MOSCOW — The US private military company Academi (formerly known as Blackwater) has confirmed its readiness to start training a Ukrainian battalion for street fighting, a military-diplomatic source told TASS on Tuesday.
“The private military company Academi has confirmed to the Kiev authorities its readiness to start training an experimental battalion of 550 men as of January at the request of Ukraine’s General Staff,” the source said.
The competition to build the U.S. Army's next service pistol is heating up. Currently the Pentagon is not happy with its current standard-issue Beretta M9 semiautomatic pistol. Common complaints range from the lack of stopping power of 9mm bullets fired from the M9, to concerns about the reliability of the weapon itself -- and its cost. As one Army spokesman noted at the time: "It's costing us more to replace and repair M9s than it would cost to go get a new handgun."
A former employee of a U.S. contractor was indicted today in the Eastern District of Texas for allegedly soliciting and accepting bribes in exchange for his influence in awarding U.S. government-funded contracts in Afghanistan, announced Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney John Malcolm Bales of the Eastern District of Texas.
George E. Green, 57, of Carrollton, Texas, was charged with conspiracy to structure financial transactions to avoid currency transaction reporting requirements, wire fraud and receipt of bribes in connection with a program receiving federal funds.
