What We All Want
The 14-year-old Afghan suicide bomberAs three soldiers are blown up, teenager caught on a lethal mission reveals how he was groomed to kill British troops
By Kim Sengupta in Kabul
Tuesday, 10 June 2008
The surroundings were grim and forbidding, a notorious jail run by Afghanistan’s feared security service for those taken prisoner in the bloody war with the Taliban.Among the inmates: Shakirullah Yasin Ali; a small, frail boy, just 14 years old, arrested as he prepared to carry out a suicide bombing against British and American targets. “If I had succeeded, I would be dead now, I realise that,” he said in a soft, nervous voice.
USA
How HUD Mortgage Policy Fed The Crisis
Subprime Loans Labeled ‘Affordable’
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 10, 2008; Page A01
In 2004, as regulators warned that subprime lenders were saddling borrowers with mortgages they could not afford, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development helped fuel more of that risky lending.Eager to put more low-income and minority families into their own homes, the agency required that two government-chartered mortgage finance firms purchase far more “affordable” loans made to these borrowers. HUD stuck with an outdated policy that allowed Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to count billions of dollars they invested in subprime loans as a public good that would foster affordable housing.