2 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, December 4, 2001 NATION/WORLD Taliban defends aiortin Kandahar KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Anti-Taliban fighters battled for control of Kandahar's airport yesterday as American bombers pounded suspected hide-outs of Osama bin Laden in the rugged White Mountains near the border with Pakistan. Fighters loyal to former Kandahar governor Gul Agha said they fought their way into the airport compound, but were pushed back by Taliban defenders, according to Agha's brother, Bismillah. Kandahar is the Taliban's last major stronghold. Agha's forces have been advancing on the city from the south, while troops loyal to former deputy for- eign minister Hamid Karzai have been closing in from the north. U.S. Marines camped out about 70 miles south- west of Kandahar have not joined the fight since helicopter gunships attacked a Taliban convoy a week ago. However, a Marine spokesman said three war- ship-based Harrier jets bombed another site in southern Afghanistan after being called in by a for- ward observer. It was unclear if the Harrier strike was linked to the fight for Kandahar. Capt. David Romley said he did not have details of the target. He said the strike was called by some- one other than the U.S. Marines, who turned a desert airfield into a base over a week ago. Elsewhere, American bombers pounded the rugged area south of the city of Jalalabad near Tora Bora, the eastern cave complex in the White Moun- tains that, along with Kandahar, has become a focus of the hunt for bin Laden. Also in Jalalabad late yesterday, four huge explo- sions could be heard from the direction of Farmada Farm, a former bin Laden stronghold seized by anti-Taliban Afghans last month. President Bush launched military operations against Afghanistan on Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden for his alleged role in the Sept. I1 terrorist attacks in the United States. Anti-Taliban officials in Jalalabad have said some U.S. bombs have fallen on wrong areas, killing civilians and opposition fighters. A provincial security chief Mohammed Zeman said yesterday that U.S. warplanes bombed a guest- house in Agom village, 15 miles south of Jalalabad, on Sunday evening. He said seven of his fighters and five civilians were killed. U.S. officials insist they are targeting Taliban and al-Qaida installations and accused the groups of endangering civilians by hiding among them. NEWS IN BRIEF t WASHINGTON: Terrorism warning issued for holidays President Bush urged Americans yesterday to return to a high state of alert for holiday season terrorist strikes after U.S. intelligence officials reported an increase in credible threats. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, standing in for Bush to announce the third government alert since the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings, said the information does not point to a specific target or type of attack, either in the United States or abroad. "The convergence of information suggests, ladies and gentlemen of America, you know, we're at war, be on alert," Ridge told reporters in the White House briefing room. "Now is not the time to back off," Ridge said, echoing a warning he issued the nation's governors in a conference call yesterday. The FBI put 18,000 law enforcement agencies "on the highest alert" because of threats culled from intelligence sources across the globe, he said. In the- last several days, intelligence and law enforcement officials report- ed increased threats. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the threat comes from people with links to al-Qaida, the terrorist net- work headed by Osama bin Laden and suspected in the Sept. 11 attacks that killed almost 3,500. I I C a ME'<%3 :j~i:J> >:: : '::. i':::::j:.:;;Al?::';.:; Ri' :i% f :j:::?::' ;:i::i': n4 R f'D W 1jD Calif teen fought for Taliban The Los Angeles Times Casual dining at its best! REWARD YOURSELF! ° Corner of 1st and Huron St. Downtown AA (734) 623-7400 www.damatos.com ****Detroit Free Press V 9 out of 10 Ann Arbor News A family friend called him a sweet, shy kid from California. But somehow John Phillip Walker Lindh became a Taliban fighter. Just how that happened remained a mystery of profound proportions Sun- day to family and friends. Lindh was among the Taliban prisoners who sur- rendered over the weekend to Northern Alliance forces. The youth spent his formative years attending high school near the family's San Anselmo home, a leafy and wealthy suburb in Marin County across the bay from San Francisco. He came to be Abdul Hamid after his switch at 16 to Islam, a move made with the grudging acceptance of his parents. They supported the conversion out of love and a belief that their son needed to chart his own course, said Bill Jones, a family friend. "It isn't what they would have chosen for him," Jones said. "They sort of shrugged it off. It was an attitude of: This is strange, but we'll support it. They thought it was good he was into spirituality and helping people." Lindh moved to Pakistan to study Islam about two years ago, Jones said. But there was no indication that he had joined the cause of the Taliban, let alone had taken up arms. Though he had kept in fairly regular touch with his family, Lindh suddenly dropped from sight earlier this year, Jones said. "This had been a terrifying time for his family," Jones said. "They hadn't heard from him in six months." Neither his father, Frank Lindh, an attorney, nor his mother, Marilyn Walk- er, could be reached for comment. OENGSWITER, Germnany Factions agree on post-Taliban framework Four Afghan factions agreed early today on a framework for a post-Taliban admin- istration, making speedy progress after the United States pressured the northern alliance to drop obstacles threatening to derail talks on Afghanistan's political future. In a night of hectic diplomacy, White House official Zalmay Khalilzad tele- phoned nQrthern alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani in Kabul, winning a promise to release a long-delayed list of candidates for the interim administra- tion, U.S. envoy James F. Dobbins said. With the list finally on the table, delegations representing the northern alliance, exiles loyal to former King Mohammad Zaher Shah and two smaller exile groups quickly finalized the text of an agreement establishing a 29-member interim gov- erning council, U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said. He said they would haggle over who would sit on the council today. A Western diplomat said that could take another 48 hours. The northern alliance, which has captured Kabul and much of the country from the Taliban with the backing of U.S. forces, has promised to transfer power to the 29-member interim administration once it is formed. (oxygen )T40 chooseto L E TM Can we talk about power? Oxygen invites you to attend Choose To Lead: Powerful Choices A panel discussion that explores women's complex relationship with power and how STAMFORD, Conn. Anthrax discovered at Stamford postal office A 94-year-old woman who mysteri- ously died of anthrax more than a week ago likely was the victim of cross-contaminated mail, state and federal officials said yesterday. Investigators said they have not conclusively determined how Ottilie Lundgren contracted anthrax. But over the past three days, they have found trace amounts of anthrax at a postal distribution facility in Walling- ford and in a piece of mail sent to a house in nearby Seymour. The findings support the theory that Lundgren's mail picked up spores of anthrax from contaminated letters, officials said. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said he believes experts have now found enough evidence to label the Nov. 21 death of Lundgren as a case of cross-contamination. WASHINGTON Age discrimination, a civil rights issue The Supreme Court agreed yester- day to decide whether older people may use a civil rights lawsuit to claim that company layoffs targeted them more heavily than younger workers. The court said it will hear an appeal from fired Florida utility workers who claim that company layoffs fell dispro- portionately on older workers. The case involves a class-action lawsuit filed by former Florida Power employees who were 40 or older when fired as part of company reorganiza- tions in the early 1990s. The workers claim they were fired because the com- pany wanted to change its image and reduce its costs for salaries and pen- sions. More than 70 percent of the laid-off workers were 40 or older, the suit claimed. The justices also refused to inter- fere with a court-ordered housing desegregation plan for Yonkers, N.Y. WASHINGTON New AIDS meds may improve quality of life An on-and-off medication cycle in which AIDS patients take a powerful drug combination for a week and then stop for a week may be able to control HIV, reduce side effects and cut costs in half. Researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases report that HIV infection did not grow worse in a small group of patients put on the alternating medication cycle. "If further studies bear out what we've seen so far, it will mean that you can reduce the cost of therapy by 50 percent," said Mark Dybul, a clinical researcher at NIAID, which is one of the National Institutes of Health. He said the study, which appears today in the Proceedings of the National Acad- emy of Sciences, suggests the approach may lower the toxicities of the drugs enough to give "a dramatic improvement in a patient's quality of life." - Compiled from Daily wire reports. it affects leadership. 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