Defense giant KBR Inc. was awarded a contract potentially worth $2.8 billion for support work in Iraq as U.S. forces continue to leave the country, military authorities said Tuesday. KBR was notified of the award Friday, a day after the company told shareholders it lost about $25 million in award fees because of flawed electrical work in Iraq.
The Houston-based company was charged with maintaining the barracks where Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth of Pittsburgh, a 24-year-old Green Beret, was electrocuted in 2008 while showering. The company has denied wrongdoing, and investigators said in August there was "insufficient evidence to prove or disprove" that anyone was criminally culpable in Maseth's death.
TVNL Comment: KBR, formerly a subsidiary of Cheney's Halliburton, is the largest non-union construction company in the United States.



The U.S. government announced Wednesday that it supports prohibiting international trade of Atlantic bluefin tuna, a move that could lead to the most sweeping trade restrictions ever imposed on the highly prized fish.
While in Britain, France, USA and Argentina the Mossad enjoys the support of thousands of local Sayanim, Jews who are happy to betray their neighbours for their beloved Jewish state, when operating in Arab countries the Mossad has to schlep its very many assassins and their assistants using different fraudulent methods.
Even as U.S. forces take steps to reduce the number of Afghan civilians killed by aerial attacks, other civilian casualties remain stubbornly high — deaths in so-called escalation of force incidents in which edgy American troops fire on civilians who've come too close to their convoys or roadblocks.
An official at the United States Embassy in Iraq has told federal prosecutors that he believes that State Department officials sought to block any serious investigation of the 2007 shooting episode in which Blackwater Worldwide security guards were accused of murdering 17 Iraqi civilians, according to court testimony made public on Tuesday.
If every tax-exempt religious organization received the same scrutiny as Washington's now famous C Street rowhouse, the IRS would have its hands full. But given the evidence available, it's difficult to see why a boarding house for evangelical Congressmen should be classified as a church -- for the purposes of God or Caesar.
The Supreme Court today refused to block the District of Columbia's gay marriage law, freeing the city to issue its first marriage licenses to same-sex couples the following day.
Just 50 miles off the Pacific Northwest coast is an earthquake hotspot that threatens to unleash on Seattle, Portland and Vancouver the kind of damage that has shattered Chile.
Makers and sellers of fish oil supplements were sued in California for not including labeling about PCB contamination, a plaintiff's attorney said Tuesday.





























