Northern Alliance stops Taliban prisoners' revolt

Northern Alliance soldiers, with the aid of British and U.S. Special Forces, have quashed a three-day uprising by captured Taliban fighters, according to The New York Times. All of the approximately 400 prisoners are thought to be dead. The turning point in a fight that involved days of heavy artillery shelling occurred yesterday when Northern Alliance troops moved a tank into the area where the last prisoners remained. Once in position, the tank fired on the fort at point-blank range. No one returned fire, the Alliance soldiers said. There were no accurate details of casualties, but several hundred people may have been killed and wounded in the gun battles and American air strikes on the fort to quell the revolt, local Afghan commanders said. About 40 to 50 Northern Alliance soldiers were killed or wounded in the fighting, especially in the airstrikes, said a Northern Alliance commander who was unhappy with what he called reckless American bombing. The prisoners' aim was unclear, but their seizure of the guards' guns and raid of the fort's weapons store was well-coordinated and may have been aided by the presence of two CIA operatives in the fort.

Washington, D.C.

Religious right leader set on dissolving Amtrak

A leader of the religious right, Paul Weyrich, has devoted himself to a much different cause: he's spearheading the effort to eliminate Amtrak. Weyrich was the architect of a recent finding that Amtrak will not achieve financial self-sufficiency by a December 2002 deadline set by Congress. The Amtrak Reform Council's decision forces Amtrak to draft a liquidation plan although only Congress can put it out of business. The council has until February to design a restructured rail passenger system for consideration by Congress. Weyrich and other members are currently circulating ideas that include high-speed trains and focusing on connecting cities rather than long-haul routes. "He is a complete right-wing ideologue except on one issue-passenger rail and transit," Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, a Democratic appointee to the council, told CNN.com. Though Norquist and others believe Amtrak should survive in some form, Weyrich is determined to dismantle the railway. "Amtrak is a fatally flawed institution," he told CNN.com. Since it's inception in 1970, the company has consumed more than $24 billion in subsidies, yet still can't stay solvent.

Worcester, Massachusetts

Cloning of human embryos draws much criticism

Advanced Cell Technology, Inc. (ACT) proclaimed Sunday that they had created human embryos through cloning, drawing criticism from President Bush and lawmakers and raising new ethical questions. ACT, based in Worcester, Mass. explained that the breakthrough in "therapeutic cloning" could lead to advances in fighting a variety of ailments, including Parkinson's disease and diabetes. ACT reinforced that they have no plans or desire to produce a cloned human embryo. "The President has made it clear that he is 100 percent opposed to any type of cloning of human embryos," said a White House spokeswoman at a press conference. "The president supported the House legislation to ban human cloning which passed overwhelmingly." Clonaid, a controversial group that operates a secret lab outside the U.S., said Monday that it had created cloned human embryos before ACT. Clonaid plans to use these embryos to produce a clone. Clonaid, which calls itself a religion and believes extraterrestrial beings created life on Earth, has hinted that a woman could be pregnant with a clone by April, but they will give no timeline for the baby.