Negotiations at the World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun collapsed Sunday when delegates of the newly formed G-22 from Africa, the Caribbean and Asia walked out of the meeting in protest.

The breakdown is seen as a huge setback for the World Trade Organization and for future global trade negotiations.

Thousands of anti-corporate globalization activists and academics rejoiced last night at the meeting’s breakdown.

Developing countries blamed the U.S. and Europe for being unwilling to cut the huge subsidies paid out to their farmers. There was also concern that new proposals on foreign investment proposed by Europe and Japan would make it easier for foreign multinationals to take control of industries in the global south.

Israel’s deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said yesterday his government would consider assassinating Yasser Arafat in order to remove him from power.

Meanwhile former Israel Prime Minister Shimon Peres criticized the Sharon government for its treatment of Arafat. Peres said exiling or killing Arafat will only strengthen Palestinian groups including Hamas.

On the 10th anniversary of the Oslo peace accords, Peres said, “This government has destroyed the peace process.”

Meanwhile Palestinians are calling on the United Nations to demand that Israel ensures Arafat’s safety. Haaretz is reporting the U.S. will abstain from Security Council vote today on a resolution today forbidding Israel from deporting Arafat.

Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday aggressively defended the administration’s handling of Iraq saying there is no reason to “think that the strategy is flawed or needs to be changed.”

Cheney claimed that the White House, which last week asked for $87 billion in additional funding, had not underestimated the cost of war. He described the Iraq operation as a “major success” and claimed that Americans are being viewed as “liberators” in Iraq

He also continued to make long debunked allegations linking Iraq to the attacks of Sept. 11. At one point Cheney claimed Iraq was the “geographic base” for the Sept. 11 attack. And despite doubts from both the FBI and CIA, Cheney claimed that one of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta, may have met with an Iraqi intelligence officer five months before the attack.

Cheney however said little about Saudi Arabia’s ties to Sept. 11. He said “I don’t want to speculate.” He then went on to say Sept. 11 is “over with now, it’s done, it’s history and we can put it behind us.”

Cheney’s comment came as polls show hat Americans are more concerned than ever about the President’s handling of the Iraq situation. A new Washington Post/ABC News poll found six out of 10 Americans opposed Bush’s request for $87 billion.

Meanwhile in Iraq a U.S. soldier was killed and three were wounded Sunday in an attack outside Fallujah, where U.S. troops shot dead eight Iraqi police officers and a Jordanian guard on Friday.

The police officers were buried Saturday as mourners called for violence against the American occupation.

Ten thousand striking workers at Yale University and union supporters shut down the center of New Haven Saturday. Police arrested a total of 151 people for blocking traffic including AFL CIO President John Sweeney. Yale clerical, technical and maintenance workers walked off their jobs Aug. 27

In Venezuela, the nation’s election board has invalidated three million signatures collected on a petition to recall President Hugo Chavez. The board ruled the petition was invalid because the signatures had not been collected in a timely fashion. Opponents of Chavez vowed to gain the signatures again.

This news from West Africa: A military coup has toppled the government of Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony on the Atlantic coast with a population of about one million.

Voters in Sweden rejected adopting the Euro in a nationwide vote that took place days after the assassination of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, who was a leading advocate for the European common currency.

Scientists are reporting that the ozone hole over the Antarctic is now bigger than ever before and is threatening regions of South American and New Zealand with ultraviolet radiation. There had been hopes that the ozone hole was shrinking.

One of Canada’s most moderate and respected Muslim clerics was pulled off a plane Thursday and detained by U.S. immigration officials for 16 hours in Florida where he was traveling to deliver a Sept. 11 lecture warning against Muslim extremism.

The imam, Ahamad Kutty, was detained along with a second Toronto cleric Abdool Hamid. The Toronto Star reports the U.S. declared them a risk to national security.

40 Years Ago Today: Klan Bombing in Alabama Kills 4 Girls And 40 years ago today, four African-American girls were killed when the Ku Klux Klan set off a bomb inside the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama. The girls, Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley were all between 11 and 14 years old.