So Happy It's Thursday

US soldiers 'desecrated Taliban bodies'

Senior US military officials launched an investigation today into claims that US soldiers desecrated the bodies of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan as part of a propaganda campaign.

Australian investigative news programme Dateline broadcast a film which appeared to show US soldiers burning the bodies of two fighters and using their charred and smoking corpses as a taunt to nearby Islamic militants.

1 in 4 Iraq vets ailing on return

More than one in four U.S. troops have come home from the Iraq war with health problems that require medical or mental health treatment, according to the Pentagon's first detailed screening of servicemembers leaving a war zone.

Insiders Collected $1 Billion Before Refco Collapse

In the year before Refco sold shares to the public and then promptly made the fourth-largest bankruptcy filing in United States history, insiders at the firm received more than $1 billion in cash, according to the firm's financial statements.

And one insider, Robert Trosten, received $45 million when he left his post as chief financial officer a year ago, according to testimony at an arbitration hearing earlier this year.

Quake 'is UN's worst nightmare'

The UN says the shortfall in aid for victims of the South Asian quake has made the relief situation worse than after last December's tsunami.

UN emergency relief chief, Jan Egeland, said the organisation had never seen such a "logistical nightmare".

3 kids feared dead -- thrown into S.F. bay

A 23-year-old woman who said she was hearing voices stripped her three small children naked Wednesday and threw them off a San Francisco fishing pier into the bay, authorities said.

Diners and strollers watched in horror as rescuers raced against an ebb tide to search for the children in the murky waters off Pier 7. After five hours, the body of a small child was pulled from the bay near Fort Mason. Minutes later, police booked the mother of the children, Lashaun Harris of Oakland, on three counts of murder.