From the Associated Press

A researcher with the Wildlife Conservation Society stumbled upon the small, olive-brown large-billed reed warbler in 2008 and taped its distinctive song — a recording experts now say is probably the first ever. He and colleagues later caught and released 20 of the birds, the largest number ever recorded, the group says.

At the time, however, Robert Timmins, who conducting a survey of aviary communities along the Wakhan and Pamir rivers, thought he was observing a more common warbler species.

But after a visit to a Natural History Museum in Tring in England to examine bird skins, Timmins realized he had something else on his hands.

Lars Svensson, a Swedish expert on the family of reed warblers and familiar with their songs, was the first to suggest that Timmins’ tape was likely the first recording of the large-billed reed warbler.

“Practically nothing is known about this species, so this discovery of the breeding area represents a flood of new information on the large-billed reed warbler,” said Colin Poole, executive director of group’s Asia Program. “This new knowledge of the bird also indicates that the Wakhan Corridor still holds biological secrets and is critically important for future conservation efforts in Afghanistan.”

Researchers returned to the site of Timmins’ first survey in 2009, armed with mist nets used to catch birds for examination. The research team broadcast the recording of the song, which brought in large-billed reed warblers from all directions, allowing the team to catch 20 of them for examination and to collect feathers for DNA.

Lab work comparing museum specimens with measurements, field images, and DNA confirmed the find: the first-known breeding population of large-billed reed warblers.

“This is great news from a little-known species from a remote part of the world and suggests that there may be more discoveries to be made here,” said Mike Evans, an expert on birds in the region for BirdLife. He did not take part in the discovery.

Researchers are hoping the discovery sheds light on the bird, which U.K-based Birdlife International in 2007 called one of the world’s rarest. The first specimen was discovered in India in 1867, with more than a century elapsing before a single bird was found in Thailand in 2006.

But the announcement of the discovery of a home to the large-billed reed warbler came the same day Taliban militants launched an assault the Afghan capital, underscoring the challenges of doing conservation work in the country.

The bird was discovered in the Pamir Mountains , a sparsely populated region near China that has been relatively peaceful. It is, however, difficult to access — part of the reason the breeding site is only now being discovered.

WCS is the only conservation group doing scientific studies in Afghanistan . It has been involved in helping set up the first national park, Band-e-Amir, in central Afghanistan as well as working with the government to create the first-ever list of protected species.

A preliminary paper on the finding appears in the most recent edition of BirdingASIA, the magazine of the Oriental Bird Club .

From The Associated Press

WEST POINT, N.Y. – President Barack Obama says the war in Afghanistan is not lost as he announces he will send another 30,000 U.S. troops to fight it.

Obama on Tuesday said the first new U.S. forces will join the fight by Christmas. Obama also said the first U.S. forces will begin coming home in July 2011.

Speaking to the nation from the U.S. Military Academy, Obama acknowledged Afghanistan has moved backward and huge challenges remain. Obama said the Taliban has gained momentum and al-Qaida has safe-havens along the border with Pakistan.

Obama has spent three months in an intensive review of the U.S. strategy for an eight-year war that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

WEST POINT, N.Y. (AP) — President Barack Obama ordered an additional 30,000 U.S. troops into the long war in Afghanistan on Tuesday night, and told an impatient American public he hopes a gradual withdrawal can begin within 18 months.

In a prime-time address from the U.S. Military Academy, the president said the additional forces would be deployed at “the fastest pace possible so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers.” Excerpts of his remarks were released in advance.

It marked the second time in his young presidency that Obama has added to the American force in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has recently made significant advances. When he became president last January, there were roughly 34,000 troops on the ground; there now are 71,000.

Obama’s announcement drew less-than-wholehearted support from congressional Democrats, many of whom favor a quick withdrawal. Others have already proposed higher taxes to pay for the fighting.

Republicans reacted warily, as well. Officials said Sen. John McCain, who was Obama’s Republican opponent in last year’s presidential campaign, told Obama at an early evening meeting attended by numerous lawmakers that declaring a timetable for a withdrawal would merely send the Taliban underground until the Americans began to leave.

As a candidate, Obama called Afghanistan a war worth fighting, as opposed to Iraq, a conflict he opposed and has since begun easing out of.

A new survey by the Gallup organization, released Tuesday, showed only 35 percent of Americans now approve of Obama’s handling of the war; 55 percent disapprove.

In speech excerpts released in advance by the White House, Obama said a withdrawal from Afghanistan would be executed “responsibly taking into account conditions on the ground.”

“We will continue to advise and assist Afghanistan’s security forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul. But it will be clear to the Afghan government and, more importantly, to the Afghan people that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country,” Obama said.

The president also leaned heavily on NATO allies and other countries to join in escalating the fight.

“We must come together to end this war successfully,” he said. “For what’s at stake is not simply a test of NATO’s credibility. What’s at stake is the security of our allies and the common security of the world.”

The speech before an audience of cadets at the military academy ended a three-month review of the war, triggered by a request from the commanding general, Stanley McChrystal, for as many as an additional 40,000 troops. Without them, he warned, the U.S. risked failure.

The length of Obama’s review drew mild rebukes from normally amiable NATO allies. There was sharper criticism from Republicans led by former Vice President Dick Cheney, who said the president was dithering rather than deciding.

In advance of the speech, senior officials said Obama intended to underscore his commitment to stabilizing Afghanistan and scouring corruption out of the government of President Hamid Karzai. Obama has vowed to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a safe haven for al-Qaida boss Osama bin Laden and his terrorist organization.

Most of the new forces will be combat troops. Military officials said the Army brigades were most likely to be sent from Fort Drum in New York and Fort Campbell in Kentucky; and Marines primarily from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

They said the additional 30,000 troops included about 5,000 dedicated trainers, underscoring the president’s emphasis on preparing Afghans to take over their own security. They added the president is making clear to his generals that all troops, even if designated as combat, must consider themselves trainers.

These aides said that by announcing a date for beginning a withdrawal, the president was not setting an end date for the war.

But that was a point on which McCain chose to engage the president at a pre-speech meeting with lawmakers before Obama departed for West Point. “The way that you win wars is to break the enemy’s will, not to announce dates that you are leaving,” McCain said later.

Obama’s address represents the beginning of a sales job to restore support for the war effort among an American public grown increasingly pessimistic about success — and among some fellow Democrats in Congress wary of or even opposed to spending billions more dollars and putting tens of thousands more U.S. soldiers and Marines in harm’s way.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and liberal House Democrats threatened to try to block funding for the troop increase.

Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs a military oversight panel, said he didn’t think Democrats would yank funding for the troops or try to force Obama’s hand to pull them out faster. But Democrats will be looking for ways to pay for the additional troops, he said, including a tax increase on the wealthy although that hike is already being eyed to pay for health care costs. Another possibility is imposing a small gasoline tax that would be phased out if gas prices go up, he said.

Meanwhile, Republicans said that setting a timetable for withdrawal would

If the timeline for the troop increase holds, it will require a costly logistical scramble to send in so many people and so much equipment almost entirely by air. It will also probably require breaking at least an implicit promise to some soldiers who had thought they would have more than 12 months at home before their next deployment.

At the same time, NATO diplomats said Obama was asking alliance partners in Europe to add 5,000 to 10,000 troops to the separate international force in Afghanistan. Indications were the allies would agree to a number somewhere in that range. The war has even less support in Europe than in the United States, and the NATO allies and other countries currently have about 40,000 troops on the ground.

Late Monday, the president spent an hour on a video conference call with Karzai. On Tuesday, he contacted Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and, aides said, planned to speak of a need to help Pakistan stabilize itself from the threats it faces not only from al-Qaida but Taliban forces that are increasingly behind terrorist bombings in that country.

The United States went to war in Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the United States.

Bin Laden and key members of the terrorist organization were headquartered in Afghanistan at the time, taking advantage of sanctuary afforded by the Taliban government that ran the mountainous and isolated country.

Taliban forces were quickly driven from power, while bin Laden and his top deputies were believed to have fled through towering mountains into neighboring Pakistan. While the al-Qaida leadership appears to be bottled up in Pakistan’s largely ungoverned tribal regions, the U.S. military strategy of targeted missile attacks from unmanned drone aircraft has yet to flush bin Laden and his cohorts from hiding.

From The Associated Press

NEW YORK – The airport shuttle driver accused of plotting a bombing in New York had contacts with al-Qaida that went nearly all the way to the top, to an Osama bin Laden confidant believed to be the terrorist group’s leader in Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence officials told The Associated Press.

Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, an Egyptian reputed to be one of the founders of the terrorist network, used a middleman to contact Afghan immigrant Najibullah Zazi as the 24-year-old man hatched a plot to use homemade backpack bombs, perhaps on the city’s mass transit system, the two intelligence officials said.

Intelligence officials declined to discuss the nature of the contact or whether al-Yazid contacted Zazi to offer simple encouragement or help with the bombing plot prosecutors say Zazi was pursuing.

Al-Yazid’s contact with Zazi indicates that al-Qaida leadership took an intense interest in what U.S. officials have called one of the most serious terrorism threats crafted on U.S. soil since the 9/11 attacks.

“Zazi working with the al-Qaida core is exceptionally alarming,” said Daniel Bynam of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center. “The al-Qaida core is capable of far more effective terrorist attacks than jihadist terrorists acting on their own, and coordination with the core also enables bin Laden to choose the timing to maximize the benefit to his organization.”

U.S. intelligence officials said earlier that Zazi had contact with an unnamed senior al-Qaida operative. That helped distinguish Zazi from other would-be terrorists who have acted on their own in planning or attempting U.S. attacks.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the case remains under investigation, declined to describe al-Yazid’s specific interaction with Zazi, who has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction. But one senior U.S. intelligence official said the contact between Zazi and the senior al-Qaida leader occurred through an intermediary.

Just weeks before U.S. intelligence officials identified Zazi as a possible terrorist threat in late August, John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s top domestic terrorism adviser, told a Washington audience that “another attack on the U.S. homeland remains the top priority for the al-Qaida senior leadership.”

U.S. intelligence officials and prosecutors have said that Zazi was recruited and trained by al-Qaida. They say he and others traveled last year to Pakistan to receive the training.

Prosecutors say Zazi, during meetings with federal investigators before his arrest last month, “admitted that he received instructions from al-Qaida operatives on subjects such as weapons and explosives” during his trip to Pakistan.

Arthur Folsom, Zazi’s Denver lawyer, said Wednesday he was not aware of a claim that his client had contact with al-Yazid or any other senior al-Qaida leader. He said Zazi told investigators he met with a number of people while in Pakistan.

“He may well have talked to someone at a coffee shop who had some type of connection he wasn’t aware of,” Folsom said. “Under those grounds, guess what? I have a connection to al-Qaida and so do you.”

Folsom said prosecutors have mischaracterized comments Zazi made after he voluntarily agreed to meet before his arrest last month. Folsom said those comments have “been wildly exaggerated or blown out of proportion.”

Folsom said Zazi never said he visited a training camp or received explosive training from al-Qaida. Folsom said he doesn’t know who the government claims his client contacted who may have had al-Qaida connections.

“They either don’t know or won’t say who this person is,” Folsom said, referring to prosecutors. “It’s hard for us to comment on this because we don’t know who this person is.”

Folsom said he was in New York meeting with prosecutors and investigators over the weekend and that was not mentioned.

Zazi, who is being held without bond in New York while awaiting trial, has denied receiving al-Qaida training or visiting one of the group’s training camps. He said before his arrest that he traveled to Pakistan to see his wife, who lives in Peshawar.

In court documents, prosecutors say Zazi is linked to three e-mail accounts that he used to pursue his bomb plot. Investigators say they found nine pages of handwritten bomb-making instructions when searching two of the e-mail accounts. The notes were sent to the e-mail accounts while Zazi was in Pakistan last year, prosecutors say.

The bomb, which can be made of hydrogen peroxide and flour, is similar to the explosives used by terrorists in the 2005 London subway bombings that killed 52 people.

Prosecutors say Zazi accessed the bomb-making instructions and downloaded them on to his computer after moving to the Denver area in January. In a Colorado hotel suite in early September, Zazi contacted someone “on multiple occasions” for help correcting mixtures of bomb ingredients, “each communication more urgent in tone than the last,” court papers say.

Al-Yazid, 53, also known as Abu Saeed al-Masri and Sheikh Said, is a well-known al-Qaida figure who initially disagreed with bin Laden’s 9/11 plot, according to the 9/11 Commission Report. Al-Yazid was known at the time of the attack as head of al-Qaida’s finance committee.

He proclaimed in a June interview with Al-Jazeera television that al-Qaida would use nuclear weapons in its fight against the United States.

A member of Egypt’s radical Islamist movement, al-Yazid took part in the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat, according to “In the Graveyard of Empires,” a book by counterterrorism expert Seth G. Jones. He spent three years in prison, where he joined Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Jones wrote. al-Zawahiri is considered al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader, behind Osama bin Laden.

Al-Yazid left Egypt for Afghanistan in 1988 and later moved to Sudan in 1991 with bin Laden, serving as his accountant. Al-Yazid returned to Afghanistan in 1996 and became a confidant of bin Laden and a member of its Shura Council, according to Jones.

In 2007, al-Yazid took over al-Qaida operations in Afghanistan.

He was reported killed last year in clashes with Pakistani forces near the Afghan border in August 2008 but re-emerged to the surprise of counterterrorism officials.

Terrorism experts say al-Yazid’s contact with Zazi in the foiled New York City bombing plot underscores the seriousness of the threat.

“I think that it would suggest the Zazi was taken seriously by al-Qaida, and that they wanted him to feel encouraged and supported,” said Charles S. Faddis, who headed the weapons of mass destruction unit at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center until he retired in May 2008.

“It may also have meant that they were attempting to determine to what extent he represented an opportunity to do something inside the United States,” said Faddis, who also ran operations against al-Qaida. “For instance, they may have been trying to figure out if they were looking only at an individual or at someone who represented a larger group of jihadists.”

From The Associated Press

NEW YORK – An Afghan immigrant pleaded not guilty Tuesday to plotting a New York City terrorist attack with bombs made from beauty-supply chemicals and was ordered held without bail.

A lawyer for 24-year-old Denver airport shuttle driver Najibullah Zazi entered the plea in a federal courtroom in Brooklyn. Officials say he and co-conspirators bought products in Colorado containing hydrogen peroxide and acetone — key ingredients for homemade bombs.

Prosecutors believe Zazi received explosives training from al-Qaida in Pakistan and may have planned to target mass transit in the New York City area.

“I’d like to stop this rush to judgment because what I’ve seen so far does not amount to a conspiracy,” said Zazi’s attorney, J. Michael Dowling.

A law enforcement official confirmed Monday that investigators had identified three people believed to have been in on the scheme. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation continues.

The accomplices are suspected of traveling from New York City to suburban Denver this summer and using stolen credit cards to help Zazi stockpile bomb ingredients, authorities have said.

“I don’t know the names of anybody else that allegedly conspired with Mr. Zazi,” Dowling said Tuesday. “Those names have not been produced.”

Before authorities made a series of raids in the case, police detectives showed a source — a Queens imam at a mosque where Zazi had once worshipped — photographs of him and three people considered possible suspects, court papers say. It was unclear whether those three were the same ones suspected of traveling to Denver.

There have been no reports that the bomb-making materials have been recovered.

Prosecutors allege that Zazi has admitted that while living in Queens, he traveled last year to Pakistan and received explosives training from al-Qaida. Security videos and store receipts show that when he returned and moved to Aurora, Colo., he and three others bought several bottles of beauty products over the course of several weeks, court papers said.

On Sept. 6, Zazi took some of his products into a Colorado hotel room outfitted with a stove on which he later left acetone residue, authorities said. He repeatedly sought another person’s help cooking up the bomb, “each communication more urgent in tone than the last,” the papers said.

The FBI was listening to Zazi and becoming increasingly concerned as the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and a New York visit by President Barack Obama approached, officials said. They decided to track him on Sept. 9 when he rented a car and drove to New York.

On Sept. 10, Zazi told the Queens imam in an intercepted phone call that he feared he was being watched, court papers said. The imam later tipped Zazi off, saying police had come around and asked questions, the papers said.

Zazi cut short a five-day trip and flew back to Denver on Sept. 12. He was arrested a week later and initially charged along with his father and the imam with lying to investigators.

A letter filed by Brooklyn prosecutors last week argued that Zazi should be jailed indefinitely because, as an immigrant with ties to Pakistan, he could flee, and because he “poses a significant danger” to the community.

Evidence gathered — including bomb-making instructions found on his laptop computer — shows “Zazi remained committed to detonating an explosive device” until he was arrested, the letter said.

Zazi’s next court date has been set for Dec. 3.

From The Associated Press

DENVER – Claims that an Afghan immigrant was on the verge of unleashing a terrorist attack on New York City on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks are missing a key element: explosives or the chemicals allegedly used to make them, the man’s attorney said.

FBI agents have yet to find those elements and connect them to Najibullah Zazi, charged with conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction in a plot authorities say was aimed at commuter trains, attorney Arthur Folsom told a federal judge in Denver Friday.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer ultimately ordered Zazi’s transfer to New York, and Zazi was taken there by federal marshals.

“No traces of any kind of chemical was found in his vehicle,” Folsom said of an FBI search of Zazi’s car.

A federal prosecutor argued that Zazi was planning an attack to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary.

“The evidence suggests a chilling, disturbing sequence of events showing the defendant was intent on making a bomb and being in New York on 9/11, for purposes of perhaps using such items,” prosecutor Tim Neff told Shaffer.

Zazi was stopped by police on Sept. 10 as he entered New York, and he dropped his plans for an attack once he realized that law enforcement was on to him, prosecutors allege.

Prosecutors said Zazi received explosives training from al-Qaida in Pakistan and returned to the U.S. bent on building a bomb.

Over the summer, he and three associates went from one beauty-supply store to another in a Denver suburb buying chemicals to make explosives like those that killed dozens of people in transit bombings in London and Madrid, investigators said.

At least three and possibly more of his accomplices remain at large, and investigators have fanned out across New York in pursuit of suspects. Authorities also issued a flurry of terrorism warnings for sports complexes, hotels and transit systems.

A law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation said associates of Zazi visited Colorado to help him buy the chemicals using stolen credit cards before returning to New York.

Another law enforcement official said that authorities had been especially worried about Zazi’s Sept. 10 visit to the city because it coincided with a visit by President Barack Obama. Police considered arresting him right away. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation continues.

Police have been especially active in the neighborhood in Queens where Zazi visited during his New York trip, staying at an apartment with a group of cab drivers and food cart operators he knows.

Folsom said prosecutors lack direct evidence that Zazi was involved in bomb-making, finding none of those materials in Zazi’s car, his Aurora, Colo., apartment or apartments Zazi visited in New York. FBI agents said they found Zazi’s fingerprints on a scale and batteries during a search in Queens, but Folsom said those items have no connection to the alleged plot.

“I think they were hoping that people would just jump to conclusions,” Folsom said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Zazi ran a coffee cart in Manhattan before moving to Denver this year and getting a job as an airport shuttle driver.

FBI raids beginning Sept. 14 rattled a quiet, predominantly Asian neighborhood in Queens. Muslim men said dozens of FBI agents ransacked their homes and questioned them for hours, sometimes taking DNA samples and prints from their shoes.

The FBI has also been visiting beauty shops and home-improvement stores in Colorado and New York for details about the alleged bomb-making purchases.

Court papers say that during the summer, Zazi and three unidentified associates bought “unusually large quantities” of hydrogen peroxide and acetone — a flammable solvent found in nail-polish remover — from Denver-area beauty supply stores. The products had names such as Ion Sensitive Scalp Developer and Ms. K Liquid 40 Volume.

Zazi also searched the Web site of a Queens home-improvement store for another ingredient needed to make a compound called TATP (triacetone triperoxide), the explosives used by shoe bomber Richard Reid and the terrorists who carried out the London bombings that killed more than 50 people, according to court papers.

Zazi intensified his bomb-making experiments this month, cooking up substances in a Colorado hotel suite he rented on Sept. 6-7 before driving 1,600 miles to New York over the course of about two days. He became aware that law enforcement was onto him when he was stopped entering the city on Sept. 10, causing the plot to unravel.

Neff said Zazi “was in the throes of making a bomb and attempting to perfect his formulation” and seeking information on how to use flour to make the explosive suitable for transporting.

“He was asking for information on flour and how to get the contents right,” Neff said in court.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority — which runs New York City’s subway system, buses and commuter rails — declined to comment on the revelation of a Sept. 11-timed plot. It reissued a statement from earlier in the week that it has boosted its police presence at “key commuter rail locations” since the terror threat became public.

Federal agents and police officers in New York visited up to 200 locations a day in the area during the probe, including beauty-supply stores, extended-stay hotels that have rooms with kitchens, hardware stores, truck rental agencies and storage facilities.

Zazi was scheduled to appear in federal court Tuesday in Brooklyn.

A government request to deny bail laid out a chronology of the alleged scheme, which prosecutors said had been in the works for more than a year.

On Sept. 6 and 7, Zazi checked into a suite at a Colorado hotel with a kitchen and a stove, government papers say, and tried to contact an unidentified associate “seeking to correct mixtures of ingredients to make explosives.”

“Zazi repeatedly emphasized in the communications that he needed the answers right away,” the papers said, adding that each communication was “more urgent than the last.”

Beauty supply store employees in New York and the Denver suburbs said authorities had been asking whether anyone had come in buying a lot of hydrogen peroxide or acetone.

At Beauty Supply Warehouse in suburban Denver, Paul Phillips said a co-worker told investigators he had sold chemicals to Zazi. Company President Karan Hoss said the firm turned over security video of a man matching Zazi’s description to the FBI. A check of sales found that someone bought a dozen 32-ounce bottles of a hydrogen peroxide product in July. More was purchased in late August, Hoss said.

From The Associated Press

NEW YORK – Terror suspect Najibullah Zazi plotted for more than a year to detonate homemade bombs in the United States, had recently bought bomb-making supplies from beauty supply stores and was looking for “urgent” help in the past two weeks to make explosives, an indictment charged Thursday.

Zazi, arrested in Denver last weekend on a count of lying to terrorism investigators, was charged in New York with using conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. He arrived in a Denver courtroom late Thursday morning for a hearing on whether he should remain in federal custody.

The two-page indictment offers few details, but a separate document — a government motion seeking to deny bail to the 24-year-old Afghan immigrant — lays out evidence gathered by investigators.

The airport shuttle driver began plotting to “use one or more weapons of mass destruction” between Aug. 1, 2008, and September 2009 against the United States, the papers say.

The document says that on Sept. 6 and Sept. 7, Zazi tried on multiple times to communicate with another individual “seeking to correct mixtures of ingredients to make explosives.”

“Each communication,” the papers say, was “more urgent than the last.”

On those days, Zazi rented a suite at a hotel in his hometown of Aurora, Colo., authorities charge. The room had a kitchen, and subsequent FBI testing for explosives and residue in the suite found the presence of residue in the vent above the stove.

In July and August, Zazi purchased unusually high amounts of hydrogen peroxide and acetone products from beauty supply stores in the Denver metropolitan area, the document says. He searched the Internet for home improvement stores in Queens before driving a rental car for a two-day trip to the city, the document says.

Zazi has publicly denied any terrorist plotting — and the documents don’t specify a specific time and place of a possible attack. Counterterrorism agents fear he and others may have been planning to detonate homemade bombs on New York City commuter trains.

Authorities plan to transfer him to the federal court in the New York borough of Brooklyn to face the new charge.

Zazi, his father and Ahmad Wais Afzali, a New York City imam, are scheduled to appear Thursday in Denver and Brooklyn courts on counts of lying to terrorism investigators.