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President Barack Obama’s “administration is weighing plans to detain some terror suspects on US soil — indefinitely and without trial — as part of a plan to retool military commission trials that were conducted for prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay,” The Wall Street Journal said.

The proposal, which is part of the administration’s internal deliberations on how to deal with the prisoners ahead of a planned closure of the controversial US military prison next year, is being shared with some lawmakers, it added.

White House officials contacted by AFP had no immediate comment on the detainee deliberations.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who met with White House Counsel Greg Craig this week about the Guantanamo plans, told the Journal that the administration was namely seeking authority for indefinite detentions granted by a national security court.

The responding officers — eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 — face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots — BAM! BAM! — fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.

“United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!” screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.

It is all quite a step up from the square knot.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

One participant, Felix Arce, 16, said he liked “the discipline of the program,” which was something he said his life was lacking. “I want to be a lawyer, and this teaches you about how crimes are committed,” he said.

Cathy Noriego, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns — known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets — in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range.

“The taxpayers ought to know that we are in effect receiving a subsidy. They put in 40pc of the money but get little of the equity upside,” said Mark Patterson, chairman of MatlinPatterson Advisers.

The comments are likely to infuriate Tim Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, because MatlinPatterson took advantage of the TARP’s matching funds to buy Flagstar Bancorp in Michigan. His confession appears to validate concerns that the bail-out strategy is geared towards Wall Street.

Under the convoluted deal agreed earlier this year, MatlinPatterson has come to own 80pc of the shares while the US government has ended up with under 10pc.

Mr Patterson said the US Treasury is out of its depth and seems to be trying to put off drastic action by pretending that the banking system is still viable.

“It’s a sham. The banks are insolvent. The US government is trying to sedate the public because they are down to the last $100bn (£66bn) of the $700bn TARP funds. They think they’re doing this for the greater good of society,” he said, speaking at the Qatar Global Investment Forum.

Mr Patterson said it would be better for the US to bite the bullet as Britain has done, accepting that crippled lenders must be nationalised. “At least the British are not hiding the bail-out,” he said.

MatlinPatterson said private equity and hedge funds were deluding themselves in hoping to go back to business as usual after the trauma of the last 18 months.

“This is not a normal recession and there will be no V-shaped recovery. The crisis has destroyed leveraged companies. We’re going to see a catastrophic increase in the number of LBO’s (leveraged buyouts) going into default because they’re knee-deep in debt and no solution exists since they can’t refinance,” he said.

“Alfa hedge funds have been making their money by gambling with excessive leverage, so the knife that cuts off leverage is going to cut off their heads as well,” he said.

Like many bears, Mr Patterson expects the great crunch to end in deliberate inflation, deemed a lesser evil than outright depression.

“The US government has thrown 29pc of GDP at this crisis compared to 8pc in the early 1930s. The Fed’s balance sheet has risen from $900bn to $2.7 trillion to bail out the system. America has to do it because the only way out is to debase the currency, but that is going to lead to some very high inflation three years down the road,” he said.

Konan Michel Yao, 42, “was taken into custody” while crossing the border from Manitoba province into the western US state of North Dakota on May 5, said a spokeswoman for the Public Health Agency of Canada, which operates the lab.

According to US prosecutor Lynn Jordheim, Yao was detained for carrying unidentified biological materials in vials wrapped in aluminium foil inside a glove and packaged in a plastic bag, along with electrical wires, in the trunk of his car.

Yao said in an affidavit he stole the vials, described as research vectors, from the Winnipeg lab on his last day of work there on January 21.

He told US border guards he was taking them to his new job with the National Institutes of Health at the Biodefense Research Laboratory in Bethesda, Maryland.

US authorities feared their contents could pose a terrorist threat. But tests later showed “they are not hazardous,” said Jordheim.

“This turned out not to be a terrorism-related case,” he said by telephone from North Dakota. “It appears to be exactly as he (Yao) said. However, he still faces possible charges for smuggling the vials into the United States.”

Yao, meanwhile, remains in US custody after waiving his right to bail and preliminary hearings, as he awaits a possible grand jury indictment for smuggling, he said.

A Public Health Agency of Canada spokeswoman told AFP Yao “was working on vaccines for the Ebola virus and HIV, among other things.”

“But he only had access to harmless and non-infectious materials, similar to what you’d find in a hospital or university lab. He did not have access to dangerous materials.”

One of the largest fleets of ships ever gathered idles here just outside one of the world’s busiest ports, marooned by the receding tide of global trade. There may be tentative signs of economic recovery in spots around the globe, but few here.

Hundreds of cargo ships — some up to 300,000 tons, with many weighing more than the entire 130-ship Spanish Armada — seem to perch on top of the water rather than in it, their red rudders and bulbous noses, submerged when the vessels are loaded, sticking a dozen feet out of the water.

So many ships have congregated here — 735, according to AIS Live ship tracking service of Lloyd’s Register-Fairplay in Redhill, Britain — that shipping lines are becoming concerned about near misses and collisions in one of the world’s most congested waterways, the straits that separate Malaysia and Singapore from Indonesia.

The root of the problem lies in an unusually steep slump in global trade, confirmed by trade statistics announced on Tuesday.

China said that its exports nose-dived 22.6 percent in April from a year earlier, while the Philippines said that its exports in March were down 30.9 percent from a year earlier. The United States announced on Tuesday that its exports had declined 2.4 percent in March.

“The March 2009 trade data reiterates the current challenges in our global economy,” said Ron Kirk, the United States trade representative.

More worrisome, despite some positive signs like a Wall Street rally and slower job losses in the United States, is that the current level of trade does not suggest a recovery soon, many in the shipping business say.

“A lot of the orders for the retail season are being placed now, and compared to recent years, they are weak,” said Chris Woodward, the vice president for container services at Ryder System, the big logistics company.

Facing more losses ahead, Sony said it would close three factories in Japan, part of a continuing effort to trim production costs and rebuild a business that has been ravaged by the sharp cutback in consumer spending worldwide.

Sony expects to book a net loss of ¥120 billion, or $1.26 billion, in the business year ending in March 2010, after a loss of ¥98.9 billion in the year that just concluded. That shortfall, while substantial, beat Sony’s forecast of a ¥150 billion loss, partly because of a one-time gain from a change in Japanese tax laws.

Like other Japanese exporters, Sony is reeling from a decline in sales overseas, as well as in Japan, which is mired in its worst recession in decades. A stronger yen, which erodes overseas revenue and inflates production costs at home, has also weighed heavily on its bottom line.

Sales for the 2009 financial year fell 12.9 percent from a year earlier, to ¥7.73 trillion. The slump deepened in the most recent quarter, falling 22 percent to ¥1.52 trillion.

But those factors mask more fundamental problems at the Tokyo-based manufacturer.

A spokeswoman for GM in China did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the reports, which were said to be based on a company recovery plan given to U.S. lawmakers.

GM intends to sell 17,335 made-in-China passenger cars in the U.S. market by 2011, the Shanghai Securities News and other reports said. By 2014 exports would triple to more than 51,000, it said.

The main focus would be on exporting small cars similar to the Chevrolet Spark, the reports said.

If true, GM could end up becoming the first automaker to begin exporting to the U.S. from China: previously announced plans by Chinese manufacturers to crack the U.S. market have so far fizzled.

Most Chinese automakers have been daunted by the challenge of meeting stringent U.S. safety standards. They also face the uphill battle of winning consumer confidence for their unfamiliar brand names.

Brand name recognition is perhaps the least of GM’s problems as it faces a June 1 government-imposed deadline to finish a restructuring plan or follow Chrysler LLC into bankruptcy protection.

Opting to export from China would help the company, now surviving on $15.4 billion in federal loans, to slash production costs and make full use of its huge investments in factories here.

But it would likely raise protests from labor unions it has been seeking to win concessions from as part of its restructuring.

Most are simply not that worried about the new flu, which has spread around the globe, killed more than 60 people and brought the world to the brink of a pandemic, the poll of 1,442 adults found.

Only 36 percent said they got a vaccine against seasonal influenza this year, although virtually the whole population, especially everyone over 50, children, pregnant women and people with chronic conditions, are advised to get the immunization every year.

The World Health Organization estimates that seasonal flu is a factor in up to 500,000 deaths every year — 36,000 in the United States alone.

The poll by Zogby International and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston found that 38 percent not only were not vaccinated, but did not follow recommendations to wash or clean their hands frequently to prevent infection and were not restricting travel to Mexico.

Only 18 percent said the flu, which emerged in March, is a severe threat.

The decision was a blow to some liberals in Obama’s Democratic Party who see the photos as part of a broader effort to investigate Bush-era officials and cleanse America’s image abroad.

Just last month the Obama administration had said it would comply with a court order to release the pictures by May 28, saying legal options for appealing the case had been limited.

But Obama shifted gears after senior military commanders and some members of Congress expressed misgivings about the potential for the photos to generate violence against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.