U.S. alert as Hurricane Irene threatens East Coast (Reuters)

SANTO DOMINGO (Reuters) – Hurricane Irene posed a potential threat to the entire U.S. East Coast from Florida to New England, U.S. officials said on Tuesday, as forecasters tried to predict where the powerful storm might hit over the next week.

U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Craig Fugate and National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read issued the warning as Irene swept up from the Caribbean on a northwest track toward the United States.

"We're going to have a very large tropical cyclone move up the Eastern Seaboard over the next five to seven days," Read told a conference call in which he spoke along with Fugate.

The FEMA chief said residents all along the East Coast should be alert not only to a potential direct landfall but also to the risk of torrential rains, high winds and flooding that Irene could bring.

"We're saying the entire East Coast," Fugate said.

Irene, now a Category 2 storm, was heading on Tuesday over the Turks and Caicos Islands and southeastern Bahamas. It was expected to become a major Category 3 storm, with winds over 111 mph, by Wednesday and could possibly intensify further to a Category 4 as it neared the southeast U.S. coast by Friday.

Calling Irene a "very large storm," Read said the Miami-based NHC's "best guess" forecast at the moment was that the hurricane would approach the coast of the Carolinas on Saturday morning as a major storm, of Category 3 or upward on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity.

Read said the storm will skirt south Florida but added that after the Carolinas, the New England region of the East Coast could also be at particular risk.

"We're going to potentially see tropical storm-force conditions, very hazardous beach conditions," Fugate said, adding evacuations of coastal areas could be needed.

Irene, the first hurricane of the busy 2011 Atlantic season, looks set to be the first hurricane to hit the United States since Ike pounded the Texas coast in 2008.

At 11 a.m. (1500 GMT), Irene had top winds of 100 miles per hour and was 70 miles south of Grand Turk Island in the Turks and Caicos and 50 miles north northwest of Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.

Hurricane force winds extended outward up to 50 miles from Irene's center and tropical storm force winds extended out up to 205 miles, the NHC said.

(Additional reporting by Jane Sutton and Tom Brown in Miami, Reuters in San Juan: Ben Berkowitz in New York; Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Philip Barbara)

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Alert: Terrorists look to implant bombs in humans (AP)

WASHINGTON – Airlines are being warned by the government that terrorists are considering surgically hiding bombs inside humans to evade airport security. And as a result, travelers may find themselves subjected to more scrutiny when flying in the heart of summer vacation season, especially to the U.S. from abroad.

Bombs-in-the body is not a brand new idea, but recent intelligence indicates a fresh interest in using this method, as people-scanning machines in airports aren't able to detect explosives hidden inside humans. Still, there is no current information that points to a specific plot involving surgically implanted explosives, a U.S. security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss such sensitive matters.

As airport security has increased since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, so has the terrorists' creativity in developing methods to get around it. Aviation continues to be a special target, and evidence from Osama bin Laden's compound showed that the al-Qaida leader retained his fascination with attacking airplanes until his death in May.

Last year, it was reported that British officials uncovered intelligence that al-Qaida was seeking to surgically implant bombs inside people, a move some believed was prompted by the use of full-body imaging machines at major airports around the world.

"This is something we've been concerned about for quite some time," said J. Bennet Waters, a security consultant with the Washington, D.C.-based Chertoff Group and a former Transportation Security Administration official in the Bush administration.

The U.S. government has been working with foreign air carriers and governments to identify ways to discover hidden explosives, including bombs potentially hidden inside of humans. Officials did not want to discuss specific security measures under consideration so as not to tip off terrorists who could seek ways to get around them.

Once a terrorist finds a willing suicide bomber, secures the explosive material and makes the bomb, carrying off this tactic is not that difficult, said Chris Ronay, a former chief of the FBI explosives unit.

"It's rather easy and the damage could be rather severe," Ronay said.

Surgery to implant explosives could be done a couple of days before a planned attack, said James Crippin, an explosives expert in Colorado. In order for it to work, there would need to be a detonation device, and it's conceivable that if the explosive was implanted in a woman's breast, the detonator could be underneath the breast so that all the operative would have to do is press downward, Crippin said.

But Jimmie C. Oxley, a chemistry professor at the University of Rhode Island and explosives expert, said it would be tough to carry out such an effort successfully. She said there are only so many places to hide a bomb in the body, and a suicide bomber would have to recover enough from the surgery to travel and set off the device.

The al-Qaida offshoot in Yemen has emerged as the most inventive terror organization these days and has been behind two plots that nearly brought down planes over the U.S. The group, known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, was behind the Christmas Day attack in 2009 when a Nigerian hid a bomb in his underpants and nearly brought down an airliner over Detroit.

AQAP operatives also concealed bombs in printer cartridges last October, shipping them to Chicago addresses. That attack was thwarted because of specific intelligence about the plot. And in late December, the U.S. received intelligence that the Yemen group was considering hiding explosives in the insulated lining of beverage containers and carrying them aboard airplanes. There was no information pointing to a specific plot with insulated beverage containers, but, like the recent intelligence about the implanted bomb tactic, the Transportation Security Administration warned domestic and foreign carriers to be on the lookout.

"Due to the significant advances in global aviation security in recent years, terrorist groups have repeatedly and publicly indicated interest in pursuing ways to further conceal explosives," TSA spokesman Nick Kimball said, adding that passengers flying into the U.S. may notice additional security. "Measures may include interaction with passengers, in addition to the use of other screening methods such as pat-downs and the use of enhanced tools and technologies."

Officials would not specify which terrorist organizations are thought to be considering this surgical tactic.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said U.S. counterterrorism efforts must evolve as terror groups publicly indicate their interest in finding ways to conceal explosives.

"The idea that terrorists have been looking for other ways to circumvent security measures to target aircraft is not at all surprising," Carney said.

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Associated Press writer Julie Pace contributed to this story.

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