Washington, D.C.: Reward offered in Pearl case

The Bush administration Wednesday put a $5 million bounty on the heads of those responsible for kidnapping and killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

The State Department announced the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction, in any country, of people involved with Pearl’s abduction and death.

Spokesman Richard Boucher said the reward will be advertised in Pakistan. Pearl, the Journal’s South Asia bureau chief, was kidnapped in Karachi on Jan. 23.

Last week, U.S. and Pakistani officials confirmed his death after they received a videotape that showed his execution.

New York City: Temporary memorial OK’d

Twin beacons will shine from Battery Park City in a temporary memorial to those lost at the World Trade Center, with a ceremonial lighting set for March 11, the six-month anniversary of the attacks.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Wednesday endorsed the memorial of lights two 50-foot-square groupings pointing skyward that will form ghost-like images of the felled towers, according to artists’ renderings.

The light memorial will shine for 32 days from a vacant lot near the World Trade Center site.

New Jersey: Charges filed on hijacker IDs

A Newark man has been charged with participating in a fake identification ring that included two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, federal authorities said Wednesday.

The FBI charged Abdel Rahman Omar Tawfiq Alfauru with producing fake identification.

Some of the bogus Virginia identification has been linked to Hani Hanjour, one of the suspected hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11.

Officials did not say when or where Alfauru was arrested. He was ordered held without bail Wednesday, pending transfer to Virginia.

Washington, D.C.: Afghan fund nets $3.7 million

The American Red Cross, still working through a backlog of mail that piled up during the anthrax threats, has collected more than $3.7 million to help children in war-torn Afghanistan.

President Bush announced America’s Fund for Afghan Children at the end of a prime-time White House news conference on Oct. 11. He urged every child in America to contribute a dollar.

Chicago: Doomsday Clock advances

The hands of the Doomsday Clock, a symbolic gauge of the threat of nuclear annihilation, were moved for the first time in nearly four years Wednesday because of the Sept. 11 attacks, increasing tension between India and Pakistan and other threats.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which keeps the clock, set the hands at 11:53, two minutes ahead of the time its had since 1998.

Stephen Schwartz, publisher of the Bulletin, said the board originally defined “midnight” as nuclear war. In recent years, however, it has been redefined as the use of nuclear weapons anywhere on earth, he said.

It was the 17th time the clock has been reset since it debuted in 1947 at the same position it is now set to.