The Rugged Individualist
The U.S. Special Operations Command, which has Army Special Forces units worldwide, has been criticized by the Pentagon inspector general for not providing adequate oversight of .7 billion in logistic support contracts at 20 locations and for allowing contractors to perform what are considered “inherently government functions.”
Washington - President Barack Obama expressed confidence Saturday that efforts to scuttle Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court will fail despite intensified scrutiny of her judicial career. He said senators should work quickly to elevate the federal appeals judge.
”I am certain that she is the right choice,” the president said in his weekly radio and Internet address in which he scolded critics who he said were trying to distort her record and past statements.
Environmentalists feel betrayed by the EPA’s decision not to block new mountaintop mining projects.
Washington - With the election of President Obama, environmentalists had expected to see the end of the “Appalachian apocalypse,” their name for exposing coal deposits by blowing the tops off whole mountains.
But in recent weeks, the administration has quietly made a decision to open the way for at least two dozen more mountaintop removals.
In a letter this month to
A lawsuit alleges that Drummond Company paid a right-wing paramilitary for protection.
Bogota - There is a railway line in northern Colombia where cars laden with coal rumble from the parched flatlands surrounding an open-pit mine across verdant swaths of coastal plains to a port on the Atlantic.
Until recently, the Northern Block of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, terrorized communities along the railway, as well as towns throughout the provinces of Cesar and Magdalena that the tracks traverse.
New York - A survey of women who fled violence in the Darfur region of Sudan found that a third reported or showed signs of rape and revealed a widespread fear of sexual violence in their refugee camp in Chad, a human rights group reported Sunday.
About half the rapes were carried out in Darfur by Janjaweed militiamen allied with the Sudanese government, and half were assaults by Chadian villagers near the U.N.
Singapore - The U.S. defense chief urged Asian allies Saturday to consider tougher sanctions against North Korea, noting that past efforts to cajole the reclusive regime into scrapping its nuclear weapons program have only emboldened it.
North Korea’s years-long use of scare tactics as a bargaining chip to secure aid and other concessions - only to later renege on promises
Washington - Sen.
Many thousands died in final days, says diplomat.
Toronto - Canada and the United States are on different wavelengths when it comes to a shared and increasingly hardening of what had been a sleepy border within North America.
One University of Toronto political scientist doubts this will change anytime soon in the wake of how “paranoia” in the U.S. about its northern frontier has continued under the administration of Barack Obama.
”The U.S.
Firms with ties to banks can work both sides of rescue.
As the Wall Street bailout nears its first anniversary, the controversy over giving public money to private banks has become public knowledge.
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