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Blackwater is a private company that does the dirty work for America in various wars, both covert and those we know about all too well. It began only 10 years ago as a sort of cheerful paintball and shooting range in the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina, but these days it has some 20,000 mercenaries on its books (the “whores of war”), not to mention a whole bunch of quasi-military aircraft, a military base, lots and lots of guns and connections with precisely the right people. It was brought into existence by Erik Prince, a somewhat right-of-centre Roman Catholic...

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Army troops are making "significant" gains in their long-running battle against al-Qaida-inspired fighters barricaded inside a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, security officials said Tuesday. But a senior military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said four soldiers were killed in fighting Monday. The body of a missing soldier also has been found, he said. The latest deaths raise to 103 the army's death toll since the fighting broke out nearly two months ago. The security officials, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because...

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio -- Officials at Antioch College said it will close after the 2007-2008 school year while it searches for enough money to reopen. The small school in Ohio has a history of social activism and civil disobedience. It counts Coretta Scott King, "Twilight Zone" creator Rod Serling and evolutionary scientist Stephen Jay Gould among its graduates. The college has a small, $30 million endowment and depends heavily on tuition revenue. But a student body that was 2,000 strong in the 1960s has dropped to around 400. School spokeswoman Linda Sirk said the college hopes to find enough money...

People around the country accused Denver on Monday of embracing a "crackpot" scheme to fight global warming after the city's plan drew widespread attention on the Internet. The reaction was to a Rocky Mountain News story that detailed some of the proposals in Denver's Climate Action Plan, which aims to cut the city's output of gas emissions linked to global warming. The plan includes several controversial ideas, including making residents who use large amounts of electricity and natural gas pay higher utility fees, boosting insurance rates for people who drive long distances and mandating that homes be energy efficient before...

Broncos right cornerback Darrent Williams was shot and killed this morning. After leaving a nightclub in a limousine, Williams was shot and killed near 11th and Grant in Denver. The team confirmed the death of Williams. A female passenger also was shot, according to a source familiar with Williams. Williams was 24. "I learned from the Denver Police Deprtment that this incident has occured," Williams' agent, Jeff Griffin said early Monday morning. "No other details have been released. I sincerely offer my condolences and feelings to his family." Williams was the Broncos' starting right cornerback and played his final game...

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) -- Giants coach Tom Coughlin was in Jacksonville on Sept. 11, 2001. His son Tim, a bond trader, was somewhere in the south tower of the World Trade Center. Amani Toomer looked out the window of his New Jersey home and watched in disbelief as the towers fell. In Washington, LaVar Arrington felt a shudder as a jet slammed into the Pentagon. Five years later, the 9-11 terrorist attacks feels like yesterday to members of the New York Giants. Over the week that followed, there would be a trip to ground zero and firehouses where widows...

BRUSSELS, Aug. 25 -- European countries agreed Friday to provide about half the troops for a new 15,000-member U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, with the first sizeable contingents to arrive within a week, officials announced after an emergency meeting here. "Europe is providing the backbone of the force," U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said after a two-hour session with European foreign ministers. "We can now begin to put together a credible force." -snip-

Colorado Springs - The military is relegating its newly renovated airspace and missile defense complex in Cheyenne Mountain to standby status - clouding the future of a Cold War nerve center touted as the most secure spot in America. The green-jumpsuited sentries who electronically scan the skies from deep inside this granite cocoon southwest of Colorado Springs - built in the 1960s to withstand Soviet nuclear blasts - now are to blend into broader homeland defense operations under prairie skies at nearby Peterson Air Force Base. "I can't be in two places at one time," said Adm. Tim Keating, commander...

The charred pile of twisted metal outside the military Humvee manufacturing plant north of Cincinnati once carried five American soldiers through the mountains of Afghanistan. An exploding land mine lifted the 10,000-pound armored Humvee off the ground, ripped a chunk of metal off of the frame and caved in half of its front end. But the soldiers inside walked away, and that's why the wreckage sits on the grounds of the Ohio company that puts armor between America's enemies and America's soldiers. "The armor on that Humvee performed just as we would have hoped," said George Stringer, a vice president...

President Bush brings his health care road show Wednesday to Dublin, home of Wendy's International Inc. President Bush will outline his prescription for making health care more accessible. His proposal includes tax breaks for health savings accounts, the supplementary health care plans that are gaining in popularity. He chose Wendy's because it's one of the largest companies aggressively pursuing the idea, said John McClelland, spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party. "To be able to tell him about an innovative program that we believe serves the best interests of employees and shareholders is wonderful," Wendy's spokesman Denny Lynch told The Columbus...

Detroit -- Joe Montana, the only three-time Super Bowl Most Valuable Player, was one of only three Super Bowl MVPs who turned down the NFL's invitation to take part in pregame ceremonies for Super Bowl XL. Montana also declined the league's invitation for a news conference with all the MVPs after Commissioner Paul Tagliabue's Friday news conference. "We were disappointed we weren't able to work it out with him," said Greg Aiello, the NFL's vice president of public relations. The former MVPs were guaranteed $1,000 for incidental expenses while in Detroit. The NFL also provided each former Super Bowl MVP...

LIVERMORE, California (AP) -- Officials at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have added a new weapon to their armory: a high-powered machine gun that can fire more than 50 rounds per second. The weapon, unveiled Thursday, is a six-barrel Gatling gun called the Dillon Aero M134D. An undisclosed number of the guns will be mounted on vehicles and elsewhere at the lab. "What we want to do is equip our protective force with the capability that will leave no doubt about the outcome," said Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration. Lab critics questioned the wisdom of putting...

One night after his notorious reversal of an onfield interception threw NFL referee Pete Morelli into a national storm - and nearly sent Denver packing for Indianapolis - Morelli found himself between a hard place and a rock. A vandal hurled a grapefruit-sized boulder through a plate-glass window in Morelli's Stockton, Calif., home at about 10 p.m. Monday, according to Stockton Police Lt. Thomas Wells. Morelli, who also works as a high school principal, was home with his wife at the time. "They were in bed or going to bed when he heard the window break and Mr. Morelli came...

The Jets will face a tough challenge when they take on Pittsburgh's stingy defense this week, but they go into the game better prepared than most of the Steelers' opponents. The one thing in the Jets' favor is that they played New England last week, and the Patriots do play some 3-4 defense and do a lot of blitzing out of the 3-4 defense. The Steelers, of course, play the 3-4 defense almost exclusively. So the Jets will have some "repeating knowledge" in back-to-back games. Every time there was a big moment in the Patriots-Jets game last week, the Pats...

Two former Iraqi detainees tell ABC News in an exclusive interview that they were repeatedly tortured by U.S. forces seeking information about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. Thahee Sabbar and Sherzad Khalid are two of eight men who, with help from the American Civil Liberties Union and the group Human Rights First, are suing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The men claim they were tortured for months, in violation of the U.S. Constitution and international law. Torture has been the center of controversy lately. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. — himself a victim of torture during the Vietnam War —...

Rocky Mountain News reporter Jim Sheeler and photographer Todd Heisler spent the past year with the Marines stationed at Aurora's Buckley Air Force Base (Colorado) who have found themselves called upon to notify families of the deaths of their sons in Iraq. In each case in this story, the families agreed to let Sheeler and Heisler chronicle their loss and grief. They wanted people to know their sons, the men and women who brought them home, and the bond of traditions more than 200 years old that unite them. Though readers are led through the story by the white-gloved hand...

I've been on vacation, and upon snapping on the TV this morning to check the forecast, I see Bill O'Reilly uneasily in the guest chair chatting it up with Katie Couric on The Today Show! To me, the world had turned upside down. Am I missing something? How long has this been going on? Is he a regular? From what I saw (in amazement), they briefly discussed the following: *His new book ("The O'Reilly Factor for Kids") *Harriet Miers (O'REILLY: "I say, 'Give her a chance!'" and "The right wing are a bunch of hippocrits because they complain about the...

Reid said while Roberts, a federal appeals judge the past two years, is a smart man, "I'm not too sure if his heart is as big as his head." As for Bush's pending nominee, Reid said, "We want him to give us a candidate who is mainstream, not extreme." "A number of candidates who have been talked about are extreme," Reid said. Reid did not name names but said he would find as problematic any of the 10 federal appeals court nominees who Democrats blocked during Bush's first term. Among those who have been mentioned as possible Supreme Court candidates...

...Former President Bill Clinton called in to the BET telethon to express support and was asked by co-host Steve Harvey what his administration would have done differently if it were in power during the hurricane. Clinton refrained from criticizing Bush, but talked about the importance he placed on the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “We always thought faster was better than slower,” Clinton said.

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Rescue crews prepared to speed up the retrieval of the dead from Hurricane Katrina on Friday amid reports that President George W. Bush chose unqualified political supporters rather than disaster experts to head the agency leading the relief effort. (snip) The Washington Post reported that five of the top eight FEMA officials had little experience in handling disasters and owed their jobs to their political ties to Bush. As political operatives took the top jobs, professionals and experts in hurricanes and disasters left the agency, the newspaper said. FEMA director Michael Brown, already under fire for...