Yovani Gallardo is firm. Even if he's fortunate enough to make the All-Star team again next summer, he'll skip it."If the game is in Arizona

ANAHEIM, Calif. Yovani Gallardo is firm. Even if he’s fortunate enough to make the All-Star team again next summer, he’ll skip it.”If the game is in Arizona, I will totally boycott,” the Milwaukee Brewers pitcher said Monday.A year before Phoenix is set to host baseball’s big event, the state’s new immigration law kept drawing the attention of major leaguers.Kansas City reliever Joakim Soria, who leads the majors with 25 saves, said he would support a Latino protest and stay away. Detroit closer Jose Valverde can see himself steering clear, too.”It’s a really delicate issue,” said Toronto outfielder Jose Bautista, who leads the majors with 24 home runs. “Hopefully, there are some changes in the law before then. We have to back up our Latin communities.”

“If I do get chosen, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said.About three dozen protesters held signs Monday one block from the hotel where Major League Baseball held its welcoming news conferences. The demonstrators said they had over 100,000 petitions asking commissioner Bud Selig to move the 2011 All-Star game out of Arizona.Another protest was planned outside Angel Stadium before Tuesday night’s game.

Selig has not spoken directly on the subject. Asked in May about calls to shift next year’s game, he gave a defense of baseball’s minority hiring record. Selig did not take questions at Monday’s All-Star introductory event.Arizona’s much-debated measure takes effect July 29. The statute requires police, while enforcing other laws, to ask about a person’s immigration status if there is reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country illegally.”They could stop me and ask to see my papers,” Soria said. “I have to stand with my Latin community on this.”

The Mexican-born Gallardo said he’s talked with Soria and San Diego’s All-Star first baseman Adrian Gonzalez about the Arizona law.”We don’t agree with it,” Gallardo said. St. Louis slugger Albert Pujols said he opposed the law and Valverde called it “dumb.”

Several All-Stars avoided the topic.”That’s a political thing,” New York Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano said. “I don’t have anything to say about it. They already made a decision. If I say anything it’s not going to make any difference.””Wrong guy,” teammate Alex Rodriguez said, pointing to other players in the interview room.

Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop Rafael Furcal said he would wait for guidance from the players’ union.”The game is going on at this point, regardless,” said former All-Star Tony Clark, who played for Arizona last season and now works for the union. “Whatever decision an individual player makes, they would have the full support of the union.”The union has already condemned the law and said that if it is not repealed or modified additional steps would be considered.

Oakland closer Andrew Bailey, whose team holds spring training in Phoenix, said his sport was caught in a crossfire.”The Arizona Diamondbacks and Major League Baseball had nothing to do with making the Arizona immigration laws,” he said. “I know there are discrepancies. Hopefully, things can get resolved.”(AP) —

airlines that leave passengers stranded on a tarmac in a delayed plane for three hours or more can face a hefty fine under new rules adopted by the U.S. Department of Transportation

airlines that leave passengers stranded on a tarmac in a delayed plane for three hours or more can face a hefty fine under new rules adopted by the U.S. Department of Transportation.If carriers don’t let passengers out of the plane before the three-hour mark, the agency can fine them up to $27,500 per customer.

At least three domestic airlines have announced plans to avoid the penalties. But that won’t necessarily cut down on delays.US Airways and Continental Airlines have both unveiled procedures to return the plane to the gate if it can’t take off before the three-hour limit.American Airlines Chief Executive Gerard Arpey said his carrier the nation’s second-largest has modified a previous plan to unload passengers stranded four hours or longer.

US Airways, the sixth-largest domestic carrier, announced its plans in an employee newsletter last week.For example, if a US Airways flight is delayed 90 minutes, the crew offers drinks and snacks to avoid a fine that applies if fliers are delayed for two hours without food and water.

After 2 1/2 hours, the airline’s operations center makes a decision: Either return the plane to the gate or, if a takeoff is imminent, keep it in line on the tarmac.In 2009, US Airways alone had 193 flights that were delayed more than three hours. If each had an average of 200 passengers, under the new rules the fines could add up to more than $1 billion.It is unclear what happens to a flight after it returns to the gate, but American’s Arpey predicted bad news for passengers: “Most certainly, it will result in more cancellations.”

Costliest city is still New York

If you can afford to stay in New York, you can afford to stay anywhere.The 2010 rankings for the most expensive cities for business travelers put New York at the top again, with the average daily cost for food, hotel and a car rental totaling $622.The results came from the annual survey of hotel, restaurant and car rental costs by the Business Travel News, a publication for business travel managers, of 100 U.S. travel destinations. New York topped the list last year and in 2008 as well.

White Plains, N.Y., and Detroit inched up in the list, with hotel and car rental prices rising in both cities.Las Vegas, on the other hand, dropped on the list.Last year, Sin City ranked as the nation’s 30th most expensive city to visit. It fell to 45th this year, below such cities as Oakland, Cleveland and Pittsburgh.Honolulu ranked ninth in the 2009 survey but dropped to 20th this year, below Minneapolis, Austin and Detroit.

Most hospitality experts blame what they call the “AIG affect” for the drop in hotel and restaurant prices at cities with a reputation for luxury and frivolity.After the insurance giant American International Group Inc.took a federal bailout in 2008, it hosted a junket for senior executives at the St. Regis Monarch Beach resort and was then stung by public outrage. Since then, image-conscious executives have avoided holding corporate meetings in places known for fun and opulence.

“There is still a huge residual from the AIG affect,” said Carl Winston, the director of the hospitality and tourism management program at San Diego State University.Los Angeles dropped to 16th on the list this year from 13th in 2009, based on cheaper car rental rates.Prank tells guests to break windowYou are asleep in a hotel room, and a frantic caller warns you that the building is on fire, instructing you to pull the fire alarm and break the window.

The American Hotel & Lodging Assn. has issued a warning, telling hotel guests to think twice before following such instructions. Prank callers have been victimizing hotel guests in California, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida and Nebraska, the trade group warned.The group advises hotel guests who get such a call to phone the front desk to see if the emergency is legitimate.In Orlando, Fla., the victim of such a prank busted a hotel window with part of a toilet after his wife took the call. “When I broke the window, I got suspicious,” the hotel guest told the Orlando Sentinel. “It didn’t seem right, but she was panicking, so I continued.”

New York The abrupt transformation of Colleen R. LaRose from bored middle-aged matron to "JihadJane," her Internet alias

New York The abrupt transformation of Colleen R. LaRose from bored middle-aged matron to “JihadJane,” her Internet alias, was unique in many ways, but a common thread ties the alleged Islamic militant to other recent cases of homegrown terrorism: the Internet.

From charismatic clerics who spout hate online, to thousands of extremist websites, chat rooms and social networking pages that raise money and spread radical propaganda, the Internet has become a crucial front in the ever-shifting war on terrorism.”LaRose showed that you can become a terrorist in the comfort of your own bedroom,” said Bruce Hoffman, professor of security studies at Georgetown University. “You couldn’t do that 10 years ago.”

“The new militancy is driven by the Web,” agreed Fawaz A. Gerges, a terrorism expert at the London School of Economics. “The terror training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan are being replaced by virtual camps on the Web.”

From their side, law enforcement and intelligence agencies are scrambling to monitor the Internet and penetrate radical websites to track suspects, set up sting operations or unravel plots before they are carried out.

The FBI arrested LaRose in October after she had spent months using e-mail, YouTube, MySpace and electronic message boards to recruit radicals in Europe and South Asia to “wage violent jihad,” according to a federal indictment unsealed this week.That put the strawberry-haired Pennsylvania resident in league with many of the 12 domestic terrorism cases involving Muslims that the FBI disclosed last year, the most in any year since 2001. The Internet was cited as a recruiting or radicalizing tool in nearly every case.

“Basically, Al Qaeda isn’t coming to them,” Gerges said. “They are using the Web to go to Al Qaeda.”

In December, for example, five young men from northern Virginia were arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of seeking to join anti-American militants in Afghanistan.A Taliban recruiter made contact with the group after one of the five, Ahmed Abdullah Minni, posted comments on YouTube praising videos of attacks on U.S. troops, officials said. To avoid detection, they communicated by leaving draft e-mail messages at a shared Yahoo e-mail address.

Hosam Smadi, a Jordanian, was arrested in September and accused of trying to use a weapon of mass destruction after he allegedly tried to blow up a 60-story office tower in downtown Dallas. The FBI began surveillance of Smadi after seeing his anti-American postings on an extremist website.And Ehsanul Islam Sadequee and Syed Haris Ahmed, two middle-class kids barely out of high school near Atlanta, secretly took up violent jihad after meeting at a mosque.

“They started spending hours online — chatting with each other, watching terrorist recruitment videos, and meeting like-minded extremists,” the FBI said in a statement after the pair were convicted of terrorism charges in December.

Prosecutors alleged that the pair traveled to Washington and made more than 60 short surveillance videos of the Capitol, the Pentagon and other sensitive facilities, and e-mailed them to an Al Qaeda webmaster and propagandist.

U.S. authorities also closely monitor several fiery Internet imans who use English to preach jihad and, in some cases, to help funnel recruits to Al Qaeda and other radical causes.The best known is Anwar al Awlaki, an American-born imam who is believed to be living in Yemen. U.S. officials say more than 10% of visitors to his website are in the U.S.

Among those who traded e-mails with Awlaki were Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged with shooting and killing 13 people in November at Ft. Hood, Texas, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian charged with trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight over Detroit on Christmas Day.

Mahdi Bray, executive director of the MAS Freedom Foundation, part of the Muslim American Society, noted that many extremist websites featured fiery images, loud music and fast-moving videos of violence and death.”They use video games and hip-hop to bring young people in, sometimes in very benign ways,” he said. “Then they make this transition by showing all the horrific things” and by then, some would-be recruits are hooked.

Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said his group had struggled to compete with the instant attention that grisly videos of beheadings, roadside bombs or masked men with weapons draw on the Internet.”They get the backdrop of the Afghani mountains or the battlefields of Somalia,” he said. “We’re speaking from conference centers and quiet halls. Somehow, we have to figure out a way to make our message more newsworthy. We’ve issued YouTube videos, and it barely gets a couple of hundred hits.”

Osama bin Laden's son has a chilling warning for those who are hunting his father with drones, secret agents and missile strikes.

Osama bin Laden’s son has a chilling warning for those who are hunting his father with drones, secret agents and missile strikes.From Omar bin Laden’s up-close look at the next generation of mujahideen and al Qaeda training camps he says the worst may lie ahead, that if his father is killed America may face a broader and more violent enemy, with nothing to keep them in check. “From what I knew of my father and the people around him I believe he is the most kind among them, because some are much, much worse,” Omar bin Laden, who was raised in the midst of his father’s fighters, told ABC News in an exclusive interview. “Their mentality wants to make more violence, to create more problems.”

Omar has turned his back on his father’s philosophy, a remarkable step for a man in an Arab culture where it is a sin to disobey his father and taboo to openly criticize him. It was doubly significant for Omar bin Laden because his father had picked him to succeed him as the leader of jihad.The son spoke out again recently after hearing his father in an audio tape praise the attempt by the so-called “underwear bomber” to blow up a jetliner over Detroit on Christmas Day.

“Attacking peaceful people is not being fair, it is unacceptable. If you have a problem with armies or governments you should fight those people. This is what I find unacceptable in my father’s way,” Omar told ABC News.”My father should find some letter to send to all of these people, at least to tell them they shouldn’t attack the civilians,” he said. Omar is a clearly conflicted peacenik, bearing some signs of a loyal son and trying to explain his father’s hatred. When asked whether there is anything his father likes about the United States, Omar says “their weapons,” and nothing else. The son of Osama, however, had praise for the U.S. saying, “They don’t care what is your race, what is your skin, where you come from, this is very good.” And despite the $25 million bounty on his father’s head and the ever-searching drones, Omar is confident that his father won’t be caught and that no Afghan will turn him in. “It’s been 30 years now since he started fighting there. Who could catch him? No one…. This is the country that whoever gets in is stuck, be it the armies or the mujahideen,” he said. Omar says even he does not know where his father is.

Barack Obama's national security team singled out one man from its list of most-wanted terrorists, Baitullah Mehsud,leader of the Pakistani Taliban

WASHINGTON In the early months of his presidency, President Barack Obama’s national security team singled out one man from its list of most-wanted terrorists, Baitullah Mehsud, the ruthless leader of the Pakistani Taliban. He was to be eliminated.Mehsud was Pakistan’s public enemy No. 1 and its most feared militant, responsible for a string of bombings and assassination attempts. But while Mehsud carried out strikes against U.S. forces overseas and had a $5 million bounty on his head, he had never been the top priority for U.S. airstrikes, something that at times rankled Pakistan.”The decision was made to find him, to get him and to kill him,” a senior U.S. intelligence official said, recalling weeks and months of “very tedious, painstaking focus” before an unmanned CIA aircraft killed Mehsud in August at his father-in-law’s house near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

It was not the first airstrike on Obama’s watch, but it marked the first major victory in his war on terrorism, a campaign the administration believes can be waged even more aggressively than its predecessor’s. Long before he went on the defensive in Washington for his handling of the failed Christmas Day airline bombing, Obama had widened the list of U.S. targets abroad and stepped up the pace of airstrikes.Advances in spy plane technology have made that easier, as has an ever-improving spy network that helped locate Mehsud and other terrorists. These would have been available to any new president. But Obama’s counterterrorism campaign also relies on two sharp reversals from his predecessor, both of which were political gambles at home.Obama’s national security team believed that the president’s campaign promise to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq would have a side benefit: freeing up manpower and resources to hunt terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Intelligence officials, lawmakers and analysts say that approach is showing signs of success.

Obama also has sought to reach out to Islamic allies and tone down U.S. rhetoric, a language shift that critics have argued revealed a weakness, in an effort to win more cooperation from countries like Yemen and Pakistan.For example, though Pakistan officially objects to U.S. airstrikes within its border, following the Mehsud strike, the U.S. has seen an increase in information sharing from Pakistani officials, which has helped lead to other strikes, according to the senior law enforcement official. He and other current and former officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters.Pakistan’s cooperation is key to U.S. counterterrorism efforts because much of the best intelligence still comes from Pakistan’s intelligence agency. Ensuring that cooperation has been a struggle for years, in part because Pakistan wants greater control over the drone strikes and its own fleet of aircraft, two things the U.S. has not allowed.

“The efforts overseas are bearing fruit,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a strident critic of Obama’s domestic counterterrorism policies who said Obama has at times shown himself even more aggressive than Bush in his use of force overseas. “I give them generally high marks for their efforts to capture and kill terrorists in Pakistan, and they’re pushing the envelope in Yemen.”CIA drones, the remote-controlled spy planes that can hunt terrorists from miles overhead, are responsible for many of the deaths. Drone strikes began increasing in the final months of the Bush administration, thanks in part to expanded use of the Reaper, a newer generation aircraft with better targeting systems and greater, more accurate firepower.

Obama has increased their use even further. A month after Mehsud’s death, drone strikes in Pakistan killed Najmiddin Jalolov, whose Islamic Jihad Union claimed responsibility for bombings in 2004 at U.S. and Israeli embassies in Uzbekistan. Senior al-Qaida operatives Saleh al-Somali and Abdallah Sa’id were killed in airstrikes in December. And Mehsud’s successor at the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, died following an attack last month.Intelligence officials and analysts say the drawdown of troops in an increasingly stable Iraq is part of the reason for the increase in drone strikes. The military once relied on drones for around-the-clock surveillance to flush out insurgents, support troops in battle and help avoid roadside bombs.

With fewer of those missions required, the U.S. has moved many of those planes to Afghanistan, roughly doubling the size of the military and CIA fleet that can patrol the lawless border with Pakistan, officials said.”These tools were not Obama creations, but he’s increased their use and he has shifted the U.S. attention full front to Afghanistan,” said Thomas Sanderson, a defense analyst and national security fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.The Obama administration has also benefited from stepped-up cooperation with officials in Osama bin Laden’s ancestral homeland of Yemen. Authorities there killed 30 suspected militants in airstrikes in December closely coordinated with U.S. intelligence agencies.

Yemen has had a sometimes rocky relationship with the U.S. and was perceived to have an on-again-off-again approach to fighting terrorism, but officials in Washington are cautiously optimistic about a newly strengthened relationship.Abdullah al-Saidi, Yemen’s ambassador to the United Nations, said his country has always been committed to fighting terrorism. But in a fragmented country beset by a growing al-Qaida presence, a rebellion in the north and a secessionist movement in the south, it wasn’t always easy for the government to openly align with the United States.Washington is trying to make it easier with the promise of more money. But perhaps more important, al-Saidi said, were overtures such as Obama’s June 2009 speech in Cairo, where he sought a “new beginning” with the Muslim world.

Obama has also abandoned terms like “radical Islam” and “Islamo-fascism,” rhetoric that was seen as anti-Muslim by many in the Arab world and which al-Saidi said made it harder for governments to openly cooperate with Washington.”Just the notion of not equating Islam with terrorism, there is a lot of good will toward him,” al-Saidi said. “For the public, it’s easier to say, ‘Well, it’s no longer a hostile power as it used to be.'”Such international successes have largely been drowned out by the controversy that followed the failed bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas. When the FBI read suspected bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab his rights and charged him in federal court, Republicans accused Obama of not understanding the country is at war.

“They’re trying to be tougher than Bush overseas but different from Bush at home,” Graham said. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense. They really got the right model for Pakistan and Yemen, but they’re really tone deaf at home.”After Obama missed his own deadline to close the prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and backtracked on a plan to prosecute 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a New York courthouse, Republicans saw the Detroit case as an opportunity to renew questions about Obama’s national security credentials, Republican strategist Kevin Madden said.Madden said that Obama’s stepped-up strategy overseas doesn’t resonate with voters, and Republicans gain little in an election year by acknowledging where they agree with the White House strategy.

“National security politics is driven by events more than it’s driven by long-term trends,” he said.Or, as Graham put it: “What resonates with people is what happens in Detroit, more than what happens on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.”The White House says it see no conflict between broadening the attacks overseas and sticking with the U.S. judicial system at home, where hundreds of people have been convicted on terrorism charges since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”The president believes that we need to use all elements of American power to defeat al-Qaida, including the strength of our military, intelligence, diplomacy and American justice,” White House spokesman Ben Rhodes said. “We only weaken ourselves when we fail to use our full arsenal.”(AP)

Full body scanners will be introduced at Britain's airports

Gordon Brown

Full body scanners will be introduced at Britain’s airports, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said.He said the government would do all it could to tighten security and prevent a repeat of the attempted airline attack over Detroit on Christmas Day. Experts have questioned the machines’ effectiveness at detecting the type of bomb allegedly used in the US attack. But Mr Brown said it was essential to “go further” than the current technology allowed. On Friday, Gordon Brown announced he had ordered a review of existing security measures, and advisers are expected to report within days. Full body scanners, which produce “naked” images of passengers, remove the need for “pat down” searches. However they have raised concerns about privacy, with campaigners saying they are tantamount to a “strip search”. The machines are currently being trialled at Manchester airport following tests at Heathrow airport from 2004 to 2008. They are also being rolled out across the US, with 40 machines used at 19 airports.

Chicago Bulls vs Sacramento 98-87

Derrick Rose (1)

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. – When the Chicago Bulls won in Sacramento on Nov. 14, they were hoping they’d get their next road victory before Thanksgiving. Instead, it took until New Year’s Eve. “I wasn’t thinking about the streak – I just wanted to get a win,” Bulls coach Vinny Del Negro said. “This was just a nice, solid win for us.” Derrick Rose scored 22 points, and Joakim Noah added 15 points and 21 rebounds to help the Bulls end a six-week road drought with a 98-87 victory over Detroit. “This feels good,” Noah said after Chicago won its third in a row overall. “I think we are just playing better basketball right now for whatever reason.” Rose finished with a point more than Ben Gordon, who joined Detroit from Chicago this summer. “Ben’s role is to score the ball, and I’m playing point guard, so no one said anything about this being me against him,” Rose said. “I’ll do whatever it takes for us to win, and today that took being aggressive.”

Chicago had lost eight straight on the road, but never trailed while handing Detroit its ninth straight loss. The Pistons (11-21) are 10 games under .500 for the first time since the 2000-01 season, but coach John Kuester was still encouraged. “I saw a number of positive things out there,” he said. “I’m sure people are going to hear that and say, ‘You must be kidding,’ but we did some good things. We lost Rip (Hamilton), Tayshaun (Prince) and Ben Gordon for extended periods of time, and there’s no chance that they were going to come right back in midseason form.” Tyrus Thomas added 19 points for Chicago (13-17), and John Salmons had 17.

Rodney Stuckey led the Pistons with 22 points despite leaving the game twice in the first half after spraining his left ankle. “The first time Stuck went down, I was really concerned, because the way he fell, I thought this was going to be another long-term injury for us,” Kuester said. “He not only went back in, he hurt it again and he still came back. No one would have blinked if he had taken the rest of the day off, so he earned our admiration.” Stuckey acknowledged playing through severe pain in the second half. “It hurt a lot – it always does when you sprain your ankle – and then it just gave out on me the second time,” he said. “I was going to play though it if I could even walk, though, because we need to get something going. There’s no way this group of players should only be scoring 87 points.” The Bulls led 44-39 after a sloppy first half that saw the teams combine for 22 turnovers. Detroit got to 46-44 in the third quarter, but Chicago led 69-56 at the end of the period. The Bulls led by 20 as the Palace emptied during the fourth quarter.

NOTES: Charlie Villanueva, who had stopped wearing the mask protecting his broken nose, put it back on for the second half, but only wore it for a few possessions. … Detroit has not led in the second half of any of its last six games. Their only lead in the last two games – at home against the struggling Knicks and Bulls – was 2-0 against New York. … Thomas had 10 points in the first three quarters without making a field goal. He was 0-for-2 from the floor and 10-for-12 from the line.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico Former Gitmo detainees help al-Qaida grow in Yemen

Abu al-Hareth Muhammad

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico As a prisoner at Guantanamo, Said Ali al-Shihri said he wanted freedom so he could go home to Saudi Arabia and work at his family’s furniture store.Instead, al-Shihri, who was released in 2007 under the Bush administration, is now deputy leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, a group that has claimed responsibility for the Christmas Day attempted bomb attack on a Detroit-bound airliner.His potential involvement in the terrorist plot has raised new opposition to releasing Guantanamo Bay inmates, complicating President Barack Obama’s pledge to close the military prison in Cuba. It also highlights the challenge of identifying the hard-core militants as the administration decides what to do with the remaining 198 prisoners.Like other former Guantanamo detainees who have rejoined al-Qaida in Yemen, al-Shihri, 36, won his release despite jihadist credentials such as, in his case, urban warfare training in Afghanistan.He later goaded the United States, saying Guantanamo only strengthened his anti-American convictions.

“By God, our imprisonment has only increased our persistence and adherence to our principles,” he said in a speech when al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula formed in Yemen in January 2009. It was included in a propaganda film for the group.Al-Shihri and another Saudi released from Guantanamo in 2006, Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaish, appear to have played significant roles in al-Qaida’s expanding offshoot in Yemen. While the extent of any involvement in the airliner plot is unclear, al-Rubaish, 30, is a theological adviser to the group and his writings and sermons are prominent in the group’s literature.

After the group’s first attack outside Yemen, a failed attempt on the Saudi counterterrorism chief in August, al-Rubaish cited the experience in Guantanamo as a motive.”They (Saudi officials) are the ones who came to Guantanamo, not to ask about us and reassure us, but to interrogate us and to provide the Americans with information – which was the reason for increased torture against some,” he said in an audio recording posted on the Internet.Pentagon figures indicate that al-Shihri and al-Rubaish are a small if dramatic minority among the released detainees: Overall, 14 percent of the more than 530 detainees transferred out of Guantanamo are confirmed or suspected to have been involved in terrorist activities since their release.

Still, three other Saudis released from Guantanamo under the Bush administration surfaced with al-Qaida in Yemen over the last year. They include field commander Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi, who later surrendered and was handed over to Saudis, and two fighters who were killed by security forces: Youssef al-Shihri and Fahd Jutayli. All five men passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program praised by U.S. authorities before crossing the southern border into Yemen.At least one Yemeni from Guantanamo apparently rejoined the fight.

A Yemen Defense Ministry newspaper said last week that Hani al-Shulan, who was released in 2007, was killed in a Dec. 17 air strike that targeted suspected militants.At Guantanamo, some of the men had played down their links to terrorism.

Said al-Shihri, who is now formally known as the secretary general of the al-Qaida branch, told American investigators that he traveled to Afghanistan two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to aid refugees, according to documents released by the Pentagon.The file also says he received weapons training at a camp north of Kabul and was hospitalized in Pakistan for a month and a half after he was wounded by an airstrike.Although he allegedly met with extremists in Iran and helped them get into Afghanistan, he claimed he went to Iran to buy carpets for his store. He said that if released, he wanted to see a daughter born while he was at Guantanamo and try to work at the family store in Riyadh, according to the documents.In contrast, Youssef al-Shihri, who was killed in October near the Yemeni border with Saudi Arabia, openly declared rage against America to his captors at Guantanamo. He is not related to Said al-Shihri.

“The detainee stated he considers all Americans his enemy,” according to documents from his Guantanamo review hearings. “Since Americans are the detainee’s enemy, he will continue to fight them until he dies. The detainee pointed to the sky and told the interviewing agents that he will have a meeting with them in the next life.”The U.S. has repatriated 120 Saudi detainees from Guantanamo, including some still considered to pose a threat, in part because of confidence the Saudi government can minimize the risk. The Saudi rehabilitation program encourages returning detainees to abandon Islamic extremism and reintegrate into civilian life.

The deprogramming effort – built on reason, enticements and counseling – is part of a concerted Saudi government effort to counter extremist ideology. Returning detainees have lengthy talks with psychiatrists, Muslim clerics and sociologists at secure compounds with facilities such as gyms and swimming pools.Bruce Hoffman, a security studies professor at Georgetown University, stressed that the large majority of those going through the program have not rejoined extremist groups.

“It’s unrealistic to say none of them will return to terrorism,” he said. “Is two too many? I don’t know how to make that judgment. But you have to look at it in the broader perspective … There’s also a risk in imprisoning people for life and throwing away the key.”For the roughly 90 Yemeni detainees remaining at Guantanamo, the recent terror plot’s Yemeni roots will add new layers of scrutiny to any transfers. Repatriation talks with the Yemeni government have stalled for years over security issues, with the U.S. sending back only about 20 Yemenis out of concern over the impoverished nation’s ability to contain militants.

U.S. Congress members have called on the Obama administration to stop releasing any detainees to Yemen or other unstable countries.”I have read the classified biographies of the detainees to be released. They are dangerous people. I am troubled by every one of the detainees who is being sent back,” said U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican.Six Yemenis were sent home from Guantanamo in December, and detainees’ attorneys say about 35 more have already been cleared for release by an administration task force. They are the largest group left at Guantanamo, so finding new homes for them is key to Obama’s pledge to close the prison. Their attorneys are not optimistic about the transfers going through.

“I’m fearful that will grind to a halt after the events of Christmas Day,” said Rick Murphy, a Washington attorney who represents five Yemenis at Guantanamo.Obama has vowed not to release any detainee who would endanger the American people.A senior administration official said the U.S. has worked with Yemen’s government to ensure that “appropriate security measures” are taken when detainees are repatriated. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss bilateral talks.(AP)

Scanners force trade-off between privacy, security

the security gate at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO  As Ronak Ray hunted for his flight gate, he prepared for the prospect of a security guard peering through his clothes with a full body scanner. But Ray doesn’t mind: what he gives up in privacy he gets back in security.”I think it’s necessary,” said Ray, a 23-year-old graduate student who was at San Francisco International Airport to fly to India. “Our lives are far more important than how we’re being searched.”Despite controversy surrounding the scans, Ray’s position was typical of several travelers interviewed at various airports Wednesday by The Associated Press.Airports in five other U.S. cities are also using full body scanners at specific checkpoints instead of metal detectors. In addition, the scanners are used at 13 other airports for random checks and so-called secondary screenings of passengers who set off detectors.

But many more air travelers may have to get used to the idea soon. The Transportation Security Administration has ordered 150 more full body scanners to be installed in airports throughout the country in early 2010, agency spokeswoman Suzanne Trevino said.Dutch security officials have said they believe such scanners could have detected the explosive materials Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab of Nigeria is accused of trying to ignite aboard a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight Christmas Day.Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport has 15 full body scanners, but none were used to scan Abdulmutallab when he boarded. In Europe and the U.S., privacy concerns over the scanners’ ability to see through clothing have kept them from widespread use.

The technology was first used about two years ago to make it easier for airport security to do body searches without making physical contact with passengers.The idea of an electronic strip search did not bother Judy Yeager, 62, of Sarasota, Fla., as she prepared to depart Las Vegas. She stood in the full-body scanner Wednesday afternoon and held her arms up as a security official guided her through the gray closet-sized booth.”If it’s going to protect a whole airplane of people, who gives a flying you-know-what if they see my boob whatever,” Yeager said. “That’s the way I feel, honest to God.”George Hyde, of Birmingham, Ala., who was flying out of Salt Lake City with his wife, Patsy, on Wednesday after visiting their children and grandchildren in Park City, Utah.”I’d rather be safe than be embarrassed,” Hyde said. Neither he nor his wife had been through a body scanner before.”We’re very modest people but we’d be willing to go through that for security.”

Trevino said the TSA has worked with privacy advocates and the scanners’ manufacturers to develop software that blurs the faces and genital areas of passengers being scanned. In all cases, passengers are not required to be scanned by the machine but can opt for a full body pat-down instead.At Salt Lake City International Airport, fewer than 1 percent of passengers subjected to the scanner chose the pat-down since the machine was installed in March, said Dwane Baird, a TSA spokesman in Salt Lake City.On Tuesday, some 1,900 people went through the scanner and just three chose not to, he said.Critics of the scanners said the option to opt out was not enough.”The question is should they be used indiscriminately on little children and grandmothers,” said Republican U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock of California. McClintock co-sponsored a bill approved by the House 310-118 in June prohibiting the use of full body scanners for primary screenings. The bill is pending in the Senate.

He said the devices raised serious concerns regarding constitutional protections against unreasonable searches.”There’s no practical distinction between a full body scan and being pulled into a side room and being ordered to strip your clothing.”To further protect passenger privacy, security officers looking at the images are in a different part of the airport and are not allowed to take any recording devices into the room with them, Trevino said. The images captured by the scanners cannot be stored, transmitted or printed in any way.But the TSA still has some public relations work ahead of it, judging by the reactions of passengers in Albuquerque, N.M., who were worried about what would happen to their images once they were scanned.”Are they going to be recorded or do they just scan them and that’s the end of them? How are these TSA people going to be using them? That’s a real concern for me,” said Courtney Best-Trujillo of Santa Fe, N.M., who was flying to Los Angeles on Wednesday.

The six airports where full body scanners are being used for what TSA calls “primary screenings” are: Albuquerque, N.M.; Las Vegas, Nev.; Miami, Fla.; San Francisco; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Tulsa, Okla.The remainder of the machines are being used for secondary screenings in Atlanta, Ga.; Baltimore/Washington; Denver, Colo.; Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas; Indianapolis, Ind.; Jacksonville and Tampa, Fla.; Los Angeles; Phoenix, Ariz.; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Richmond, Va.; Ronald Reagan Washington National; and Detroit, Mich.

Though most passengers interviewed by The Associated Press felt security trumped other concerns, Bruna Martina, 48, a physician from the coast of Venezuela, said the scanners still made her feel uncomfortable.”I think there has to be another way to control people, or to scan them, but not like this,” she said as she headed back home after a vacation in Miami with her husband and two sons. She also does not think the scanners will thwart another attack.”They’ll find another way,” Martina said. “There is always somebody cleverer than the rest.”(Ap)

CAIRO Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula expands operations

CAIRO  Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for the attempted attack on a U.S. airliner bound for Detroit, is led by a Yemeni who was once a close aide to Osama bin Laden.The group formed in January this year, when leader Naser Abdel Karim al-Wahishi announced a merger between operatives from Saudi Arabia and Yemen.Al-Wahishi, who goes by the alias Abu Basir, was among 23 al-Qaida figures who escaped from a Yemeni prison in 2006. He is on Saudi Arabia’s most wanted list, which includes many militants currently in Yemen.At least two former detainees released in November 2007 from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have resurfaced as al-Qaida commanders in Yemen.Said al-Shihri, who was released from a Saudi rehabilitation program last year, is a deputy leader of the organization in Yemen. Another former Guantanamo inmate, Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi, surfaced in January in a video clip showing him sporting a bandolier of bullets as an al-Qaida field commander.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has been blamed for a series of attacks in Yemen, including an assault against the U.S. embassy in San’a, and suicide bombings targeting South Korean visitors.Recently, the group indicated it was ready to take its fight beyond Yemen. The government there said the Nigerian accused in the Christmas day attack on the U.S. airliner visited Yemen this year.

In claiming responsibility for that attack, al-Qaida urged supporters to get the “infidels” out of the Arabian peninsula. The call echoed Osama bin Laden, who criticized Saudi Arabia for hosting American military bases.

The group’s first operation outside Yemen was carried out in Saudi Arabia this August against the kingdom’s counterterrorism chief, though that bomb attack failed.Experts believe the al-Qaida fighters number in the low hundreds. The group appears to be well funded and has found sanctuaries among a number of Yemeni tribes, particularly in three eastern provinces.

Yemen, the ancestral home of bin Laden’s family, has been an al-Qaida haven partly because of a weak central government and rugged terrain where it is easy to hide.The country was the scene of the 2000 suicide bombing of the destroyer USS Cole off the Aden Coast that killed 17 American sailors.Just before the failed Christmas attack, Yemeni airplanes, backed by U.S. and Saudi intelligence, carried out two air strikes against al-Qaida operatives in eastern Yemen.