Australia

Embassy in Philippines closed

Australia has closed its embassy in the Philippines and placed round-the-clock security on national landmarks including Sydney’s Opera House and Harbor Bridge amid heightened terrorist threats, the government said today.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said that he ordered the closure of the embassy in Manila after receiving an intelligence report Wednesday night.

“It is a very specific report, it is not only location-specific targeting the Australian embassy itself but also it’s time-specific in the sense that we are talking over the next few days,” Downer told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Asked later on national television who was responsible for the threat, the minister said: “Islamic extremists, fundamentalist people. We know a bit about them.” He declined to elaborate further.

Germany

Missiles pledged to Israel

Germany has a “moral duty” to protect Israel and will provide Patriot anti-missile systems to help its defense against Iraq if war erupts in the Middle East, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said.

“The security of the state of Israel and its citizens is extraordinarily important to us,” Schroeder said in an interview with the weekly newspaper Die Zeit.

“If Israel needs an increase in security, we will help ” and on time,” Schroeder was quoted as saying. “This is our historic and moral duty.”

The German air force has 30 Patriot missile systems in service. A report Tuesday in the German newspaper Die Welt said Israel was seeking the indefinite loan of an unspecified number of the missiles.

Afghanistan

Sniper shoots U.S. soldier

A sniper shot and wounded a U.S. Special Forces soldier in the leg, an Army spokesman said today.

The soldier, who was in stable condition, was riding in a convoy in eastern Afghanistan when a unknown gunman shot him. The shooter escaped.

Soldiers scoured the hills around the site of the shooting, which occurred Wednesday about four miles east of Gardez in Afghanistan’s Paktia province.

The soldier, whose identity was not given, was operated upon at a nearby U.S. Special Forces base. His condition was stable, Col. Roger King told reporters at Bagram Air Base.

Nebraska

State salting, not plowing Omaha-area interstates

Melt the snow rather than plow it.

That’s the state’s new snow removal plan for the interstate highways in the Omaha area, and it apparently passed its first test of the season Tuesday.

The plan involving getting trucks out early to pour salt on the roadways, resorting to snowplow use only as a backup and for particularly heavy snows.

Crews spread about 300 tons of road salt on the highways to combat a 2-inch snowfall, said Gary Forman, a maintenance superintendent for the Nebraska Roads Department in Omaha.

“The application appeared to have worked,” Forman said. “We’re pleased with how it went.”