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Dramatic daylight terror raids on a university may have been linked to a plot to blow up a shopping centre or nightclub, police fear. Students at Liverpool John Moores University watched in shock yesterday as two men were hauled outside and forced to the ground by armed police.  Witnesses said the duo  -  students at the university's Business School  -  were wearing combat trousers and hiking jackets, and claimed there were rumours of 'a bomb' on the premises.  (edit) The raid was one of a series carried out simultaneously across the North-West in which 12 suspects believed to be...

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

AN AIRPORT suspended a Roman Catholic worker after a Muslim colleague protested about an image of Jesus pinned up on a staffroom wall. Gareth Langmead, 40, was stunned to be sent home from Manchester airport after putting up the image of the Sacred Heart. Bosses are said to have ordered the car parks supervisor to be escorted off the premises after the Muslim complained. Mr Langmead was only reinstated three days later after an investigation found that his action was not intended to be “malicious or provocative”. The row comes a year after BA check-in worker Nadia Eweida was suspended...

An investigation is under way after two passenger planes collided while taxiing at Manchester Airport. The BMI Baby Boeing 737 travelling to Belfast International and an Excel Airways Boeing 767 travelling to Goa touched wings outside Terminal Two. Seventy-nine passengers were on board the BMI Baby plane while 255 were on the Excel Airways plane, though no-one is thought to have been injured. Air accident investigators were at the scene on Thursday afternoon. 'Wings clipped' One passenger who arrived in Belfast on Thursday said: "We were on the runway preparing to take off and then the plane just went from...