Abu Sayyaf

MANILA, Philippines -- They called the project Bojinka, "the explosion."The plan was devastating in its complexity and technical brilliance. If it had not been foiled, it might have been the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.Project Bojinka was a plan to blow up 11 U.S. airliners over the Pacific in a day of rage at the United States.According to investigators, it called for five Muslim terrorists to plant virtually undetectable bombs aboard the planes, all jumbo jets, in an intricately synchronized plan that had the bombers changing planes as many as four times in a day.The U.S. government has accused Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the Pakistani suspected of engineering the New York World Trade Center bombing, of being the mastermind behind the Bojinka plot.

MANILA, Philippines - Dodging protesters and invoking history, President Bush paid a festive but condensed state visit to the Philippines yesterday aimed at shoring up President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's support and her efforts to curb terrorism in the former U.S. protectorate. But fears of terrorism overshadowed events, forcing the president to rush through the schedule - a formal arrival ceremony, a wreath-laying at the national monument, an address to a joint session of the Philippine Congress and a state dinner - in a mere eight hours.

WASHINGTON - While the hunt for Osama bin Laden continues in Afghanistan's forbidding landscape, the United States is already looking farther afield in its anti-terror campaign. Though hard-liners in the administration are pressing to make Iraq's Saddam Hussein the next target, the prevailing view in the government is that al-Qaida should remain the priority, even if bin Laden is caught. The possibilities are strong for a future military action outside Afghanistan, officials say. But it might be limited to small raids in countries where bin Laden and his supporters have operated and whose governments cannot or will not cooperate with the United States in combating terrorism.

The World Fifty prisoners taken May 24 in a nighttime raid by U.S. troops on the Afghan town of Bandi Temur, west of Kandahar, were released along with the body of tribal leader Hajji Berget, killed in the raid. For the first time in six years, the United States sent a diplomat to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. Shipwreck hunter Robert Ballard found what might be the remains of PT 109, the boat John F. Kennedy commanded when it was sliced in two by a Japanese warship in World War II. A reward of up to $5 million for the capture of leaders of Philippine Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf was offered by the United States.

WASHINGTON - The emergence of new anti-Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan yesterday eased fears in Washington that the Northern Alliance would try to impose its rule on the country and prevent formation of a broad-based government. A day after fleeing the capital, Kabul, Taliban forces showed signs of losing control over key areas of the south - their main stronghold and the home of Afghanistan's dominant Pashtun ethnic group, according to reports from the region. Vice President Dick Cheney, in Washington, said the Taliban "is in retreat virtually all over the country."

WASHINGTON - A year after the worst-ever international terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network has lost its headquarters, its training camps, hundreds of fighters, two top managers and possibly bin Laden himself as a result of a U.S.-led war. But the organization remains a dangerous and ambitious foe. Since Sept. 11, member cells or groups linked with al-Qaida have committed or attempted a series of deadly attacks in Pakistan, North Africa, Europe and East Asia. And the group wants to stage an attack "on a level that is larger than 9/11," said Francis X. Taylor, the State Department's top counterterrorism official.