War's first casualty honored [AP photo] The master sergeant was killed in an accident while building an airstrip. Community mourns 2 Rangers killed FORT BENNING, Ga. -- Earl Brannon, who specializes in giving the Army Rangers their trademark "high-and-tight" haircuts, gets a little choked up when he thinks of the dangers they're now facing in far-off Afghanistan.

Two D.C.-area workers die of symptoms consistent with anthrax
WASHINGTON -- Two District of Columbia postal workers have died of what appears to be anthrax and two others have contracted the most serious form of the disease, officials said Monday, making the city's principal mail-processing facility on Brentwood Road the newest epicenter of the letter-borne anthrax terrorism.

News angers D.C. postal workers
WASHINGTON -- The anthrax scare that shut down much of Capitol Hill last week is now reverberating in the other Capitol Hill -- the neighborhood around the congressional complex where average people are trying to live their lives in the shadow of a major terrorist target.

Women get a second chance at education
QUETTA, Pakistan -- Off a dusty, clamorous street, in a small room bare except for a lopsided chalkboard in the corner and a woven mat on the floor, a dozen female voices rise in a hesitant chorus: "The ... snow ... is ... melting."

Health officials: Bioterror plan inadequate
ATLANTA -- Public health officials from around the country Monday criticized as inadequate the Bush administration's proposal for improving the nation's ability to respond to bioterrorism.

Postal Service aiming to 'sanitize' mail
The post office increases security and will ask Congress for financial help in dealing with anthrax.

U.S. pummels Taliban forces from the air
BAGRAM, Afghanistan -- U.S. warplanes attacked front-line Taliban positions in northern Afghanistan on Monday, pursuing a strategy that Pentagon officials said was aimed at helping Northern Alliance rebels advance toward key cities.

War's disparate voices heard at the border
CHAMAN, Pakistan -- A sea of Afghans, wearing turbans or skullcaps or covered head to toe, waited to enter Pakistan at a run-down desert crossing. Behind them, trucks stuffed with smuggled goods, mattresses, personal belongings and possibly even heroin stretched into the dusty horizon.

Medicine sought for vaccine's effects
WASHINGTON -- While planning to manufacture enough smallpox vaccine for every American, the government is hunting the medication necessary to treat severe, even life-threatening, side effects from the vaccine.

America strikes: notebook
Investigation looking at two Saudi men