TAMPA, Fla. -- President Bush on Saturday signed into law changes at the FBI that include expanding the authority of the Justice Department's inspector general to investigate the bureau's agents. The measures are part of a Justice Department reauthorization bill passed easily by Congress. The bill makes clear that the Justice inspector general can investigate the FBI without first getting permission from the attorney general or his deputy. Attorney General John Ashcroft already had given the inspector general that power, but lawmakers wanted to prevent a future attorney general from changing that policy. [continues 360 words]
WASHINGTON -- Drug abuse in America was essentially unchanged last year, the government says. About 6 percent of those over 12 years old -- or 14 million Americans -- were illegal drug users in 2000, according to an annual survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services. The findings were not significantly different from 1999, either in the overall percentage of drug users or in the use of any of the major illegal drugs. [continues 270 words]
WASHINGTON (AP) - Drug abuse in America was essentially unchanged last year, the government says. About 6 percent of those over 12 years old - or 14 million Americans - were illegal drug users in 2000, according to an annual survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services. The findings were not significantly different from 1999, either in the overall percentage of drug users or in the use of any of the major illegal drugs. [continues 270 words]
WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of adults behind bars, on parole or on probation reached a record 6.47 million in 2000 - or one in 32 American adults, the government reported Sunday. On the positive side, the percentage increase from 1999 was half the average annual rate since 1990. Jails and prisons held 30 percent of the adults in the corrections system, or 1,933,503 million. People on probation accounted for 59 percent of the total, or 3,839,532 million. An additional 725,527 adults were on parole, a period of supervision following release from prison. [continues 430 words]
Black Women Targets Most Often On Flights WASHINGTON - U.S. Customs Service officials ordered black American women returning home from overseas to remove their clothes or undergo X-rays much more often than other passengers, even though their searches were less likely to reveal illegal hidden drugs, a report says. Only a fraction of 1 percent of the 71.5 million passengers were singled out for searches as they entered the United States on international flights in fiscal year 1998. And the vast majority of those 52,455 passengers were subjected to simple pat-downs, according to the report by the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, obtained by The Associated Press. [continues 368 words]
