National

WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands protested the Iraq war in Washington and in cities and towns across the nation the weekend of March 16-19, the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

NEW BEDFORD, Massachussets – Las redadas y arrestos por agentes de inmigración y aduana (ICE por sus siglas en inglés) fue motivo de gran ira a través del estado de Massachussets la semana pasada. Los arrestos de 361 inmigrantes, mayormente mujeres, que dejó a cientos de niños traumatizados, fueron en la compañía Michael Bianco, Inc.

Forty-five dollars for a six-pack of Pepsi; $99 to wash a load of clothes. You’d have to be crazy to pay such prices. Right? Wrong. This is what Halliburton has been charging in Iraq.

“Mistakes were made,” intoned Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, attempting to explain away the mass firing of eight U.S. Attorneys last year. The real reason was not their job performance but rather their failure to display sufficient loyalty to George W. Bush and his drive to clamp permanent Republican control on the White House and the nation.

As a child of eight, I came to the United States from Port of Spain, Trinidad, British West Indies. My mother and father had come to this country two years earlier, in 1922, when their economic status had been worsened as a result of the drop in the cocoa trade (on the world market) from the West Indies which had impoverished the West Indies and the entire Caribbean.

Eighteen months after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, broke the levees and flooded his home in the city’s Lower 9th Ward, Allsee Tobias and 20 of his relatives, including 10 children, are relocating once again. Last week the Federal Emergency Management Agency forced 58 families, including Tobias’, to evacuate their trailer homes in Hammond, La.

Jim Harmes, president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, told the World he has been a firefighter for over 35 years, and “I don’t remember when there have been so many multiple-death house fires as we’ve had so far this year.”

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Shock and anger swept through Massachusetts after agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided Michael Bianco, Inc., on March 6, arresting 361 undocumented workers, mostly mothers, and leaving hundreds of children traumatized.

House and Senate Democratic leaders announced new moves to begin U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq this year and set a specific timetable for ending the U.S. combat role by next fall. While not going as far or fast as some peace advocates wanted, it marks the first major congressional drive to end the war since the invasion four years ago.

WASHINGTON — Soldados heridos y la esposa de un soldado hablaron ante una vista pública en la Cámara de Represenantes el 5 de marzo de los problemas que tuvieron para conseguir ayuda en el Centro Médico Walter Reed, mientras que un memorando del congresista Henry Waxman desenmascaró los recortes que un contratista privado hizo en el personal de ese hospital del Ejército.