New York: Authorities are dubious of anthrax-hijacker link

Despite a Florida doctor’s conclusion that he treated one of the Sept. 11 hijackers for cutaneous anthrax, authorities remain doubtful that the hijackers were responsible for a deadly wave of anthrax-laced letters that were spread shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

One of the hijackers, Ahmed Al Haznawi, received treatment last June in Florida for a dark lesion on his leg. The attending doctor did not initially believe that the infection was anthrax, but he made a new diagnosis after investigators discovered the medication the doctor had prescribed in Al Haznawi’s belongings.

The case was first reported in Saturday’s edition of The New York Times.

A law enforcement source involved in the anthrax investigation said Saturday that investigators were not putting much stock in the linkage.

Afghanistan: Schoolgirls return to Afghan classrooms

Girls in bright red dresses and transparent green headscarves took center stage at a ceremony Saturday marking the first day of the school year in Afghanistan, where thousands of girls returned to the classroom for the first time in years.

Afghanistan’s interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai looked on as eager students squirmed in their seats in Amani High School’s auditorium and sang songs about the joys of education. Amani is a boys’ school, but girls enrolled in other schools also attended the ceremony.

Education in Afghanistan has been severely eroded by more than two decades of war and five years of Taliban rule, during which girls over 8 were barred from school and boys mostly were taught about Islam.

Massachusetts: Memorial service honors slain reporter

About 200 people attended a memorial service for slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl on Saturday night at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams.

Many of those in attendance were former colleagues of Pearl’s from his days on small newspapers in the Bay State.

Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan, on Jan. 23 while researching links between Pakistani extremists and Richard C. Reid, who was arrested in December with explosives in his shoe on a flight between Paris and Miami.

In February, a videotape received by the U.S. Consulate in Karachi confirmed Pearl had been murdered. His body has not been recovered.

Pearl worked for newspapers in western Massachusetts after graduating in 1985 from Stanford University. He was 24 when he joined the Berkshire Eagle, a 31,000-circulation daily in Pittsfield. He also worked for the North Adams Transcript and the Springfield Union-News.

Ohio: Hackers can’t penetrate air base’s computers

Hackers operating outside the United States tried unsuccessfully to enter the computer network at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, officials said.

There were 125,000 attempts made early Friday at the base outside Dayton, said Lt. Gen. Richard Reynolds, commander of the Aeronautical Systems Center.

The base is home to the Air Force Materiel Command headquarters, the National Air Intelligence Center, research laboratories, and the program management offices for the B-2 Stealth bomber, F-22 Stealth fighter and other major weapon systems.

It also houses one of the government’s biggest supercomputer centers, the Major Shared Resource Center.