Senate report: Torture didn’t lead to bin Laden
WASHINGTON – A Senate investigation concludes waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods provided no key evidence in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to congressional aides and outside experts familiar with a still-secret, 6,200-page report. The finding could deepen the worst rift in years between lawmakers and the CIA.
The CIA disputes the conclusion and already is locked with the Senate intelligence committee in an acrimonious fight amid dueling charges of snooping and competing criminal referrals to the Justice Department.
The public may soon get the chance to decide, with the congressional panel planning to vote Thursday to demand a summary of its review be declassified.
From the moment of bin Laden’s death almost three years ago, former Bush administration figures and top CIA officials have cited the evidence trail leading to the al-Qaida mastermind’s walled Pakistani compound as vindication of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” they authorized after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
But Democratic and some Republican senators have called that account misleading, saying simulated drownings (known as waterboarding), sleep deprivation and other such practices were cruel and ineffective.
Climate costs steep but tough to tally
YOKOHAMA, Japan – The economic and financial impact of global warming is complex and not well understood. In some scenarios, there would be economic benefits for countries that get warmer and wetter and consequently more fertile agriculturally. Drier weather in some regions would result in sharply lower crop yields.
Overall, changes in climate are expected to cause significant disruptions also exacting an economic toll. Advisers to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say the world economy may suffer losses of between 0.2 percent and 2 percent of income if temperatures rise by 2 degrees from recent levels.
Australia: No time limit on Flight 370 search
PERTH, Australia – Although it has been slow, difficult and frustrating so far, the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet is nowhere near the point of being scaled back, Australia’s prime minister said.
The three-week hunt for Flight 370 has turned up no sign of the Boeing 777, which vanished March 8 with 239 people bound for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. Ten planes and 11 ships found no sign of the missing plane in the search zone in the southern Indian Ocean, about 1,150 miles west of Australia, officials said.
The search area has evolved as experts analyzed Flight 370’s limited radar and satellite data, moving from the seas off Vietnam to the waters west of Malaysia and Indonesia – and then to several areas west of Australia. The search zone is now 98,000 square miles, about a 2½-hour flight from Perth.
Russian battalion departs Ukraine border
SIMFEROPOL, Crimea – Russia said Monday it was pulling a battalion of several hundred troops away from the Ukrainian border but kept tens of thousands in place, prompting a worried response from the Kiev government about what the U.S. warned was still a “tremendous buildup.”
Russia moved quickly to strengthen its economic hold on Crimea, with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev arriving in the newly annexed peninsula with promises of funds for improved power supplies, water lines, education and pensions for the elderly.
Russia’s takeover of the strategic Black Sea region, its troop buildup near Ukraine’s border and its attempts to compel constitutional changes in Ukraine have markedly raised tensions with the West and prompted fears Moscow intends to invade other areas of its neighbor.
However, Russian President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a phone call Monday some troops were being withdrawn from the Ukraine border, Merkel’s office said. The withdrawal involved a battalion of about 500 troops, Russian news reports said.
Associated Press
