Arwa Gunja

Today, President Obama signs into law the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. For the millions of Americans who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, the new law will require all videos first broadcast on television and then distributed on the internet to come with closed captioning. The people who will make closed captioning possible are court reporters, who transcribe conversations in real time.

The September jobs report comes out today; this month's report carries some special weight. For politicians, it's the last unemployment report Americans will hear about before the mid-term elections. For the Federal Reserve, it will affect policy when the it meets in November; many expect a loosening of monetary policy based on how the economy is faring.

Overall though, economists are predicting the September report will not show too much change in unemployment figures. Businesses are still slow to hire, but layoffs are not rising. There may not be much in the way of job growth, and many, many Americans are still unemployed, but fewer people are losing their jobs.

On October 7th, 2001, less than a month after the attacks of September 11, American and British forces entered Afghanistan seeking to disrupt terrorist activities and capture members of al-Qaida. Nine years later we look back and reflect on one of the longest armed conflicts the U.S. has ever seen. Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs joins us for the hour.

Officials in Montgomery County, Maryland, have spent $2 million to acquire and maintain a two-story colonial home and log cabin formerly believed to be the residence of Josiah Henson, the model for the protagonist in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin." As it turns out, officials had it wrong and Henson never lived in that cabin. We talk with David Rotenstein, who served on the county's Historic Preservation Commission at the time of the purchase.

America is the most religious industrialized country in the world, but a new survey finds that few Americans are well-informed when it comes to religion. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life called more than 3,4000 Americans and asked them to answer 32 questions about the Bible, Christianity and other world religions and leaders. The study found that most Americans answered around half the questions incorrectly. The people that scored highest were agnostics and atheists, with Jews and Mormons following closely behind.

Take the Pew quiz »

For many years, an integral part of the American dream has involved making it to the middle class. We associate the phrase with steady, secure work, home ownership and providing for a comfortable — if not lavish — lifestyle for our family. But has middle class America fundamentally changed since the Great Recession hit? Do people that once saw themselves as solidly middle class see themselves differently now?

On August 31, President Obama announced the end of combat operations in Iraq. "Operation Iraqi Freedom is over," he said from the Oval Office, as he ordered the withdrawal of all combat forces from the country. Now, only 50,000 troops remain, tasked with handing security operations over to the Iraqis.

Last week we discussed the Great Migration, a time period between the 1910s and 1920s when six million black Americans left the South and headed to the North and West to pursue better opportunities. Among those migrants was the father of Takeaway listener Tina Collins. Tina’s father left his life of cotton picking to settle in Michigan. But now, Tina and her siblings are moving back down south, in what she calls the Great Southern Migration.

Afghan voters went to the polls this weekend to cast their ballot in parliamentary elections. More than 2,500 candidates ran for 249 seats. According to reports from Afghanistan, many candidates tried to buy the election by paying voters for their ballots and busing crowds of people into polling stations. Meanwhile, election day quickly turned violent in some locations, with dozens of rocket attacks and violence at polling stations. The New York Times reported that more than 12 people were killed in election-related violence. Due to security concerns, some polling stations remained closed or had very little voter turnout.

For the first time in 20 months, leaders from Israel and Palestine met at the negotiating table to try to broker a peace agreement. The leaders came together in Washington, D.C. to take part in talks mediated by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. As the U.S. representative, Secretary Clinton was clear in her message – the U.S. can bring the parties to the table, but it is up to Israeli and Palestinian leaders to find a solution. President Obama said, on Wednesday, that "the only path to lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians is direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release a new jobs report this morning. Since the start of the economic downturn, the dire unemployment situation has been described in grim and abstract numbers: unemployment is at 9.5 percent; one in six Americans are receiving government assistance; and an estimated 8.5 million factory jobs have been lost since November 2007.

But behind the numbers are the human costs of unemployment. In a new book, “Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory,” photographer Bill Bamberger and author Cathy N. Davidson capture the faces and stories behind the workers in Mebane, North Carolina, who lost their jobs when White Furniture Company closed its doors in 1993. The book and its gripping photos show tell the stories of personal loss and struggle for workers whose entire lives were turned upside down.

After a 20-month hiatus, leaders from Israel and Palestine have come together at the White House to engage in a new round of peace talks. President Obama met individually with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday. Obama said he is hopeful that a peace agreement can be reached in the next year, but the talks have already hit hurdles that may be difficult to overcome.

The Ptarmigan, a mountain bird known in Colorado for its camouflaged exterior, may be at risk due to climate change. Because the birds are limited to alpine habitats, scientists worry for their survival as temperatures rise and snow and ice melt. Last week, environmentalists began a campaign to designate the bird as a threatened species. If the designation is accepted and approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, it would require action to combat the threat of climate change, which could lead to legislation to reduce carbon emissions.

It is still unclear when the 33 Chilean miners trapped 700 meters below ground will be rescued. The Chilean mining minister says it will before Christmas, a shorter timeline than originally anticipated. The group received its first solid food from the surface today: ham sandwiches. Even if the miners are trapped for 60 days, rather than the previously announced 120 days, it is still a very long time to be trapped in a confined space with the same people. We've been asking our listeners: What would happen if you were trapped underground with your coworkers?

A small group of economists are trying to study whether income inequality may have contributed to the economic collapse. The income gap in the years leading up to the recent recession, which is often compared to the Great Depression, has a striking resemblance to the income equality in 1928, when the top 10 percent of earners received nearly half of the total income. Finance reporter Louise Story wrote about this theory for The New York Times earlier in August, and we spoke with her about the income gap on The Takeaway last week.

On any ordinary U.S. airliner, you’re likely to find in the seat pocket in front you an in-flight magazine that romanticizes your destination city. Magazines tend to feature articles with titles like United Airline’s “Three Perfect Days: Denver” or US Airway’s “Endless Summer.”  But on Afghanistan’s Safi Airlines, the in-flight magazine paints a more realistic – albeit grim — reality of Afghanistan. The topics range from a piece on dog fighting to a profile of heroin addicts.

To support relief efforts in Pakistan, the United States currently has 18 military and civilian aircraft in the country and three based in Afghanistan. American helicopters have evacuated nearly 6,000 people and delivered more than 717,000 pounds of relief supplies. And Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has just announced the U.S. will increase aid to Pakistan to $150 million.

But the context for the American military presence in Pakistan is more complicated than simply delivering humanitarian aid. Pakistan is home to militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, whose offshoot organizations have already become a visible force during this crisis. The Pakistani Taliban is already believed to be behind two attacks against security forces in Peshawar since the start of the flooding.

Kenneth Feinberg officially took over the $20 billion fund allocated for those affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil gusher. BP, the company responsible for the crisis, has already paid $368 million to individuals and businesses who suffered financial losses. But thousands of claims are still left unresolved and will fall now on Feinberg's desk. 

The space shuttle program will come to a close as of 2011, and NASA is preparing to retire the three remaining orbiters and find them new homes. Retiring each orbiter is an involved process that will cost $28.8 million. Twenty-one institutions across the country are competing for the rare honor of housing an orbiter. Plans are already in the works for Discovery to go to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, where Enterprise (a test shuttle) currently lives. Enterprise will likely be made available to another institution, along with Atlantis and Endeavour.

The last combat brigadee left Iraq, yesterday, marking the end of the active combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. 50,000 troops still remain, but are tasked to non-combat operations. The Obama administration has pledged to withdraw all troops from Iraq by October 2011, at which point security operations are to be transferred to Iraqi forces. In a statement, President Barack Obama called this a "milestone in the Iraq war," and State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley labeled it "an historic moment."

But is it premature – yet again – to say, "mission accomplished?"