Tours resume at Capitol after anthrax scare

Tours resume at Capitolafter anthrax scare
WASHINGTON -- Neither rain, nor cold, nor fear of anthrax could keep several hundred visitors from the Capitol for the first public tours Saturday in almost two months.
"We're here from a long ways away and I refused to leave without seeing it if I got the opportunity," said Whitey Klassen of Vergas, Minn., making his first visit to Washington. "I just don't like all the barricades, but other than that, it's great."
Despite a cold rain, visitors lined up an hour early for the 30-minute tours, which ran from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. "I'm not worried about anthrax," said Sonja Miethke of Austin, Texas, accompanied by her husband, John. "I'm not here to deliver mail, you know?"
The tours, held daily except Sunday, were suspended after an aide to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle opened a letter containing anthrax Oct. 15. Some buildings in the Capitol complex were closed to decontaminate for anthrax, and one still is shuttered.
Capitol Police said the tours were halted so they could put in place new security checks.
New 3-man crew movesinto space station
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Two American astronauts and their Russian commander moved into the international space station Saturday, settling in for a half-year stay.
The three men arrived aboard space shuttle Endeavour the day before, but did not have time to trade places with the space station crew that has been on board since August.
The new residents' formfitting seat liners for the lifeboat had to be carried over and installed, and their spacesuits tucked away, before they could call space station Alpha home. The swap was completed late Saturday afternoon.
Russian Yuri Onufrienko couldn't wait to take over as space station commander from American Frank Culbertson. The cosmonaut kept peeking through a small window before the hatch finally swung open between the docked spacecraft Friday evening, and he said he was ready to get to work.
Onufrienko will remain on board until May, along with astronauts Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz.
Nobel laureates rally
OSLO, Norway -- Myanmar's military rulers must free democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and release all the Southeast Asian country's political prisoners, many of her fellow Nobel peace laureates declared at a rally here Saturday.
"We are gathered together to salute a giant among women and men," South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu told an audience of several hundred that had gathered in front of the Norwegian Parliament building despite a cold rain.
A satellite connection linked the rally to a similar event in Washington, D.C., at which former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright spoke. Organizers said special events calling for democracy in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, also took place Saturday in dozens of other cities around the world.
Help for Afghan kids
WASHINGTON -- With bake sales, lemonade stands and broken piggy banks, American children have raised more than $1.5 million to help provide warmth and comfort to the children of Afghanistan, President Bush said Saturday as he surveyed boxes of coats, candy, socks and crayons that will be dispatched overseas today.
"We have given the Afghan children something to smile about, because America's children are generous and kind and compassionate," Bush told about 100 workers and children at a New Windsor, Md., warehouse, where a relief agency has been storing materials for the children's campaign.
Bush called the effort "a reminder that we are at war with the Taliban regime, not with the good, innocent people of Afghanistan."
On Oct. 11, the president asked schoolchildren to send $1 each to the White House for a new America's Fund for Afghan Children. Since then, he said on Saturday, children have undertaken "all kinds of drives to raise money."
Combined dispatches