New Delhi - The latest foiled terrorism plot in Yemen should serve as a wake-up call that terrorists "keep trying to devise more and more diverse and terrible ways to kill people," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said here Tuesday.

Wrapping up her eight-day trip to China, India and Bangladesh, Clinton pressed Pakistan "to do more" to root out terrorists on its soil, including the alleged mastermind of the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, for whom she approved a $10 million reward.

She earlier said al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri was most likely residing in Pakistan.

We look to the government of Pakistan to do more," Clinton said. "It needs to make sure that its territory is not used for launching pads for terrorist attacks anywhere.

"We are committed to going after those who pose direct threats to the United States and to Afghanistan and our allies," she said.

At least four people were killed in an attack launched Tuesday by a group of gunmen against the headquarters of Libyan interim prime minister in Tripoli.

The attack raised fears over stability and security in the North African country to hold next month a national poll for a constituent assembly.

The Prime Minister, Abdel Rahim Al-Keib, was not in his office when the attackers stormed the government building.

According to some press reports, the attackers are believed to be ex-members of the militia who joined the battle and rebel forces that toppled the regime of Col. Muamar Gadhafi.

At first, they gathered in front the PM office to protest against the interim government decision to stop payments and cash rewards they used to receive for their role in ousting Gadhafi. However, a group of armed men, who were among the demonstrators, opened fire, triggering chaos and confusion.

The PM Abdel Rahim Al-Keib described the attackers as "outlaws" who pretended to be "revolutionaries". He also vowed that "the government would deliver on its promises but would not give in to blackmail or to outlaws as it would not negotiate under the threat of force."

Kiev - Ukraine's jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, whose plight in prison has soured relations between the country's leadership and the West, was moved to a local hospital on Wednesday in a high-security police convoy.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich has faced growing criticism over the conviction of Tymoshenko - and the authorities' refusal to let her travel abroad for treatment for chronic back pain.

Her transfer from prison in the eastern city of Kharkiv to a nearby hospital for treatment under the supervision of German doctors was worked out last week in a compromise.

But Wednesday's early morning transfer seemed unlikely to relieve pressure on Yanukovich who has been thrown on the back-foot by sharp Western criticism of his treatment of his rival.

Tymoshenko, 51, a former prime minister, was jailed last October for seven years for alleged abuse of power while in office, a charge she denied.

She says she is the victim of a vendetta by Yanukovich who narrowly beat her for the presidency in February 2010. The European Union and the United States have condemned her trial and sentencing as politically motivated and called for her to be released.

Moscow - Russia's lower house of parliament confirmed former president Dmitry Medvedev as prime minister on Tuesday, completing a job swap with Vladimir Putin that has sparked protests against the two leaders' grip on power.

The approval vote, comfortably won by Medvedev as Putin looked on, ignored growing concern in the country that keeping power in the hands of the same men who have led Russia for the past four years will bring political and economic stagnation.

Police led away more than 20 people, including two opposition leaders, when they broke up a peaceful protest near the Kremlin hours before the vote, after detaining more than 700 on the previous two days to keep a lid on dissent.

"They just started to grab people and put them in police buses," said Alexander Delfinov, 40, who was held for hours and ordered to appear in court on Friday, facing a fine or up to 15 days in jail.

Activists regrouped later and were chased around central Moscow by police who hemmed them in and detained dozens more.

In Twitter posts from police vans, prominent opposition activist Alexei Navalny and Ksenia Sobchak, a television host who has fallen out with Putin, said they were among those detained - Navalny for the second time in a day.

The United States said it was concerned by arrests and by clashes that erupted at a rally on Sunday, a day before Putin's inauguration as president, when police beat demonstrators with batons and some protesters wielded pieces of metal fencing and flagpoles.

Today it was widely reported that the CIA thwarted a "plot by al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner using a bomb." This bomb, which was to be concealed in a pair of underwear, was designed as an improvement over what Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to use to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day of 2009. This bomb was upgraded and designed to specifically avoid metal detectors.

At first glance it would appear to be a job well done by the world's leading domestic affairs meddlers.

But like all of these instances, it was routinely denied "there was ever any immediate threat to the public." It was also revealed that:

The bomb plot had allegedly advanced to the point that a would-be suicide bomber was told to buy a ticket on the airliner of his choosing and decide the timing of the attack. It's not immediately clear what happened to the would-be bomber.

It would seem that what the CIA recovered was essentially just a crudely made bomb. The supposed bomber was nowhere to be found. There is no evidence presented as to a real threat or plan to use it.

The truth was finally revealed as the would-be bomber was, in fact, a double agent of the CIA.

When considering the nature of the state, this new instance of government supported terrorism is unsurprisingly comparable to previous cases.

The United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years - or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.

But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.

When an Oregon college student, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, thought of using a car bomb to attack a festive Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in Portland, the F.B.I. provided a van loaded with six 55-gallon drums of "inert material," harmless blasting caps, a detonator cord and a gallon of diesel fuel to make the van smell flammable. An undercover F.B.I. agent even did the driving, with Mr. Mohamud in the passenger seat. To trigger the bomb the student punched a number into a cellphone and got no boom, only a bust.

I contend that this story is just the tip of the iceberg into the US government's black operations to further the Patriot Act, funding for Homeland Security and the TSA, and to keep intensity up for the so called War on Terror.


Respected lawyer and community leader, Kurt Haskell, has nothing to gain from pointing his finger at the federal government. He witnessed the underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, being whisked past security and led onto NorthWest Airlines flight 253, by a well-dressed man with an American accent- all without the passenger's proper visa and passport documentation. What the news piece doesn't mention is that the State Dept did indeed put Mutallab on the plane, at the behest of "an unnamed US intelligence agency." Undersecretary Patrick F. Kennedy (Detroit news article was removed from web!).

The would-be suicide bomber dispatched by the Yemen branch of Al Qaeda last month to blow up a United States-bound airliner was actually an intelligence agent for Saudi Arabia who infiltrated the terrorist group and volunteered for the suicide mission, American and foreign officials said Tuesday.

In an extraordinary intelligence coup, the double agent left Yemen, traveling by way of the United Arab Emirates, and delivered both the innovative bomb designed for his air attack and critical information on the group's leaders to the C.I.A., Saudi and other foreign intelligence agencies.

After spending weeks at the center of the terrorist network's most dangerous affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the agent provided critical information that permitted the C.I.A. to direct the drone strike on Sunday that killed Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso, the group's external operations director and a suspect in the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000.

He also handed over the bomb, designed by the group's top explosives expert to be invisible to airport security, to the F.B.I., which is analyzing its properties.

Amid concerns about rising tensions in the Persian Gulf, a U.S. House of Representatives defense subcommittee has approved nearly $1 billion for Israel's anti-missile defense program, the highest single appropriation for the four-system project.

It includes the high-altitude Arrow 3 being developed by Israel Aerospace Industries and the Boeing Co. to destroy Iranian and Syrian ballistic missiles outside Earth's atmosphere.

The move by the Defense Appropriation subcommittee also covers the only missile defense system so far used in combat, Iron Dome, built by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems of Israel to counter rockets with a range of 3-40 miles.

The $680 million slated for that system, designed to intercept short-range missiles and rockets and the lower rung of the planned missile defense shield, got the green light from the subcommittee April 29.

"The total appropriation ... reflects not only U.S. representatives' consistent support for Israel, but also rising concern about the Israel-Iran confrontation, which is liable to expose Israel to missile strikes from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas," Israel's Globes business daily reported Tuesday.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has struck a deal with the opposition Kadima party, avoiding the early elections he had previously sought.

Kadima's recently-elected head, Shaul Mofaz, is to be named a deputy PM in a deal set to be ratified later.

The surprise move was agreed at a secret overnight meeting.

It came as the parliament, or Knesset, debated its dissolution ahead of elections that Mr Netanyahu had planned for September.

A statement issued by Mr Netanyahu's office said: "A broad national unity government is good for security, good for the economy and good for the people of Israel."

President Shimon Peres welcomed the deal as "good for the people of Israel", his office said.