Ray Charles in Brazil, 1963

Never knew the man played the sax!

Forty injured servicemen are to receive payments of up to £500,000 each in a series of test cases. This is expected to lead to claims from hundreds more of the estimated 1,000 [United Kingdom] troops injured in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.

Payments will be made on a “sliding scale” of about £1,000, for a small facial scar, up to a maximum of £500,000, for the loss of a limb. The ruling was agreed, it is understood, after Government lawyers raised fears that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) could be subject to a legal challenge by troops claiming they were victims of crime because they were wounded in Iraq after the end of “at war” hostilities in May 2003.

All those injured fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but who have decided to remain in the Army, could be entitled to lodge claims with the newly revised Armed Forces’ Criminal Injury Compensation (overseas) scheme.

This is similar to that run by the Home Office, which makes payments to the victims of crimes such as muggings, rape, burglary and robbery. Troops will be informed officially of the new policy in the next few weeks and the first payments will be made in early spring.

more from Telegraph.co.uk

US bugged Diana’s phone on night of death crash

The American secret service was bugging Princess Diana’s telephone conversations without the approval of the British security services on the night she died, according to the most comprehensive report on her death, to be published this week.

Among extraordinary details due to emerge in the report by former Metropolitan police commissioner Lord Stevens is the revelation that the US security service was bugging her calls in the hours before she was killed in a car crash in Paris.

Interesting read from The Observer, UK

Men attend a funeral for people killed in an overnight U.S. raid and airstrike in Ishaqi, 90 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, December 9, 2006. (Nuhad Hussin/Reuters)

photo slideshow here

I say he’s an hero! Best wishes to Joe Darby. And a big thank you!

(CBS) Like most soldiers serving in Iraq, Joe Darby just wanted to go home when his time was up. But blowing the whistle on his unit members for abusing Iraqi prisoners changed all that, and now the former military police specialist lives in an undisclosed city with his wife, still worried for their safety.

Darby talks to CNN’s Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, this Sunday at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

“I worry about the one guy who wants to get even with me, and that one guy could hurt me and my family,” says Darby. That one guy could be from his hometown of Cumberland, Md., where many in his unit lived.

What were his friends and neighbors saying about him after they learned he gave photos to authorities showing U.S. soldiers, some from Cumberland, abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison? “He was a rat. He was a traitor. He let his unit down and the U.S. military. Basically, he was no good,” Colin Engelbach, commander of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter, says he heard townspeople say. It was hard on Darby. “These were people who knew me since I was born. my parents’ friends, my grandparents’ friends, that turned against me.”

Says Engelbach, “I agree that his actions…were no good and borderline traitor.” He understands Darby was reporting a crime. “But do you put the enemy above your buddies? I wouldn-t.”

There was a time when Darby was frightened enough of those buddies to sleep with a gun. Right after giving military authorities the pictures, the investigation began and he was worried that some of the accused might find out he had turned in the pictures and could retaliate. “[The accused] still had their weapons…unlimited access to the facility and me the whole time,” Darby tells Cooper. “[I] slept with a pistol under my pillow, loaded, with my hand on it and cocked it. Every night.”

More at CBSNews

HOLLYWOOD · The Seminole Tribe, which built a gaming empire without being able to offer craps, blackjack or even Las Vegas’style slot machines, has suddenly become a symbol of American Indian financial power and a blueprint for its future, Indian experts and financial analysts said.

The tribe’s purchase this week of the Hard Rock International and all of its memorabilia for $965 million highlights a growing trend of Indian tribes diversifying to become less dependent on gambling money. Although the Seminole deal dwarfs all previous Indian acquisitions, it is just the latest in a string of purchases by tribes across the country.

The Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut, operators of the world’s largest and most profitable single casino, bought a women’s professional basketball team, expanded its gaming operations to Pennsylvania and is involved in other business partnerships. Its main rival, the Mashantucket Pequot tribe in Ledyard, Conn., is negotiating to bring its Foxwoods Casino brand to downtown Philadelphia with a $560 million complex.

Read more at the Sun Sentinel

I hope Jefferson is out……..

Voters trickled into the polls on a chilly Saturday morning for a runoff to determine the fate of U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, whose long tenure was threatened by a federal bribery investigation.

Jefferson’s seat is one of the nation’s last unresolved midterm races, and the eight-term congressman was in danger of becoming the only Democratic incumbent to lose.

There were more poll workers than voters when Jefferson, Louisiana’s only black congressman since Reconstruction, arrived at his polling place with his wife and two daughters.

More here

Yah, they’ll take measures to insure we keep paying outrages prices for it…….

LAGOS, (Reuters) — The global oil market is over’supplied by over 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) and OPEC will take appropriate measures to balance it at its Dec. 14 meeting, the cartel’s acting secretary-general said on Saturday.

Mohammed Barkindo stopped short of saying OPEC would cut production at the Abuja meeting, though the group’s President Edmund Daukoru said on Friday he favored a further reduction after OPEC cut output by 1.2 million bpd in October.

“The over’supply is well over 500,000 bpd. It’s between 600,000 and 700,000 bpd for the first half of next year, but those numbers are continually being adjusted,” Barkindo told Reuters in a telephone interview.

The cooling global economy
“We are going to study market developments, particularly changes in stocks and non-OPEC supply in the context of a cooling global economy, and come up with appropriate measures to balance the market,” he said.

Oil fell to just over $62 a barrel on Friday as ample U.S. stockpiles offset the prospect of a new OPEC cut. Bulging oil inventories in the United States have pushed crude prices from record highs over $78 a barrel in July.

The price has recovered from a 17-month low of $54.86 on Nov. 17, but analysts say the market has not yet fully absorbed OPEC’s October cut. There has been some speculation that the group would refrain from further trimming output.

Read more here

BAGHDAD, Dec 8 (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi troops have sealed off the city of Haditha in Anbar province, in the heartland of the Sunni insurgency, and have warned residents to keep off the streets and stay indoors, officials and residents said on Friday.

The U.S. military said troops were manning checkpoints and building a sand berm to crack down on insurgents in Haditha and in neighbouring Barwana. It said U.S. troops were protecting “the population and good citizens of Haditha”.

But residents in Haditha, which is at the centre of a U.S. military investigation into the deaths of two dozen civilians in November 2005 by U.S. Marines, said electricity has been cut off and that no food is being allowed into the city.

Schools have been forced to close, they said.

While the U.S. military has acknowledged it shut down electrical power in the area during recovery efforts following the death of four U.S. troops last week when a Marine helicopter came down, it has blamed current power losses on “maintenance requirements” at a nearby dam.

“This is the sixth day Haditha is without electricity,” one resident said on Friday.

Read more at Reuters

Keith Olbermann takes a look at the Christmas/Holiday Season BarneyCam.
This year’s video will make you laugh out loud (if you are brain dead and
cannot draw a parallel to the ugliness that is the Iraq War) as the video
makes jokes about the lack of planning Barney made for his video and the
lack of money that have for Barney’s Christmas. Cameo jokester appearance
by Karl Rove!!! Mo Rocca then takes a pretty funny look at Presidential
pets.

H/T JoeWo for this post!