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Washington and Sanaa, Yemen President Barack Obama said Saturday he authorized the attempt to rescue American Luke Somers in Yemen because the U.S. had information that the American photojournalist's life was in imminent danger.

Shortly before the White House statement, Yemen's national security chief said militants had planned to kill Somers on Saturday. On Thursday, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula posted a video online threatening to kill the American.

"Al Qaeda promised to conduct the execution (of Somers) today so there was an attempt to save them but unfortunately they shot the hostage before or during the attack," al-Ahmadi said at a conference in Manama, Bahrain. "He was freed but unfortunately he was dead."

Authorities said Somers, who was kidnapped in September 2013, and a South African teacher, Pierre Korkie, were killed in the rescue operation that Obama said was conducted by U.S. forces in partnership with Yemen's government.

The president said he "strongly condemns the barbaric murder of Luke Somers at the hands of Al Qaeda terrorists" and reaffirmed that the U.S. "will spare no effort to use all its military, intelligence and diplomatic capabilities to bring Americans home safely, wherever they are located."

Obama said terrorists "who seek to harm out citizens will feel the long arm of American justice."

A mysterious U.S. raid last month had tried to rescue Somers but that he turned out not to be at the site, the Pentagon's spokesman acknowledged Thursday.

Obama cited the captors' video threatening to kill Somers within 72 hours and said "other information also indicated that Luke's life was in imminent danger."

"Based on this assessment, and as soon as there was reliable intelligence and an operational plan, I authorized a rescue attempt yesterday," Obama said in the White House statement.

Secretary of State John Kerry also cited "a compelling indication that Luke's life was in immediate danger" and said "we recommended that the president authorize an attempt to rescue Luke."

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Obama justifies failed rescue of American Luke Somers in Yemen

ATLANTA The first major revisions of US racial profiling rules in over a decade required the African-American men who steer the United States government to check their own civil rights ideals against the demands of national defense.

Coming amidst stormy protests over police profiling in dramatic and deadly use-of-force incidents in New York, Missouri, and Phoenix, the release of the new rules, expectedMonday, is significant.

The new guidelines expand the definition of racial profiling to include religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Most federal agents cant consider any of those factors, as well as race, during criminal investigations or routine immigration cases away from the border.

But as federal officials prepared the new guidelines, three men steeped in civil rights history and tribulations Attorney General Eric Holder, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, and President Obama clashed over its breadth and impact.

Consequently, the rules, to be released only weeks before Holder leaves office, exempt large agencies, including the Transportation Safety Administration, which secures airports, and the Border Patrol, which secures the border, from having to ignore visual traits as objects of suspicion.

According to published reports, Mr. Johnson worried that eliminating profiling altogether could hurt national defense by handcuffing agents trying to infiltrate ethnic populations, including Hispanic and Islamic neighborhoods, more likely to include individuals threatening national security.

As a result, disappointment is already growing among some lawmakers and civil rights groups who say that the new policy expected to be announced as soon asMonday doesn't go far enough, write Brian Bennett and Timothy Phelps in the Los Angeles Times.

To be sure, Attorney General Eric Holder has long seen racial profiling as a civil rights issue.

In comments during a visit to Ferguson, Mo., amid Michael Brown protests, Holder told residents, I am the attorney general of the United States. But I am also a black man. I can remember being stopped on the New Jersey turnpike on two occasions and accused of speeding. Pulled over Let me search your carGo through the trunk of my car, look under the seats and all this kind of stuff. I remember how humiliating that was and how angry I was and the impact it had on me.

Mr. Johnson, too, has a history of interest in civil rights. His Tuskegee Airman uncle was once arrested for trying to integrate an officers club, and Martin Luther King, Jr., once praised an essay by Johnsons grandfather about being black in the Deep South. Johnson is also a graduate of Atlantas historically black Morehouse College, where he once helped plan student marches at the home of Kings widow, Coretta Scott King.

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Obamas black cabinet heads spar over racial profiling ban

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