• Click here for the latest commentary and news from the London Guardian.

• Click here for the latest from truthout.org

• al-Jazeera reporter Yvonne Ridley fired mysteriously
By Julia Stewart, The London Independent

• Theft of Cobalt in Iraq Prompts Security Inquiry
By John F. Burns, The New York Times

• US plans war on Afghanistan's opium
Huge effort planned to plough up fields of "al-Qaida's opium", but small farmers will suffer most.
By James Astill in Kabul, The London Guardian

• 'The cars of death will not stop'
A statement purportedly from a unit of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, Abu Hafz al-Masri Brigades.
Translated by Reuters

• Blair and Bush: Axis of Weasels?
By Greg Palast

• Meanwhile 4,000 miles away in Guantanamo Bay, 660 prisoners have no idea when they will be freed
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington, for The London Independent

• India, Pakistan Agree to a Cease-Fire
By Ashok Sharma, Associated Press writer

• As a Cursed Reputation Dogs the U.S., American Death Toll Rises in Iraq
By Robert Fisk, The London Independent

• World: Americans Turn Botched House Raid into Bloody Carnage
By Robert Fisk, The London Independent

Why Are Americans Being Shot in Iraq?
Reality: Americans did not have a plan or a vision for post-Saddam Iraq
Dr. Mohammed T. Al-Rasheed, Arab News

• World: U.S. troops 'used excessive force' at Fallujah protest
By Phil Reeves, The London Independent

• Troops run out of sites to check for weapons of mass destruction
American troops have run out of new places to check for Iraq's alleged chemical and biological weapons, despite new assertions by President Bush and his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday that the weapons exist.

Meanwhile, in North Korea...
• North Korea admits intention to build nuclear weapons

• Time for press censorship in Iraq
Two months after 'liberating' Iraq, U.S. authorities under Paul Bremer have decided that Iraqi newspapers which publish 'wild stories', material deemed provocative or capable of inciting ethnic violence, will be threatened or shut down.

• Threats, Lies and Videotape
A speech presented by Robert Fisk of the Independent of London to the 56th World Newspaper Congress in Dublin, Ireland on the war, censorship, and the responsibilities of journalists.

• Where are the weapons of mass destruction?
The Bush administration has come the closest so far to conceding that, contrary to its pre-invasion scaremongering, there may not have been any chemical or biological weapons in Iraq.

• War profiteers Shell, Bechtel, Fluor take record of terror from Africa to Iraq
Many companies who stand to benefit from reconstruction and oil exploration in Iraq are associated with massacres and crimes against humanity in Africa
By Dena Montague, research associate at the World Policy Institute’s Arms Trade Resource Center

• The real story behind the "rescue" of Jessica Lynch
One of the most stunning pieces of news management yet conceived.By John Kampfner, The Guardian, UK.

• Saving Private Lynch, by Richard Scheer, alternet.org

• History lesson: Rumsfeld, Bechtel and Saddam Hussein
Rumsfeld flew to Baghdad back in 1983, as Reagan's special envoy, to pitch the idea of building an oil pipeline to Saddam Hussein. According to newly-available documents, a lot of his business was nothing more than advancing Bechtel's business.
By Jim Vallette, research director for the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies.

• "Crude Vision: How Oil Interests Obscured US Government Focus on Chemical Weapons Use by Saddam Hussein."(pdf)
By Jim Vallette, Steve Kretzmann and Daphne Wysham.
See the press release for this report, containing links to Bechtel memos and National Security Archives-released documents.

• United States Senate votes to start research into low-yield nuclear weapons
Is the U.S. launching another arms race?
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington

• Texas agents destroy rebellion records
Democrats accused Republicans of using tax-supported, anti-terrorism agencies for political purposes.
By Kelley Shannon, Associated Press

• Pentagon readies massive spying system
By Michael J. Sniffen, Associated Press

• Iraq Inc: A joint venture built on broken promises
Britain and the U.S. seek to control Iraq's future despite earlier promises that the UN would have an important role.
By David Usborne, Rupert Cornwell and Phil Reeves
The London Independent

• Remarkable achievements
What has this war really accomplished?
By Robert Fisk,The London Independent

• Targeting journalists
Americans bomb the Baghdad offices of Al-Jazeera, an Arab news organization that the U.S. government has criticized. If this was an accident, as the U.S. government says, why does it keep happening? Al-Jazeera journalists were the only ones hit by U.S. forces. Reporters Without Borders condemns the attack on Al-Jazeera, as does the International Press Institute.

• Click here for Boston Globe account of the shelling of the Palestine Hotel.

• Thirst for oil
Human-rights groups accuse the U.S. of caring more about oil than the people of Iraq.
By Terry Kirby, The London Independent

• The war to come
Iraq's war of liberation from the Americans is about to begin * The U.S. seems a bit too uninterested in fending off looters * Why did the U.S. let the highest ranking Iraqi officials escape?
By Robert Fisk, The London Independent

• Year zero
War, chaos, and the destruction of culture in Iraq.
By Robert Fisk, The London Independent

• Next target: Syria?
The U.S., Israel and the myth of weapons of mass destruction .
By Robert Fisk, The London Independent

• The myth of the "liberation" of Irag
The next stage of "the war on terror"
By Robert Fisk, The London Independent.

• Did the U.S. murder these journalists?
The military lied about the April 8th incident involving tank fire on the Reuters office in the Palestine Hotel, what else aren't they telling us?
By Robert Fisk, The London Independent

• An unwinnable war
Is Iraq the new Vietnam? The comparisons look closer every day.
By Rupert Cornwell

• Nicholas Buchele, Arab News, on the "new totalitarian regime."

• Making Saddam a martyr
Said Aburish, author of a book on Saddam Hussein, talks about how the west has given the Iraqi dictator the role he always longed for.