Here are selected stories from throughout 2007: FEBRUARY 18 – The Washington Post exposes decrepit living conditions for wounded soldiers recovering in Building 18 at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center: MARCH 8 – A New York Times study finds vast inequities in how veterans receive disability checks based on location and type of service. MARCH 9 – President Bush forms the Dole-Shalala commission with a mandate to review the military health care system....
The rapper is being charged with assault with a firearm in relation to a shooting incident in Hollywood last year. Rocky is due to appear in court Wednesday and could face up to nine years in prison if he’s found guilty. While he is facing serious charges and lengthy jail time, Rocky has been spotted out with Rihanna recently. In May, it was reported that Rihanna had given birth to a son, the couple’s first child together....
Messi 15/4 to be CL top scorer The 28-year-old’s strike at Camp Nou moved his tally for Barca to 450 goals, while he scored his 50th for his country with a penalty against Bolivia during last month’s international break. With another career landmark reached, we look at the best Opta stats from Messi’s 500 career goals. BETTER GOAL RATE THAN RONALDO Messi’s career is constantly compared to that of his Real Madrid rival Cristiano Ronaldo, with fans of both players debating who should be considered the world’s best....
For the fans, it was more than a victory; the win kept alive their hopes of cleaning up in one of the countless office pools they’d invested in, along with the rest of the country. March Madness is prime betting time—even though, unbeknownst to many hoop fans, wagering on games is illegal in nearly half the states. The laws often go unenforced, the cops typically having more important things to do than to crack down on small groups of small fry....
FEDERAL JUDGE THOMAS PENFIELD JACKSON HAD some news for his packed courtroom–he had conducted an informal software demonstration. This got the attention of the litigants before him: the world’s most powerful government and the world’s most powerful software company. Specifically, the jurist had wanted to test a claim made earlier in the week by the software firm–which is of course Microsoft, run by gazillionaire Bill Gates and staffed by 20,000 overmotivated light-bulb-heads who aspire to Gates’s genius, drive and cunning....
India’s Hindu nationalists were wise to get their partying done quickly last week. The victory was fading almost as fast as the flowers wilted. With only a third of the seats in Parliament, Vajpayee’s new Bharatiya Janata Party government seemed destined to fall before May is out, setting a record for the shortest run in India’s history. “We will pull down the BJP government in no time,” said Vithal Gadgil, spokesman for the Congress party, which lost power in an epochal shift by India’s poor to parties representing narrow class interests....
The job has aged Menem visibly, no matter what he says. His approval ratings have plunged to record lows, from a dizzy 86 percent in 1989 to a dismal 28 percent recently. Scandals and policy revolts have compelled two of his senior ministers to clean out their desks in recent months. Many of his closest former allies have abandoned him. In the presidential election scheduled for Oct. 24, all three main candidates, including the nominee of Menem’s Justicialista party, are aggressively trying to distance themselves from the departing president’s image....
Fort Belvoir has had a good record with the homeless. It turned over an old sewage-treatment facility to a shelter in 1986–even before the law required it. So why the recent burnings? An army spokesman says that county firefighters and agencies such as the FBI are getting valuable training, unavailable elsewhere, by fighting fires at the base. Last week local police exploded two buildings as part of a training exercise....
To the folks back home, Powell was a commanding presence with a rhetorical gift. He soothed a nation queasy about committing troops by defining a post-Vietnam military doctrine: “Strike suddenly, decisively and in sufficient force to resolve the matter. Do it quickly, and do it with minimum loss of life.” In the first week of war, after is was clear there would be no lightning-quick victory from the air, Powell shook the country out of its manic depression with a line aimed as much at discomfiting Iraqis as reassuring Americans....
Hirsh: Why do you think radical Islam is the “transcendent challenge” of the century? When did you decide that? McCain: I was always concerned. When I traveled abroad I saw the madrassas, and I certainly was briefed on the rise of extremism. There were other signs of it you could trace back to bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut [in 1983]. I don’t think there’s any doubt 9/11 brought it home dramatically....
Lingerie brand Pour Moi are looking for a couple to test underwear sets, and the best part is you will be paid for the privilege. The company are offering a joint fee of £300 ($410) for an “adventurous” couple to “test and shortlist the perfect gift list from our lingerie sets” ahead of the festive season. After receiving the lingerie, all the successful applicants have to do is “complete a short and simple survey at the end of the trial period....
Such is their blood feud. Despite more than 10 years of negotiations between successive Israeli governments and Arafat, Sharon never could accept him as a partner in peace, never could bring himself to shake the Palestinian’s hand. Now the two are squared off in a battle so intense and so personal it threatens the future of all Israelis and Palestinians. The leaders of the Arab world are watching the scene, too, torn between sinister admiration for Arafat’s people striking fear into the heart of Israel, and desperation at the prospect that the showdown will shake their own increasingly decrepit regimes....
Now a third Democrat named Brown is running for governor: state Treasurer Kathleen, 48, daughter of Pat and sister of Jerry. But rising violence and a lingering recession have left Californians obsessed with crime, joblessness and illegal immigration, and her family’s liberal optimism seems quaintly outmoded. So the woman who became treasurer proclaiming herself “a different shade of Brown” is running as a proponent not of government spending, but of personal responsibility and “common sense” problem-solving....
