US raises alert over attack fears

THE Bush administration yesterday raised the national terror alert from yellow to orange, the second-highest level in the colour-coded system.

Attorney General John Ashcroft cited an “increased likelihood” that the al-Qaida terror network would attack Americans, either at home or abroad.

Ashcroft said apartment buildings, hotels or other “lightly secured targets” in the United States could be vulnerable. The attorney general also said terrorists might seek “economic targets, including the transportation and energy sectors, as well as symbolic targets and symbols of American power.”