Bush seeks billions more for security

WASHINGTON -- President Bush is expected to seek at least $15-billion in new spending for domestic security needs in his 2003 budget, to fund everything from local police to baggage screening equipment.

The budget may include money for vaccines and items such as communications equipment for hospitals and public health agencies to better coordinate their response to a terrorist attack, congressional aides say.

Homeland security director Tom Ridge told the Washington Post for a story in Saturday's editions that the White House has settled on "substantial increases in spending" for domestic security. The budget request will focus on helping police and health care professionals respond to possible attacks, Ridge said.

BUSH URGES GRATITUDE: President Bush urged Americans on Saturday to spend Christmas "appreciating more than ever the things that matter most: our families, our friends and our faith."

In his weekly radio address, Bush said the entire country shares the grief of those whose loved ones died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and during military action in Afghanistan.

And to those serving in the military campaign in Afghanistan, he said: "We owe them much."

"The year now ending saw a few acts of terrible evil," Bush said. "It also saw many more acts of courage and kindness and love. And these reflect the great hope of Christmas: A light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it."

Security at Army anthrax lab criticized

FREDERICK, Md. -- Security has improved at an Army laboratory that works with anthrax since the deadly microbes were mailed to two senators, but during much of the 1990s, it was not stringent enough to prevent a theft, former scientists at the post said.

One former researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick said nothing would have prevented workers from removing deadly germs from the labs.

"As far as carrying anything out, micro-organisms are small," said Luann Battersby, a biologist who left USAMRIID voluntarily in 1998 after eight years. "The problem would be getting in, not getting out."

Also . . .

VIEWING PLATFORMS AT TRADE CENTER: New York has started building public viewing platforms around the World Trade Center terrorist attack site to give visitors a vantage point. But not everyone agreed the platforms would serve that purpose, since the debris of the leveled trade center is rapidly being cleared away. Four of the 13-foot-high platforms are planned, the New York Times reported Saturday.

SOMALIA STUDIES DETAINEES: Somali authorities have detained nine foreigners while investigators tried to determine Saturday if the detainees have any links to Osama bin Laden's terror network. Mogadishu police Chief Abdi Hassan Awaleh Qeybdid said it was too early to say if the men -- seven Iraqis, an Iraqi Kurd and a Palestinian -- are terrorists.

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