Bagdad residents look through a locked gate...

Baghdad residents look through the locked gate of a petrol station as others wait in line to get fuel. The amount of fuel is limited to 8 gallons per person bi-weekly, and due to recent electricity cuts, petrol is mostly used for powering generators. A US congressional inspection team set up to monitor reconstruction in Iraq published a scathing report of failures by contractors, mainly from the US, to carry out projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars.


The bad news keeps coming...Americans dying every day. Today, one of my neighbors, a young man from Salem, New Hampshire, was buried after a funeral service in Methuen, Massachusetts. Of course his family celebrated his heroism and patriotism. What else would you expect? It's the only way they could possibly deal with their terrible loss.

Photo: Karim Kadim / AP.