Doctors rely on information supplied, and research done, by major drugs companies: so 'Big Pharma' directly or indirectly influences the choice of prescriptions for patients. Philippe Riviere reports.

The Bush administration characterizes the nature of the US's enemy in Iraq as "terrorist," identifing the leading culprits as "foreign fighters." Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter questions the notion that Al Qaeda or Al Ansar al Islam are using Baghdad as an independent base of operations. The resistance in Iraq, he argues, is not foreign and it's well prepared.

Commentary by Ellen Barfield, Baltimore resident and Veterans for Peace activist.

As many as 25,000 union members will be in Miami November 17-21 to protest the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Members of United Steel Workers union, AFSCME, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and other workers organizations will join thousands of global justice activists, many of whom will be engaged in direct action, to derail the meetings. Abe Walker reports.

The humanitarian situation in northern Uganda is worse than in Iraq, or anywhere else in the world, a senior United Nations official has said.

There are great cultural, political and physical differences between Vietnam and Iraq that cannot be minimized, and the geopolitical situation is entirely different. But the US has ignored many of the lessons of the Vietnam experience, repeating many of the errors that produced defeat. Gabriel Kolko, author of "Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US, & Modern Historical Experience," comments.

The US is having trouble selling the latest model of global trade deals as a cure-all for the world's economic ills. First, talks in Cancun last September to expand the World Trade Organization collapsed. Now talks scheduled in Miami for November 17-21 to create a new free trade agreement for the Western Hemisphere likely will be marked by conflict and similarly end in stalemate. David Moberg reports.

VIRGINIANS CAN FLATTER themselves that they held an election this week, and in some technical sense they did. Votes were cast, and by day's end candidates had won state offices. Yet there was one glaring problem, which should gnaw at everyone who left the polls with a cheery "I Voted" sticker: Most of the legislative races were hardly more competitive than elections in the old Soviet Union.