The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private equity funds, may soon acquire the $2 billion government contracting business of consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the biggest suppliers of technology and personnel to the U.S. government’s spy agencies.
To carry out its tasks at the intelligence agencies, Booz Allen has hired a dazzling array of former national security officials and foot-soldiers. In 2002, Information Week reported that Booz Allen had more than 1,000 former intelligence officers on its payroll.
Of course, Israel has the right to blockade the Palestinian territories and impose curfews for days, for weeks, for months, denying people the basic necessities of life—food, water, medicine, electricity, freedom of movement, their very livelihoods. It does not mean to visit oppressive collective punishment upon the Palestinian population. That’s just the way it is.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has approved the renewed construction of hundreds of an estimated 750 new homes in the West Bank settlement of Givat Ze'ev near Jerusalem, the Housing Ministry said Sunday. 
A Philippine general says American intelligence guided his troops in a hunt for militants, but eight villagers were slain.
Within the first year of the war, news of atrocities by U.S. forces—the torching of villages, the killing of prisoners—began to appear in American newspapers. Although the U.S. military censored outgoing cables, stories crossed the Pacific through the mail, which wasn’t censored. 
President George W. Bush said Saturday he vetoed legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding to break suspected terrorists because it would end practices that have prevented attacks. 
The number of sex abuse claims against Roman Catholic clergy dropped for the third consecutive year, but total payouts to victims nearly doubled to reach their highest level ever, according to a new report for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
