Dr. Joanathan Brown, an Islamic Scholar reverted to Islam explains on Hadiths.

The freeze, to be announced in Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech on Wednesday, would exclude defence, veteran affairs, homeland security and spending on international affairs, the officials said.

“We are in the midst of fighting a war and have security needs. We’re going to fund those security needs as necessary,” one of the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The freeze in “non-security discretionary spending “will be implemented in 2011 and continue throughout 2012 and 2013.

“The savings from the three-year freeze will amount to $250bn over the next decade,” the official said.

Ilyas Kashmiri was indicted in Chicago on Thursday for his role in plotting a revenge attack against the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

The Danish newspaper published cartoons of Prophet Muhammad in 2005, setting off a firestorm of protests across the Muslim world.

Court documents released on Thursday described Kashmiri as having been in regular contact with leaders of al-Qaeda.

Pakistan-born businessman Tahawwur Rana, 48, and Abdur Rehman, a retired Pakistani Army major, were also formally charged. Both were previously named in the investigation.

Kashmiri, who is believed to reside in the Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan, was charged with conspiracy to murder and maim persons in Denmark and providing material support to the plot.

Rehman, who is also believed to be in Pakistan, was similarly charged.

Mumbai plot

The court documents also contained additional details about the planning for a deadly assault on the Indian city of Mumbai in November 2008.

Rana’s associate, David Headley, a 49-year-old American with Pakistani roots, was charged last month with conducting several surveillance trips to Denmark and to Mumbai ahead of the planned attacks.

Headley is accused of passing information on to “handlers” from another Pakistani group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is blamed for the three-day Mumbai siege that killed more than 160 people.

Headley, 49, has pleaded not guilty to 12 terrorism-related charges and remains in custody.

Rana has been accused of using his immigration business as a cover for Headley’s scouting trips.

According to prosecutors Rana and Headley had numerous conversations, recorded by US agents, about the Denmark plot and Mumbai attacks.

A lawyer for Rana said his client was “duped” by Headley and had no prior knowledge of the Mumbai attacks.

He has denied the charges.

At least 300,000 people were estimated to be homeless in Port-au-Prince on Friday, more than 48 hours after one in 10 homes in the capital collapsed, the United Nations said.

Many more people were believed to be sleeping on the streets fearing aftershocks will cause more buildings to fall.

‘Logistical challenge’

Rescue and aid efforts have been been hampered by blocked roads, severed communications lines and the difficulties faced by relief agencies that have lost personnel and seen their office destroyed.

The capital’s port was too badly damaged to handle cargo and supply planes arrived at the airport faster than ground crews could unload them, prompting aviation authorities to restrict non-military flights for fear jets would run out of fuel while waiting to land.

Alejandro Lopez-Chicheri, senior spokesman for the World Food Programme for Latin America, Central America and the Caribbean, said that Haiti was “completely on the ground”.

“The roads, many of them are still to be opened, and on the ones that are open there are still people concentrated on the sides of the roads,” he told Al Jazeera from Port-au-Prince.

“This is a logistical challenge. Before the earthquake struck we were already assisting one million people here, we are considering it will be at least double that after this earthquake.”

The court published its decision to uphold the jail term in a ruling posted on the internet on Sunday.

Seventy-one-year-old Fujimori’s defence lawyer had asked the court to revoke his client’s sentence, claiming that the evidence against him was not strong enough to prove his involvement.

“None of the 10 pieces of evidence that went to determine his guilt as mastermind of premeditated murder have to do with the issue of him giving the order for the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta” Cesar Nakazaki had argued.

Massacres

The case related to two massacres, the first committed on November 3, 1991 when a group of masked soldiers burst into a party in the Lima suburb of Barrios Altos, killing 15 people, including an eight-year-old boy.

Several months later, nine La Cantuta university students and their professor were rounded up by the same “La Colina” squad, taken to a deserted area of the city and executed with shots to the back of their heads.

The lawyer also asked for an annulment of Fujimori’s conviction in the kidnapping of a journalist and a businessman, both critics of his government, in 1992, also because he claimed there was not enough evidence to prove that the former president had ordered the abductions.

Given Fujimori’s age and ill-health, the 25-year sentence would likely mean the former president would spend the rest of his life in prison.

However, his daughter Keiko Fujimori has vowed to pardon him if she is sucessful in her bid for the presidency in 2011.

Fujimori’s political downfall began in 2000 when a video of Vladimiro Montesinos, his security chief, was broadcast on television, showing him buying off an opposition politician.

The US embassy posted a message on its website on Sunday saying it was closed “in response to ongoing threats by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to attack American interests in Yemen”.

A British foreign office spokeswoman said later that it too had shut its embassy because of “security concerns”.

Neither mission said when the embassies might reopen.

The Spanish embassy restricted access to its premises on Sunday, but remained open. The El Mundo newspaper said the embassy would be closed to the public on Monday.

John Brennan, the assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism to Barack Obama, the US president, meanwhile told CNN’s “State of the Union” programme that “there are indications that al-Qaeda is planning an attack against a target in Sanaa”.

Hakim al-Masmari, the editor-in-chief of the Yemen Post newspaper, told Al Jazeera that the closure can only mean “that they believe al-Qaeda threat is very serious”.

“If you look at the recent video tapes from al-Qaeda, they clearly mention they have no enemy in Yemen except the US interests in Yemen. They warned the Yemeni soldiers against helping the Americans in any such way,” al-Masmari said.

“We really expect attacks on the US interests in the next month by al-Qaeda.”

Beginning Monday, all passengers flying from or via at least 14 countries, including Nigeria and Yemen, will be patted down and have all carry-on luggage searched before boarding flights bound for the US.

The move is part of the security crackdown following the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian man, was arrested after being accused of carrying a bomb sewn into his underwear on to a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Abdulmutallab, who had got through security screening, was subdued by passengers and crew after allegedly attempting, unsuccessfully, to detonate the bomb on board the plane.

Barack Obama, the US president, said on Friday that it appeared Abdulmutallab was a member of al-Qaeda and had been trained and equipped by the group in Yemen.

The US government is investigating why its intelligence agencies failed to stop Abdulmutallab from boarding the plane but on Sunday, John Brennan, the deputy national security adviser, said that while some errors were made in tracking him, there was no one piece of evidence to help officials connect all the dots.