KBR’s Shoddy Workmenship In Iraq
18 U.S. Service Members Electrocuted
Rewarded With New $35 Million Contract
In Iraq
Obama’s NSC Will Get New Power
Directive Expands Makeup and Role Of Security Body
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 8, 2009; Page A01
President Obama plans to order a sweeping overhaul of the National Security Council, expanding its membership and increasing its authority to set strategy across a wide spectrum of international and domestic issues.The result will be a “dramatically different” NSC from that of the Bush administration or any of its predecessors since the forum was established after World War II to advise the president on diplomatic and military matters, according to national security adviser James L. Jones, who described the changes in an interview. “The world that we live in has changed so dramatically in this decade that organizations that were created to meet a certain set of criteria no longer are terribly useful,” he said.
No crisis yet, but Obama finding world won’t wait for him
By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON – In the midst of the presidential campaign last October, Barack Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden, warned that within six months of Obama’s election, “We’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”The prediction hasn’t come true yet, but unfriendly nations and international competitors already are stepping up their efforts to challenge the young new president or at the very least get his attention.
USA
The next president of America?
He’s a non-drinking, non-smoking vegetarian, who went from a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford to being the charismatic mayor of the “worst city in America”. Here, Gaby Wood talks to Cory Booker about chasing robbers, saving Newark and turning down Obama
Gaby Wood
The Observer, Sunday 8 February 2009
Martin Luther King weekend, 2009. In a beautiful 19th-century church in Newark, New Jersey a young jazz musician has just performed a dizzying solo. Two days from now, the first African American president of the United States will take over the White House, and Newark – a city that has been predominantly black since the 1960s – is celebrating. Dr King’s dream has, the church service programme declares, “become reality”. As the applause mounts, a figure familiar to the assembled citizens hops into the pulpit.“Oh!” he shouts in praise of the pianist, closing his eyes to emphasise the collective ecstasy. The congregation cheers. “Ohhhhh!” he repeats. More noise from the pews. “Can I get a witness!” he calls out, using the motivational cadences of a preacher to ride the natural rhythms of the crowd.