Three other letters with anthrax inside have been found, all of them bearing similarities. Letters to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw and the New York Post appear to be photocopies. The third letter went to Daschle, a Democrat from South Dakota. All had block lettering. More than 30,000 Americans are using antibiotics to prevent possible anthrax symptoms, most as a precaution because they are somewhat likely to have had contact with anthrax. The anthrax attacks will cost the United States post office billions of dollars in lost trade and the implementation of a screening and sanitizing system. Losses so far exceed $350 million. 

The American consulate at the Russian city of Yekaterinburg is the latest site to find anthrax. The mail originated in Washington and was part of a regular diplomatic delivery. The news came only hours after it was confirmed that an envelope sent to the US mission in the Pakistani city of Lahore contained anthrax - the third such discovery in Pakistan. On Tuesday, the US embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, confirmed that an envelope sent to its Lahore consulate last week had tested positive for anthrax. The Pakistan news daily, the Daily Jang, confirmed again that it had received anthrax spores in a hand-delivered envelope.

FBI agents say they have built up a psychological and linguistic profile of the culprit. The FBI say he is probably an adult male who may have no more scientific knowledge than a lab technician. His equipment need not have cost more than $2,500 and he could have set it up in his garage, or in his attic. He is, agents believe, a loner, rational and methodical but "lacking the personal skills necessary to confront others".

The United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Mexico made a joint statement, ministers in international cooperation, they say: "Terrorism, particularly bio-terrorism, is an international issue."

Smallpox vaccinations are being considered. In the wake of the anthrax scare in the United States, some scientists say preparations should also be taken against a possible outbreak of smallpox - a feared biological weapon because of its potential speed of spread and fatality rate. The United States is taking no chances and plans to stockpile 300 million doses of smallpox vaccine.

AFGHANISTAN
Pashtun anti-Taliban groups in the south are suspicious of the predominantly ethnic Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance, which took control of Kabul on Tuesday after a lightning advance across the country. Underlining the ethnic rivalries that make building a coherent government so difficult, a group of southern tribal leaders support the return of the exiled former King, Zahir Shah. They warn that the Northern Alliance must not be allowed to take control in Afghanistan. In Kabul, the Northern Alliance now occupy every street corner. Many fear a new reign of ethnic cleansing may begin.

Understanding the Afghans probably possess a war mind may not be especially comforting right now, however, a book by an Afghan fighter is useful for this purpose. Last spring, Ahmed Rashid published "The Taliban" as a way to continue his story about the problems of Afghanistan and the region. One needs to understand, he says. "These are boys, many of them orphans, who grew up without women. They grew up in boarding schools, madrassas. They never saw women. They never had any contact with women. Many of them did not even have female family members. So there's a background of living in a totally all-male society and wanting to recreate that in Afghanistan." He says of Afghanistan, "There have been human losses of an almost holocaust proportion. You have a country that is utterly, utterly devastated. You have an economy that is now totally criminal." As he sees it, "The United States encouraged Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to support the Taliban, certainly right up to their advance on Kabul" on September 26, 1996. NOTE: In the months before the Taliban took power, former US assistant secretary of state for South Asia Robin Raphel waged an intense round of shuttle diplomacy between the powers with possible stakes in oil projects. Another factor in the early US support for the Taliban movement was the belief that they would be able to eradicate the many so-called "terrorist" camps. Over this issue the Taliban fell out with Washington. Later, most diplomatic connections were severed as protests against the Taliban's treatment of women erupted in the United States.

This week, President Bush agreed to cut the nuclear arsenal and there isn't any agreement on anti-ballistic missile (ABM) testing with Russia or anybody else.  Rumsfeld is an advocate for an ABM program. He claims that ABM's will be an insurance against strikes by enemies if we begin testing. Still, the ABM pitch eludes scientific explanations. Missile defense critics argue that missile-tracking tests are scientifically pointless and that the plan is concocted by the Pentagon mainly to bolster its complaint that the ABM treaty is constraining.

The Pentagon is moving ahead with plans for missile defense testing and construction work that could violate the treaty sometime next year, officials said today. Pentagon officials said today they have not scheduled any tests for the rest of this year that were likely to conflict with the treaty's strictures. But the Pentagon has also been developing plans to conduct missile- tracking tests and build a communications system in Alaska sometime next spring or summer.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his wife made a visit to the Bush ranch where the group reportedly had a wonderful visit.

There is irony to that as a candidate, Bush had strongly criticized his predecessor, Clinton for his close relationship with Boris Yeltsin. The US should have a policy towards Russia the country, the Bush campaign argued, not its leaders. President Bush says that he enjoys his growing friendship with President Putin and that he sees it as an opportunity to improve relations between the US and Russia. "The best diplomacy starts with getting to know each other. I knew that President Putin was a man with whom I could work to transform the relationship between our two countries."

Civil Liberties
A growing chorus on the political left and the right is accusing the Bush administration of ignoring civil liberties. The latest focus of the debate is an order signed by President Bush this week that empowers him to order military trials here and abroad for international terrorists and their collaborators and that the FBI questioned 5,000 foreign nationals who recently entered the country; and made visits to hundreds of college campuses to check on the records of foreign students, mostly from Middle Eastern countries; and that foreign business people are being delayed from normal business with the US for background checking.

Economies
The war isn't improving the economy. Why would it? Now, with a reduction of income taxes perhaps the only agreeable solution between the House and Senate, the economy may again flourish (see opinions, archive).

UN Relief
Uzbekistan officials, with United Nations officials have said they hope they will soon be able to move three barges across the Amu Darya each day. This may provide as many as 16,000 tons of flour a month. Uzbekistan bordering Afghanistan in the north, is formerly part of the USSR. The Uzbek border city of Termez is a nearly perfect shipment point for moving supplies to the Afghan people. During the 1980's, the city served as the major logistics center for the Soviet Union's failed occupation of Afghanistan. Much of that military infrastructure is intact. The city is served by rail lines, an international airport and a large working port complete with warehouses, cranes and tugs and barges for moving goods to Afghanistan at a northern city, Hairaton. There are doubts about the availability of Afghan trucks needed to move the goods down the road from Hairaton to Mazar-i-Sharif.

A barge on Wednesday carried 10,000 jackets, 1,333 pairs of boots, 2,000 blankets, 50 tons of wheat flour, and 10,000 collapsible water containers. It unloaded its cargo at the river's southern bank about 11 miles upstream at the port of Hairaton.

Relief offices in Mazar-i- Sharif were largely abandoned in September and October after the terrorist attacks in the United States because of looting and abusive assaults on staff. Taliban soldiers made off with many of the trucks that serve in aid convoys. With no arrangements in place today to move goods farther south, cargo was stored in a warehouse in Hairaton.

Aid organizations say that about three million displaced civilians are living in Afghanistan's northern provinces, including as many as 450,000 in or near Mazar-i-Sharif, the city 40 miles south of the Uzbek border that was liberated from Taliban control last weekend. Richard Conroy, the United Nations coordinator in Uzbekistan, said some of these people are in desperate need of support.

The war in Afghanistan is still keeping needed relief away from some of the most needy. An estimated 400,000 people, mostly children and elderly were near starvation last week and that means that this week the number increased and the medical need is now staggering. Another 4 to 6 million are suffering from lack of food and clean water. Relief workers and shipments are picking up but it will take several weeks to catch up to the need.

The Uzbek government closed the only bridge between the two nations, a long span built by the Soviet Union during the 1980's. The Uzbek border guards have kept it closed since 1997. The Bush administration is working today to get the "Friendship Bridge" opened for truck convoys as soon as next week. Once opened, the bridge would become the main land route this winter for monthly food shipments of up to 20,000 tons.

Barge traffic was repeatedly delayed amid reports of lawlessness and looting in the northern areas and in Mazar-e-Sharif, the main city in northern Afghanistan. The United Nations moved another 220 tons of food to Afghanistan today, part of an effort to increase supplies as winter approaches and thousands of refugees make their way home following the ouster of the Taliban from large swathes of the country.

Britain Failed Relief
British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) says that many of the 6,000 unaccompanied refugee children in the UK are abandoned at places such as train stations. Afghan children who fled to Britain to escape joining the Taliban army are being overlooked and left to fend for themselves. The report was compiled after 33 refugee children from eight war-torn countries, including Afghanistan, Rwanda, Somalia and Yugoslavia were interviewed about their experiences. In August this year, a study by the Refugee Council made similar discoveries.

Ground Deployments
About 100 members of the British Special Boat Service (SBS) arrived at the Bagram airbase near Kabul on Thursday to carry out a fact-finding mission. The troops will begin by hunting for mines and liaising with the Northern Alliance to ensure the whole area is suitable for further flights bringing in both more troops and humanitarian supplies. News of the British ground deployment came as Tony Blair warned the campaign against terrorism was far from over.

With almost two-thirds of Afghanistan now under opposition control, thousands of bin Laden's Arab troops and Taliban fighters were surrounded in the northern city of Kunduz, facing a fight to the death, while others were under siege in the city of Kandahar, the last southern stronghold. Rumsfeld said that high-level Taliban leaders had been captured by opposition Afghan forces and that U.S. officials were planning to interrogate them. He says that Taliban that won't surrender are being killed by American and other anti-Taliban forces in combat.

Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, the recluse, remained defiant, telling the BBC Pashto service that the rapid collapse of his military was part of a big plan including the destruction of the United States.

Eight Western aid workers held for months under threat of possible execution by the Taliban on charges of trying to convert Afghan Muslims to Christianity are freed!

Three U.S. special forces helicopters picked up eight aid workers in a field near Ghanzi, about 50 miles southwest of Kabul, at about 4:40 p.m. EST, Pentagon officials said. They flew from the field to Pakistan. Australians Peter Bunch and Diana Thomas, Americans Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer, and Germans Georg Taubmann, Katrin Jelinek, Margrit Stebner and Silke Durrkopf are free. Finally, good news for the eight aids seems promising after months fearing knowledge that their fates was in the hands of the Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar. His decree is law and death is the penalty that was expected to be decreed. The eight -- four Germans, two Americans and two Australians -- worked for the German-based Shelter Now International (SNI) charity and had spent more than three months in detention.

News of the release prompted hoots of delight at the evangelical, nondenominational Waco, Texas church where Mercer and Curry were members since they attended nearby Baylor University. The 1,000-member church has kept up a 24-hour prayer vigil for the women for weeks.

RELIEF
Four times as much humanitarian food aid is flowing into Afghanistan than was arriving via airdrops at the beginning of the air campaign, says White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. Officials said increasing humanitarian aid and securing its delivery to starving Afghans is a top priority. Cheering Afghans greeted a barge loaded with U.N. aid on the Amu Darya river. The route, closed for years by nervous Uzbek officials, is reopening vital relief from ex-Soviet Uzbekistan.

World Trade
Officials from the 142 countries in the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreed today on a plan for three years of negotiations aimed at lowering barriers to commerce worldwide. An accord commits the WTO's member nations to negotiate agreements by January 1, 2005, to lower tariffs, eliminate agricultural export subsidies, and establish rules concerning the relationship between trade and the environment. The global trading system is governed by extensive rules based on the principle that member nations cannot discriminate against one another's goods and companies without good reason. The WTO has come up against widespread convictions among trade experts that developing countries fare much worse than they should have under globalization, and that they should get a greater share of the benefits. Critics still contend that the latest WTO commitment is vague, and that developing countries will be disappointed that they didn't get the immediate speedup in tariff reductions on textiles and apparel, making progress to develop the plan yet still slow and difficult to chart. India's minister of commerce and industry, Murasoli Maran, profiled fervent advocacy for issues of the developing world and often pressured powerful European Union and US negotiators into special consideration for poorer countries.

Red Cross Liberty Fund
The Red Cross is apologetic, yesterday announcing that 9/11 victims will receive the entire "Liberty Fund" worth $543 million. This after creator of the Liberty Fund, Bernadine Healy resigned in protest in October and the fund was brought to the attention of the American donors this month. Large numbers of donors made telephone and other protests this week that the fund was not to being distributed to victims of 9/11. Top executives at Red Cross caused a controversy saying the Liberty Fund will be mingled with other Red Cross disaster funds and that $200 million would be kept in reserve. Last week, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer threatened legal action to stop the organization from using donated funds for programs other than victim aid. Harold Decker, who took over as chief executive two weeks ago, following the abrupt resignation of Healy. David T. McLaughlin, chairman of the American Red Cross Board of Governors says the organization will change course and work to restore faith of donors and the trust of Americans. $31 million used for other programs -- will be repaid -- from the charity's general accounts. So far, the Red Cross has spent about $137 million to assist those affected by the attacks. This includes emergency gift checks averaging $18,000 to more than 2,300 individuals and families to cover basic living expenses such as rent and utilities, and assistance to an additional 23,000 families that were displaced, injured or unemployed by the attacks. There are plans to distribute an additional $111 million in emergency gift checks, extending support for families to a year from three months. There will be social workers to manage the case files of affected families.

Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, a charity watchdog says the Red Cross acted opportunistic. The organization now reports it will spend $275 million by the end of the year for food, housing and other expenses for families whose relatives were killed or seriously injured in the attacks. In January, the Red Cross will outline how it will spend the remainder of the funds, more than $260 million.

Pursuit of bin Laden and al Qaida
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States bombed a building in Afghanistan where members of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's al Qaida network were gathered, killing a number of people, a US official said. The attack was led by US military jets and a CIA unmanned plane equipped with anti-tank Hellfire missiles.

Pursuit of the al Qaida terrorist network "may still last years." Fleischer said the fall of Kabul does not carry the strategic or military importance that the fall of a nation's capital would have had in previous wars. Remember, here is a tribal society that comes from the southern mountains into Kabul. The Taliban and bin Laden retreated to home base. They have the terrain mapped and the strategy planned. The reinforcements are arriving from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. American officials said Washington was prepared to send troops into the southern caves and mountains in a guerrilla campaign to ferret out bin Laden.

Military action is far from over. Vice President Dick Cheney reminds, "The al Qaida network is a global network. They've got cells all over the world. There is no reason to believe this operation is about to end."

Defense and Nuclear Treaties
Talks began anew yesterday at Bush's ranch between Bush and Russian Putin following  President Bush and President Putin in agreement that United States will reduce our nuclear warheads.  Bush said that the new relationship is based upon trust that doesn't need endless hours of verification of nuclear arms reduction. "I looked the man in the eye and shook his hand, but if we need to write it down I will be glad to do that."

President Bush has US officials working on the details of a new package of major cuts to strategic arsenals, and Putin has hinted this will help Russians to accept changes to the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.

Homeland
House and Senate committee members worked to compromise on aviation security, but failed to agree. Leaders in both the House and Senate vowed to have a deal before Thanksgiving. House Republicans yesterday submitted a plan in which all airport security supervisors and managers would be federal employees, while the screeners would remain private. Senate negotiators rejected that. The Senate made a counteroffer that during a transition period, airports may use both public and private screeners. All airports then would move to an exclusively federal screening system, with the opportunity to later move back to a public-private partnership. That plan isn't satisfying House Republicans.

The Transportation Department's inspector general, Kenneth Mead, told the committee members that less than 10 percent of all baggage is being run through automatic bomb-detection scanners, despite orders to increase use of the machines. If currently available machines were put to full use, he said, airlines could immediately quadruple the amount of bags being checked for bombs. However, this past weekend, Mead said, federal observers found a single airline employee running a bomb scanner for 20 hours straight and another worker thought a scanner was at full capacity, but was only scanning about 14 bags an hour and the machine can do 250 bags per hour. Mead says 125 to 150 bags an hour would be realistic.

Anthrax Update
It still is a problem for sure with more than 32,000 people taking antibiotics and with millions of pieces of mail in lock-down waiting to be irradiated. The contract for irradiating the mail will exceed $2 million. States are beginning to form research and action committees to plan ways to cope with bio-terror in the future. After all, the anthrax threat was on a small scale really. In Washington, investigators now are certain that other mail eluded detection but that anthrax spread by it seemingly did not infect large numbers.

The following steps about what to do if you suspect mail is contaminated with anthrax are provided courtesy of the United States Postal Service.

1. Do not handle the mail piece or package suspected of contamination.
2. Notify your supervisor, who will immediately contact the Inspection Service, local police, safety office or designated person.
3. Make sure that damaged or suspicious packages are isolated and the immediate areas are cordoned off.
4. Ensure that all persons who have touched the mail piece wash their hands with soap and water.
5. Call a postal inspector to report that you've received a parcel in the mail that may contain biological or chemical substances. An inspector will collect the mail, assess the threat situation and coordinate with the FBI.
6. Designated officials will notify local, county and state health departments.
7. Designated officials will notify the state emergency manager.
8. List all persons who have touched the letter and/or envelope. Include contact information. Provide the list to the postal inspector.
9. Place all items worn when in contact with the suspected mail piece in plastic bags and have them available for law enforcement agents.
10. As soon as practical, shower with soap and water.
11. If prescribed medication by medical personnel, take it until otherwise instructed or it runs out.
12. Call the Center for Disease Control Emergency Response at (770) 488-7100 for answers to any questions.

President Bush signed an order that allows the military to set up courts to try foreigners accused in the 9/11 attacks and similar assaults. The military order gives Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld the authority to establish tribunals, White House counsel Al Gonzales told reporters. Gonzales said the order creates an option for bringing to justice those directly responsible for attacks on New York and Washington. The United States has blamed Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network for the suicide plane assaults that killed more than 4,500 people.

Arabs Doubt Evidence
The FBI said bin Laden was behind the attacks in New York and Washington. Saudis insist that the Arabs on board the hijacked planes were just passengers, nothing more. It was an inside job, they say, by American fanatics, or maybe by Israelis. Such beliefs have been compounded by the initial delay in releasing the alleged evidence against bin Laden and by errors of US investigators. The FBI was quick to release a list of alleged hijackers, but some of them turned up alive and well in the Arab world.

Hunting bin Laden
With Kabul and Herat and Jalalabad all taken from the Taliban, the American military now begins a hunt for bin Laden and for Ayman Zawahri. The two top most wanted FBI terrorists were last known to be in Afghanistan. Both were reported on this past weekend when a reporter took a five hour drive from Kabul to meet with bin Laden. 

The anti-Taliban forces took northern Afghanistan from the Taliban including the capital, Kabul. The opposition forces also captured the key western city of Herat and is pursuing retreating Taliban forces in the north-eastern Kunduz province. There are reports that Maulvi Yunus Khalis took control in the eastern city of Jalalabad.

Heavy bombing followed troop movement southward. Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said that if his forces captured Osama bin Laden and his protector, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, they should face trial as war criminals. Abdullah played down the need for any kind of international peacekeeping force in Kabul.

Four eastern provinces of Laghman, Logar, Kunar and Nangahar in Afghanistan have fallen from Taliban hands with the local population in revolt. The are is  populated by a majority of ethnic Pashtun who have made up most of the Taliban recruits since 1997. Air fields in the northern parts of Afghanistan now may become available after repair for humanitarian relief and military re-supply. The United States has no obvious allies in southern Afghanistan equivalent to the Northern Alliance.

Plotting

The rout is too easy! Taliban are fleeing into mountain areas presumably to wage guerrilla warfare and for regrouping. The Taliban's rear guard dismissed the fall of Kabul as a strategic withdrawal. This they openly declare allows Taliban to wage guerrilla war from the mountains of their Kandahar heartland. Taliban supporters gathered in the thousands at the headquarters of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islami, the Party of Islamic Clerics, to lay out strategy. The mass meeting decided to raise money for the Taliban and to send thousands of recruits across the border to join their ranks. They plan to provide sanctuary for the Taliban in tribal areas along the border.

A Kandahar resident contacted by telephone said many Taliban appeared to have left the city. Apparently, here too there is strategic regrouping.

Mullah Mohammad Omar today ordered Taliban troops to stand and fight. According to the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) news agency, Mullah Omar told his troops: "I order you to obey your commanders completely. Do not move here and there.... regroup yourselves. Put up resistance and fight," he said. Mullah Omar made his rallying call to Taliban troops in a radio broadcast in Pashto. He said, "Do not listen to the propaganda by opposition media. I am in Kandahar and have not gone anywhere. This is a fight for Islam." Failure to obey edicts from Mullah Omar have been punishable by the death sentence. Deserters, Omar said, would be "would be like a hen and die in some ditch." See the Thugs for more on Omar.

Last week, Pakistan's President, General Musharraf, warned President Bush not to allow the Northern Alliance to take the capital. Today in Pakistan, the report of entry into Kabul of Northern Alliance forces is pointed at as a betrayal by the United States. Only three days ago, they say, President Bush appeared to be endorsing General Musharraf's call for the Northern Alliance to stay out of Kabul. The Pakistani Government has said that the Northern Alliance must not be allowed to occupy Kabul.

Pakistan's military and intelligence have had close ties to the predominantly Pashtun Taliban in order to ensure a secure western frontier. The ethnic background of groups in Afghanistan tends to predict what politics that they will ally with.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan told journalists that Pakistan wanted to see Kabul de-militarized under the control of the United Nations or a multi-national force under UN auspices. Currently about 7000 Northern Alliance fighters occupy Kabul. A small force of American military are present there. The United Nations outlined a broad-based two-year transitional government and a security force drawn from a variety of nations.

Related News
The main separatist alliance in Indian administered Kashmir, the All-Party Hurriyat Conference, has called for a ceasefire by all groups to pave the way for peace talks.

BBC confirmed that the central Afghan town of Bamiyan was totally destroyed by the Taliban before they fled over the weekend. The statues were priceless pieces of Buddhist heritage.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has ordered that 21 recently arrested members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood organisation must face military trial.

Eight western aid workers held by Afghanistan's Taliban on charges of promoting Christianity were taken to the movement's southern stronghold of Kandahar. The father of an American prisoner, John Mercer had a 20-minute meeting with Taliban diplomats in Islamabad. He said they confirmed that the six women and two men were well but had been taken by retreating Taliban forces from Kabul. Mercer has been seeking his daughter's release since her arrest with the group early in August. The Taliban refused to discuss freeing the humanitarian workers, two Americans, two Australians and four Germans. A trial of the eight aid workers had begun when the military campaign was launched against the Taliban for sheltering Osama bin Laden. The Taliban had rejected earlier appeals by family and governments to release the aid workers, who have denied trying to convert Afghans from Islam. The US government listed the release of the eight as one of the demands on the Taliban. The Taliban chief justice promised a fair trial. Punishments would be decided by Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who was known to be based in Kandahar until the U.S. air strikes began on October 7. The prisoners have been identified as Australians Peter Bunch and Diana Thomas, Americans Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer, and Germans Georg Taubmann, Katrin Jelinek, Margrit Stebner and Silke Durrkopf.

The USA added several Palestinian groups and factions to the State Department list of 'foreign terrorist organizations' facing heightened financial scrutiny after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the PFLP-General Command are all included.

Northern Alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani, who as Afghan president was driven from Kabul by the Taliban in 1996, said he would return to Kabul on Wednesday. Bush said he was aware of reports Northern Alliance fighters had killed prisoners of war as they made their way into the Afghan capital and said the United States would stress to them the importance of respect for human rights.

Many of Afghanistan's Taliban rulers appeared to have slipped away under cover of night, abandoning Kabul. Most are heading south, beginning yesterday and in mass today as vehicles made hasty retreat at dawn today. Small-arms fire erupted in parts of city, apparently from Taliban-forces that had not managed to escape; or had chosen to make a last stand. Witnesses reported looting of government buildings.

Cheering crowds made their way to the edge of the city and surrounded truckloads of soldiers poised to enter. Some young men shaved off the beards mandated by the Taliban. Others put on jeans while music, long banned, blared from loudspeakers. Witnesses said the movement's defense and foreign ministers drove into the city in defiance of pressure from the United States, whose air strikes helped blast a way through Taliban defenses on Monday.

The vehicles of alliance fighters in Kabul were plastered with photographs of their assassinated leader, Ahmad Shah Masood. Masood was murdered by bin Laden suicide bombers on September 9. The whereabouts of FBI most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden, #2 most wanted terrorist, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Mohammad Omar is unclear.

Remaining Kabul residents harbor painful memories of bloody power struggles from the last time the Northern Alliance controlled the city, emerged from their homes to find the Taliban had gone.

Increasing air strikes, cluster bombs and military special ground forces have undoubtedly caused anxiety and fear for the people of Afghanistan. Additionally, U.S. Navy fighter jets have accidentally dropped bombs in neighborhoods that have increased civilian casualties.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, speaking in India, urged the United States and Britain to ensure the rights of civilians were protected. She urged the United States, Britain and all other countries involved in the military campaign in Afghanistan to make it clear that they would not tolerate abuse of civilians and would bring anyone guilty of human rights violations to justice.

An anti-Taliban leader in southwest Afghanistan said his forces had captured Nimruz province, which borders Iran. In the west, an anti-Taliban spokesman said that opposition commander Ismail Khan had entered the ancient city of Herat.

The military is to establish air bases in Tajikistan, the former Soviet republic that borders Afghanistan to the north. A coalition government for Afghanistan and the destruction or capture of bin Laden terrorists still remain on the list of priorities there. The United Nations said it wanted Afghan politicians to meet within days, make interim arrangements for Kabul and provide the nucleus for a broad-based government to replace the Taliban.

Iraq & Kuwait
Two Iraqi defectors, veterans of the country's intelligence service, say they worked in a secret site outside of Baghdad where 80 Kuwaitis captured during the 1991 war were detained in an underground prison. Iraqi forces are believed to have fired mortar rounds that landed near a UN patrol and observation post on the Kuwaiti side of the border. Kuwaiti border police complained that 15 minutes before the mortar firing, two Iraqis were spotted firing several rounds from a Kalashnikov in the direction of the Kuwaiti border. Iraqi dissidents have speculated Saddam may be linked to the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States. If proven, such allegations may result in renewed US attacks on Iraq.

Israel & Palestine Skirmish
Israeli tanks firing machine guns briefly moved into Palestinian territory in the central Gaza Strip after a bomb was detonated near an army patrol. The incident came as the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council asked Israel to withdraw its forces from two Palestinian towns in the West Bank and called on the Palestinians to step up their efforts to thwart violence. 45 people were arrested by Israeli officials with including 16 from the Israeli wanted list. Israel continues to hold areas of the West Bank following the assassination of a Cabinet Minister on October 17.

Saudi anger at the Bush administration may soon prompt statements of enthusiastic support from Washington for a Palestinian state.

Red Cross News
The Red Cross is planning to make refunds available for any that demand one after their announcement last month that money will not all go into relief for victims of the September 11 attacks. More than $500 million had been collected under the fund for victims of 9/11. At least $200 million will not go to the 9/11 victims.

al Qaida Financier in Custody
Liban Hussein, the operator of Barakaat North America Inc., was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Toronto. Investigators believe tens of millions of dollars a year flow overseas through Al-Barakaat. The funds are sent by Somali residents of the United States to relatives, with the network skimming money off for al Qaida through exchange fees, according to US investigators.

Anti-Taliban forces are claiming capture of essential positions as the Taliban is retreating from heavy fire and bombing. The Taliban are leaving Kabul.  Anti-Taliban forces and leaders of Afghanistan's opposition Northern Alliance entered the capital.  Reports from the country pointed to a collapse of Taliban rule.

Hamid Mir, the editor of the Urdu-language Ausaf newspaper, says he held a two-hour interview with bin Laden in the early hours of Thursday morning at a secret location in Afghanistan. Mir told Reuters he was picked up in Kabul Wednesday night, blindfolded, wrapped in a blanket and bundled into the back of a jeep for a bone-jarring five-hour journey to meet Osama bin Laden.

Mir said that when his blindfold was taken off, he found himself in a room, where bin Laden arrived with about a dozen bodyguards and Ayman Zawahri, a top lieutenant in al Qaida (#2 on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list - see Thugs).

In a second account of the interview published Sunday, the newspaper said that when bin Laden was asked whether his al Qaida network was behind the anthrax attacks, "he laughed and said we don't know anything about it."

In the first account bin Laden said he has nuclear and chemical weapons and that he may use these against the US.  .

Post Office May Succumb to Anthrax After All
The US Postal Service Postmaster General John Potter says Congress must bail the service out of over $7 billion related to the anthrax case, for damages and losses from decreased mail volume. Deputy Postmaster General John Nolan said today it will be after Jan. 1 before the post office has a firm handle on how much money it needs.

Front Line Now
The human rights concern was well founded, because one of the key commanders entering Mazar-i-Sharif was Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, renown for human rights abuses when his forces were in city from 1992-97 and fought on the outskirts of Kabul. His followers were accused of rape, torture, murder, theft, thereby paving the way for the Taliban.

During his meeting with Musharraf, Bush announced a $1 billion aid package and the lifting of all the sanctions imposed after Pakistan's nuclear tests. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf (left), whose country helped bring the Taliban to power, has been opposed to the Northern Alliance, also known as the United Front, from taking over Kabul. Bush after meeting Musharraf late on Saturday said Washington had discouraged the alliance from entering Kabul.

Last week, the US sent a message... daisy-cutter bombs destroy anything for about 600 yards. What will be next as the Taliban and bin Laden dig into the mountains of Afghanistan?

Search the Archives for information from the previous weeks including new content every week. Visit the multimedia page and the People and Places section to read more about the latest news analysis and events.