USA
Democrats were left in control of the Senate, at least for the start of its lame-duck session, when interim Minnesota appointee Dean Barkley announced he would not caucus with the Republicans. President Bush has said he wants the session to focus on approval of his proposed Homeland Security Department. The issue has been stalled over the amount of flexibility the president would have in hiring, firing, and transferring federal employees.
Police arrested a serial rapist suspect believed to be responsible for 31 attacks in California and Washington state over the past six years. Mark Wayne Rathburn was taken into custody in the Los Angeles suburb of Oxnard after a DNA sample linked him to evidence from 13 of the sexual assaults. Police believe the remaining cases also are the work of Rathburn because of the attacker's modus operandi.
The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether public libraries must block their users from accessing sexually explicit Internet websites. A measure signed by President Clinton two years ago required libraries receiving federal technology funds to use web-filtering software. But a three-judge federal panel later ruled that the Children's Internet Protection Act violates the First Amendment because the filtering programs also block nonpornographic sites.
Augusta National, the exclusive Georgia golf and country club that annually stages the Masters Tournament, will not yield to pressure and allow women into membership in the near future, chairman Hootie Johnson announced. Johnson wrote in an essay in The Wall Street Journal that despite an ongoing and widely publicized campaign by the National Council of Women's Organizations the club would decide "alone, and in private" whether or when to admit women.
A British hacker who broke into dozens of US military networks was expected to be indicted for computer crimes in federal courts in Virginia and New Jersey. Officials were considering whether to seek the extradition of the suspect, whose work was considered professional rather than recreational.
Hundreds of people gathered in the New York Borough of Queens to mark the first anniversary of the crash of American Airlines Flight 587. The Nov. 12, 2001, accident killed all 260 people aboard and five people on the ground. The flight was bound for the Dominican Repulic.
The Monitor's Peter Spotts won one of six "pinnacle of excellence" awards from the American Academy for the Advancement of Science for articles published in 2001. The AAAS called his work "sharply drawn" and "compelling."
