New York City

Reporters take knives onto 14 airline flights

Reporters investigating airport security were able to smuggle small knives and pepper spray through checkpoints at 11 U.S. airports during the Labor Day weekend, the Daily News reported Wednesday.

The reporters carried utility knives, rubber-handled razor knives, a pocket knife, a corkscrew, razor blades and pepper spray through every airport security checkpoint they encountered, the newspaper said.

The Daily News said guards X-rayed and hand-searched its reporters’ bags, asked them to remove their shoes and checked photo identifications, but did not find the banned items.

The airports included the four at which the terrorists boarded flights on Sept. 11 last year: Newark International, Boston’s Logan International, Washington Dulles International and Portland International Jetport in Maine, the News said. The other airports were New York’s La Guardia and Kennedy airports, Chicago’s O’Hare, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Santa Barbara, Calif.

Gaza Strip

Palestinian exile condemned

Israel expelled two Palestinians from the West Bank, driving them Wednesday blindfolded into the Gaza Strip and leaving them at a deserted fig orchard the first time Israel has forced relatives of militants to leave their home areas.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat condemned the court-sanctioned expulsions as a “crime against humanity that violates all human and international laws.”

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan echoed Arafat’s assessment.

“Such transfers are strictly prohibited by international humanitarian law and could have very serious political and security implications,” said Annan spokesman Fred Eckhard.

Washington, D.C.

Anti-war activists plan march

Led by former Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark, anti-war activists said they would march on Washington next month in opposition to an attack on Iraq.

The Washington demonstration and a parallel protest in San Francisco are scheduled for Oct. 26. They are being led by International Answer, a group that staged a pro-Palestinian protest in Washington last April that attracted thousands of demonstrators.

Clark, U.S. attorney general in the Johnson administration, has been a longtime critic of U.S. policy toward Iraq, including opposition to the Persian Gulf War. Recently, he helped former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic fight war-crimes charges.

Florida

Tropical storm downgraded

Tropical Storm Edouard was downgraded to a depression late Wednesday as it made landfall near Daytona Beach, causing forecasters to cancel warnings and watches.

The storm’s maximum wind speed dropped to about 35 mph, below the 39 mph threshold to be considered a tropical storm, said forecaster Richard Pasch at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

At 10 p.m. CDT, Edouard’s center was about 20 miles west of Daytona Beach, moving west-southwest at 6 mph. The storm was expected to dump 2 to 4 inches of rain along its path, Pasch said.