The Evening News Bits and Pieces

   A middle school principal was busted for using and selling crystal meth after he was snitched on. CNN for more.

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   In the story that won't go away news, we have this from CNN

A Florida appeals court cleared the way Wednesday for Anna Nicole Smith to be buried next to her son, Daniel, in the Bahamas.

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   From BBC we hear that Airbus will kill off 10,000 jobs in Europe over the next four years. I'll bet that Boeing just loved that news!

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Al Jazeera

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2007

US stocks have risen after steep falls on Tuesday, as the head of the Federal Reserve said that no single trigger was responsible for the sell-off.

Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, said on Wednesday that he still expects "moderate growth" in the US economy, giving investors confidence to buy stocks one day after the Dow fell 416 points.

Chinese stocks also recovered by about four per cent, a day after the Shanghai Composite index fell nearly nine per cent – the biggest decline for a decade.

However, markets in Europe and Asia fell for a second day amid concerns about possible slowdowns in the US and Chinese economies.

 

middle school principal, crystal meth, anna nicole smith, airbus, us stock market, federal reserve

HRW Says CIA Detainee's Missing

   Here is an interesting report from the Human Rights Watch group which is reporting that 14 detainees held in the CIA's secret prison system are missing. That would be another shocker now wouldn't it?

HRW

February 2007

Estimates of the number of detainees held by the CIA over the course of the program vary.  The Washington Post described a two-tier system of detention, with some 30 “major terrorism suspects” being held at high-security prisons operated exclusively by CIA personnel, and an additional 70 less important suspects being transferred to prisons run by other countries’ intelligence services. The major suspects, also known as “High Value Targets,” were alleged top al-Qaeda leaders, not “foot soldiers.”

The picture emerging from detainee accounts, however, suggests that these numbers are understated, and that the true picture is more complex. For example, at the prison in Afghanistan where Khaled el-Masri was held, the guards were Afghan, but the interrogators, the main director, and the people in charge of prisoner transport appeared to be CIA. So while the prisoners had daily contact with Afghan personnel, all of the important decisions regarding detention, treatment, and release were made by Americans.

And at the so-called Dark Prison in Afghanistan, which appears to have been operated solely by CIA personnel, there were a substantial number of detainees who were not top terrorism suspects.  Human Rights Watch knows of some 20 prisoners previously held at that facility who are currently held at Guantanamo, as well as a former detainee who was released from Guantanamo in 2004. The majority of these prisoners (and obviously the one who was released) would not be considered major suspects.

Similarly, prisoners such as Marwan Jabour and the three Yemeni former detainees interviewed in 2005 by Amnesty International were far from top suspects—they were eventually released without charge.  Yet they too were held in prisons that seemed to have only American staff, as well as the extreme high-security arrangements characteristic of the CIA.

human rights watch, cia, guantanamo, dark prison, detainees