USA
Attorney General Ashcroft unveiled a sweeping restructuring of the Justice Department to better position FBI and immigration agents to combat terrorism. Ashcroft called his five-year plan a "wartime reorganization" and said it would shift 10 percent of jobs in Washington headquarters to field offices. He said he was restructuring FBI counterterrorism efforts to better ensure prevention of attacks and ordered law enforcement to share more intelligence. (Editorial, page 10)
A presidential commission was to recommend that three major Pentagon intelligence agencies be shifted to the CIA, a move that would represent the largest shake-up in the intelligence community in decades, The Washington Post reported. The plan aims to reduce rivalries and consolidate programs. Agencies that would be transferred include the National Reconnaissance Office, which develops intelligence satellite systems, the National Security Agency, and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency.
Almost two months after the terrorist attacks, President Bush was to give a major update on the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan, but with a heavy emphasis on the war against domestic terrorism. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, he planned to say that the government is doing all it can to thwart future attacks. Bush has said he doesn't know yet who sent at least three anthrax-tainted letters that have caused four deaths.
The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether administrators of untroubled schools should have the same authority to test students for drug use as do schools with serious narcotics problems. The high court said it will reconsider the subject of screening in response to conflicting rulings over how far educators can go in keeping classrooms drug-free. The justices upheld testing of athletes in 1995 in an Oregon school district, where drug-users were blamed for discipline problems. At the time, however, the court stopped short of endorsing far-reaching drug testing.
The Postal Service told lawmakers it needs $5 billion in emergency funding to cover lost revenues caused by the Sept. 11 attacks and anthrax-tainted letters that appeared last month. Postmaster General John Potter told a Senate subcommittee those events had resulted in unanticipated costs, estimated as high as $7 billion for damages, cleanup of anthrax-tainted equipment, purchasing safety devices, and lower mail volume.
A California appeals court upheld a $26.5 million jury award against cigarettemaker Philip Morris to a Los Angeles woman with lung disease and a history of smoking. It was the state's first such award of damages for a smoking-related illness. Philip Morris challenged the ruling, arguing a 1998 law allowing smokers to sue doesn't apply retroactively. The state Supreme Court plans to weigh the retro-activity argument in several smoking-related cases.