Congress has midnight deadline on anti-terror bill

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WASHINGTON – Congress is rushing to extend the life of three anti-terror tools, including the use of roving wiretaps, before they expire at midnight Thursday.

The Senate was set to start voting on the legislation, including possible amendments, Thursday morning. Final passage during the day would send it to the House for quick approval and then onward to President Barrack Bema in Europe for his signature.

The rapid-fire action on key elements of the post-9/11 USA Patriot Act comes after several days of impasse in the Senate and results in part from the prodding of senior intelligence officials, who warned of the consequences of disrupting surveillance operations.

"Should the authority to use these critical tools expire, our nation's intelligence and law enforcement professionals will have less capability than they have today to detect terrorist plots," James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, wrote congressional leaders.

The legislation would extend for four years provisions that allow law enforcement officials to set roving wiretaps to monitor multiple communications devices; obtain court-approved access to business records and other documents, including library check-outs that might be relevant to a terrorist threat; and conduct surveillance of "lone wolf" suspects not known to be tied to specific terrorist groups.

First Wills and Kate book published; more in store

"William and Kate: A Royal Love Story," by The Sun newspaper's royal reporter James Clench was published in Britain Friday, the first in a slew of new titles about the relationship between Prince William and Kate Middleton that publishers hope will set cash registers chirping in the months before their April 29 wedding at Westminster Abbey.

Published by Harper Collins and The Sun — both owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. — the book is scattered with photos by Arthur Edwards, the paper's long-serving royal photographer.

It is one of several books on the royal romance in the works. They include one by celebrity journalist Andrew Morton, whose 1992 book "Diana: Her True Story" rocked the royal family and punctured the image of Princess Diana's and Prince Charles' fairy-tale romance with its details of bulimia, depression and infidelity.

"William and Kate: A Royal Love Story" — due to be published in the U.S. on Dec. 17 — is a more reverent affair. It charts the romance between "the boy who would one day be king" and "the middle-class girl who had harbored a crush on him since her school days."

The book traces "the greatest love story of the century" from the couple's first meeting at a university in Scotland. It claims that William's nickname for Kate was Babykins, while she called him Big Willie.

Publication comes just days after the Nov. 16 engagement announcement — and at the start of the lucrative Christmas book-buying season. Clench had written most of the text in advance and turned out the final 4,000 words in 48 hours.

"The engagement was announced on Tuesday and the book was at the printer on Friday," said Anna Valentine, senior nonfiction editor at Harper Collins.

It's an increasingly common phenomenon, speeded by technology — "insta-books" appearing within days of the event they commemorate.

"Publishers have books that are ready to go," said Cathy Rentzenbrink of U.K. book store chain Waterstone's. "If Andy Murray won Wimbledon I imagine there would be a book very soon off the press called 'My Wimbledon' by Andy Murray."

Valentine said it's increasingly important for publishers to be able to move quickly with books about current events.

"Newspapers and magazines have been doing it for centuries — but if book publishers are going to remain relevant we have to be able to respond in the same way, and give consumers what they want when they want it."

Foiled Saudi Qaeda cells were recruiting, goverment says

Saudi Arabia said on Friday it had captured 149 al Qaeda militants in recent months who were raising money and recruiting members to carry out attacks inside the kingdom, with links to other militants in Somalia and Yemen.

The announcement by the world's largest oil-exporting country was made with elderly Saudi King Abdullah in the United States recovering from surgery to treat a blood clot complication from a slipped disc.

"In the past eight months 149 people linked to al Qaeda were arrested, among them were 124 Saudis and 25 were from other nationalities," Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour Turki told a news conference.

Turki said the attackers belonged to 19 al Qaeda cells and were planning to target government facilities, security officials and journalists in the kingdom. He gave no names of targets.

When asked whether they had also targeted oil installations in Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, he said: "We cannot exclude this. Investigations are ongoing."

The television channel al Arabiya reported that the kingdom had also foiled plans to attack Saudi oil installations.

The non-Saudi suspects were Arabs, Africans and South Asians, he said, adding that the thwarted cells had associations with al Qaeda in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan.

"These cells have links with al Qaeda who are disturbing the security in Yemen, with Somalia and organizations in Afghanistan," Turki said.

One cell had links to Somalia, but the large majority had ties to Yemen. Most cells were very small, were operating independently and still in the stages of being set up, he said.

The ministry confiscated 2.24 million riyals ($597,000) from al Qaeda suspects, he said, and militants had tried to collect money and spread their ideology during the Muslim pilgrimages of Haj and Umra in Saudi Arabia.

IMPROVED INTELLIGENCE, TACTICS

Analysts said that while the announcement was not unusual for Saudi Arabia, it pointed to the kingdom's continuing struggle against militancy but also its improved intelligence and tactics in fighting al Qaeda.

"There is no doubt that there is a security problem. Particularly it seems (to be) coming from inside Yemen," said Neil Partrick, an independent Britain-based analyst on the Middle East.

"In the last five years the Saudi security services ... have become more efficient at intercepting security threats, whether those directed against soft targets or those against major installations."

A Saudi Arabian counter-terrorism drive halted a violent al Qaeda campaign in the Gulf Arab country from 2003 to 2006. Al Qaeda's Yemeni and Saudi wings merged in 2009 into a new group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen.

"The organization is trying to recruit people inside the kingdom. There are cells that facilitate (the recruits) to travel outside (the kingdom) to train and then they return, Turki said.

"They exploit the Haj season for this purpose," Turki told journalists at the press conference. The plan was to send them to countries including Somalia and Yemen, he said.

One cell was learning how to build car bombs, he said. A woman was also among those arrested, he said, for spreading al Qaeda's ideology on the Internet, but she was returned to her family as is customary in the kingdom.

Those who had donated money were not aware they were giving to militant organizations, he said. Saudi banks last month launched a campaign to stem the flow of money to support al Qaeda.

Saudi concerns about al Qaeda's presence in Yemen deepened after the kingdom's top anti-terrorism official, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, was slightly hurt in a suicide attack in August 2009 by a Saudi posing as a repentant militant returning from Yemen.

The arrests announced on Friday follow one of the largest al Qaeda sweeps in years by Saudi Arabia earlier this year. In March, the kingdom arrested 113 al Qaeda militants including alleged suicide bombers who it said had been planning attacks on energy facilities in the world's top oil-exporting country.

The March arrests netted 58 suspected Saudi militants and 52 from Yemen. The militants, who also came from Bangladesh, Eritrea and Somalia, were backed by the Yemen-based AQAP.

Last month a plot to send two parcel bombs from Yemen to the United States was foiled following a tip-off from Saudi Arabia.

Analysis: US carrier visit a dilemma for China

This weekend's arrival of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Yellow Sea poses a dilemma for Beijing: Should it protest angrily and aggravate ties with Washington, or quietly accept the presence of a key symbol of American military pre-eminence off Chinese shores? Full Story »

Suu Kyi calls for talks

Myanmar's democracy heroine Aung San Suu Kyi is vowing to press ahead in her decades-long fight for political liberty while also calling for compromise with other political parties and the ruling junta after taking her own first steps back to freedom.

Suu Kyi, who was freed from house arrest on Saturday amid a divided political landscape and days after widely criticised elections, made clear she faces a precarious position: moving between the expectations of the country's pro-democracy movement and the realities of dealing with a clique of secretive generals who have kept her locked up for much of the past two decades.

“I've always believed in compromise,” the Nobel Peace laureate told reporters on Sunday in the dilapidated offices of her party, the National League for Democracy, with its rough concrete floor and battered wooden furniture. “I am for national reconciliation. I am for dialogue. Whatever authority I have, I will use it to that end... I hope the people will support me.”

This Southeast Asian nation, once known as Burma, has been ruled by the military since 1962, leaving it isolated from much of the international community and battered by poverty. The junta has an abysmal human rights record, holding thousands of political prisoners and waging brutal military campaigns against ethnic minorities.

In recent years, though, it has also become an increasingly important regional trading hub, and its natural gas reserves and hydroelectric possibilities have brought it close to energy-hungry China and India.

Earlier on Sunday, Suu Kyi spoke to a rapturous crowd of as many as 10 000 people who jammed the street in front of the office. While the speech was technically illegal - any gathering of more than a handful of people needs government permission in Myanmar - the authorities made no arrests.

Deeply charismatic, the 65-year-old Suu Kyi is by far the country's most popular politician, a popularity the junta clearly fears. Dozens of secret police officers were on hand on Sunday to record her comments and photograph those in attendance.

“I believe in human rights and I believe in the rule of law. I will always fight for these things,” she told the crowd. “I want to work with all democratic forces and I need the support of the people.”

But she also urged her followers to work for national reconciliation.

Campaigners urge US and Europe to cut cotton subsidies

Campaigners working with West African farmers are calling on Europe and the United States to cut the subsidies they pay to their cotton farmers.

They say the money that rich countries use to back their farmers - more than $1bn a year - is artificially boosting world supply, and reducing the prices that poorer West African producers can earn.
Trade negotiators for the so-called "Cotton 4" West African states - Chad, Mali, Benin and Burkina Faso - believe that removing US cotton subsidies alone could boost West African cotton farmers' income by up to 10%.
A report published today by the Fairtrade group - which pays premium prices for organically-produced agricultural goods to stabilise incomes in poor countries - says an increase of this magnitude can make a huge difference.
Working with co-operatives in Mali, Fairtrade says the extra money generated by the premium prices it pays has boosted school enrolment for farmers' children and allowed them to build a basic health clinic.
In parts of southern Mali, the report says, the extra money generated by organic cotton farming has boosted school enrolment to 95%, compared with a national average of 43%.
Cutting the cotton subsidies, Fairtrade argues, could deliver similar advantages to non-organic farmers.
The rich countries' case

Schemes to support organic cotton producers have been a success

Cotton producers in the United States, represented by the National Cotton Council, counter that subsidies have helped them to establish a stable income for more than 340,000 people employed in some of the poorer southern states of the country.
They add that many more jobs have been created in ancillary industries, such as those producing crop-protection chemicals and machinery.
European Commission officials make similar points - saying the subsidies help farmers in Greece and Spain, some of who are relatively poor by European standards.
But none of those areas is as poor as the West African "Cotton Four" producers.
The report quotes the trade body, the International Cotton Advisory Committee, as saying subsidies to farmers in the richer parts of the world depress prices to the extent of cutting annual revenue to African producers by $147m.
'Level playing field' Agricultural subsidies began in the United States in response to the Great Depression of the 1930s. During the Second World War the subsidies were portrayed as part of the national defence strategy.
Europe's system of subsidies, the Common Agricultural Policy, was established to provide farmers with regular income and preserve rural heritage.
But on both continents the subsidies have recently come in for criticism as they have gradually been perceived as benefiting special interest groups rather than serving the whole community.
In 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, a new series of multilateral trade negotiations began, known as the Doha Round.
The thinking was that a fairer system might reduce the possibility of attacks like those on New York and Washington.
One of the aims of the Doha round was to set new global trading rules which would stimulate growth and wealth in underdeveloped countries. One way of doing this would be to reduce tariffs and subsidies, so creating a "level playing field".
The cotton subsidies were quickly seen as a litmus test.
It seemed obviously iniquitous to many of the negotiators that poor people who could actually produce cotton very cheaply should in effect be punished by richer people who produced it at higher cost.

After 388 days, Somali pirates free British couple

The retired British couple were sailing the world on a 38-foot-yacht that represented most of their life savings when Somali pirates captured them last year, demanding the sort of huge ransom a multimillionaire or a multinational company might cough up.
The fact that Paul and Rachel Chandler couldn't pay a big ransom helped stretch out their ordeal 388 agonizing days — until Sunday, when they were released thin and exhausted, but smiling. It was one of the longest and most dramatic hostage situations since the Somali piracy boom began several years ago.
The Chandlers were welcomed by the Somali community close to where they had been held, and later met with the Somali prime minister in Mogadishu. A private jet then flew them to Nairobi's military airport, where they were whisked away in a British Embassy vehicle.
"We are happy to be alive, happy to be here, desperate to see our family, and so happy to be amongst decent, everyday people, Somalis, people from anywhere in the world who are not criminals, because we've been a year with criminals and that's not a very nice thing to be doing," Rachel Chandler said at a news conference in Mogadishu.
She also said in a BBC interview that their captors beat them during their captivity after deciding to separate the couple.
"We were really distraught, very frightened at that point," Chandler said. "We refused to be separated and we were beaten as a result. And that was very traumatic."
When asked about their health, she said "we're OK."
Pirates boarded the Chandlers' yacht the night of Oct. 23, 2009, while the couple were sailing from the island nation of Seychelles. The couple, married for almost three decades, took early retirement about four years ago and were spending six-month spells at sea. They had sailed to the Greek islands, Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Oman, Yemen, India and the Maldives.
They could not make it through the dangerous waters of East Africa, where pirate attacks have spiked the last several years. Despite an international flotilla of warships and aircraft, pirates continue to prowl the Indian Ocean seemingly at will, pouncing on pleasure craft, fishing vessels and huge cargo ships using small skiffs, automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.
Somali pirates still hold close to 500 hostages and more than 20 vessels. The pirates typically only release hostages for multimillion-dollar ransoms. But unlike the companies who own large transport ships, the Chandlers are far from rich. Paul Chandler has been identified in the British media as a retired construction site manager, while Rachel has been described as an economist.
Pirates had initially sought a $7 million ransom. The Chandler family said in a statement Sunday that during protracted discussions with pirates that it was "a difficult task" to convey that Paul and Rachel were "two retired people on a sailing trip on a small private yacht and not part of a major commercial enterprise."
Repeated efforts to free the couple by the Somali diaspora, the weak Mogadishu-based government and Britain had failed over the last year until, the family said, "common sense finally prevailed." The family said it would not comment on questions about payment to the pirates, so as not to encourage the capture of other private individuals.
Conflicting reports from Somali officials about the Chandlers' release said there was either a $300,000 ransom for "expenses" or a $1 million ransom that the Somali diaspora helped pay. A spokeswoman for Britain's Foreign Office said the ministry wasn't immediately able to comment on the release, but it has always insisted that the British government never pays ransom.
British Prime Minister David Cameron called the Chandlers' release "tremendous news."
"Their long captivity is over at last," he said. "I unreservedly condemn the actions of those that held the Chandlers for so long. Kidnapping is never justified."
The pirates set the couple free about 4 a.m. Sunday, said Mohamed Aden, the leader of the government administration in Adado, a stifling hot region of central Somali near the Ethiopia border. When they arrived in Adado they were taken to a safe house, took a shower and changed clothes. They then took about a 90-minute nap, Aden said. When they awoke they had what he called a "British" breakfast of fried eggs.
The couple attended a ceremony with several dozen people seated in blue plastic chairs. Rachel Chandler wore a bright red dress and red scarf. Paul Chandler wore a mauve-colored short shirt and a green patterned sarong. Both appeared thin, suggesting they ate little while in the control of pirates in a sweltering region near the Ethiopia border.
"The community expressed their sorrow over their captivity and they told them that the pirates don't represent all Somalis but they represent a fringe part of the community," Aden told AP. "The Chandlers thanked the community in return and they said they are grateful for anyone who played a role in their release."
In the Somali capital, the couple walked across the airport tarmac, smiling and thanking people. Paul Chandler had a large camera around his neck and was taking photos.
Somali Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed met the two and said the government had "exerted every humanly possible effort to bring you back to your loved ones."
Somalia, however, has been without a functioning government since clan-based warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Pirates, meanwhile, have made tens of millions of dollars there over the last several years, fueling a building boom in Somali neighborhoods of Nairobi and a spending spree on cars, women and guns in pirate towns.
The Chandlers were to get medical checkups in Nairobi and fly back to Britain shortly afterward. A statement from their family in Britain said that Paul and Rachel were in good spirits although tired and exhausted.
Abdi Mohamed Elmi, a Somali doctor who has regularly attended to the couple and was involved in efforts to free them, said the Chandlers will now need more specialized attention.
"They need counseling and rest to recover from the situation they have been living in for the last 13 months," Elmi said. "But now they seem OK and were happy this morning. They had showers, changed clothes and had breakfast with us smiling."
A serious attempt to free the Chandlers had been made in June, according to a Nairobi-based Western official. Roughly $450,000 was dropped from a plane to free the couple, but pirates had been negotiating with different groups of people, and the effort to free the couple fell through, said the official, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the nature of his work.
International navies have taken a more aggressive approach this year to stop the pirates, and vessels often employ armed, private security on board. But the hijackings have persisted because the sea is so vast, and because piracy offers Somalis high pay in a country where few economic opportunities exist.