Other developments in the war on terrorism:

Other developments in the war on terrorism:
HOMELAND SECURITY
The Senate defeated an attempt by Democrats to kill what they called special interests measures in a homeland security bill, bringing a lame-duck Congress close to granting President Bush's demand for a new Cabinet agency to protect Americans from terrorists.
The Senate voted 52-47 to reject an amendment that would have removed from the bill seven provisions that Democrats said were favors to friends of Republicans. The president and his key advisers actively lobbied wavering senators to defeat the amendment, saying its approval could doom passage of the bill this year.
With the amendment out of the way, the Senate was set to finish work on the legislation today, ending five months of contentious debate on how to carry out the most monumental reorganization of the federal government in over half a century.
BIN LADEN TAPE
The deep, unshaken voice calling for more attacks against the United States and its allies broadcast on the al-Jazeera television network last week is a genuine, unedited audiotape made by Osama bin Laden in the past several weeks, U.S. intelligence officials said Monday.
Linguists at the National Security Agency who have been assigned for many years to study bin Laden's voice and analyze tape recordings and intercepts of his suspected conversations have no doubt it is the voice of Al-Qaida's leader. But the quality of the tape, in which bin Laden is believed to be speaking into a telephone that is near a tape recorder's microphone, is not good enough to allow a 100 percent certainty that it is him, a U.S. intelligence official said.
Still, the CIA and NSA assessment is the next best thing to definitive.
WIRETAP POWERS
Attorney General John Ashcroft and the FBI have broad power to wiretap the phones and secretly search the computers and homes of individuals who can be linked to foreign terrorists, a special spy review court ruled Monday.
Proclaiming a major victory in the war on terrorism, Ashcroft said the decision "revolutionizes our ability to investigate and prosecute terrorists" because it permits criminal investigators and intelligence agents to work together and to share information.
Ann Beeson, who heads the American Civil Liberties Union's Technology and Liberty program, said she was "deeply disappointed with the decision, which suggests that this special court exists only to rubber-stamp government applications for intrusive surveillance warrants."
PAKISTAN'S FUNERAL
Thousands of people packed a soccer stadium today for the funeral of Aimal Kasi, a Pakistani man executed last week for the 1993 murders of two CIA employees. Heavily armed police were on hand to ensure peace amid fears of an anti-American backlash.
As Kasi's body, draped in green cloth and sprinkled with flower petals, was brought into the stadium, an Islamic cleric began reciting verses from the Koran. About 20,000 people were on hand, and hundreds more were arriving by the minute.
"Aimal Kasi was martyred by the imperialist America," said the cleric, Hussain Ahmed Sherodi. "Aimal Kasi's martyrdom has united Muslims against the United States."
Source: Combined dispatches