Afghanistan: Democrat calls security top need in Afghanistan
Calling Afghanistan "the other end of Ground Zero," U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden said Saturday that basic security supersedes every other concern in reconstructing the nation and stressed the need for a powerful international peacekeeping force.
Biden, a Delaware Democrat who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, met Saturday with interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai.
Biden said that people watching Afghanistan should be mindful that all other endeavors from physical rebuilding to repatriation of refugees and education cannot be achieved until people feel safe.
He said a show of force by the world in the form of the multinational peacekeeping force that is being deployed in Afghanistan is the key to establishing security.
WASHINGTON: FAA plan for cockpit doors draws some complaints
The Federal Aviation Administration issued new standards on Friday to strengthen airliner cockpit doors, but some critics in aviation security complained they were insufficient.
The FAA rules call for making doors harder to bash in or shoot open, even at point-blank range. And the rules also call for building in resistance to shrapnel from a grenade. But critics said the standards do not fully address a possible attack using plastic explosives.
Airlines will have until April, 2003, to install the new hardened doors on some 6,000 planes.
The cost to the airline industry, including increased fuel consumption from heavier doors, could be as much as $120 million over 10 years.
Malaysia: Two more arrests made in suspected terror plots
The investigation into terror groups in Southeast Asia widened Saturday as Malaysia announced the arrests of two more suspected militants tied to al-Qaida and linked Malaysian extremists to a cell in Singapore that plotted to bomb Western embassies.
The government of Singapore said Saturday that more al-Qaida members were likely still at-large, even after the arrest of 30 suspected militants so far in the city-state and neighboring Malaysia.
Malaysian officials on Saturday said two men had been arrested in the past few days for alleged membership of an Islamic militant group called the Kumpulan Mujahiddin Malaysia. The arrests brought to 15 the number of alleged members of the group detained since Dec. 9.
Afghanistan: Declaration extends rights to women in Afghanistan
Afghanistan's interim prime minister, Hamid Karzai, unexpectedly signed a document Saturday that demands basic human rights for Afghan women, long oppressed under the puritanical Taliban.
The document states that the women of Afghanistan are entitled to: "equality between men and women, equal protection under the law, institutional education in all disciplines, freedom of movement, freedom of speech and political participation and the right to wear or not wear the burqa or scarf."
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