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The man accused of killing a soldier and wounding another outside a military recruiting office in Little Rock, Ark., pleaded not guilty Tuesday.

Prosecutors charged Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, a 23-year-old Muslim convert, with capital murder and 15 counts of engaging in a terrorist act in connection with Monday’s shooting, which left Army Pvt. William Long, 23, dead, and Army Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, 18, injured.

Muhammad was ordered held without bail.

“If there had been more recruits out there at the time he would have killed more of them, or tried to,” prosecutor Larry Jegley said. “It’s my understanding that after his conversion to Islam he decided that he had a bone to pick with the military officers because of what he perceived to be mistreatment of Muslims around the world.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Pat Harris said his office might pursue federal charges.

Muhammad, who was known previously as Carlos Bledsoe, acted alone and was not part of a larger plot, said Cassandra Davis, a spokeswoman for the Little Rock Police Department. She said Muhammad had previously lived in Memphis, Tenn., and Nashville and had recently moved to Little Rock.

Iftikhar Pathan, the president of the Islamic Center of Little Rock, said Muhammad had never worshiped at the center’s mosque. “This man who claims to be a Muslim has never been seen in our Islamic center,” Pathan said.

Long and Ezeagwula had only recently completed basic training at Ft. Benning in Georgia, and had been asked by the Army to return to Arkansas to work in the recruiting office. Neither had seen combat.

Long and Ezeagwula were smoking outside of the Army-Navy Career Center in a shopping center in northwest Little Rock on Monday morning when police said Muhammad pulled up in a black Ford pickup and opened fire with an assault rifle.

Muhammad fired several rounds before fleeing, Davis said. He was stopped 15 minutes later by police and taken into custody. She said police found several guns inside his truck.

Long, who was from Conway, a town 30 minutes north of Little Rock, was pronounced dead shortly after the shooting. He had been scheduled to join a unit at Ft. Bliss, Texas, in two weeks, according to Army Lt. Col. Thomas F. Artis, commander of the Oklahoma City recruiting battalion, which oversees the Little Rock office.

Chip Minty of Oklahoma City says Michael Harris was a geologist in Devon’s Rio de Janeiro office. He started with Devon in 2004 and became a full-time employee in 2006.

Minty says Harris had moved from Houston to Brazil in July.

Anne Harris’ sister, Mary Miley of Lafayette, tells the local newspaper that Anne Harris was originally from Lafayette, and the couple had lived there until 2004. She tells The Advertiser they had been married for 16 years.

The 16-nation euro gained for a fourth day versus the dollar as the Russian government said emerging-market leaders may discuss the idea of a supranational currency. The pound strengthened to $1.65 for the first time since October.

“There’s been a lot of talk out of Russia about a new global currency, and that’s contributing toward this latest bout of dollar weakness,” said Henrik Gullberg, a currency strategist at Deutsche Bank AG in London. “These latest comments are just adding to the general dollar weakness we’ve seen recently.”

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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev may discuss his proposal to create a new world currency when he meets counterparts from Brazil, India and China this month, Natalya Timakova, a spokeswoman for the president, told reporters by phone today. Medvedev first proposed seeking alternatives to the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency in March.

The dollar also declined on speculation “smaller” central banks started today’s selling of the greenback, said Sebastien Galy, a currency strategist at BNP Paribas SA in New York.

“If people believe that there is official pressure behind it, then obviously it puts pressure on euro-dollar on the upside,” Galy said. Galy predicted the 16-nation currency may reach $1.4360 today, a peak last reached in December.

There will be demand for the record amount of debt the U.S. is selling, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in an interview earlier today with state media outlets in China.

China’s ‘Understanding’

As the army mops up Taliban resistance in the Swat valley, where a defence official predicted fighting would be over within days, the focus is shifting to Waziristan and the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud.

But a deadly war of wits is already under way in the region, where tribesmen say the US is using advanced technology and old-fashioned cash to target the enemy.

Over the last 18 months the US has launched more than 50 drone attacks, mostly in south and north Waziristan. US officials claim nine of the top 20 al-Qaida figures have been killed.

That success is reportedly in part thanks to the mysterious electronic devices, dubbed “chips” or “pathrai” (the Pashto word for a metal device), which have become a source of fear, intrigue and fascination.

“Everyone is talking about it,” said Taj Muhammad Wazir, a student from south Waziristan. “People are scared that if a pathrai comes into your house, a drone will attack it.”

According to residents and Taliban propaganda, the CIA pays tribesmen to plant the electronic devices near farmhouses sheltering al-Qaida and Taliban commanders.

Hours or days later, a drone, guided by the signal from the chip, destroys the building with a salvo of missiles. “There are body parts everywhere,” said Wazir, who witnessed the aftermath of a strike.

Until now the drone strikes were the only threat to militants in Waziristan, where the Pakistani army had, in effect, abandoned the fight.

But now, emboldened by a successful campaign to drive militants out of Swat, a region about 80 miles from Islamabad, the army is preparing to regain lost ground in the more remote tribal belt.

It will be a much tougher campaign than in Swat, with the army pitched against a formidable, battle-hardened opponent. Yesterday Taliban fighters ambushed a military position in what could be a prelude to much more intense combat.

For the US military, drones have proved to be an effective weapon against al-Qaida targets, and they are becoming increasingly accurate.

On 1 January a drone-fired missile killed Usama al-Kimi, a Kenyan militant who orchestrated last year’s Marriott hotel bombing in Islamabad, a senior official with Pakistan’s ISI spy agency said.

It is a high-tech assassination operation for one of the world’s most remote areas.

The pilotless aircraft, Predators or more sophisticated Reapers, take off from a base in Baluchistan province.

But they are guided by a joystick-wielding operator half a world away, at a US air force base 35 miles north of Las Vegas.

Barack Obama has approved the drone campaign, which is cheap and limits the danger posed to US troops. But the strikes have many unintended victims. A Pakistani newspaper estimated that 700 people had been killed since 2006, most of them civilians, as a result of drone attacks.

For the tribesmen who plant the microchips and get it wrong, the consequences can be terrible. Last month the Taliban issued a video confession by Habib ur Rehman, 19. “They money was good,” he said in a quavering voice, describing how he was paid 20,000 rupees (£166) to drop microchips hidden in a cigarette wrapper at the home of a target.

The vast pattern appeared in the field last week and experts are claiming it to be the first of its kind in the world.

“I wish to tell the U.S. government: ‘Don’t be complacent and think there isn’t any alternative for China to buy your bills and bonds’,” Yu said in an interview yesterday. “The euro is an alternative. And there are lots of raw materials we can still buy.”

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“China will be shooting themselves in the foot if they push this issue too hard,” said Sean Callow, a senior currency strategist at Westpac Banking Corp. in Sydney. “If they are too alarmist and contribute substantially to a dollar and Treasuries sell off, they are going to feel more pain than just about anybody in the world.”

“The idea that countries don’t go bust is a joke,” said Niall Ferguson, Harvard professor and author of The Ascent of Money.

“The debt trap may be about to spring” he said, “for countries that have created large stimulus packages in order to stimulate their economies.”

His chosen prime candidate to go bust is “Ireland, followed by Italy and Belgium, and UK is not too far behind”.

“You don’t need a TV. You don’t need a radio. You don’t even need a newspaper,” says Mr. Pitts, an aspiring poet in a purple cap and yellow fleece jacket, who says he has been homeless for two years. “But you need the Internet.”

Mr. Pitts’s experience shows how deeply computers and the Internet have permeated society. A few years ago, some people were worrying that a “digital divide” would separate technology haves and have-nots. The poorest lack the means to buy computers and Web access. Still, in America today, even people without street addresses feel compelled to have Internet addresses.

New York City has put 42 computers in five of the nine shelters it operates and plans to wire the other four this year. Roughly half of another 190 shelters in the city offer computer access. The executive director of a San Francisco nonprofit group, Central City Hospitality House, estimates that half the visitors to its new eight-computer drop-in center are homeless; demand for computer time is so great that users are limited to 30 minutes.

Shelter attendants say the number of laptop-toting overnight visitors, while small, is growing. SF Homeless, a two-year-old Internet forum, has 140 members. It posts schedules for public-housing meetings and news from similar groups in New Mexico, Arizona and Connecticut. And it has a blog with online polls about shelter life.