World-acclaimed reggae singer Lucky Dube has been shot and killed in a hijacking.
The incident took place just after 8pm on Thursday night when Dube went to drop off his son at his uncle's house in Rosettenville, southern Johannesburg. Two men approached him and opened fire.
It has been more than 2 1/2 months since our commission presented its six pragmatic recommendations to improve the system of care for our injured service members and their families. Our recommendations are eminently doable and designed for immediate implementation. While progress has been made, more work remains. And the clock is ticking.
We have also testified before Congress and met individually with lawmakers. Overall, we are buoyed by the strong bipartisan support being given to the proposals.
Despite this support, however, it is clear that our recommendations are being swept up in a decades-long battle to reform the entire disability system for all service members. It is important to remember that our commission was tasked with improving care and benefits for those returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While we hope that our recommendations will help many others, our mission was to make the system work better for this new generation of veterans.
The current systems of disability and compensation are convoluted, confusing and dated. Modernizing the disability system was of great importance to our commission. Four of our nine commissioners are disabled -- including two who sustained serious injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and one is the wife of a soldier severely burned in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Session Start: Sat Oct 13 15:31:54 2007
Session Ident: Blackmarlin
[15:31] Session Ident: Blackmarlin (~fena@85.103.118.4)
[15:31] [Blackmarlin] my dear friend we are no preparing for an invasion to Iraq and we shall spoil all US plans for the next 100 years.live with it prepare to feel Turkish people as enemies with Russians and Iran as allies.. you will soon feel nukes in NewYork.. flying over your heads..:) the war shall be in US skies in 5 years .never forget ahet I said today.. you will remember when they come true..
[15:32] [GiGGLe] piss off
[15:33] [Blackmarlin] I would..:) I am not important.. But dont gorget what I teold you.. all what I predicted before Iraq war and fater Iraq war came true..
[15:33] [Blackmarlin] live in peace..:)
Session Close: Sat Oct 13 15:43:05 2007
"...while Iraqi forces clearly remain a work in progress, Iraqi soldiers and police are very much in the fight, and they continue to sustain losses that are two to three times our losses."
-General David Petraeus in a letter to US Forces, Sept 7, 2007
Over the last week, almost 600 men have applied to join Sha’ab’s new volunteer security force, a government-authorized, U.S.-funded community police force which will guard important local infrastructure sites like offices, schools and markets. The total force will eventually number more than 1,200 people.
“These guys are going to work in partnership with the Iraqi police and the Iraqi national police to secure their own neighborhoods and streets and markets,” said Hinckley, Ohio, native Capt. Dennis Marshall, commander of Headquarters Company, 2nd “White Falcons” Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division. The White Falcons have backed the creation of the new force with funding and assistance screening applicants.
While Sha’ab’s volunteer security force program comes in the wake of several other well-publicized community police programs in other parts of Baghdad, Marshall said it was not a case of jumping on the bandwagon.
“This is something the sheiks have been asking for since I first got here,” he said. “It’s about local solutions to local problems.”
The allure of the program is that it gives area residents a greater role in securing their own neighborhood, while also providing much-needed jobs, said Hamood Hassem, a political figure known as the mayor of Adhamiyah, and one of the key organizers of the program.
“We want to give people a chance to work and we want to protect our area,” Hassem said.
MINNEAPOLIS, MN (NBC) -- When they came home from Iraq, 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard had been deployed longer than any other ground combat unit. The tour lasted 22 months and had been extended as part of President Bush's surge.
1st Lt. Jon Anderson said he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill.
Anderson's orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days.
Had they been written for 730 days, just one day more, the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school.
(CNSNews.com) -The federal government is currently conducting more than 60 "stolen valor" investigations of individuals suspected of making false claims about their military records, according to the Department of Veteran's Affairs, and about 30 people nationwide have been arrested in the past year for crimes related to falsifying a military record.
Stolen valor typically occurs when someone falsifies documents or produces medals and awards from the military they didn't earn in order to qualify for veterans benefits.
Jeffrey Sullivan, the U.S. attorney in the Western District of Washington, prosecuted Jesse Macbeth of Tacoma, Wash., in the past year as well as five others who falsely claimed heroic military service.
Macbeth, who was sentenced to five months in prison last month, is the person Rush Limbaugh cited on his radio program as an example of a "phony soldier."
