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BAGHDAD, Iraq - On the table by her bed, Najat Saleem keeps two precious items. One is a worn Arabic-English dictionary. Before she goes to sleep and as soon as she awakens, Najat memorizes a few English words. She wants to be fluent so she can move to America and leave behind the country she in many ways has grown to hate. There is also a faded photograph of Najat at a party with a handsome man. Her husband. The last time she saw him was April 7, the day he left for work and never came home. In her...

Kyle Barden is 24, less than six years out of Olympic High School in Charlotte, and two years from West Point. Yet he finds himself in the middle of world affairs. Barden is an Army ranger, a first lieutenant. He's been in Iraq since before the war started, and after war's end he was assigned to oversee rebuilding of a small northern town called Laylan, near Kirkuk. He has helped form a new town council. He has trained and deployed a police force and has mediated disputes between tribes. His greatest joy -- and challenge -- are the children. The...

KARBALA, Iraq(June 18, 2003) -- In a power transformer yard in northern Karbala, protected by barbed wire, the Marines of I Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines make their home. What makes this arrangement unusual is that inside the company's perimeter, is a row of small apartment buildings were a handful of Iraqi men, who run the transformer yard, live with their families. The families lived in the compound long before the coalition invasion of Iraq, and were still there when the company moved in. Because they share common ground, the Iraqis and Marines have benefited from each other's presence in...

BAQUBA, Iraq, (AFP) - Villagers in northeastern Iraq chased off four unknown assailants overnight who were laying mines at the scene of a previous blast that injured a US soldier, witnesses said Sunday. According to Ali al-Samarrai, a resident of Al-Abara four kilometres (two-and-a-half miles) north of Baaquba, village guards saw a car pull up with one man inside, another two arrive by bicycle and a fourth on foot at 2 am (2200 GMT Saturday. The group tried to lay mines at the same spot where the US soldier had been injured in a blast early Saturday. The guards fired...

Great Neck Teens Give Iraq Boy Life Donations helped pay for operation for 10-month-old with hole in heart By Jeremy Boren STAFF WRITER August 5, 2003 Only a month ago in Iraq, Latifa Hussein was desperately trying to help her 10-month-old son, Karam, who needed open-heart surgery. Today, in New Hyde Park, she checks on Karam every few minutes - displaying the mixed emotions of a mother worried but relieved.