Updated 2:13 PM ET November 3, 2001

By Brian Williams and Sayed Salahuddin

WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden on Saturday angrily broke a four-week-long silence on U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan, one day after the United States revealed the crash of one of its helicopters in Taliban-held territory.

Anti-Taliban forces seeking to capture the key crossroad town of Mazar-i-Sharif reported advances on the city in northern Afghanistan as well as desertion by hundreds of Taliban fighters in the face of the move forward.

In the United States, President Bush called an anthrax scare sweeping the nation, as well as several other countries, ''a second wave of terrorist attacks.''

With no clear victory and winter approaching in Afghanistan, President Bush urged Americans to be patient and vowed to get bin Laden, suspected of masterminding the suicide hijacking attacks that killed almost 4,800 people in the United States.

Bin Laden issued a new videotaped statement -- his first since Oct. 7 when the United States started its attack on Afghanistan -- saying Afghans were not to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks and accusing the United Nations of crimes against Muslims by approving the U.S. bombing.

The world's most wanted man appeared in footage broadcast by the Arabic satellite television channel in his third videotaped statement since the attacks on New York and Washington.

The Saudi-born militant described the United Nations as an instrument of crime against Muslims and said Arab leaders who cooperated with the world body were infidels.

He appeared on the footage wearing traditional headdress and a military camouflage jacket, with an automatic rifle propped at his side against a brown wall or screen behind him.

``Today without any evidence the United Nations is peddling

resolutions in support of America ... against the weak who just emerged from a massive war by the Soviet Union,'' bin Laden said.

As well as his videotaped statements, bin Laden has also issued a letter, urging Pakistani Muslims to defend Islam against what he described as a Christian crusade, according to Qatar's al Jazeera satellite television.

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, which is under U.S. attack for giving shelter to bin Laden, said they had shot down a U.S. helicopter killing up to 50 soldiers and had downed a U.S. plane in a separate attack.

U.S. defense officials said the first onslaught of the harsh Afghan winter apparently downed the helicopter, which was on a special forces mission, and a $3.2 million remote-controlled Predator drone -- an unmanned spy plane -- late on Friday.

They rejected outright the reports of dead. The Pentagon said four of the helicopter's crew were injured but all aboard were rescued and evacuated by another helicopter on the same mission. The injuries were not life threatening.

The Pentagon did not specify the type of helicopter, where in Afghanistan the crash occurred or the kind of bad weather that caused it.

The Taliban said the helicopter was brought down after it was hit by fire in Nawoor district of Ghazni province while it was trying to rescue another aircraft that had crashed in the area.

In Islamabad, the Taliban envoy to Pakistan said the Taliban had brought down a U.S. plane on Saturday.

``It's a very huge plane. We do not know the model,'' ambassador Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef told reporters.

``We believe some bodies may still be in the area. Because of heavy snowing our mujahideen (holy warrior) brothers are finding it hard to find the bodies,'' Zaeef told reporters.

WALLS OF FLAME AND SMOKE

U.S. bombers returned to the skies of Afghanistan on Saturday in the 28th day of a campaign that has thus far relied almost exclusively on aerial bombardments.

Two waves of U.S. aircraft roared over the Afghan capital Kabul and bombed the east of the city near the main road to the front line facing opposition Northern Alliance forces.

There were explosions, similar to those on Friday when Vietnam War-vintage B 52s carpet bombed Taliban-held hills, sending up walls of flame and smoke.

The United States is pounding the Taliban position to clear the way for an opposition advance toward the capital.

An Afghan opposition spokesman said fighters of commander Ata Mohammad were advancing on Mazar-i-Sharif after killing 20 Taliban as they captured ground in Aq Kubruk district, south of the city.

Capturing Mazar-i-Sharif would cut Taliban supply lines to western Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.

Washington's strategy has focused on promoting a broad-based alliance incorporating the Northern Alliance, the majority Pashtun, from which the Taliban draw their support, and other ethnic groups across the impoverished country.

But that is apparently now becoming secondary to the military objective of defeating the Taliban.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters on the first leg of trip to Russia and central Asia the military was moving as fast as possible to oust the Taliban.

``We can't know how long that will take or how it will shake out,'' he said of any future political agreement among the various anti-Taliban groups around the multiethnic

country.

Waiting for that ``unpredictable'' process to be completed ''would be mindless,'' Rumsfeld added.

With the Bush administration under fire for initially sending mixed messages and being slow to protect postal workers after anthrax-laced letters were discovered, the president devoted his entire weekly radio address to the issue for the first time.

``As we learn more about these anthrax attacks, the government will share the confirmed and credible information we have with you,'' he said. ``I'm proud of our citizens' calm and reasoned response to this ongoing terrorist attack.''

The toll of anthrax cases in the United States rose to 17, including four fatalities. No hard evidence has emerged tying the anthrax attacks in the United States to bin Laden but U.S. officials have said they might be linked.

In Pakistan, which is backing U.S. strikes on Afghanistan, a government minister said tests had confirmed that at least one suspicious letter received there contained anthrax spores.

Americans were on high alert on other fronts after warnings of new terror attacks in the coming week and California beefed up security around several bridges, including San Francisco's famed Golden Gate and Bay Bridges in the light of what it called credible threats.

Bush, who was spending the weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat, led a video teleconference with his top aides on Saturday. He and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice also prepared for a busy week during which Bush will meet six world leaders and deliver his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said the Taliban had released French journalist Michel Peyrard who had entered Afghanistan disguised as a woman on Oct. 9 to report on the bombing.

As Islam is a religion of peace that has been "hijacked" by a few zealots, what force is it that is hijacking more men into fanatic action? The Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI) is a powerful organization in Pakistan. Consider that there are perhaps a billion Islamic males in the area of the war on terrorism, that tens of thousands join protests every day. Anti-American protests fueled by JUI vehemence are occurring in East Asia and the Middle East. Hundreds and sometimes thousands continue attempts at crossing over from Pakistan into Afghanistan to join the Taliban, daily.

The US is beginning to pressure the Pakistani government to control the border and to keep men from joining the Taliban. The Taliban caught and executed Abdul Haq an opposition leader who had ability to rally support in Pakistan. Taliban operatives leaked plans to execute up to 25 followers of Hamid Karzai, a supporter of ex-Afghan King Zahir Shah.

Meantime the US military is punishing front lines and closely monitoring activity at the areas near known terrorist hideouts, this in preparation for assaults to ferret out bin Laden and by the opposition alliance. U.S. B-52s carpet-bombed front lines of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban. Opposition commanders Mustafah and Rellozai watched from near the front lines as flames and smoke rise from positions used by the Taliban to shell the Bagram air base. Still, Western and Pakistani military officials and analysts say that air strikes and Afghan opposition forces may be unable to bring down the Taliban without major assistance from US and allied ground forces.

The latest figures show that the US economy is slipping again toward recession. Bush is demanding that Congress pass an economic recovery package by the end of this month. A recession is generally defined by two consecutive quarters of economic contraction.

November 1, 2001
California Gov. Gray Davis said he had received "credible'' reports that three suspension bridges, including San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, are slated for bombing in a rush-hour attack between Friday and next Wednesday. Florida officials say they placed armed soldiers at the state's four seaports, two nuclear power plants, and at airports.

With 103 nuclear reactors and bits of evidence turned up that al-Qaeda terrorists trained in seizing nuclear power plants and causing a meltdown, the plants are on the highest alert with the majority of them receiving government reservists for beefing up security forces. The al-Qaeda published more than 6000 pages of terrorist tactics in an encyclopedia for the jihad (elimination of America and Israel).

The US continues to investigate nuclear and other possible forms for terrorism that are emerging from recent discoveries of large networks of terrorist organizations, many directly tied to the extremist jihad movements (see Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam and the bin Laden profile). Britain, Germany and France are reporting assessment activities as well. Israel is continuing to take action.

In the US there is emerging evidence that extremist domestic organizations may be performing copycat crimes. James Ridgeway reports on a connection (http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0142/ridgeway.php and http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0144/ridgeway.php) to domestic bio-terror in an editorial. There are a large number of groups that preach violence in the US (http://www.milnet.com/milnet/domestic/dtgmain.htm). I've previously reported about a possible Army of God connection to anthrax.

Israel Killed Hamas military wing leader Jamil Jadalah, a member of Izzadin Kassam. Jadalah's is responsible for staging the suicide bombing of Tel Aviv's Dolphinariam disco and for a pizza restaurant bombing. Most of the victims were children and teenagers. Israeli intelligence says he was working on sending out a suicide bomber when he was killed by an Israeli air-to-surface missile. The Boston Globe picked up on Massachusetts area Episcopal clergy and then joining in from a number of clergy of various denominations saying the story of all the oppression that the Palestinians are under doesn't get told.

The Ayatollah Khameini, the Islamic supreme spiritual leader of Iran, is forbidding President Mohammed Khatami from working on any relations with the United States. Khamenei says about the US attack on Afghanistan it marks a campaign against 'all Muslims'. Americans may remember the Ayatollah from past conflicts. News to many is that he often (sometimes daily) leads anti-American protests and hate sessions as chief spiritual leader in Iran.  Iran is developing relations with Russia, and from past reports, we know that Iran is now developing missile and other military buildups.

Scientists will be prominent in telling the American people about bio-terrorism after the Bush administration responded to heavy criticism of its statements about anthrax. Meanwhile, the US will tighten restrictions on hazardous biological agents and this has some researchers nervous by the extent of the clampdown.

Yesterday, the US took a small step toward limits for immigration if a background check turns up an affiliation to any of 46 terrorist organizations that were named for the State Department. For now, this seemingly translates into that immigration concerns will be looked at.

October 31, 2001
This year's Halloween ghosts and goblins can trick or treat by the light of a full moon; not again until 2020. Where should Americans be this Halloween? How about balanced between frightful warnings of a new terrorist actions and injunctions to resume normalcy? The government's own message was, again, mixed: Be wary, but go on with workaday routines. Is the government being forthcoming? Time will tell... but the moving and often missing casualty picture is troubling especially with more news of Afghan civilian casualties.

The al-Qaeda may attempt to use radioactive bombs that have an explosive core that is encased in radioactive material. The CIA had intelligence reports from senior Arab intelligence officials alleging that in October 1998 bin Laden had obtained one or two nuclear suitcase weapons.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Wednesday that Iraq could be a target if evidence was found linking it to specific acts of terrorism but insisted their current campaign was focused solely on Afghanistan.

A Red Cross special fund for helping the victims of the 9/11 attack was just too much money to give to just the victims of the terror attack. Americans sent in $550 million. Red Cross spokesman Mitch Hibbs said, "It takes a lot of money to do a lot of work. We believe very much that we are honoring donor intent." The folks that donated to the Liberty Fund didn't know the Red Cross wasn't going to use the money for the reason it said it was collecting it for.  Neither did the creator of the Liberty Fund, Red Cross Bernadine Healy. She said last week, "I strongly oppose commingling of the monies with other Red Cross disaster funds."  Healy resigned this week in protest.

Chinese fight for the Taliban? 

The American alliance with Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf rest on shaking footing. As leader, Musharraf must contend with many top officials that belong to or sympathize with the little-known but powerful fundamentalist party called Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI). It was the JUI that helped to establish the Taliban. Recently, JUI is working to spark civil war in Pakistan. For more read  The THUGS and about ties to bin Laden.

October 30, 2001
U.S. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge urged U.S. law enforcement agencies and private companies, especially in the energy sector, to be on high alert for possible attacks this week. Ground forces in Afghanistan began close work with the resistance fighters. A ground base is one objective.

A report in the London Times says that Mohamed Atta 'may' have been given a flask of anthrax spores by an Iraqi agent during a meeting between the two in Prague several months before the 9/11 attack.

According to a report in the London Telegraph, if Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf were to lose power, a combined US Special Operations and Israeli commando unit would lose their nuclear warheads. The team is in training to storm Pakistan's nuclear weapons facilities and steal their warheads if the government there should fall. 

Pakistan turned over three Pakistani nuclear scientists to the US. The US wants to investigate their alleged links with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.

October 29, 2001
Attorney General John Ashcroft, warning anew of possible terrorist attacks against the United States or U.S. interests in the coming week said the administration had "credible'' information of a possible future attack but he could not be specific about the type of attack or targets. Special forces are operating on the ground.

US military is already begun equipping troops with "smart" ID cards that will allow them to open secure doors, get cash, buy food – and soon check out weapons and other military hardware. The new cards contain a bar code, circuit chip and magnetic stripe to store personal information about its holder. With it, soldiers can access secure Defense Web sites, log into their computers and digitally encrypt and sign their e-mail.

October 28, 2001
Israel is continuing to charge that the United States is maintaining double standard when condemning Israel's military actions compared to the way we are prosecuting our own war.

Osama bin Laden already has nuclear capabilities. He may strike with for example, a truck bomb like the one used in Oklahoma City. The radioactive material would spread over a large area.

Updated 1:30 PM ET November 2, 2001
By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush on Friday vowed the United States would ultimately get Osama bin Laden and his militant followers in Afghanistan and that the bombing campaign was tightening the net around them.

Bush spoke optimistically about the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan although after nearly four weeks of bombing the Afghan Taliban rulers were as defiant as ever and Saudi exile bin Laden, considered the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks, remained at large.

``We are making progress overseas in Afghanistan. We're slowly but surely tightening the net on the enemy. We're making it harder for the enemy to communicate. We're making it harder for the enemy to protect themselves. We're making it harder for the enemy to hide. And we're going to get him, and them,'' Bush said.

Bush's comments came after a New York Times poll showed on Tuesday that only 28 percent of 1,024 respondents were very confident the United States could capture or kill bin Laden, and only 29 percent were very confident Washington could hold together its international coalition.

Bush and top aides in the last two weeks have stressed how much patience they believe the American people have with the war on terrorism both abroad and the effort to rout out terrorist cells within the United States who are feared to be planning a new attack.

``We're running down every single lead, we're hardening assets, we're on the hunt, we're going to chase 'em down. And the American people fully understand that we're in for a long struggle, and I appreciate the patience of the American people,'' Bush said.

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden with visiting Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, Bush cautioned Americans against expecting an early end to the war and chastised pundits who complain it is taking too long.

``There's some that say, 'Shouldn't this have happened yesterday?''' This is not an instant gratification war. This is a struggle for freedom and liberty,'' he said.

Bush said his offer still stood to stop the bombing if the Taliban handed over bin Laden and his loyalists but doubted at this stage the demand would be met.

``We still have the same objective, and that is for the Taliban to hand over al Qaeda, the leaders to release those who are being detained and to destroy ... terrorist training camps. And they've been given ample times to meet those demands, and now they're paying a price for not having met the demands,'' Bush said.

Bush also ruled out a bombing pause for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, as did national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld earlier in the week.

``The enemy won't rest during Ramadan and neither will we,'' he said. ``We're going to pursue this war until we achieve our objective ... This is not a political campaign. This is a war.''

Updated 5:39 PM ET November 2, 2001

By Glenn Somerville

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States shed a staggering 415,000 jobs in October, the most in two decades, as the full impact of the Sept. 11 attacks ripped into an economy that is probably already in the early stages of recession, a government report on Friday showed.

The Labor Department said job losses last month were the worst since 464,000 were axed in May 1980. They came on top of 213,000 cast away in September and 54,000 in August -- showing a job market that was soft before the attacks and that has crumbled since.

The unemployment rate shot up half a percentage point to 5.4 percent in October from 4.9 percent in September -- the highest in nearly five years, since a matching 5.4 percent rate in December 1996.

Analysts were hard-pressed to find bright spots in the report, as virtually every sector of the economy lost jobs.

Many businesses shut down for a few days after hijackers slammed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and shoppers abandoned malls. Some industries like airlines and tourism are still trying to crawl back to normal operation amid heightened economic uncertainty and consumer anxiety.

IN RECESSION'S GRIP NOW

``We clearly are now in the throes of a nasty recession,'' said economist Bill Cheney of John Hancock Financial Services Inc. in Boston. ``Nothing dampens consumer confidence and spending like job losses, even if you aren't the one losing your job.''

President Bush said shortly after the data came out that there was rising urgency for lawmakers to approve broad-based measures to boost activity. A package is currently working its way through Congress, but progress has been slow amid partisan bickering.

``We need to work together to prevent further loss of jobs by passing an economic stimulus package that in fact will cause the job base to firm up and expand,'' Bush said.

The worse-than-expected report raised concerns that a more severe downturn might lie ahead and boosted chances for another sharp interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve next week.

A Reuters poll of the 24 primary dealers in U.S. government securities -- the biggest Wall Street firms that deal directly with the government -- found that 15 now expect U.S. central bank policymakers to slash the 2.5 percent federal funds rate on overnight bank lending to 2 percent next Tuesday. The remaining nine foresee a smaller quarter-percentage-point cut.

``The recession is getting deeper and will extend well into 2002,'' said economist Sung Won Sohn of Wells Fargo Bank in Minneapolis, but he added there could be a strong rebound in the second half next year because of fresh stimulus spending, reduced tax rates and sharply lower inventories.

``But meantime, government policymakers must put out the immediate fire in front of us in the form of a rising jobless rate and plunging confidence,'' Sohn said, ``That's why the Fed has to cut interest rates another half percentage point next week.''

The U.S. central bank's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee meets on Tuesday. It already has cut rates nine times this year, but the economy was losing steam even before the Sept. 11 attacks, which are widely regarded as having been the straw that broke the record economic expansion's back.

EXPANSION HAS ENDED

Earlier this week, the government reported the nation's gross domestic product, the broadest measure of total economic activity, shrank at a 0.4 percent rate in the third quarter.

White House Economic Adviser Glenn Hubbard told reporters that the likelihood was ``quite high'' that fourth-quarter GDP also would contract. If so, that would fulfill the official definition of a recession, in which national output shrinks for at least six months.

Financial markets were unbowed in the face of the bleak economic data as investors apparently looked past current conditions toward a recovery sometime next year.

The Dow Jones Industrial average added a modest 59.64 points, less than one percent, to close at 9,323.54, while the high tech-laden Nasdaq composite index was down less than one percent to end at 1,745.

The dollar was stable, apparently on the belief that other parts of the global economy may encounter a steeper recession and have more difficulty putting stimulative policies into place than the United States.

The job losses were broad-based in October. Goods-producing companies cut 174,000 people from payrolls, nearly twice the 90,000 who were cut in September.

But service-producing companies engaged in everything from transportation to retail trade chopped a whopping 241,000 people, double the 123,000 who were shed in September.

Despite the spike in the October unemployment rate to 5.4 percent, Sohn noted that this was only half the nearly 11 percent rate hit during the 1981-82 recession -- the steepest downturn in the post-World War Two period.

Nor does the rate approach European unemployment levels. In September, 9.1 percent of the French work force was unemployed and 9 percent of Germans were out of work.

In addition, it was well below the Canadian rate of 7.3 percent last month, reported by the Canadian government on Friday, demonstrating the U.S. economy's durability after a record period of expansion during the 1990s when hundreds of thousands of jobs were created.