whether to send in thousands more U.S. troops and complicating his efforts to adopt a war policy he can sell to a public grown weary of the 8-year-old conflict.
   With top military commanders and congressional Republicans pushing for a troop increase, Obama pressed key members of his national security team Wednesday for their views during an intense, three-hour session in a packed White House Situation Room.
   The meeting didn’t include specific discussions of troop levels, a senior administration official said. At its conclusion, Obama reminded the crowd that he hadn’t reached a decision and that his war council should return twice next week with more details and ideas, the official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private deliberations.
   The talks revealed the emerging fault lines within the administration, with military commanders solidly behind the request for additional troops and other key officials divided.
   Secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton and special Afghan and Pakistan envoy Richard Holbrooke appeared to be leaning toward supporting a troop increase, the official said.
   White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Gen. James Jones, Obama’s national security adviser, appeared to be less supportive, the official said. Vice President Joe Biden, who attended the meeting, has been reluctant to support a troop increase, favoring a strategy that directly targets al-Qaeda fighters who are believed to be hiding in Pakistan.
   The meeting, the second of at least five Obama has planned as he reviews his Afghanistan strategy, comes after a critical assessment of the war effort from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the man he put in charge of the war earlier this year. McChrystal declared that the US would fail to meet its objective of causing irreparable damage to Taliban militants and their al-Qaeda allies if the administration did not significantly increase American forces.
   McChrystal is widely believed to want to add between 30,000 and 40,000 to the current US force of 68,000.
   Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both support McChrystal’s strategy, Penta-gon press secretary Geoff Morrell said. defence secretary Robert Gates is on the fence, the spokesman said.
   White House officials say it may take weeks more before the president decides whether to overhaul the US strategy in Afghanistan or send more troops.
   Jones told senators in a classified briefing after the White House meeting that the administration’s evolving Afghanistan strategy depends in large part on the outcome of the disputed Afghan election. Those decisions are expected in a matter of weeks.

A deadly typhoon that scythed through Southeast Asia has underscored the area’s vulnerability to climate change — but it may have also finally given regional nations a voice at crucial environment talks.
   Delegates from 192 countries are meeting in Bangkok until October 9 in a desperate bid to thrash out the draft text of a global warming treaty that world leaders aim to sign in Copenhagen in December.
   Small nations most likely to suffer the effects of global warming have in the past been overshadowed in climate talks, with major greenhouse gas emitters such as the United States, Europe, China and India taking centre-stage.
   But after Typhoon Ketsana killed more than 300 people in the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos this week, Southeast Asian nations suddenly found themselves with a podium from which to call on richer nations to do more.
    ‘These countries (in Southeast Asia) in a way are the canary in the mine, they’re the ones that will be confronted by the impacts of climate change if we fail to reach an agreement in Copenhagen,’ UN Climate Chief Yvo de Boer told AFP.
   He said that Southeast Asia’s long coastlines and high population density make it one of the world’s most vulnerable areas if global warming continues.
   ‘We’re in a region that’s going to be incredibly impacted by climate change — that goes for the coastal cities that are likely to be impacted by sea level rise that are already affected by severe storms, flooding, changing weather patterns,’ he said.
   The Philippines made an impassioned plea at the Bangkok talks on Wednesday, saying that Typhoon Ketsana showed the need for developed nations to cut emissions.
   The disaster-prone country’s chief negotiator Secretary Heherson Alvarez said that if the storm spurred richer countries to act then ‘the ruin and the pain may not have been in vain.’

The United States believes it would be a mistake to lift sanctions against Myanmar at the beginning of a dialogue with that country’s military junta, the top US diplomat for Asia said on Wednesday.
   Following a US policy review on Myanmar, the Obama administration said this week it would pursue deeper engagement with Myanmar’s military rulers to try to spur democratic reform but would not ease sanctions for now.
    ‘Lifting or easing sanctions at the outset of a dialogue without meaningful progress on our concerns would be a mistake,’ assistant secretary of state Kurt Campbell told a US Senate panel.
   Campbell met U Thaung, Myanmar’s minister of science, technology and labor, in New York on Tuesday for what he described as ‘substantive talks for several hours.’ His meeting was the highest-level contact with Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, in nine years.
    ‘We laid out very clearly our views and I stressed to U Thaung that this is an opportunity for Burma, if it is ready to move forward,’ he told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing.
   No schedule or venue was set for future bilateral meetings, Campbell added.
   A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Myanmar officials ‘have shown interest in improving relations with us, reaching out to us.’
   Washington has gradually tightened sanctions on the generals who rule the country to try to force them to hold talks with ethnic minorities and with Nobel laureate and opposition party leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
   Democratic Senator Jim Webb, who visited Myanmar last month and met junta leader Than Shwe as well as Suu Kyi, said the cutting of all commercial ties had eroded U.S. influence and placed the country under China’s sphere of influence.
   ‘We limit the opportunities to push for positive change because we do not talk directly to the generals in charge,’ said Webb, chairman of the subcommittee.

Every night, Shah Muhammad dreams of paying back a loan and freeing himself from the employ of a Pakistan brick kiln owner, but instead his debt mushrooms with each day that passes.
   Muhammad, 68, has a large family, yet no matter how hard they toil in the scorching sun and dirt of Pakistan’s Punjab province, he cannot keep up with the medical bills, food costs and other expenses.
   ‘I start work before dawn and stop when the sun disappears... only to wait for another day to make bricks I pledged to make against the loan I took,’ said Muhammad, who initially borrowed 200,000 rupees (2,422 dollars) two years ago.
   He is among perhaps several million Pakistanis under bonded labour: poor families who accept cash advances from landlords, but in return are expected to work, often for no wages, from morning till nightfall.
   Human beings treated like commodities, the bonded labourer can then be sold on to another employer in what activists decry as modern-day slavery.

South Korea’s leader urged the military Thursday to stay on guard against North Korea despite its recent peace overtures, saying the communist state is diversifying its threats against the South.
   ‘North Korea has heightened the crisis on the Korean peninsula with a rocket launch and a second nuclear test after making comments about a military confrontation,’ President Lee Myung-Bak told a parade marking Armed Forces Day.
   Lee called on the armed forces to maintain firm deterrence.
    ‘Dialogue with North Korea should not lead to a compromise in our principles and values,’ he said.
    ‘Our military must be able to deter a war without fighting one,’ he added in a speech, saying North Korea is ‘diversifying its threats’ with its nuclear and missile programmes.
   North Korea launched a long-range missile on April 5. In response to United Nations censure of the launch, it quit six-nation nuclear disarmament talks and staged its second atomic weapons test on May 25.
   In August, after months of hostile moves towards Seoul and bitter verbal attacks, Pyongyang began making peace overtures to South Korea and to its ally the United States.
   It sent a delegation to Seoul in August to pay respects to late president Kim Dae-Jung and to hold talks with Lee, and allowed the resumption of a family reunion programme for the first time in two years.
   South and North Korea have remained technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice without a subsequent peace treaty.
   Armed Forces Day marks the day when South Korea and its allies made their first military counter-offensive into the North in 1950.
   Dozens of fighter jets including KF-16s and attack helicopters such as Cobras staged performance flights, while special forces troops showed off martial arts moves and rappelling skills.
   South Korea’s 655,000 troops, backed up by US forces numbering 28,500, face off against a North Korean military numbering 1.2 million across a heavily fortified frontier.

China on Thursday celebrated 60 years of communist rule with a massive military parade and elaborate pageantry on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square showcasing the nation’s revival as a global power.
   Thousands of troops marched in tight formations, fighter jets flew over the city and the world’s largest military displayed an array of high-tech weaponry including intercontinental ballistic missiles in a patriotic show of force.
   President Hu Jintao extolled the country’s Communist Party-led rebirth in a speech to the invitation-only crowd from Tiananmen gate, where Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic on October 1, 1949.
   “The development and progress of the new China over the past 60 years fully proved that only socialism can save China, and only reform and opening up can ensure the development of China, socialism and Marxism,” Hu told the crowd.
   China typically holds grand celebrations every 10 years to commemorate Mao’s pronouncement, but authorities promised that this year’s festivities would top those staged in the past — and outdo last year’s Olympic opening ceremony.
   The government wants to send a clear message: that China, the world’s third-largest economy and with a population of 1.3 billion, has re-emerged as a proud and undeniable global force.
   Hu, in a high-collared Mao-style tunic, underlined this confidence in his speech before a packed Tiananmen Square festooned in the nation’s red and yellow.
   “Today a socialist China that faces the future is standing tall and firm in the East,” he declared.
   An estimated 200,000 people took part in the lavish morning festivities, which unfolded under clear blue skies.
   Flexing its growing muscle, China paraded long-range nuclear missiles capable of striking the heart of the United States and other homegrown weaponry signalling that a nation once bullied by foreign powers is a pushover no more.

Dozens of Tibetan exiles were arrested in Nepal on Thursday as they tried to hold demonstrations on the 60th anniversary of Communist rule in China, police and witnesses said.
   Baton-wielding riot police detained 40 Tibetan protesters outside a Chinese embassy building in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu.
   The protesters waved Tibetan flags and shouted slogans including ‘No human rights in Tibet’ and ‘We want a free Tibet’ before they were dragged away and put into police vans.
   Police said they had also arrested 38 Tibetan exiles on Thursday morning in Kathmandu after receiving reports that they intended to gather for anti-China protests.
   ‘They will be released after the necessary investigations,’ sub-inspector Chabira-man Bhattarai told AFP.
   The arrests came as China celebrated 60 years of communist rule with a military parade and lavish ceremonies on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
   Nepal is home to around 20,000 exiled Tibetans who began arriving in large numbers in 1959 when the Dalai Lama fled Tibet after a failed uprising.
   Sandwiched between India and China, Nepal has supported Beijing’s ‘One China’ policy that views Tibet as an integral part of China.
   The government in Kathmandu has come under increasing pressure from Beijing to suppress anti-China activity on its soil, and activists say it has responded by adopting a harder line against the exiles.

Taiwan hopes to sign an extradition treaty with the United States soon to bring 75 fugitives hiding there to justice, officials on the island said Thursday.
   Justice minister Wang Ching-feng made the proposal to the US de facto ambassador William A Stanton during a meeting on Wednesday, a justice ministry official said.
   Among the list of fugitives is former Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian’s family doctor Huang Fang-yen, who fled to the US last year during a probe into his suspected role in Chen’s corruption case, the official said.
   Another high-profile runaway is tycoon Wang You-theng, who faces up to 30 years in prison for allegedly embezzling a record 73 billion Taiwan dollars (2.29 billion US), he said.

Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar is not in Pakistan and the United States is only saying he is there to justify an expansion of its drone missile strikes, a Taliban commander said on Wednesday.
   The Washington Post said this week US officials had expressed concern over the ability of Omar and his lieutenants to launch attacks into Afghanistan from sanctuaries around the Pakistani city of Quetta.
   Pakistan has long denied that Omar or any of his commanders are based in Pakistan but it has been unable to dispel the suspicion in Washington and Kabul. Several Taliban members have been detained in Pakistan.
   Mounting US concern about Omar and his so-called Quetta shura, or leadership council, comes as the United States weighs options on how to deal with an intensifying Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
   Possibilities include sending more combat troops and trainers for the Afghan army and stepping up strikes by pilotless drone aircraft on militants on the Pakistani side of the border.

Sri Lanka on Thursday said it accepted much of the United Nations’ recent criticism over its handling of 250,000 Tamils detained in camps since the end of the island’s ethnic conflict six months ago.
   Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe pledged the government would address recommendations made by Walter Kaelin, a representative of the United Nations secretary-general, who last
   week toured the detention facilities.
    ‘He (Kaelin) said a lot of factual things like getting the sewer and sanitation right on an urgent basis and to make things comfortable for those living inside the camps,’ Samarasinghe told AFP.
    ‘It is a very positive statement. We take these things in the right spirit.’
   The government has vowed to re-settle all people displaced during the decades of war by January, but international aid and human rights groups have questioned its commitment to the welfare of Tamil
   civilians.

Authorities in Indian Kashmir have set up security protection for a young Muslim woman who shot dead a militant at the weekend and now fears for her life, police said Thursday.
   Ruksana Kausar, 22, snatched the militant’s gun and shot him dead, forcing other attackers to flee. They had stormed her house with a plan to abduct her, police said.
   ‘I am sure they would like to take revenge. I don’t feel safe in my house,’ Kausar told reporters. A police officer said specially-instructed security personnel would ensure she was not targeted by militants.