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A policeman (2nd R) and private security personnel stand guard at the entrance of a road leading towards the U.S. consulate in Lahore August 9, 2013. REUTERS/Mohsin Raza

By Katharine Houreld

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The U.S. government ordered the evacuation of non-essential staff from its consulate in the northeastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Friday due to the threat of attack, with the State Department also warning U.S. citizens not to travel to Pakistan.

"The Department of State ordered this drawdown due to specific threats concerning the U.S. consulate in Lahore," said a travel warning posted on the Department of State's website on Thursday.

The warning in Lahore, near Pakistan's border with India, comes two days after Washington evacuated some diplomats from Yemen and told its nationals to leave that country immediately.

The United States shut nearly two dozen missions across the Middle East after a worldwide alert on August 2, warning Americans that al Qaeda may be planning attacks in August, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.

Still, a U.S. embassy spokeswoman said the closure was due to a specific threat to Lahore. A U.S. national security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Pakistan threat was unconnected to the one that closed other embassies.

The U.S. embassy spokeswoman said it was unclear when the consulate would reopen. Tensions have also risen this week with Pakistan's neighbor India over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

A cosmopolitan city dominated by an ancient Mughal fort, Lahore is Pakistan's cultural capital but has also suffered from attacks by militant groups.

A bomb killed five people and wounded dozens on a restaurant-lined street, popular with tourists, in Lahore last month. Attacks have gone up since the landslide election of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in May elections.

The Lahore warning noted that "several foreign and indigenous terrorist groups pose a potential danger to U.S. citizens throughout Pakistan".

Pakistan is home to a number of militant groups, including al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other sectarian groups.

The U.S. State Department initially announced the wider embassy closures would be only for last Sunday, then extended the closures of some by a week and added Burundi, Rwanda and Mauritius to the closure list.

A number of the missions would have been closed anyway for most of the week due to the Eid celebration at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the State Department said.

Yemen, one of the poorest Arab countries, is the base for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), one of the most active branches of the network founded by Osama bin Laden. Militants have launched attacks from there against the West.

U.S. sources have told Reuters that intercepted communication between bin Laden's successor as al Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, and the Yemen-based wing was one part of the intelligence behind their alert last week.

(Additional reporting by Paul Eckert in Washington and Mark Hosenball in London; Editing by Vicki Allen)

U.S. evacuates staff from Pakistan consulate

All non-essential workers are told to leave the consulate in Lahore and Americans warned not to travel to Pakistan.
'Specific threats'

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An employee inspects a water-gate, which is designed to block a tsunami, during a safety drill at the First Nuclear Power Plant in Shihmen, northern Taiwan in this September 4, 2012 file photo. REUTERS/Pichi Chuang/Filers

TAIPEI (Reuters) - A nuclear power plant in Taiwan may have been leaking radioactive water for three years, according to a report published by the government's watchdog, adding to uncertainty over the fate of a new fourth nuclear power plant.

The First Nuclear Power Plant, located at Shihmen in a remote northern coastal location but not far from densely populated Taipei, has been leaking toxic water from storage pools of two reactors, said the watchdog, called the Control Yuan.

An official of Taiwan Power Co. (Taipower), which operates the island's nuclear power plants, said the water did not come from the storage pools, but may have come from condensation or water used for cleaning up the floor.

"We have explained to the Control Yuan, but they turned it down. They asked us to look into if other causes were involved," said the official. He declined to be identified as the matter is sensitive.

In any case, the water has been collected in a reservoir next to the storage pools used for spent nuclear rods and has been recycled back into the storage pools, and so poses no threat to the environment, the official added.

The Control Yuan said there had been a catalogue of errors, including a lack of a proper plan for how to handle spent nuclear materials, and did not believe the explanations from Taipower.

"The company has yet to clearly establish the reason for the water leak," it said.

The use of nuclear power on resource-poor Taiwan has long been controversial, not least because the island is comparatively small and any major nuclear accident would likely affect its entire land area.

Nuclear power accounts for 18.4 percent of electricity production.

Plans to build a fourth nuclear plant - located close to the one at Shihmen - have been held up for years, and have been subject to mass protests on the streets of the island.

Scuffles broke out between legislators at a parliamentary debate on the plant this week.

Currently, Taiwan has three operational nuclear power plants and six reactors.

Taiwan has also had problems on what to do with its nuclear waste, which for many years was dumped on a small island off its southeast coast, to the anger of its aboriginal inhabitants.

Taiwan has previously considered sending its nuclear waste to the Pacific Ocean state of the Marshall Islands and even North Korea.

(Reporting by Faith Hung; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

CAIRO (AP) — Tens of thousands of supporters of Egypt's ousted president marched Friday on the streets of Cairo and across the country, leading to clashes with opponents and security forces that injured dozens.

The marches during the Muslim holiday of Eid el-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan, come as Egypt's government increasingly looks poised to break up sit-in protests by supporters of President Mohammed Morsi when the festivities end.

However, a leader in Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood maintained the aggressive rhetoric used by some opposing the military-backed interim government's plans while addressing protesters Friday, raising the possibility of further bloodshed in the country.

"Kill as much as you like. I won't move an inch," Brotherhood leader Mohamed el-Beltagui said. "We will offer a million martyrs."

The protesters waved signs Friday bearing Morsi's picture, who was deposed in a July 3 military coup that came after millions marched in the streets against him. While most of the protests were peaceful, clashes erupted in several locations in the country between Morsi supporters and those opposing Morsi, as well as security forces.

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Supporters of Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi shout slogans under his posters following Frid …

A security official said 28 people, including three policemen, were injured in clashes in Fayoum, south of Cairo. He told The Associated Press that security forces fired tear gas and birdshot at Brotherhood supporters who tried storming the province's security services headquarters.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorized to speak to journalists.

Dozens were injured in clashes between Morsi supporters and opponents in several villages of the northern Sharqiya province, the website of the state-run daily newspaper Al-Ahram reported.

In the Nile Delta city of Mahalla, four pro-Morsi protesters were injured after local residents attacked them when they started distributing leaflets criticizing military leader Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, witnesses said. In Gharbia province, north of Cairo, three were injured after clashes erupted between villagers and Morsi's supporters who had organized a march, witnesses said. The two groups hurled stones at each other beforehand.

Morsi supporters demand his reinstatement, restoration of the suspended constitution drafted under Morsi and the return of the disbanded Islamist-dominated legislative council. The interim government has rejected those demands and is instead moving forward with a fast-track plan calling for revising the constitution and holding presidential and parliamentary elections early next year.

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A supporter of Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi holds his poster in Nahda square, where prote …

Morsi himself remains held by the military at an undisclosed location.

Supporters of the ousted president continue to hold daily demonstrations at two sit-in sites in the capital, Cairo. Egypt's government has said it had plans to break up the demonstrations, which it repeatedly has described as a threat to national security.

An earlier Cabinet statement said the government was keen not to take action during the celebrations that mark the end of Ramadan, which started Thursday and continue for four days. Authorities talked earlier about using gradual measures to end the protests, such as besieging the sit-ins to prevent people from getting in while allowing those inside to gradually leave.

Organizers of the sit-ins have brought games and other diversions to the sites, hoping to continue to draw crowds, including children. Meanwhile, guards carrying sticks and wearing hard hats still stand guard behind barricades, hinting that any attempt to end the sit-ins by force could turn bloody.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Central America is on track to have one of its worst years ever for the painful, sometimes fatal disease of dengue, prompting governments across the region to mobilize against the mosquito-borne virus.

There have been 120,000 suspected cases of dengue reported across Central America so far in the season, which is roughly June to November, when the rains make it optimal for mosquito breeding. The number of cases already is about to surpass the total for all of 2012 in the seven countries from Guatemala to Panama. At least 39 people have died so far, more than the 32 for all of 2012.

The disease is endemic to the region, but cases tend to surge every three to five years, and the Pan-American Health Organization says this year's looks unusually bad. Perhaps the worst major outbreak in the Americas was in 2010, when 132 people in Central America died.

Honduras and El Salvador have declared health emergencies to channel extra funds and efforts to prevent the spread of the disease. Other nations are also sending teams of workers across villages and cities to squirt bursts of insecticide at puddles and to lecture citizens against leaving standing water where mosquitoes can breed.

"They're involving people from public health, police and soldiers. It's an all-out effort to fight the effects of the epidemic," said Vilma Areas, spokeswoman for the Nicaraguan Health Ministry.

At least 17 people have died in Honduras, where more than half the municipalities have registered dengue cases.

Most of Nicaragua's 2,000 cases, including six deaths, are concentrated on the border with Honduras, which has reported nearly 18,000 cases so far, compared with 15,000 for all of 2012.

Dengue is a leading cause of illness and death in the tropics and subtropics, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. The virus-transmitting aedes aegypti mosquitoes are found in dense population areas where a combination of people and standing water allow them to breed and thrive.

There is no vaccine or cure for dengue. Treatments can mirror those for standard flu symptoms or can be more extensive for patients who have to be hospitalized. People contracting the most severe type, hemorrhagic dengue, can experience severe pain, breathing difficulties, bleeding and even circulatory failure.

Epidemics can depend on which type of dengue is circulating in a particular year, and whether the population has already built immunities to that type. People with immunity to one type of dengue can still contract others.

"New, susceptible people are being born all the time," CDC epidemiologist Dr. George Han noted.

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Associated Press writers Freddy Cuevas in Honduras, Luis Galeano in Nicaragua, Vivian Sequera in Colombia, Marcos Aleman in El Salvador and Javier Cordoba in Costa Rica contributed to this report.

TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) — A year before he was caught on an intercept discussing the terror plot that prompted this week's sweeping closure of U.S. embassies abroad, al-Qaida's top operative in Yemen laid out his blueprint for how to wage jihad in letters sent to a fellow extremist.

In what reads like a lesson plan for the less-experienced jihadist, Nasser al-Wahishi, who spent years as Osama bin Laden's personal secretary, provides a step-by-step assessment of what worked and what didn't in Yemen.

Yet in the never-before-seen correspondence discovered by The Associated Press, the man at the center of the latest terror threat barely mentions the extremist methods that have transformed his organization into al-Qaida's most dangerous branch.

Instead, he urges his jihadist colleague whose fighters had just seized northern Mali to make sure the people living in the areas they have just conquered have electricity and running water. And he offers tips for making garbage collection more efficient.

"Try to win them over through the conveniences of life," he writes. "It will make them sympathize with us and make them feel that their fate is tied to ours."

The perhaps surprising hearts-and-minds approach advocated by the 30-something Wahishi is a sign of a broader shift within al-Qaida, according to experts shown the two letters and an accompanying report. After its failure in Iraq, the terror network realized that it is not enough to win territory: They must also learn to govern it if they hope to hold it.

"People in the West view al-Qaida as only a terrorist organization, and it certainly is that ... but the group itself is much broader, and it is doing much more," says Gregory Johnsen, a scholar at Princeton University whose book, "The Last Refuge," charts the rise of al-Qaida in Yemen. "The group sees itself as an organization that can be a government."

The correspondence from al-Wahishi to Algerian national Abdelmalek Droukdel is part of a cache of documents found earlier this year by the AP in buildings in Timbuktu, which until January served as the headquarters of al-Qaida's North African branch. The letters are dated May 21 and Aug. 6, 2012, soon after al-Wahishi's army in Yemen was forced to retreat from the territory it had seized amid an uprising against long-time Yemeni ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Al-Wahishi's advice is drawn from his own experience trying to hold and govern a slice of southern Yemen for 16 months. At the time, the terror network as a whole was trying to come to grips with its losses in Iraq, where people rose up against brutal punishments including executions for watching the soccer World Cup on television.

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FILE - In this Thursday, June 14, 2012 file photo, a military vehicle patrols a street next to a bui …

The failure of Iraq was front and center in how al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula went about governing its provinces in Yemen, including the region where al-Wahishi was born, says Robin Simcox, research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, whose recently published study chronicles the group's occupation of southern Yemen.

In the May letter, al-Wahishi warns his counterpart not to crack down too quickly or too harshly.

"You have to be kind," he writes. "You can't beat people for drinking alcohol when they don't even know the basics of how to pray. ...Try to avoid enforcing Islamic punishments as much as possible, unless you are forced to do so. ... We used this approach with the people and came away with good results."

Al-Qaida's foray into governance in southern Yemen began on the morning of Feb. 28, 2011, when residents of the locality of Jaar woke up to find an ominous black flag flying over their town. Fearing the worst, the population was mystified to discover that their occupiers appeared more interested in public works projects, than in waging war.

"There were around 200 of them. They were wearing Afghan clothes, black robes that go to the knees, with a belt," said Nabil Al-Amoudi, a lawyer from Jaar. "They started extending water mains. ... They installed their own pipes. They succeeded in bringing electricity to areas that had not had power before."

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula chronicled their achievements in 22 issues of a newsletter and in propaganda films showing glowing light bulbs and whirring fans inside the homes of villagers who had never had power before. In one video, al-Qaida fighters are seen leaning ladders against power poles and triumphantly yelling "Allah Akbar," or "God is great," each time they connect a downed wire.

Al-Wahishi's group was forced to retreat from southern Yemen in June of 2012, just as al-Qaida's affiliate in North Africa succeeded in grabbing control of an Afghanistan-sized chunk of northern Mali, giving the terror network another chance to try their hand at governing.

Adopting an avuncular, almost professorial tone, al-Wahishi advises Droukdel to not only pay special attention to the minutiae of running a mini-state, but to also publicize his efforts. He advises them to appoint a spokesman and court the media to change people's perception of the terror brand.

"The world is waiting to see what you do next and how you go about managing the affairs of your state," he writes. "Your enemies want to see you fail and they're throwing up obstacles to prove to people that the mujahedeen are people that are only good for fighting and war, and have nothing to do with running countries."

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FILE - In this Friday, June 15, 2012 file photo, an al-Qaida logo is seen on a street sign in the to …

This preoccupation with al-Qaida's image is clear throughout the letters. The former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, Stephen Seche, says the letters from al-Wahishi are in large part about the group's perception of itself.

"These guys are no longer in the business of just trying to take out Western targets. They are in the business of establishing themselves as legit alternatives to governments that are not present in areas on a daily business," says Seche, who was posted to Yemen between 2007 and 2010. "I don't think we should be fooled by this. ...This is a velvet glove approach. It will come off."

For many in Yemen, the glove came off on Feb. 11, 2012, when a man accused of spying was arrested and sentenced to death by crucifixion. No amount of time or gradual application of Shariah could have prepared the population for what came next.

His body was left to rot, hanging from a power pole, a scene captured in a YouTube video, says Katherine Zimmerman, senior analyst at the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project, who identifies the crucifixion as the turning point in public opinion.

Al-Wahishi does not acknowledge losing the support of the population, though he concedes his men were forced to retreat, as Yemen's army, backed by the U.S. military, regained control of the south. He explains that they pulled out after concluding that resisting would have both drained their resources, and caused high civilian casualties.

Al-Wahishi is blunt in laying out the cost of al-Qaida's foray — and how it was financed.

"The control of these areas during one year cost us 500 martyrs, 700 wounded, 10 cases of hand or leg amputation and nearly $20 million," he writes. "Most of the battle costs, if not all, were paid for through the spoils. Almost half the spoils came from hostages. Kidnapping hostages is an easy spoil, which I may describe as a profitable trade and a precious treasure."

In conclusion, al-Wahishi warns Droukdel not to be drawn into a prolonged war. He effectively recommends the strategy al-Qaida used in both Yemen and Mali: Melt into the background while preparing to strike again: "Hold on to your previous bases in the mountains, forests and deserts and prepare other refuges for the worst-case scenario," he says. "This is what we came to realize after our withdrawal."

Al-Wahishi, a tiny man with a pointy beard, spent years serving as Osama bin Laden's personal assistant, before returning to his native Yemen, where he was named the emir of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula in 2002.

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FILE - In this Tuesday, April 23, 2013 file photo, a suspected Yemeni al-Qaida militant, center, hol …

In 2009, the Yemeni branch of al-Qaida attempted to send a suicide bomber with explosives sown into his underwear onto a Detroit-bound flight.

U.S. officials recently intercepted a communication between al-Wahishi and al-Qaida supreme chief Ayman al-Zawahri, causing the U.S. to shutter 19 embassies and consulates.

Although al-Qaida has been on a learning curve since Iraq, it still does not seem to understand how to govern populations used to a far more moderate form of Islam. Al-Qaida experts say this extremism is a permanent Achilles' heel for the terror franchise — their final destination jars, regardless of how slowly they drive to get there.

"The question is, are these groups always fated to overplay their hand?" asks Simcox. "They are so ideological, that they will always veer in this direction."

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Associated Press writer Adam Goldman contributed to this report from Washington.

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The letters from al-Wahashi and the case study on their occupation of southern Yemen can be viewed here:

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_international/_pdfs/al-qaida-papers-how-to-run-a-state.pdf