US heightens security for 9/11 anniversary

As precaution, security has been tightened at US airports, mass transit stations, major government buildings and even athletic events, and will remain so in the next month, as the nation prepares for the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in 2001.

The US government has planned a series of official memorial ceremonies to be held in New York, Pentagon, Washington D.C. and Shanksville ahead of and on September 11, to commemorate the victims.

State and local law enforcement agencies have been receiving a daily briefing on possible terror threats and ways to increase security in local communities from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), US officials were quoted by US media as saying on Wednesday.

But John Brennan, the homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to President Barack Obama, insisted on Wednesday that the government had received no specific or credible terror threat that targets the 9/11 anniversary.

Noting that US security agencies are doing better in sharing intelligence than 10 years ago, Brennan said the FBI has been doing a good job in tracking down individuals with extremist ideology that could lead them to launch terror attacks; Kazinform cites China Daily.

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