Stock investors cheered Friday because the latest monthly jobs report wasn’t terrible. But the big issue remains: Even if you set aside the temporary impact of downsizing at the Census Bureau, the economy isn’t generating nearly enough new jobs to bring down the US unemployment rate.

Here’s the problem. August marked the eighth straight month of job gains in the the private sector – a welcome pattern that President Obama was quick to highlight. Yet those gains average less than 100,000 per month. That’s not enough to improve the job market, economists say.

How’s that? Well, if the whole economy, including government, ticked along at a pace of 100,000 job gains per month, it wouldn’t be fast enough to account for natural demographic growth in the labor force. A rising population means about that many new people should be entering the workforce each month.

So a modest pace of 100,000 jobs a month is certainly better than declines, but it doesn’t begin to fill America’s jobs hole.

In fact, unemployment could actually rise more. On Friday, the Labor Department said the jobless rate edged up to 9.6 percent in August, from 9.5 percent in July. The disappearance of Census jobs outweighed a gain of […]

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A business owner indicted for the human trafficking of 400 laborers from Thailand is a frequent donor to the Republican Party and recently waged war against other companies involved with hiring illegal immigrants.

The Associated Press reports that according to the allegations, ‘the recruiters lured the workers with false promises of lucrative jobs, then confiscated their passports, failed to honor their employment contracts and threatened to deport them.’

The FBI considers this the largest human-trafficking case in US history, and those indicted face maximum sentences of five to 70 years in prison, the Justice Department confirmed to AP.

The man at the helm is Mordechai Orian, 45, President and CEO of the Los Angeles-based Global Horizons Manpower Inc., a labor contracting group. Five of his affiliates and contractors were also charged in the scheme.

Orian gave tens of thousands of dollars to the National Republican Congressional Committee on eight occasions between 2004 and 2006, according to the election records database Newsmeat. His largest contribution of $11,000 came on July 13, 2006. Orian also gave $2000 to the GOP-affiliated Restore America PAC twice in that period.

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During those years the Republican-led Congress debated and sought to pass a major immigration reform bill that involved, […]

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After months of prodding from anti-immigration politicians, the entire US-Mexico border is now being watched by the Predator B unmanned surveillance aircraft commonly known as Predator drones. The news may comfort residents of border states where the details of Mexico’s brutal drug war continue to make headlines, but here’s some more comforting news: violent crime in US border states has decreased during the past decade, and some big border cities are the safest in the nation.

Here’s some uncomfortable news: several of the politicians who pushed to bring more Predator drones to the border have received campaign contributions from military contractors that make drone aircraft and parts.

But, on the bright side, the downward trend of violent crime in border states coupled with the $600 million President Barack Obama recently approved in spending on security technology like Predator drones and the deployment of 1,200 additional National Guard troops to the border indicates that the region is secure, really, really secure.

Even Homeland Security Secretary Jane Napolitano said the border is safer than ever as she briefed the press on the new Predator drones and the arrival of National Guard troops, according to The New York Times.

‘Numbers don’t lie,’ Napolitano added.

Violent crime rates in […]

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The world is facing a mass extinction event that could be greater than that of the dinosaurs, new Australian research shows.

Macquarie University palaeobiologist Dr John Alroy used fossils to track the fate of major groups of marine animals throughout the Earth’s history.

He compiled data from nearly 100,000 fossil collections worldwide, tracking the fate of marine animals during extreme extinction events some 250 million years ago.

The findings, published this week in the international journal Science, showed a major extinction event was currently underway that had the potential to be more severe than any others in history.

‘Organisms that might have adapted in the past may not be able to this time,’ Dr Alroy said.

‘You may end up with a dramatically altered sea floor because of changes in the dominance of major groups. That is, the extinction occurring now will overturn the balance of the marine groups.’

The research shows a combination of human behaviour and climate change could have devastating affects on species across the planet.

‘When there’s mass extinction all bets are off and anything could happen,’ Dr Alroy said.

‘So what we’re basically doing as the human species collectively is we’re running this gigantic experiment with nature.’

There have been three major mass extinction […]

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BAGHDAD — The last American combat soldiers in Iraq shuffle through a half-empty base as they prepare for the one-way journey to the Kuwaiti border. Some recall their exploits during many tours of duty over the past seven years, charting their fortunes with language that has become common currency on television back home. The shock and awe of the invasion was eclipsed by insurgents using IEDs. Backed by contractors who erected blast walls around a green zone, the soldiers eventually inspired an awakening among Iraqi tribes that, aided by a surge of extra troops, in time brought something like order. In the soldiers’ telling, the names of places that were little known before the war have acquired the resonance of history: Najaf, Sadr City, Abu Ghraib.

Some 50,000 American troops will stay on in a support role, to ‘advise and assist

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