NEW YORK July 18, 2005 (Reuters) - Britain's top intelligence and law enforcement officials concluded less than a month before the London bombings that there was no group with current intent and the capability to attack the U.K., the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing a confidential intelligence report.

The Times said authorities made their conclusion in the wake of a terror threat assessment by the Joint Terrorist Analysis Center, which includes officials from Britain's top intelligence agencies, as well as Customs and the Metropolitan Police.

The assessment, according to the newspaper, prompted the British government to lower its formal threat assessment one level, from "severe defined" to "substantial." Asked to comment on the document, a senior British official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said according to the newspaper, "We do not discuss intelligence assessments."

CAIRO July 19, 2005 (Reuters) -- British authorities are sure that an Egyptian biochemist being questioned in Egypt had no role in the London bombings, a state-owned Egyptian newspaper said today, quoting a senior security official.

"There is complete security cooperation with the British side, which is convinced from the questioning carried out by Egypt, that Elnashar had no role in these explosions," al-Ahram newspaper quoted the security source as saying.

Chemist Has 'No Links' With Al Qaeda

Egyptian biochemist Magdy Mahmoud el-Nashar  

LUTON, England July 18, 2005 (AFP) -- In a Muslim district of Luton, where the four suspected London bombers met on the morning of July 7, all agreed the attacks were wrong, but were quick to point to the Iraq war as an explanation for them. Muslims, most of them originally from Bangladesh and Pakistan, make up 14.5 percent of Luton's 180,000 inhabitants.

Although few people in the neighbourhood voiced extreme views, all had harsh words for US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"Bush and Blair, they are not caring about the people in Iraq, about the innocent people getting killed," said Abdul Mohammed, 45, a Sunni Muslim from Bangladesh who settled in Britain 29 years ago. He felt his religion to be under attack by Western powers. "Since the last 10 years, they are trying to control everything all over the world ... Islam is attacked: in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Palestine," argued the father of four.