America strikes notebook

Afghanistan receives two months of food for 6-million

WASHINGTON -- More than 115,000 tons of food, most of it from the United States, arrived in Afghanistan in December, enough to feed 6-million displaced Afghans for two months.

The food arrived as winter descended on the stricken South Asian country. It was twice the amount that arrived in November, and improvements in distribution by trucks could ease future deliveries and distribution.

On the diplomatic front, meanwhile, the Bush administration took a big step toward formalizing relations with the U.S.-backed, post-Taliban government.

Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, was named charge d'affaires for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, and State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said an ambassador would be named eventually.

FIGHTING VISA FRAUD: The Bush administration is developing a plan to use digitized photos to help cut down on visa fraud at U.S. points of entry, officials said Wednesday.

The new system will help immigration officials deal with impostors using other people's documents and also fight the practice of photo substitution on valid passports, said Russ Bergeron, spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The change involves linking computers used by immigration inspectors to the State Department's database of photographs, he said.

RADIATION DRUG BOUGHT: The federal government recently bought 1.6-million doses of a drug that protects against certain kinds of radioactive fallout and will buy at least 6-million additional doses in the coming year to create a large national stockpile, the Department of Health and Human Services said Wednesday.

Mandela backtracks on war

CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- Nelson Mandela, who was criticized in some quarters here for coming out strongly in support of the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism, said Wednesday that he may have overstated his backing for the war and that his earlier comments may have unintentionally suggested that he was ignoring the conflict's toll on ordinary people.

"Our view may have been one-sided and overstated," said Mandela, a Nobel peace laureate as well as South African's first post-apartheid president. He added, "Such unreserved support for the war in Afghanistan gives the impression that we are insensitive to and uncaring about the suffering inflicted upon the Afghan people and country."

Charity's founder ordered held

DETROIT -- A federal immigration judge Wednesday ordered the founder of a charity accused of funding terrorist activities held indefinitely on a visa violation charge, the man's lawyer said.

Rabih Haddad, 41, was arrested at his Ann Arbor home Dec. 14, the same day federal agents raided the offices of Global Relief Foundation in Illinois, which he helped start.

The U.S. Immigration Court hearing on Haddad's detainment was closed and a court spokesman declined to comment on it.

Tampa back on list at National

WASHINGTON -- More destinations will appear on departure screens at Reagan National Airport, but passengers won't be able to fly to any of them directly this week.

The Department of Transportation approved service to an additional 14 cities, including Tampa, effective Wednesday as the airport continued to restore flights eliminated after the Sept. 11 attacks.

But according to Tom Sullivan of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, there were no immediately scheduled flights to any of those destinations.

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