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Fighting terror
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 31, 2003
KABUL, Afghanistan -- U.S. Special Forces and Afghan intelligence agents arrested three men Thursday and seized explosive material, uncovering an alleged plot to bomb U.S. and international targets.
The men were arrested in a pre-dawn operation at an undisclosed location in the Afghan capital, where authorities found makeshift bombmaking equipment and explosives, said Col. Roger King, a spokesman for the U.S. military at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul.
It was not clear which terrorist group, if any, the men were working with.
DEADLINE EXTENDED: The Immigration and Naturalization Service, which is launching a new automated system to track foreign students, has given colleges until Feb. 15 to comply, extending the deadline by two weeks of technical problems.
The INS had set Thursday as the deadline for schools to use the Internet-based Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, designed to keep up-to-date information on foreigners who apply for and receive student visas. Mandated by Congress, the system will track an estimated 1-million foreign students and replace a paper-based monitoring system that's been plagued by problems.
Although INS has authorized more than 3,000 schools to use SEVIS, there were indications that the agency would have trouble meeting its deadline.
Some school officials already using the system complained that it froze for long periods or was "unavailable" to receive data.
LINDH MOVED: John Walker Lindh, 21, the American serving a 20-year sentence for helping the Taliban, has been transferred to the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution in Victorville, Calif.