be just

Two Navy Ships That Cost $300 Million Are Headed To The Scrapyard Without Having Seen A Day Of Service Embroiled by legal battles for more than 25 years, two U.S. Navy ships are finally headed to the scrap heap without ever having sailed and despite the fact that they're almost completely finished. According to Hampton Roads, the USNS Bejamin Isherwood and the USNS Henry Eckford were commissioned in 1985 at the Pennsylvania Shipbuilding Co. to carry fuel to the Navy's fleet around the globe. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/two-navy-ships-henry-eckford-benjamin-isherwood-scrapyard-2011-7#ixzz1SPdn8Onw

Assassin who killed Afghanistan President Karzai's brother hanged in public square - Online News # 27191 Assassin who killed Afghanistan President Karzai's brother hanged in public square Kabul, July 14 : The man who shot dead Afghanistan President Hamid Kazai's half brother Ahmed Wali Karzai was hanged in a public square in Kandahar city. A group of men hung the corpse against the wall in Kandahar for around 20 minutes before they carried it away, the Daily Mail reports. Ahmed was assassinated on Tuesday by the man who is said to have been from his own tribe and home town, whom he had travelled with and worked alongside for seven

Daily Nation: - News |Kenyan ‘held at secret CIA jail’ A Kenyan who disappeared from Nairobi’s Eastleigh suburb two years ago is being held at a secret CIA prison in Mogadishu, claims a US magazine. Mr Ahmed Abdullahi Hassan is among several people snatched from Nairobi streets and “rendered” by plane to the prison in the basement of the Mogadishu headquarters of Somalia’s National Security Agency, writes investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill in the New York-based Nation magazine. One of the men held in the secret prison told Clara Guttteridge, a researcher with a British legal rights group called Reprieve that he met Mr Hassan in the prison. “Hassan, he said, had told him how Kenyan police had knocked down his door, snatched him and taken him to a secret location in Nairobi,” Mr Scahill writes. “The next night, he was rendered to Mogadishu.” Kenya has denied knowledge of Mr Hassan’s whereabouts. But Mr Scahill points out that Human Rights Watch and Reprieve have documented that Kenyan...

U.S. Debt Default Looms as Talks Stall on Deficit Reduction: “We Are Playing with Fire” Discussion on a deficit reduction deal has stalled after five consecutive days of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats. In order to borrow beyond August 2, the United States must raise its $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. This week, Standard & Poor’s became the second of the major credit rating agencies to place U.S. debt under review, citing an increasing risk of a payment default. Republicans are pushing for massive spending cuts, many of which Obama has agreed to, even as Democrats say they want to raise taxes on corporations and wealthy households. We speak with Jeff Madrick, director of policy research at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at The New School and author of "Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present."

Sudan: The break-up - Sudan: The Break-Up - Al Jazeera English http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/sudanthebreakup/2011/07/201171285056382703.html The party is over and now the monumental task of nation-building confronts the people of South Sudan. On July 9, 2011, as the country celebrated its independence from the north in front of numerous foreign dignitaries, very few of those present in the huge square across from the John Garang Mausoleum in the capital, Juba, or the millions watching on television screens around the world, would have known that thousands of poor people had had their shacks and kiosks bulldozed from that same square to ensure the city looked its best for the visitors. In many ways that sums up the current reality that is South Sudan - it is a façade. To the unknowing eye, everything in the garden looks rosy; the truth is an entirely different matter. The world's newest nation is already in turmoil, and while the government's spin-doctors may attempt t...

Somalia crisis one of 'largest in decades' - Africa - Al Jazeera English East Africa's hunger crisis has been described by a US official as one of the worst humanitarian crisis in decades amid stepped-up efforts by Western countries to provide relief aid and a decision by Kenya to open a fourth camp for starving refugees. Tens of thousands of Somali refugees are flooding camps in Ethiopia and Kenya - at a rate of more than 3,000 new arrivals per day - in search of food after several seasons without rain killed livestock and destroyed crops in Somalia. "There are many seasoned relief professionals who would tell you we haven't seen a crisis this bad in a generation," Reuben Brigety, the deputy assistant secretary responsible for state department assistance to refugees and conflict victims in Africa, said on Saturday. "We anticipate that this crisis will get worse before it gets better." The US was studying how much more it would give in addition to $5...

Bodyguard who killed Karzai's brother was trusted CIA contact - Asia, World - The Independent The bodyguard who assassinated President Hamid Karzai's brother had been working closely with US Special Forces and the CIA before he was recruited by the Taliban, raising fears over the Islamist movement's increasingly sophisticated intelligence apparatus which has managed to threaten the inner circles of power in Afghanistan. Sardar Mohammad, who shot Ahmed Wali Karzai at his home in Kandahar City on Tuesday, also held regular meetings with British officials, and had two brothers-in-law serving in a CIA-run paramilitary unit, the Kandahar Strike Force, the Washington Post reported yesterday.