The Earlybird: Today's Headlines

Arrests made in New York, black boxes found at Pentagon, Afghanistan expects attack, D.C. security increased, emergency spending doubled, toll of missing and dead nears 5,000, stock markets now in the spotlight:

• Military officials said today that "Marine fighter jets and a U.S. Navy cruiser are being deployed to the Western Pacific island of Guam," the Washington Post reports.
• A spokesman for Afghanistan's Taliban government today told Agence France-Presse that "it expected to be hit by a massive attack by the United States and vowed that it would take revenge."
• "An Afghan radio station said on Thursday the ruling Taliban were ready to hand over Osama bin Laden to an Islamic court if Washington could prove his involvement in terror attacks in the United States," Reuters reports.
• Searchers found the flight data and cockpit voice recorders around 4 a.m. from the hijacked plane that flew into the Pentagon, AP reports. The black boxes "are now in the possession of the FBI, and officials from the National Transportation Safety Board are providing technical assistance."
• The streets around the White House are closed today because of security concerns, Reuters reports. The Washington Post has a list of all the Washington streets that are closed.
• The Capitol was evacuated after a bomb threat Thursday afternoon, AP reports, and Vice President Dick Cheney was relocated to Camp David as "a precautionary measure."
• Reports yesterday that five firefighters had been rescued from the World Trade Center rubble proved untrue, the BBC reports. The account was "a misinterpretation of a less dramatic rescue -- of two people who had been searching the debris several hours earlier and got trapped in an air bubble."

• President Bush will travel to New York City today after he attends a memorial service at Washington's National Cathedral, CNN.com reports. In New York, Bush will offer condolences and thank rescue workers.
• The Bush administration on Thursday began taking steps to "put armed federal agents on at least some commercial airliners," the Dallas Morning News reports.
• Bush proclaimed today a national day of prayer, the Washington Times reports.

• Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., called the measure a "very minimal down payment [on] what will be required and what we will do in the days and weeks ahead," the Washington Post reports.
• The House "overwhelmingly passed a bill on Thursday giving tax relief to the families of those killed" in Tuesday's attacks, Reuters reports.
• According to a GalleryWatch e-mail alert, "House leaders are advising that a Saturday session is possible to debate legislation relating to the War Powers Act."
• Reuters, however, reports that "legislation limiting the companies' liability could come to the floor of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in coming days."

• Senate Intelligence Committee member Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said Thursday that "there's going be a lot of speculation" about CIA Director George J. Tenet's future in the wake of Tuesday's attacks, the Washington Times reports. But Roberts noted that Tenet "does have the... trust of the president, so it's going to be pretty hard for people in Congress to do anything."
• "Tensions are mounting between Congress and the White House over how much information should be given to lawmakers" about the investigation, the Los Angeles Times reports. The "tiff... may stem in part from comments" made by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, shortly after the attacks.
• U.S. News' "Washington Whispers" reports that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other national security officials "were outraged that [Hatch] talked with reporters about intercepted secret information."
• The Boston Herald reports that Reps. Richard Neal and Martin T. Meehan, both D-Mass., "questioned President Bush's leadership style yesterday, cracking the veneer of bipartisan unity Congress has shown in the wake of the twin terrorist attacks."
• The Washington Post reports that at a Thursday confirmation hearing for Gen. Richard B. Myers' nomination to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, senators "grilled" Myers on the slow response of U.S. fighter jets Tuesday.
• Members of Congress "are pushing for more gun-carrying marshals on planes and better pay for baggage screeners," Bloomberg reports.

• The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday endorsed John Negroponte's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Reuters reports. "Senators said the United States needed an ambassador in New York as soon as possible to mobilize international support."
• Reuters reports that Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, "said on Thursday he will drop his opposition to a payment of U.S. back dues to the United Nations."

• Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Thursday "stated in the strongest terms yet that the administration believed that Mr. bin Laden was behind Tuesday's devastating attacks," the New York Times reports.
• Bush on Thursday called the attacks the "first war of the 21st Century," the Dallas Morning News reports. He and congressional leaders prepared for war, and they "made clear the retaliation would be unlike any other in the decades-old battle against terrorism."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday "recommended calling up as many as 50,000 military reservists," the New York Times reports. They would help "support air patrols over New York and Washington" and would be "on alert elsewhere in America."
• Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Thursday that any military action the United States takes would be "sustained and broad and effective," the Houston Chronicle reports.
• "Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov today tried to squelch speculation that a U.S.-led anti-terrorist operation could be launched against Afghanistan from formerly Soviet Central Asia," AP reports.
• "The U.N. Security Council delayed discussion Thursday on lifting five-year-old sanctions on Sudan because of the terrorist attacks on the United States," AP reports.

• The Bush administration is putting "extraordinary pressure" on Pakistan, including asking officials there to "close their border with Afghanistan, stop supplying fuel to the Taliban government there, provide any information on suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden and allow U.S. war planes access to Pakistani air space in the event of a military strike," CNN.com reports.
• "Islamic rebel groups in Pakistan have asked the country's president not to help the United States," UPI reports.
• "Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has promised full cooperation with the United States," CNN.com reports.
• "Afghanistan's Taliban rulers Friday rejected U.S. claim that alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden was the prime suspect in Tuesday's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington," UPI reports.
• Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey told UPI Thursday that he "sees the hand of Iraq behind Tuesday's attacks, and he warned the White House not to shirk the hard realities of possible state sponsorship."

• Ten people were taken into custody at JFK and La Guardia Airports and one was arrested last night, the New York Times reports. At least three of the suspects were removed at gunpoint from a Los Angeles-bound jet, AP reports.
• The men at both airports "carried knives, false identification and open tickets to U.S. destinations dated Tuesday," the Washington Post reports.
• "Some of those detained at Kennedy had tried to board a United Airlines flight to Los Angeles on Tuesday morning around the time that two hijacked jets smashed into and toppled the World Trade Center," the New York Daily News reports.
• At least one of the men "was using a name that had been red-tagged by FBI investigators tracking the terror network," the New York Post reports.
• JFK, LaGuardia and New Jersey's Newark International Airport were all shut down, the Washington Times reports.

• During the last part of former President Bill Clinton's administration, U.S. officials received intelligence on bin Laden's whereabouts, but they rejected a plan for a military strike because of "concerns the information was stale and could result in a miss or civilian casualties," AP reports.
• Government sources told the Washington Post on Thursday that "the CIA has been authorized since 1998 to use covert means to disrupt and preempt terrorist operations planned abroad by Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden under a directive signed by President Bill Clinton and reaffirmed by President Bush this year."
• "Japanese securities regulators are investigating whether Osama bin Laden was involved in futures trading prior to Tuesday's terrorist attacks," Bloomberg reports.
• Some terrorism experts said that "if the Bush administration were to limit its retaliation to only going after Mr. bin Laden or those atop his Al Qaeda organization, that could end up actually strengthening terrorist organizations by further inspiring and inciting their members," the Wall Street Journal reports.

• Agents believe "at least 12 people in South Florida might have been involved in the plot," including "five hijacking suspects," the Miami Herald reports. Most of the Florida suspects "lived like college students and had little or no history of employment," but they could "somehow afford expensive flight training, some of it costing as much as $25,000, and paid for many expenses in cash."
• Three men in Daytona Beach "spewed anti-American sentiments in a bar and talked of impending bloodshed the night before the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington," the New York Post reports.
• In Texas, FBI officials are seeking Moataz Al-Hallak, the former spiritual leader of the Islamic Society of Arlington, for questioning "because of his link to Wadih el Hage, a member of Al-Hallak's former mosque" who was "convicted of conspiring with bin Laden in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa," AP reports.
• "The Boston office of the FBI arrested a known Algerian terrorist who was attending flight school in Massachusetts almost a month before this week's deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon," the Boston Herald reports.
• Federal agents yesterday "swooped down on a hotel at Newark Airport where the hijackers of Flight 93 are believed to have stayed," the Newark Star Ledger reports.
• "Police in Hamburg, Germany, say they have detained a male airport worker and questioned a woman in connection with the terror attacks," and they are seeking a third, CNN.com reports.
• U.S. and Philippine authorities searched a hotel in Manila in connection with Tuesday's attacks, AP reports. "Philippine officials also questioned a Saudi Airlines pilot and refused entry to nine Malaysian men suspected of having undergone terrorist training."

• Late Thursday night, a fire erupted in the damaged portion of the Pentagon, hampering search efforts until it was put out 20 minutes later, AP reports.
• Authorities on Thursday found the flight data recorder recovered from the Boeing 757 jetliner that crashed in southwestern Pennsylvania, one of the jetliner's engines, but the "cockpit voice recorder had not been recovered," the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports.
• "Almost immediately after its discovery at 4:20 p.m.," the black box "was on its way to Washington to be examined by experts at the National Transportation Safety Board," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
• After a pilot on Flight 11 from Boston to New York alerted authorities to the hijacking, two F-15 jets were "dispatched from Otis Air Force Base," but "just before or after the military planes got off the ground" air traffic controllers reported "they lost [sight] of Flight 11's radar signal over Manhattan," the Christian Science Monitor reports.
• Cell phone calls from passengers "suggest that passengers might have tried to overcome the hijackers to keep them from slamming the jet into a Washington landmark," and "interviews today with 10 people who saw the plane in its final five minutes seemed to support the possibility of a cockpit struggle," the New York Times reports.
• "Debris from United Airlines Flight 93 was found six miles from the crash site yesterday, raising the possibility the hijacked plane was shot down," the New York Post reports. FBI Agent Bill Crowley "declined to say whether evidence actually pointed to an explosion before the Boeing 757 crashed."

• In New York, "the toll of missing and confirmed dead headed toward 5,000," AP reports.
• Mayor Rudy Giuliani "said the city had some 30,000 body bags available to hold the pieces taken from the wreckage, and parts of 70 bodies had been recovered," FoxNews.com reports. There are 94 confirmed dead, but 30 or fewer had been identified.
• "A hazardous brew of dust, soot, asbestos and toxic combustion gases will pose a continuing threat to New York City rescue workers long after the flames are extinguished, environmental health experts say," the Dallas Morning News reports.
• CNN.com intends to post photos of people missing after the attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and it is soliciting photos and contact information via e-mail.

• Wall Street plans to reopen Monday after the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq and American Stock Exchange "test their networks and equipment Saturday," USA Today reports.
• "Major securities firms and corporations have reached an extraordinary agreement to prop up prices by buying shares if a flood of sell orders threatens to send the markets into a free fall," the Washington Post reports.
• "Treasury prices skyrocketed in trading Thursday as investors sought out a safe haven following the devastating terrorist attacks earlier in the week," AP reports.
• However, AP reports, share prices slumped across Asia today -- "except in Japan, as worries deepened about the global economy as well as possible military retaliation."
• Standard and Poor's has placed most major airlines' credit ratings on its watch list for possible downgrade, AP reports, while the International Air Transport Association... increased its loss forecast for airlines to $10 billion, from $6 billion," in 2001.
• The Financial Times has produced a special report on the "macroeconomic impact" of the attacks.

• Reagan National Airport will remain closed indefinitely because of its close proximity to key federal buildings, the Washington Post reports.
• "Jet fighters forced down three single-engine propeller planes" yesterday "for violating a flight ban in separate incidents in Maryland, West Virginia, and near President Bush's ranch," the New York Times reports.
• "The skies over virtually every major American city have been patrolled this week by U.S. warplanes," Scripps Howard News Service reports.

• "Shortly after 4 p.m." yesterday, former President Bill Clinton toured the damage in New York and "immediately drew a crowd," Long Island Newsday reports.
• In a speech yesterday, former President George Bush "allowed his paternal instincts to override his geopolitical judgment and suggest that the man in the Oval Office is still a boy in knickers," but he "was quick today to add that in their conversations, his son was not just seeking advice," the New York Times reports.
• Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency reports that Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi on Thursday accused Israel of "trying to exploit the terrorist attacks in the U.S. for purely provocative purposes."
• Israel has launched a military offensive in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that has killed a dozen Palestinians in the last three days, AP reports.
• The New York City mayoral primary was rescheduled Wednesday for Sept. 25, the New York Times reports. Voting machines from Tuesday will be reset, and none of the votes that were cast on that morning will be counted. A runoff, if necessary, will be held on Thursday, Oct. 11.
• Illinois residents have received fund-raising calls from telemarketers claiming to represent the "National Republican Committee" and blaming former President Bill Clinton for this week's terrorist attacks, UPI reports. GOP officials denounced the calls as fraudulent and said "it should go without saying that this is not a time for partisan politics or political activities of any kind."
• A government source said Thursday that the "Bush administration agrees with top officials of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that the two institutions' annual meetings planned for downtown Washington later this month should not take place as scheduled," the Washington Post reports. No formal decision on the meetings has been made.