Al-Qaeda shifts into dangerous new territory The key to success against the jihadists will always be good intelligence. By Telegraph View
Published: 6:50AM GMT 04 Jan 2010Comments 25 | Comment on this articlePresident Barack Obama's statement on Saturday linking the failed airline bomb attack over Detroit on Christmas Day to an al-Qaeda group based in Yemen will have surprised no one. It confirmed, if confirmation were needed, that the coming decade will be as dominated as the last by the threat posed to the West by Islamist terrorism. The focus of the battle is, however, shifting. Significant successes by the United States and its allies in both Afghanistan and Pakistan have forced al-Qaeda largely to re-locate to Yemen and Somalia. Yesterday the senior American commander in the region, General David Petraeus, met Ali Abdallah Saleh, the Yemeni President, to examine ways in which the United States can assist local security forces in hunting down al-Qaeda militants. The US and UK have already agreed to fund a counter-terrorism police unit there, and Gordon Brown will convene a summit in London at the end of the month devoted solely to the security situation in that country. At least Yemen has a functioning government with which the West can deal. Somalia does not, which will make al-Qaeda's gravitating to that wretched country all the more likely, and all the harder to handle. Yet the battle against the jihadists cannot be confined to the distant countries in which they plot their attacks. On Friday, in the Danish city of Aarhus, a Somali man was shot and arrested by police after allegedly trying to break into the home of Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist whose depictions of the Prophet Mohammed more than four years ago caused outrage in the Muslim world.…

   U.S. Probes Bomb Plot's Links to Gitmo U.S. investigators are pursuing possible links between the Christmas Day bomb plot and former Guantanamo Bay prisoners now thought to be leaders of an al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen.  

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 Reforms put Wall Street in its placePassage of Obama's financial reform bill restores Wall Street to its proper role as the economy's servant – and not its master Thomas Noyes guardian.co.uk, Friday 21 May 2010 Article history Barack Obama described passage of the financial reform bill as a victory over Wall Street's blocking tactics. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The Senate last night passed a comprehensive financial reform bill by a vote of 59 to 39 after weeks of amendments and a series of cloture votes failed to derail the measure.Passage of S.3127, the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010, represents a clear victory for Barack Obama, who made this his next big legislative priority after healthcare. Obama hailed the bill's passage, noting "The recession we're emerging from was primarily caused by a lack of responsibility and accountability from Wall Street to Washington." Legislation usually becomes watered down as it winds its way through the maze of committee markups and amendments. But this bill got stronger as the process unfolded, particularly after the Goldman Sachs scandal involving mortgage-backed securities came to light. The firm's abysmal performance in front of a Senate committee reminded people why Wall Street needs adult supervision.The most important provision in the bill may be the Volcker Rule, which restricts the ability of banks to trade on their own account. Goldman Sachs became the poster child for this kind of trading when it was revealed that the firm was selling mortgage-backed securities designed by an investment partner who was shorting mortgages. These trades led to charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission and prompted a federal criminal investigation into the firm's dubious practices.

Last year, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker…

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