Showing posts with label security. Show all posts
Showing posts with label security. Show all posts

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Report: 25,000 Security Breaches at U.S. Airports Since November 2001 (Time.com)

Newly released Department of Homeland Security documents reveal that there have been 25,000 security breaches at U.S. airports since November 2001.

More than 14,000 of those infractions were people entering "limited-access" areas, while another 6,000 incidents included travelers who made it through security checkpoints without being properly screened. Congressman Jason Chaffetz of Utah, a frequent critic of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), is overseeing a congressional hearing Wednesday on the security shortcomings. "I think it's a stunningly high number," Chaffetz told the Associated Press.

(MORE: Woman Calls TSA Hair Pat Down 'Racially Motivated')

But Transportation Security Administration spokesman Nicholas Kimball told USA Today that the breaches represent a miniscule fraction (just 1%) of the 5.5 billion air travelers who have used U.S. airports in the past 10 years. He also added that the term "breach" can mean a number of things and that "many of of these instances were thwarted or discovered in the act."

The TSA has been under fire in recent months for several high-profile breaches. The most recent incident occurred when a cleaning employee discovered a stun gun on a JetBlue plane that had landed in Newark, having flown from Boston. In early July, a Nigerian national was found to have flown cross-country using an expired boarding pass in someone else's name. And in June, the TSA concluded a six-month investigation at Honolulu International Airport, recommending that 36 screeners be fired for failing to follow proper security procedures in a recurring shift.

(LIST: 20 Reasons to Hate the Airlines)

Frances Romero is a writer-reporter at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @frances_romero. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

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Wednesday, July 13, 2011

US homeland security secretary to visit Minot (AP)

MINOT, N.D. – The Cabinet secretary responsible for the Federal Emergency Management Agency is slated to tour flood-stricken Minot.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano plans to take a helicopter tour over the city on Wednesday to survey flood damage and meet with state and local officials.

State National Guard Commander David Sprynczynatyk (sprin-suh-NAT'-ik) calls the visit "critical." He says it's important that Napolitano not just hear about the estimated $1 billion in flood-related costs in North Dakota this year but that she also "see the emotion and devastation" for herself.

North Dakota U.S. Sens. Kent Conrad and John Hoeven also say it's important for Napolitano to see the disaster in person.

More than 4,100 Minot homes were damaged by Souris River floodwaters, and more than 11,000 people had to leave their homes.


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Friday, July 8, 2011

London tests Olympic security plans for 2012 (AFP)

LONDON (AFP) – Police and key organisations involved in the London 2012 Olympics have launched tests to prepare for any possible terror attack, the police officer in charge of Games security said.

"We recognise the terrorist threat could come from anywhere," London police's Olympic security coordinator Chris Allison told AFP, after a press conference on Tuesday to unveil a series of exercises which will run over the coming year.

The Olympics will see the biggest ever peacetime policing operation in Britain amid fears that terrorists could attack an event which will attract huge attention worldwide.

The threat level from international terrorism is currently ranked at severe, meaning an attack is highly likely. It is only one notch below the top level, critical, which means that an attack is imminent.

Islamist extremists are considered a major threat to London. Al-Qaeda-inspired bombings on the city's transport system in July 2005 killed 52 people.

Northern Irish dissident republicans -- who are seeking to destabilise the province's peace process -- have ramped up their activity in recent months and could also pose a threat to mainland Britain.

The security tests will include a live counter-terrorism exercise, to be held early next year, and meetings between the heads of police, emergency services, Olympic organisers and government departments to ensure they coordinate their response.

"We've looked at the various attack methodologies the terrorists have used in the past and we've used that to inform the plans," said Assistant Commissioner Allison.

Detailing the tests at the Scotland Yard headquarters of London's Metropolitan Police, Allison acknowledged that terrorism "potentially is the biggest" threat facing the Games.

Home Secretary Theresa May insisted that the government would "leave nothing to chance" when it came to security at the Games.

"The testing of our plans, structures and responses to ensure they can deal with any incident is vital," she said at Scotland Yard.

She denied that cuts to the police as part of reductions to public spending would affect the security operation.

"It is possible to make significant changes in budgets without affecting frontline officers," she said.

The government has earmarked ?600 million for Games security, which May pledged would be protected from spending cuts imposed on public services including the police.

The exercises, beginning in the coming weeks and running until shortly before the Games start on July 27, 2012, would also prepare police and key organisations for threats such as large protests and organised crime.

"All the sorts of things that could possibly happen in any event, we are going to test it," said Allison.


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Sunday, July 3, 2011

Post-9/11, a security blanket for a wounded nation (AP)

MARTINSBURG, W. Va. – Brian Tolstyka stood at the edge of a giant American flag spread across several tables in the Veterans Affairs hospital gym. Wearing a leather vest with a flag patch and a hat with a flag pin, Tolstyka was about to stitch his place in history.

Gently clasping a threaded needle between thumb and forefinger, Tolstyka, 43, slipped it into the fabric of a red stripe. The 300 people in the West Virginia gym clapped. The Gulf War veteran felt a lump in his throat.

The 30-foot flag flew from a half-destroyed building across from ground zero in New York in those dark days after Sept. 11 — its stripes torn and tattered by debris from the fallen World Trade Center. In 2008, it was mended by 58 tornado survivors in Kansas with remnants of flags from their communities. Dubbed the National 9/11 Flag, it's been traveling the country ever since — a journey for the country's most recognizable symbol that has brought most Americans along, uniting more people in a post-9/11 world than it has divided in other times.

Within hours of the attacks, flags seemed to be everywhere: car windows, T-shirts, front porches. Wal-Mart sold 5 million by the spring of 2002.

Tolstyka, who served in the Army and organizes memorial motorcycle rides for veterans, went out and bought a flag for his car antenna a few days after Sept. 11. "It was a symbol," he says, "of support."

It was also a show of defiance against the terrorists, a rallying cry of unity and a soothing security blanket for a wounded nation.

"Every time there's some kind of national emergency, we put up flags," says Carolyn Marvin, a professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania. "The flag represents the life of the country."

The Stars and Stripes hasn't always been as feel-good a symbol, depending on the decade and the politics. Defaced by Vietnam War protesters in the 1960s, invoked by politicians on both sides of debates about war and American values and burned by anti-American protesters overseas, it's been alternately reviled and revered.

Few Americans flew the flag outside of homes or businesses in the first few decades of its existence, says Marc Leepson, who wrote a book called "Flag: An American Biography."

But on April 12, 1861, when Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, "flags started appearing almost overnight," he says. Women wore them in hats, men put them in wagons."

Leepson discovered an advertisement in a copy of a New York newspaper that was published just after the Fort Sumter attack. It mentioned a paint shop that advertised red, white and blue paints, and touted: "These colors are warranted not to run."

After Sept. 11, 2001, the flag took on a larger-than-life symbolism and brought that unity to a grieving country. Bumper stickers with images of the flag and phrases like "these colors don't run" became commonplace in parts of the U.S.

A New Jersey photographer snapped a photo of three city firefighters raising a flag on the ruined trade center site in an image that instantly was compared to the 1945 photo of U.S. Marines raising the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima. Flags spearheaded a patriotic buying boom, appearing outside homes, on office buildings, mugs and pins.

Country Singer Toby Keith wrote "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" one week after Sept. 11. The song led with Americans saluting the flag and described wreaking vengeance upon the country's enemies:

"When you hear Mother Freedom start ringing her bell/And it'll feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you/Ah, brought to you, courtesy of the red, white and blue."

In December of 2001, Congress designated Sept. 11 as "Patriot Day" to honor those lost during the attacks — and mandated that all flags should be flown at half-staff each year on that day.

Nearly a decade later, flags aren't hanging from every front porch anymore, but they fill many American blocks, and thousands follow the touring flags to touch something that connects them to Sept. 11.

For West Virginia's Tolstyka, the national flag in Martinsburg — a small city straddling three states in West Virginia's lush green panhandle — directly to ground zero in New York and the attack that tore it shreds.

"It's a once in a lifetime opportunity," he says, grinning through his long, salt-and-pepper goatee.

For Bob McKee of Van Buren, Ohio, the flag symbolizes how much the U.S. has grown and changed over the years, while remaining strong. The 60-year-old flies four U.S. flags outside of his home, a few miles from Findlay, Ohio — a northwest Ohio community that's been known as Flag City since the 1970s.

"People from both political parties, from the left to the right, the one thing they have in common is the love for their country and what represents that is the US flag," he said.

After Sept. 11, McKee draped the flag in black crepe.

The attacks did more than usher a renaissance for the U.S. flag; they have also spawned a cottage industry of entirely new flag designs, mostly sold to raise money for various 9/11 charities.

There's the "Flag of Heroes," which lists the names of all emergency workers who died on Sept. 11. The "Flag of Honor" lists the names of everyone who died in the attacks that day.

There are two flags dedicated to the 40 who died aboard Flight 93 in a Shanksville, Pa., field: It declares, "OUR NATION WILL ETERNALLY HONOR THE HEROES OF FLIGHT 93" at the top three white stripes.

A retired Catholic priest created the "Thunder Flag," comprised of a blue stripe on top, white in the middle, and red on the bottom. On the top blue stripe are four white stars, representing the four planes on 9/11. The other colors represent heaven, courage and American soil.

There's a "9/11 National Remembrance Flag" that is loosely modeled on the POW-MIA flag.

There's a traditional American flag with the New York City skyline, including the twin towers, superimposed on the field of stars.

There's the "9/11 Patriot Flag," created by a Sept. 11 survivor, which depicts the Pentagon, two trident steel columns from the World Trade Center and four stars, one for each hijacked jet that crashed on Sept. 11.

That flag shouldn't be confused with the other "Patriot Flag" — a 75-pound, traditional U.S. flag that's also touring the country to honor the victims. It will be in New England on July 4.

Marvin, the Penn professor, says it's common, especially after such a ground-shifting event like Sept. 11, for flags to take on the status of a "sacred icon."

Or a national quilt. In West Virginia — the 32nd state to host the national flag's tour — folks lowered their voices to describe their feelings about having contact with something that once was near New York's twin towers. Yet when pressed to explain, they fell back on simple phrases about America and pride.

Samuel Boynton, who served in WWII, Korea and Vietnam and used a walker to approach the flag, says simply: "It means number one to me. There's no other flag better than the American flag."

A New York construction worker retrieved the flag and stored it at his home in a plastic bag for seven years — then brought it to Kansas when a nonprofit group, the New York Says Thank You Foundation, went to help people there recover from a tornado strike. State by state, Americans are stitching the banner back together, using pieces of fabric from American flags scheduled for retirement.

The flag is in Southport, N.C., this weekend; at the end of its tour, it will be displayed at the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum in New York.

Denny Deters, the president of the New York Says Thank You Foundation, his wife and their tiny Yorkie dog travel with the flag around the country, mostly in the couple's RV — although they occasionally fly. As he did in Martinsburg, Deters often emcee's each stop and introduces the people who lay the first stitches.

But the greying, faded flag that once flew across from ground zero might be most remembered for what it offers: a chance for ordinary Americans to weave a bit of their own history into the fabric.

Mending it, Deters said, "shows that the American people have the resiliency to come back."

In Martinsburg, Dawn Johns, 41, waited patiently in line. She had been there since the beginning, to mend a tiny piece of national history. She said that she could feel the patriotism, the emotion, as she looked at the flag.

"It represents everyone coming together and helping one another after a tragedy," she said.

Two hours later, it was Johns' turn to stitch, She had tears in her eyes as she took the needle in her hand.

___

Online:

http://national911flag.org/

EDITOR'S NOTE — Tamara Lush is traveling the country writing about the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tamaralush.


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Wednesday, June 29, 2011

NYPD beefs up hotel security after Afghan bombing (AP)

NEW YORK – The New York Police Department is stepping up counter-terrorism measures at hotels in the wake of a terrorist attack in Afghanistan.

Police spokesman Paul Browne says the move wasn't prompted by a specific threat in the city. But the nation's biggest police department is taking no chances as it learns more about the attack on Kabul's Inter-Continental Hotel, which is frequented by foreigners.

Insurgents attacked the hotel with suicide bombers, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades late Tuesday Kabul time.

Two NATO helicopters later fired rockets that killed gunmen on the rooftop of the hotel.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes nearly a week after President Barack Obama announced he would end the American combat role in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.


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Thursday, June 23, 2011

Full container screening 'not best' move: US security chief (AFP)

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (AFP) – Asking ports of departure to perform full screening of containers before they travel to the US was probably not the best decision, US Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano said Wednesday.

"We believe the so-called 100 percent requirement is probably not the best way to go," Napolitano told reporters at a press briefing in Rotterdam, where she was visiting Europe's largest port and the fourth-largest globally.

Napolitano is on a week-long tour of Britain and Europe to beef up security ties within the global supply chain between the US, Britain and Europe and met her British counterpart Theresa May earlier this week, her office said.

On Thursday she is to meet EU ministers and will participate in a conference of the World Customs Organisation in Brussels, where she said she would deliver a similar message.

Asked about a 2007 US Congress requirement that all containers entering the US should be scanned by their ports of exit by 2012, Napolitano said: "We at this point are not going to insist on that."

Although the 2012 deadline was set by Congress, it did give her department the opportunity to extend it if 100 percent scanning wasn't feasible.

Napolitano has previously expressed doubt about whether the mandate for all containers to be scanned by 2012 would be met.

Napolitano said the Department of Homeland Security preferred a more "layered approach" including better co-operation between countries, better intelligence sharing and analysis, as well as some container scanning to prevent attacks on the United States.

"I think what we have learnt over time is that there are many different ways to achieve a security objective. You have to have multiple layers that operate effectively," she said.

Called the Container Security Initiative (CSI), the project is being run by 50 ports worldwide including Rotterdam.

The scanning initiative requires port customs to pre-scan and evaluate containers considered to be high-risk possibilities of being used in terror attacks before being put on ships bound for US ports.

Napolitano told a Congressional panel in February the US faced "heightened" threats of terror of attacks from extremists, probably the highest since the attacks of September 11, 2001.


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Saturday, June 18, 2011

Jakarta security boosted for Bashir trial (AFP)

JAKARTA (AFP) – Indonesia tightened security at shopping centres in Jakarta on Wednesday following bomb threats a day before the trial of radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir on terrorism charges, police said.

"I ordered security at malls to be heightened, we'll send more personnel to ensure public security," Jakarta police chief Sutarman told reporters.

More than 3,000 police and soldiers backed by armoured vehicles and several snipers will guard the trial at South Jakarta district court, police said.

Police were taking special precautions after phone text messages threatening terror attacks circulated in the mainly Muslim country, Sutarman said.

"There are many such text phone messages circulating with some containing serious (threats). We won't play down such threats," he added.

Bashir, 72, has been accused of providing funding of more than $62,000 to a terrorist group dubbed Al-Qaeda in Aceh that was plotting attacks in Indonesia, and prosecutors have sought a maximum life sentence.

He is seen as a spiritual leader of Southeast Asian militants, but he denies any role in terrorist activity.

Court spokesman Ida Bagus Dwiyantara said judges who handled Bashir's case had also received the text messages which said "there will be bomb blasts in a number of places".

"Police will provide special security to the judges," Dwiyantara said.

Security forces will be stationed around the court and only people with special identification passes such as journalists will be allowed on the premises.

Indonesia has been rocked by a series of attacks staged by regional terror network Jemaah Islamiyah in recent years, including the 2002 Bali bombings which killed 202 people.


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Monday, June 6, 2011

US lawmakers cut Homeland Security funding (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US House of Representatives has voted to shave more than a billion dollars from next year's Department of Homeland Security budget as part of its deficit reduction plan.

The Republican-held House voted 231 to 188 to cut the fiscal 2012 budget by $1.1 billion to $40.6 billion for the agency charged with fighting terror and guarding US borders.

The budget, whose fiscal year begins on October 1, is $3 billion, or seven percent less than President Barack Obama's request

"Providing for critical national security measures is a funding priority, and I'm pleased we've done so expediently while still cutting spending to more sustainable levels," said Kentucky Republican Hal Rogers, who chairs the committee that oversees the agency's budget.

Democrats, however, denounced the cuts, calling them counter-productive.

"This bill is simply an assault against the progress we've made protecting the homeland over the past ten years," said Bennie Thompson, the highest-ranking Democrat on the panel.

Thompson also criticized the bill for eliminating bargaining rights for Transportation Security Administration employees.

"Furthering the Republican anti-worker political agenda, this bill prevents TSA screeners from collective bargaining rights and calls for the elimination of up to 8,000 critical jobs," he added.


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Pakistan's LeT threat to US: security chief (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Pakistan-based Islamic militant group blamed for the assault on Mumbai could also pose a threat to the United States, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said Thursday.

Napolitano, who visited India last week for talks on anti-terrorism, renewed her assertion that Lashkar-e-Taiba -- which means "The Army of the Pure" in Urdu -- was in the same league as Al-Qaeda in US eyes.

"LeT is a potent terrorist organization. It could be construed as a threat to the United States. It certainly is to India," Napolitano said.

"It is Al-Qaeda-like in its strength and organization," she said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank.

India believes the LeT and the Pakistani intelligence service staged the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, which left 166 people dead and severely strained relations between the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals.

David Coleman Headley, a Pakistani American who admitted scouting sites for the Mumbai attacks, has testified in a trial in Chicago that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence has supported the LeT despite an official ban on the group.

Napolitano stayed tight-lipped about her talks with India on Lashkar-e-Taiba but said that her counterparts did not ask her specifically to ask Pakistan to turn over suspects in the Mumbai assault.

"The United States believes that it is in everyone's interest for India and Pakistan to be able to work together," she said.

Relations between India and the United States, the world's two largest democracies, have improved rapidly in the past decade. But many Indian policymakers are uneasy about the close US cooperation with Pakistan.


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Saturday, June 4, 2011

House passes $42.3B homeland security funding bill (AP)

WASHINGTON – The GOP-controlled House on Thursday passed a $42.3 billion budget for the government's homeland security efforts after a debate that demonstrated resistance for some of the spending cuts required under austere budget times.

The measure passed 231-188 after lawmakers eased cuts to popular grant programs for local fire departments and after GOP conservatives tried but failed in several attempts to add millions of dollars to a variety of border security initiatives.

It's the first of the 12 annual spending bills funding the day-to-day operations of federal agencies for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. It's also the first concrete step to implement the budget blueprint approved by House Republicans in April.

The homeland security measure bears a $1.1 billion cut of almost 3 percent from the spending levels for the ongoing budget year that were enacted in April in a compromise between House Republicans and President Barack Obama.

But far more stringent spending bills — they contain cuts to health research, student aid, food aid for low-income pregnant women and energy efficiency programs — will follow this summer.

Republicans focused the homeland security cuts on port and transit security grants, awards for high-risk cities, and grants to local fire departments to help them with salaries and equipment purchases, proposing to slash them by $2.1 billion below Obama's requests — cuts of more than half.

On Wednesday a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers restored $320 million in cuts to grants for fire departments by a sweeping 333-87 vote, but only by imposing an unrealistic cut on the agency's bureaucratic operations.

Border state Republicans were successful in some but not all of their attempts to add money to favored programs. Rep. Ted Poe of Texas gained $10 million for cell phone towers along the U.S.-Mexico border but could not secure $100 million for detention beds to hold illegal aliens facing deportation. Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas unsuccessfully pressed for, among others, a $50 million amendment for drone aircraft, helicopters and boats to patrol the border.

The cuts to grant programs freed up funding for core homeland security programs like border security, immigration control, airport security and the Coast Guard. An amendment by Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., designed to boost airport screening operations undertaken by private companies instead of federal workers was adopted 219-204.

The measure adds almost $2 billion above the administration's request for Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster relief accounts, which were already facing a $3 billion or so shortfall before the recent wave of tornadoes in Missouri and Alabama and flooding along the Mississippi River.

The legislation cuts off funding for new advanced airport scanners that have sparked outrage over their revealing images of travelers' bodies. The measure denies the administration's $76 million request for an additional 275 scanners.

Budgetary factors rather than protests from privacy advocates sparked the cut. The Transportation Security Administration is trying hard to modify the machines so that they won't produce revealing images, but the software isn't yet ready.

The underlying measure wouldn't affect the 500 or so machines already in place at 78 of the nation's airports or the 500 just funded in a recent spending bill.

An amendment by Reps. Justin Amash, R-Mich., and Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, to prohibit TSA from relying on the advanced screening machines as the primary means of screening passengers was defeated 300-123.

The measure would also take away collective bargaining rights from the nation's 44,000 airport screeners.

TSA head John Pistole had agreed in February to grant screeners limited union rights for the first time since the agency was formed a decade ago. But Republicans have complained that giving the workers union rights could jeopardize security. TSA workers are in the process of voting for which of two federal unions to represent them.

The House voted 218-205 in favor of an amendment that would effectively override Pistole's decision by prohibiting use of federal funds for collective bargaining for the workers. That provision is expected to face stiff resistance in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Also Thursday, the House began debate on a $72.5 billion measure funding veterans programs and construction projects at military bases. A vote to pass the bill was expected later this month.

___

Associated Press writer Sam Hananel contributed to this report.


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Friday, June 3, 2011

UK embassy in Indonesia evacuated in security shake-up (AFP)

JAKARTA (AFP) – The British embassy in the Indonesian capital has evacuated its staff after the Jakarta administration ordered anti-terrorist vehicle barriers to be removed from an adjoining road, reports said Friday.

"This is due to circumstances specific to the security arrangements for the site of the embassy building. We're now working off-site in various places," embassy spokeswoman Faye Belnis said.

"It's not because of a specific threat or a change in the threat level in Indonesia," she said.

The Jakarta Globe said the staff were likely to remain working off-site until the mission's new building in Kuningan, South Jakarta, is ready around mid-2013.

Belnis said they were working with the Indonesian authorities to find a solution so they could move back into the premises.

"However, this situation is inevitably causing disruption to our service delivery, which is likely to get more significant the longer the situation continues," she said.

On its website the British embassy said it had to close the building for operational reasons.

Twelve people, including a suicide bomber, were killed when an explosives-laden van exploded in front of the Australian embassy in Jakarta in 2004.

Extremists targeted Westerners in the 2002 Bali bombings which killed more than 200 people and 2009 attacks on the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta.

Indonesia, the biggest Muslim-majority country in the world, is struggling to deal with the threat of homegrown Islamist militants who oppose the country's secular, democratic system and aim to create a caliphate across much of Southeast Asia.


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Sunday, May 29, 2011

US, India seek to step up security cooperation (AFP)

NEW DELHI (AFP) – Top US homeland security officials were set to discuss stepping up cooperation with their Indian counterparts on Friday in the wake of Osama bin Laden's killing in Pakistan.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who arrived in India on Tuesday, and Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram will jointly launch the US-India homeland security dialogue, the US Embassy in New Delhi said.

The agenda for the talks -- which take place as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits Pakistan with "tough questions" for the country's leadership -- is expected to include the May 2 killing of bin Laden and information-sharing related to the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

Napolitano's visit also comes amid the ongoing trial in a US court of a Pakistani-American who plotted the attacks in Mumbai.

The dialogue is part of new Indo-US ties that would increase "communication and information-sharing between the US and India on counter-terrorism and other issues that affect our security," the US embassy said.

India, fearing attacks by Islamist militants following bin Laden's killing by US forces, has increased security in major cities such as Mumbai and New Delhi.

In Mumbai, the first leg of a four-day trip to the country, Napolitano attended a memorial ceremony for the 166 people, including six Americans, slain in the 2008 attack on the city by gunmen who India says came from Pakistan.

India has blamed agencies of arch-rival Pakistan of staging the attacks, but Islamabad has denied the allegations.

"Terror will occupy centre-stage" when Napolitano and Chidambaram meet for their first formal talks on internal security, the United News of India said, quoting unnamed officials.

India and Pakistan, both armed with nuclear weapons, have fought three wars since their independence from British rule in 1947.

The Indo-US dialogue "will also highlight protecting the global supply chain, combating illicit financing and enhancing cyber security," the US embassy added as Napolitano flew to New Delhi.

Other topics that could be addressed include coastal security, mega-city policing, countering illicit financing and trans-national crime, cyber security, accessing and sharing of data relating to terrorism.


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