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Obama to Unveil Reforms to Anti-Terror Policies


U.S. President Barack Obama is preparing to announce reforms to the nation's counterterrorism policies, following the attempted Christmas Day (December 25) bombing of a U.S. jetliner.

Mr. Obama will unveil the new measures later Tuesday, after meeting with senior members of his national security team. He summoned the officials to the White House to discuss ongoing reviews after a Nigerian man allegedly attempted to detonate explosives on a Northwest Airlines flight approaching Detroit.

A White House spokesman says the president will give a "candid update" of the review, and outline specific steps that have been taken and detail more changes that may be coming.

FBI Director Robert Mueller is to brief the president on the investigation, while Attorney General Eric Holder will discuss the prosecution of the 23-year-old suspect. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will provide a review of terrorist detection techniques.

Other attendees expected at the closed White House meeting include Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and CIA Director Leon Panetta.

Mr. Obama ordered an interagency review to determine how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly brought explosives onto the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight -- even after the suspect's father had warned U.S. officials about his son's radical views.

In other news Tuesday, Dutch prosecutors said they did not find any evidence that Abdulmutallab had accomplices at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. The prosecutors said that after studying more than 200 hours of security camera footage, it appears the suspect already had the explosives with him when he arrived at the airport from Nigeria.

The suspect's father had alerted U.S. authorities in Nigeria that his son, who was studying in Yemen, should be watched closely. He was placed on a U.S. terror watch list but not on the no-fly list, which would have prevented him from flying into the United States.

The U.S. government has increased security screening for people traveling "from or through nations that are state sponsors of terrorism," listed by the State Department as Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria -- as well as "other countries of interest" -- Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen.

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