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Dublin-born charity worker Margaret Hassan has lived in Iraq for 30 years, and began working for Care International soon after it began operations there in 1991.
In her 60s, she is now head of the charity’s operations in the country.
Married to an Iraqi, Mrs Hassan has joint British and Iraqi nationality.
Her friend Felicity Arbuthnot, a film-maker who has travelled to Iraq to document Mrs Hassan’s work, described her as "an extraordinary woman".
"She is one of those slender people (…)

Gunmen seized the head of CARE International’s operations in Iraq a woman who has worked on behalf of Iraqis for three decades as the British government on Tuesday weighed a politically volatile American request to transfer soldiers to dangerous areas near the capital.
Elsewhere Tuesday, a mortar attack killed at least four Iraqi National Guard soldiers and wounded 80 at a base north of Baghdad. An American contractor also died when mortar shells crashed onto a U.S. base in the Iraqi (…)

Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy October 2004
An Open Letter to the American People:
We, a nonpartisan group of foreign affairs specialists, have joined together to call urgently for a change of course in American foreign and national security policy. We judge that the current American policy centered around the war in Iraq is the most misguided one since the Vietnam period, one which harms the cause of the struggle against extreme Islamist terrorists. One result has been (…)

California Pumps Up Stem Cells (Business Monday)
http://go.hotwired.com/news/business/0,1367,65394,00.html/wn_ascii
Gov. Schwarzenegger takes a political risk and endorses a $3 billion
California bond measure that would fund embryonic stem-cell research.
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From Wired News
http://www.wired.com/
E-Voting Still a Florida Bugaboo
(Machine Politics Monday)
http://go.hotwired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65388,00.html/wn_ascii (…)

by ALI AKBAR DAREINI
TEHRAN, Iran - The head of Iran’s security council said Tuesday that the re-election of President Bush was in Tehran’s best interests, despite the administration’s axis of evil label, accusations that Iran harbors al-Qaida terrorists and threats of sanctions over the country’s nuclear ambitions.
Historically, Democrats have harmed Iran more than Republicans, said Hasan Rowhani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran’s top security decision-making body. (…)

By Robert Scheer The Los Angeles Times
Tuesday 19 October 2004 The agency is withholding a damning report that points at senior officials.
It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general’s office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago. (…)

‘Third World’ Election
by Manuel Valenzuela
As much as America and the world wish to believe Florida will not be rigged with electoral fraud this November, the sad truth is that all the mechanisms needed to steal the state in favor of George Bush are already firmly entrenched. Thanks to Jeb Bush, Jim Crow manipulator of mandates, corrupt fraudster, decimator of democracy and brother of the president, and the Republican Party, which in essence controls the logistics of and the keys to (…)

by Jason Leopold
Sinclair Broadcasting Group has tried to influence the outcome of elections long before the media company became a lightning rod for criticism due to its decision to air a controversial documentary ten days before the Nov. 2 election critical of Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry’s activities during the Vietnam War.
Two years ago, Duncan Smith, vice president of Sinclair, gave then Maryland GOP gubernatorial candidate Robert Ehrlich extensive use of a luxury (…)

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
Nearly 1.7 million U.S. veterans had no health care coverage in 2003 — no access to private insurance, to Medicare or Medicaid or to the Veterans Affairs health program, health care advocates said on Tuesday.
Many had seen combat in Vietnam or the Gulf Wars and most were employed, the Physicians for a National Health Program and Public Citizen said in a joint report.
"The number of uninsured veterans has increased by 235,159 since 2000, (…)

by Jane Stillwater
Remember that Twilight Zone episode where the aliens arrived on Earth and presented our leaders with this glorious plan for the planet entitled "How to Serve Man". Well. In the final scene, "How to Serve Man" turns out to be a COOKBOOK!
For those of you familiar with the "Left Behind" series of books dealing with cult Christian longings for Armageddon, you will immediately recognize No Child "Left Behind" as code words too.
According to www.leftbehind.com, the plot (…)