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Former FEMA chief to start consulting enterprise

DENVER - Former FEMA director Michael Brown, heavily criticized for his agency's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm to help clients avoid the sort of errors that cost him his job.

"If I can help people focus on preparedness, how to be better prepared in their homes and better prepared in their businesses - because that goes straight to the bottom line - then I hope I can help the country in some way," Brown told the Rocky Mountain News.

Brown said officials need to "take inventory" of what's going on in a disaster to be able to answer questions to avoid appearing unaware of how serious a situation is.

In the aftermath of the hurricane, Brown was criticized for his lack of formal emergency management experience.

Brown admits that while he was head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency mistakes were made in the response to Katrina. He also said he had been planning to quit before the hurricane hit.

"Hurricane Katrina showed how bad disasters can be, and there's an incredible need for individuals and businesses to understand how important preparedness is," he said.

Brown said companies already have expressed interested in his consulting business, Michael D. Brown LLC. He plans to run it from the Boulder, Colo., area, where he lived before joining the Bush administration in 2001.

NEW YORK - A Pakistani man who said he told investigators "what I thought they wanted to hear" when he confessed to helping an al-Qaida operative sneak into the United States to carry out a chemical attack has been convicted of terrorism charges.

A federal jury deliberated about five hours before finding Uzair Paracha, 25, guilty of providing material support to terrorists and of other related charges. He could face up to 75 years in prison.

Paracha, 25, testified that the FBI pressured him into confessing that he tried to help alleged al-Qaida member Majid Khan get fake travel documents.

After his detention in 2003, Paracha told agents that Khan had tried to recruit him to al-Qaida and made clear that he wanted to come to the United States as part of a plot to attack Americans.

Paracha told the agents he cooperated because Khan and others related to the terrorist network had promised to invest $200,000 in one of the family's businesses.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Karl Metzner told the jury Paracha wanted to help Khan and "did so knowing that a terrorist was coming here for one purpose: to kill Americans." The government also alleged he knew Khan was planning to attack the United States.

Paracha grew up in Pakistan, but has lived off and on for many years in New York.