Secret Service tightens conduct rules for agents
Secret Service tightens conduct rules for agents
WASHINGTON — Seeking to shake the disgrace of a prostitution scandal, the Secret Service late Friday tightened conduct rules for its agents to prohibit them from drinking excessively, visiting disreputable establishments while traveling or bringing foreigners to their hotel rooms.
The new behavior policies apply to Secret Service agents even when they are off duty while traveling, barring them from drinking alcohol within 10 hours of working, according to a memorandum describing the changes obtained by The Associated Press. In some cases under the new rules, chaperones will accompany agents on trips. The embattled Secret Service director, Mark Sullivan, urged agents and other employees to “consider your conduct through the lens of the past several weeks.”
The Secret Service said it would conduct a training session on ethics next week.
U.S. officials: Core al-Qaida group ‘essentially gone’
WASHINGTON — A year after the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks is essentially gone but its affiliates remain a threat to America, U.S. intelligence officials say.
Core al-Qaida’s new leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, still aspires to attack the U.S., but his Pakistan-based group is scrambling to survive, under fire from CIA drone strikes and laying low for fear of another U.S. raid. That has lessened the threat of another complex attack like a nuclear dirty bomb or a biological weapon, intelligence officials say.
Al-Qaida’s loyal offshoots are still dangerous, especially Yemen’s al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP. While not yet able to carry out complex attacks inside the U.S., such groups are capable of hitting Western targets overseas and are building armies and expertise while plotting violence, according to senior U.S. counterterrorism officials who briefed reporters Friday.
Imagery shows work at
N. Korea nuclear test site
WASHINGTON — New satellite imagery appears to show a train of mining carts and other preparations under way at North Korea’s nuclear test site but no indication of when a detonation might take place.
Early this month, South Korean intelligence reported digging of a new tunnel at the Punggye-ri site, which it took as a sign that North Korea was covertly preparing for a third nuclear test.
The U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies provided The Associated Press on Friday with its analysis of a sequence of photos of the site obtained from a private satellite operator and taken between March 8 and April 18.
The analysis estimates that 282,500 cubic feet of rubble have been excavated at the site, where the communist country conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.
Police surround bunker of Wash. man accused of killing wife, daughter
NORTH BEND, Wash. — Authorities on Friday surrounded an elaborate, underground bunker believed to be that of a gun-toting survivalist suspected of killing his wife and daughter nearly a week ago and then holing up in the woods of Washington state.
They pumped gas into the structure in the Cascade foothills east of Seattle and saw movement inside, but the dozens of officers were not entering the bunker because they believed its occupant was heavily armed, and that it might be booby-trapped.
Sheriff’s officials said later Friday they weren’t sure the gas penetrated deep enough to reach the person inside, who they believed was 41-year-old Peter Keller, and officers were pulling back to reassess their options.
Keller has not been seen since a fire at his North Bend-area home Sunday led responders to discover the bodies of his wife and daughter. The two had been shot to death.
By wire sources