US may abandon colour-coded terror alerts

US Homeland Security Department stated it may abandon its eight-year-old system of assigning colours to terrorist threat levels (Bloomberg/AP, 24-Nov-2010). The five-tiered threat colour system, developed after September 11, has not been changed since 2006 and has never been lowered to green or blue, the bottom two levels. In its eight years, it has fluctuated between yellow for "elevated" and orange for "high," once reaching red for "severe" in Aug-2006. The threat level was lowered to orange that same month and has remained there.