The Washington Postleads with the government's decision to offer anthrax vaccine—which the FDA has not yet approved—to 3,000 people who may have been exposed to the bacteria. Health officials have decided to offer the vaccine, which will be paired with antibiotics as part of an experimental combo-treatment, because they're concerned that the previously suggested treatment for anthrax exposure (60 days of Cipro and call me in the morning) may not totally clear people of the bacteria. The Los Angeles Timesleads with the Senate's passage of an education overhaul bill that requires increased standardized testing and allocates significantly more federal money for education. The New York Timesand USA Todaylead with the search for Bin Laden. There's not much new on this front. He's still MIA, and he's not the only one. The NYT, citing U.S. and Pakistani officials, reports up high, "Hundreds of Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters have slipped across the Afghan border and evaded the Pakistani Army to disappear into remote tribal areas." LAT says that Afghan commanders believe that Osama himself has crossed the border. The Wall Street Journal's worldwide newsbox is topped with the arrival of some FBI guys in Afghanistan to question members of al-Qaida.

The LAT, citing one U.S. intelligence official, says that last week's report of Bin Laden talking on shortwave radio is probably bunk. Nor was the official particularly optimistic about other reports. "It's like Elvis sightings," he explained.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz warned, "Any country in the world that would knowingly harbor bin Laden would be out of their minds."

Not that Afghanistan has been ruled out. According to Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the American military operation, "it's going to be a while" before Tora Bora is given the all clear.

The LAT says that 15 al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners—"who might have important information," said Wolfowitz—now have a new home: the Marine compound at Kandahar's airport. The Journal says that it's unlikely that these folks will be brought back to the United States for civilian trials, thus raising the possibility that they may be about to learn about the joys of a U.S. military tribunal. 

The NYT fronts a dispatch that reads like an excerpt from the script of an Indiana Jones sequel. The piece, written by Barry Bearak and Michael Gordon, says an Afghan commander "agreed to guide two reporters and a photographer into the remote landscape of Tora Bora. These past weeks, the press has been confined to a distant perch convenient only for gazing at plumes of smoke." So what'd they find out? Well, nothing really. But the piece, especially the second half, is still a great read.   

OK, Bearak and Gordon do note that two of the Afghan militias in Tora Bora nearly came to blows yesterday. "This is what Afghanistan is," explained their guide. "We kill each other."

The papers all report that Yemen went after some tribes who had refused to hand over suspected members of al-Qaida. Twelve people, including some government soldiers, were hurt in the attacks.  

Britain announced that it will start sending peacekeeping troops into Kabul in a few days. The NYT notes that the U.K. is sending in fewer troops than it once planned, "a victory for the Northern Alliance."

The WSJ reports that although Saudi Arabia has called Saudi clerics who are named on the Bin Laden tape "deviants," they're actually "influential" (WSJ's word) and haven't been arrested.