Intelligence agencies are obtaining more information about the Al Qaeda chemical and biological weapons programs. They made two large purchases of lab equipment and had it shipped to Afghanistan, and also had a manual detailing how to make various chemical and biological agencies using easily obtainable components.

Hazara.net: a site about the Hazara ethnic group in Afghanistan. Hazara Online is also interesting. Hazaras make up about 20% of the population of Afghanistan, and were the ethnic group most persecuted by the Taliban.

Here’s a review of Microsoft’s PowerToys for Windows XP. I really appreciated the PowerToys for Windows 95 back in the dark ages.

Mullah Mohammed Omar, in his own words.

I thought that roving wiretaps were one of the more reasonable provisions of the anti-terrorism bill recently signed into law. Tracey Maclin, a Boston University law professor, clearly articulates the dangers of that provision and explains how it violates the Fourth Amendment in his National Law Journal article, On Amending the Fourth. Here’s an excerpt:

One might argue that a wiretap that follows the person rather than a particular phone better protects privacy than a traditional search warrant because when the government obtains a traditional warrant to monitor the telephones of a particular location, all the conversations that occur at that particular location will be subject to surveillance. Under the new law, the government contends that it will focus only on the conversations of the target.

But if the government can assign the wiretap to the person so that it can gain intelligence from a person who uses multiple telephones or changes cellular phones, then the conversations of all people using those devices will be overheard. For example, if the government suspects that a particular target uses different pay phones at Boston’s Logan Airport, then the government would have the power to wire all the public telephones at Logan Airport and the discretion to decide which conversations to monitor.

Here’s the full text of President Bush’s executive order providing for the trial terrorists in secret military tribunals.

The foreign aid workers who were arrested by the Taliban on August 3 on charges of preaching Christianity were finally rescued yesterday by Afghans who are resisting the Taliban. The US immediately went in with helicopters and spirited them out of the country.

Christopher Hitchens: Ha ha ha to the pacifists

Wagner James Au doesn’t think much of the future of the Xbox, mainly because its intitial lineup of games is uninspiring. The article provides an excellent overview of the current state of game development in the console market, if you’re into that sort of thing.

The Washington Post is reporting that the reward for Osama bin Laden is now up to $25 million. Considering how much the war in Afghanistan costs to wage, that’s probably a bargain for us if somebody turns him over. People in Afghanistan seem to be getting really riled about the presence of various Arabs, Pakistanis, and Chechens fighting for Osama bin Laden, so I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he were turned over by the Afghans.