A Long Road Ahead : Bush Pledges to Help Florida
Herald Tribune

Two days after one of the worst storms in the state's history tore across Florida, the breadth of its devastation came into sharper focus.

As of Sunday, state officials said Hurricane Charley killed 16 people statewide and caused as much as $11 billion in damage. Thousands of people -- many of them frail, sick and elderly -- remained homeless. Some with homes were without power or telephone service.

Schools and hospitals will be shuttered for weeks.

Electricity that could power air conditioners and provide much-needed relief from muggy August days is expected to be out that long, too.

Touring storm-ravaged Charlotte County Sunday by air and on foot, President George W. Bush promised aid to residents whose homes, businesses and lives were rocked by Charley.

Al Qaeda shows new signs of life
MSNBC

In the more than two years since U.S. forces destroyed al Qaeda's haven and much of its leadership in Afghanistan, many U.S. intelligence officials and terrorism experts had come to believe that other Islamist extremist groups now posed the gravest threat.

From Istanbul to Madrid, local jihadists mounted daring and deadly attacks with little apparent support from Osama bin Laden's crippled network. President Bush and other U.S. officials boasted that two-thirds of al Qaeda's senior leadership had been captured or killed and that those who remained, including bin Laden, were desperate and on the run.

Battered but not beaten
But the wave of arrests and intelligence discoveries in Pakistan in recent weeks that led to a new terrorism alert in the United States caught many U.S. officials and outside experts by surprise. It revealed a network of operatives connected to past al Qaeda operations and aligned with Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the imprisoned mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

US to remove up to 70,000 troops from Europe, Asia
Reuters

CINCINNATI, Aug 16 (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Monday announced plans to bring home up to 70,000 troops from Europe and Asia within a decade in a major realignment that Democrats said was politically motivated in an election year.

"The world has changed a great deal and our posture must change with it," Bush said of his plan for one of the biggest shifts of U.S. forces at many of 5,458 military facilities worldwide since the Cold War.

Bush said his goal was to ease the burden on U.S. troops, but the plan offered no immediate relief to more than 140,000 American troops facing extended deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars in the political battleground state of Ohio, Bush said more troops would eventually be stationed in the United States, and those remaining overseas would have more combat power to "surge quickly to deal with unexpected threats."

At the Pentagon, defense officials said a "significant portion" of the 60,000 to 70,000 troops and 100,000 family members and civilian personnel in question would come out of Europe, including about 30,000 troops in two heavy divisions in Germany.

Border Breaches Stir Fears
Dallas Morning News

MEXICO CITY – Fears that terrorists might enter the United States via remote stretches of the border with Mexico are not based on idle chatter, according to authorities on both sides.

Dozens of bulletins and requests for help have been forwarded by U.S. intelligence agencies to their Mexican counterparts in the last year. The information triggered searches and investigations into a number of incidents. They include:

• The possible entry from Belize into Mexico's Quintana Roo state, south of Cancún, of a Middle Eastern migrant named Adnam Gushair Shukrijumah. His name reportedly matches one on a U.S. law enforcement watch list, Mexican officials said. Published reports in Mexico said the nation's law enforcement agencies have been warned by U.S. authorities that Mr. Shukrijumah previously had been tracked in Honduras and Panama.

• Flight plans in December by two men – listed by Mexican authorities as Ali M. Safia and Can Azif – whose names also scored hits on U.S. watch lists. The pair arrived in Mexico in the winter of 2003 on one-way tickets from Europe, Mexican officials said. While in Europe they also had purchased one-way tickets for a flight from the western Mexican city of Culiacán to Los Angeles. The pair failed to show for the flight and have not been seen since.

• The arrest in Tijuana in November of Imelda Ortiz Abdala, a former Mexican diplomat in Lebanon. Ms. Ortiz Abdala is accused of participating in a ring that prepared faked Mexican travel documents for migrants from Middle Eastern countries and helped smuggle them into the U.S.

"We cannot discount these incidents. We can't afford to ignore anything," said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Qaeda-Linked Group Says Will Strike Italy-Web Site
Yahoo

DUBAI (Reuters) - A group claiming links to al Qaeda called on its fighters to attack "all targets" in Italy after it ignored the group's Aug. 15 deadline for Italian troops to quit Iraq, an Internet statement said Sunday.

The Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades said Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was one of its main targets, adding that its forthcoming attacks would not stop until "Iraq is secure."

"The Italian government has dug its own grave after it heeded the top infidel America and remained in Iraq to shed blood ... which is why it is responsible for all the blood that will flow in Italy," the statement said.

Countries Run Drills for Panama Attack
Guardian Unlimited

ABOARD THE USS CROMMELIN (AP) - The U.S. Coast Guard boarded the ship in the choppy Caribbean waters and began counting crew members, but the numbers did not match those given earlier.

As helicopters whirred overhead, officials searched below deck and found a man crouched in a closet - a possible terrorist, according to information used in the weeklong anti-terror exercise aimed at protecting the Panama Canal, an essential route for international commerce.

While the supposed ``terrorist'' was just acting, military and security officiand searched for weapons.

Three countries - the United States, Panama and Chile - staged similar naval exercises a year ago.

This year, the number of participants grew to include Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Panama, Peru and the United States. Ecuador sent observers.

For days, military and security officials searched ships and scoured Pacific and Caribbean waters for signs of suspicious activity.