WASHINGTON – The government said Thursday it will go ahead with plans to require travelers from Canada, Mexico and other allied nations to show a passport or other secure document to enter the country. Under the new timeline, all who travel by air or sea from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Bermuda and South and Central America will have to show a passport or one of four other secure documents by Dec. 31, 2006. Travelers crossing land borders, namely from Mexico and Canada, will have to comply with the rules by Dec. 31, 2007.
Pentagon probes Able Danger data
Pentagon officials said Thursday they have found three more people who recall an intelligence chart that identified Sept. 11 mastermind Mohamed Atta as a terrorist one year before the attacks on New York and Washington. But they have been unable to find the chart or other evidence that it existed. Last month, two military officers said a secret unit code-named Able Danger used data mining – searching large amounts of data for patterns – to identify Atta in 2000. One of the officers said three other Sept. 11 hijackers also were identified.
Big anti-war demonstration planned
Organizers are planning what they say will be the largest anti-war demonstration in the nation’s capital since the Iraq war began in March 2003. The ANSWER Coalition and United for Peace and Justice detailed their plans Thursday for the Sept. 24 protest. They plan to bus in people from across the country for a march past the White House. Other major protests are planned that day in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
California: Vote backs gay weddings
The California Senate voted Thursday to allow homosexuals to marry, becoming the first legislative body in the United States to embrace the idea and setting off a scramble for three votes in the Assembly needed for full passage. Almost completely along party lines, the Democrat-controlled Senate approved the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, which would make marriage a civil contract between two individuals rather than a man and a woman.
Missouri: Priest faces 20-year term
A jury in St. Louis on Thursday recommended a 20-year prison sentence for the Rev. Thomas Graham, a Roman Catholic priest convicted of sexually abusing a teenage boy in the rectory of St. Louis’ Old Cathedral in the 1970s. Graham, 71, was convicted of sodomy on Wednesday. It wasn’t clear if he would appeal. His attorneys had argued the statute of limitations had run out on the alleged crimes. But prosecutors cited a 1969 law that has no statute of limitations for “abominable and detestable crimes against nature.”
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