national news

U.S. soldiers from the NATO-led coalition force relax beside a basketball court as night falls at the Kandahar Air Field, AfghanistanBy David Alexander and Phil Stewart WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top U.S. military official declared "the days of Rambo are over" as the Pentagon unveiled its plans on Tuesday for integrating women into combat infantry positions following 12 years of war in which they fought and died in Iraq and Afghanistan while barred from front-line fighting jobs. The plans, which call for gender-neutral job requirements like scaling walls and lifting 55-pound (25-kg) tank ammunition, will require more years of study, education and training before some services open combat jobs to women. ...


2013-06-18 19:08:19 -0500
By Heide Brandes OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - Oklahoma executed a man on Tuesday convicted of stabbing an elderly couple to death during a robbery in 2000 that netted about $73, some of which he and convicted accomplices used to buy tacos. James Lewis DeRosa was pronounced dead at 6:07 p.m. CDT (1907 ET) after a lethal injection, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections said. He was the second person executed in Oklahoma this year and the 16th in the United States. ...
2013-06-18 19:12:23 -0500
SAN JUAN (Reuters) - The FBI is investigating allegations that high-ranking bank officials in Puerto Rico conspired to have a former Doral Bank executive killed after he claimed he uncovered fraud, the U.S. attorney for the district of Puerto Rico said on Tuesday. Maurice Spagnoletti, 56, was shot multiple times while driving home from work to the fashionable Condado beachfront district in rush-hour traffic in June 2011. Authorities have described the shooting as an apparent contract killing, but have made no arrests. "We have had some leads, but not enough to bring charges. ...
2013-06-18 18:10:31 -0500
Michael Hastings, the journalist whose explosive 2010 Rolling Stone profile of U.S. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal ("The Runaway General") led to McChrystal's ouster, died in an early morning car accident in Los Angeles on Tuesday, the magazine said. He was 33. "Hard-charging, unabashedly opinionated, Hastings was original and at times abrasive," Rolling Stone said in [...]
2013-06-18 19:23:00 -0500