USA
President Bush was to announce hundreds of millions of dollars in additional aid to Pakistan as early as this week, helping a crucial US ally in the military strikes on Afghanistan. New grants could total up to $500 million and likely would go to helping Pakistan with costs incurred since the strikes, including accommodating a growing number of Afghan refugees.
Tests showed traces of anthrax spores were present in the mail center for the Supreme Court and in the offices of Reps. John Baldacci (D) of Maine, Rush Holt (D) of New Jersey, and Mike Pence (R) of Indiana in the Longworth office building, bringing the total number of locations exposed on Capitol Hill to 11. Anthrax first appeared on the Hill in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. Thousands of postal and Capitol workers were being treated with antibiotics as a precaution.
Investigators were probing whether homegrown extremists, rather than international terrorists, are behind the anthrax attacks. Authorities, however, were not ruling out terrorism. Meanwhile, Postal Service officials signed a $40 million contract to buy electron-beam devices that would sanitize mail. Sixty-eight tons of mail from the Capitol were sent to a Lima, Ohio, facility to be decontaminated.
The Central Intelligence Agency is considering missions aimed at killing people the US designates as "terrorists," The Washington Post reported. The tactic was abandoned in 1970s. The agency said it has the authority for covert, "targeted killing" missions based on classified memos written by the Bush and Clinton administrations, the Post said. President Bush believes the missions wouldn't violate previous executive orders banning assassination.
NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft took dips into the Martian atmosphere so it could arrive in position to map the planet's surface. The probe began Friday a process known as aerobraking, passing within 98 miles of the Martian surface and entering the atmosphere for seven minutes, officials said. The passes ultimately should bring Odyssey to within 60 miles of Mars. Its mission is also to seek out frozen water deposits.
The president of the US Olympic Committee named New York, Houston, San Francisco, and Washington as finalists vying for the 2012 Summer Games. The USOC plans to narrow that list to one next November. The International Olympic Committee is scheduled to award the 2012 Summer Games in 2005.
Thousands of people flocked to the site where the World Trade Center's towers once stood to remember loved ones still missing under tons of rubble after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The memorial service for family members of some 4,500 victims was only the second time recovery efforts were halted since the attacks.
