The nation's unemployment rate dropped slightly to 4.7 percent in August as the economy added 128,000 new jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this morning.
Lockheed Martin edged out aerospace industry rivals Boeing and Northrop Grumman late Thursday to win a $3.9 billion contract to build NASA's next generation of manned spacecraft.
Smokers today inhale more nicotine per cigarette than they did six years ago. That's the finding issued this week by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which requires manufacturers selling cigarettes in the state to report on nicotine content annually. (Utah and Texas are the only other states to collect such data each year.)
AP - An American thought to be an al-Qaida activist appeared in a videotape with the terror group's deputy leader Saturday and called on his countrymen to convert to Islam and for U.S. soldiers to switch sides in the Iraq and Afghan wars.
AP - An Army investigator has recommended that four soldiers accused of murder in a raid in Iraq should face the death penalty if convicted, according to a report obtained Saturday by The Associated Press.
AP - Afghanistan's world-leading opium cultivation rose a "staggering" 59 percent this year, the U.N. anti-drugs chief announced Saturday in urging the government to crack down on big traffickers and remove corrupt officials and police.
The unity that followed the September 11 attacks five years ago was never going to last. But the nation has not merely returned to the messy family arguments of September 10. All wars bring a reckoning of means and ends, and the war on terrorism has long since lost its crisp moral lines. Americans may agree that terrorism is wicked, but they're still unsure about how to answer it.