After meetings Oct. 14 with officials of the Office of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the intelligence community, the Bush administration kept the nationwide alert level at yellow - meaning "significant risk" - but are giving "increased scrutiny" to raising the alert to orange - meaning a high risk, AP reported.

Among the reasons: An apparent suicide boat rips a hole in an oil tanker off Yemen; a U.S. Marine is gunned down in Kuwait; a bomb kills hundreds of nightclub patrons in Bali; and Osama bin Laden's top deputy speaks out for the first time in almost a year, prompting warnings to Americans around the world.

U.S. counterterrorism officials say it's too soon to tell whether these events, all believed connected to bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network in some fashion, are also linked to each other.