USA
Saying Yasser Arafat has not done enough to halt attacks on Israelis, Vice President Cheney signaled that he's unlikely to meet with the Palestinian leader before Wednesday's Arab League summit in Beirut, Lebanon. "Up to now, [Arafat] has not expended the level of effort we think is warranted," Cheney told NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday. But if and when Arafat meets certain conditions, Cheney said, "Then I'm prepared to go forward with the meeting." US officials want Arafat to renounce terrorism and round up militants, as part of an effort to end weeks of almost constant violence between Palestinians and Israelis.
The government is looking into a reported anthrax link to one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, US officials said. Experts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies reviewed the treatment a Florida doctor gave to hijacker Ahmed Ibrahim al-Haznawi for a skin ailment three months before the attacks, and agreed it may have been the result of anthrax exposure. The FBI said, meanwhile, that despite exhaustive testing, government agencies have found no traces of anthrax anywhere that the hijackers had been. Anthrax-tainted letters killed five people in aftermath of the attacks.
An expanded free-trade zone and democracy were the main topics as President Bush met with Central American leaders in El Salvador Sunday, wrapping up a four-day trip to Latin America. At an earlier stop in Lima, Peru, Bush voiced support for President Alejandro Toledo's efforts to fight terrorism and poverty. The US and Peru "share a common perspective on terrorism: We must stop it," Bush said. A bombing outside the US Embassy in Lima killed nine people last week.
Firefighters in New Mexico were battling three blazes that consumed 11,000 acres in the southern part of the state. Strong winds fanned two fires on the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation, and another was moving away from the city of Alto after burning 30 homes.
Stars attending the Academy Awards had to pass through metal detectors to get into the Kodak Theatre, and airspace over Hollywood was restricted to police helicopters before, during, and after the Sunday night ceremony, held amid unprecedented security. While the big winners weren't known at press time, Sidney Poitier, the first black actor to win an Oscar, and actor-director Robert Redford were to receive honorary awards.
Eileen Farrell, who died Saturday in Park Ridge, N.J., was a soprano renowned not only for opera, but jazz and pop music as well. Farrell (above, in a 1992 photo) was well known from radio and television appearances when she debuted at the San Francisco Opera in 1956 and spent five seasons at New York's Metropolitan Opera. She also was a favorite soloist for the New York Philharmonic.
