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of being pawns in a never-ending political struggle over government funding.
• "The pay has fallen behind, the uncertainty of having a job from day to day, the stability which was a drawing factor for a large portion of the people is gone now," said Tommy Jackson, an Air Force acquisitions manager in Warner Robins, Ga., who has spent 30 years in government.
• Jackson, 54, is going through his second furlough of the year. He and his wife, Debbie, also a government employee, lost about $6,000 in wages this year when they were furloughed for six days each. Now the shutdown, and he said they are considering options to move into the private sector.
• "That six-day furlough cost us a good bit of money," he said. "I'm sitting out right now, I don't know if it'll be for a day, a month or two months. I don't want to operate that way."
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• KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A bomb killed four U.S. soldiers in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, American and Afghan officials said. They were the latest casualties in a 12-year conflict that shows no signs of slowing down despite a drawdown in foreign forces.
• The U.S.-led international military coalition says four of its service members were killed in the south, and a military official confirmed all were Americans killed by an "improvised explosive device."
• Their deaths bring the toll among foreign forces to 132 this year, of which 102 are from the United States. At least 2,146 members of the U.S. military have died in Afghanistan as a result of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to an Associated Press count. They are part of a total of nearly 3,390 coalition forces that have died during the conflict.
• They were killed on the eve of the 12th anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2001 invasion, which led to an insurgency that shows no signs of abatement and a war that has become largely forgotten in the United States and among its coalition allies despite continued casualties suffered by their forces on the ground.
• Javed Faisal, a spokesman for the governor of Kandahar, confirmed the four Americans were killed in the province by an IED. He had no further details.
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