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by Luke Harding in Baghdad
Iraqi security officers stormed al-Jazeera’s Baghdad offices and sealed the newsroom with red wax at the weekend after the US-backed interim government banned the Arabic television station from broadcasting in the country.
The raid followed a decision by the prime minister, Ayad Allawi, to close the station temporarily in August because of its apparent failure to support the US occupation. Officials said al-Jazeera had now been shut indefinitely because it had (…)

By Tom Pettifor
Thirteen Palestinians were killed and 25 wounded last night when the Israeli air force attacked a field in the eastern part of Gaza City.
The Israeli army said the attack targeted an area used by militant group Hamas. The Israeli statement listed events that it said took place at the field in recent days, including assembly of a large bomb and a suicide bomber’s vest, practice in hijacking vehicles, and training in preparing and firing mortars and rockets.
A Hamas (…)

By Patricia Wilson and Adam Entous
CANONSBURG, Pa./POPLAR BLUFF - Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry launched one of his harshest broadsides against the Iraq war on Monday, sparking an angry response from President Bush, as the war overshadowed their attempts to focus on the economy.
Marking Labor Day, the traditional kickoff for what has become a marathon presidential campaign season, the two candidates held rallies in the battleground states of Missouri, Pennsylvania, West (…)

By David Moberg
Back on the campaign trail after dazzling a national audience at the Democratic National Convention, U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama was greeted like a rock star in the small towns of downstate Illinois. Hours before his arrival, the banquet hall of the Turtle Run golf club in this hard-pressed town of nearly 40,000 was filled with 650 people, the biggest political rally in several decades according to local pols. The crowd bode well for his campaign but had national (…)

By LEE SUSTAR
Corporate America is rushing to get out of pension payments while the getting is good—before the crisis in retirement benefits eases. And for organized labor, the stakes on pensions are higher than ever. The news that United Airlines is prepared to kill its $8.3 billion pension plan and hand over the remains to the federal Pensions Benefits Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) raised the possibility that other airlines would follow suit.
United’s proposal to dump the pensions of 120,000 (…)

MANAGEMENT at the Italian national airline Alitalia put forward a rescue plan today to trade unions that foresees slashing 5000 jobs and splitting the struggling carrier into two in order to keep it aloft.
The company confirmed it foresees laying off 450 pilots, 1050 cabin crew, 1440 maintenance and 970 ground staff as part of efforts to stem losses, which hit E330 million ($575 million) in the first quarter of this year.
The layoffs would affect nearly one in four workers at the (…)

By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
A car bomb killed seven US Marines and three Iraqi soldiers outside the city of Fallujah yesterday, bringing the total number of American dead since the US invasion of Iraq in March last year close to 1,000.
An apparent suicide bomber blew himself up nine miles north of Fallujah, which has been controlled by Iraqi insurgents for the past six months, destroying two Humvee vehicles. The force of the explosion hurled the engine "a good distance" from the blast (…)

by Fred E. Foldvary
The Republican Party of the USA has now selected its candidates for president and vice president. They have given rousing speeches, and now the voters should carefully analyze the substance of their proposed policies.
The main problem with the Republicans is that they have two contradictory goals. They seek to prevent governmental interference with private enterprise and individual liberty, but they also as conservatives seek to uphold traditional morality. Where (…)

By Sheila Samples
09/06/04 "ICH" — ...So I’m sitting here with a sack over my head, trying to come to grips with reality. Facts just don’t compute anymore. For example, it’s a fact that on Sept 7 the New York Yankees turned in the worst loss in their entire century of kicking baseball ass. It’s a fact that the Yanks lost 22-0 to the Cleveland Indians — but is it logical? Believable? Is it reasonable?
My friend Bernie says stuff happens, even if only once a century and — sadly — even to (…)

There have been:
– 1,120 coalition deaths,
– 993 Americans,
– 65 Britons,
– six Bulgarians,
– one Dane,
– two Dutch,
– one Estonian,
– one Hungarian,
– 19 Italians,
– one Latvian,
– 10 Poles,
– one Salvadoran,
– three Slovaks,
– 11 Spaniards,
– two Thai
– eight Ukrainians,
in the war in Iraq as of September 6, 2004 (Graphical breakdown of casualties).
The list below is the names of the soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors and Coast Guardsmen whose families have been (…)