Friday, September 9, 2016

The inside story of the Senate's report on CIA torture




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The inside story of the Senate's report on CIA torture

Senate investigator goes public for first time; North Korea tests 'nuclear explosion'; Facebook under attack for censoring 'Napalm girl' photo

Dianne Feinstein
Former Senate intelligence committee chair Dianne Feinstein on the day the CIA torture report was released, in December 2014. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

Edward Helmore


One man's fight to expose the CIA's torture secrets

Daniel Jones, the man at the center of the US Senate's landmark investigation of the CIA Bush-era torture program, has gone public for the first time about an experience that led to the CIA spying on him as part of what he calls a "failed coverup". Jones led the team that turned 6.3m pages of internal CIA documents into a scathing study which concluded that torture was ineffective and that the CIA had lied about it to two presidents, Congress and the public. In the first of three installments, Jones expands on the findings and the role of CIA officials whom, he claims, "played a significant role in this program, who are in the report, continue to play significant roles in sensitive programs at the agency." The current administration, while doing "all the right things" shutting down the torture program, lost an opportunity to open the books on the dimensions of the ugly, post 9/11 episode. "We were just never given a fair airing. No one from the White House would be briefed by us. They were briefed by the CIA," Jones says.

The man who revealed the CIA's torture secrets

North Korea tests nuclear 'warhead explosion'

North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test overnight. The underground test, which was recorded as a 5.3-magnitude earthquake recorded near a military installation. Pyongyang confirmed it had conducted a "nuclear warhead explosion" in response to "US hostility". Yukiya Amano, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, called the test "deeply troubling and regrettable" and in "complete disregard of the repeated demands of the international community". Japan called for an emergency meeting of the UN security council and its prime minister, Shinzo Abe, described North Korea's nuclear weapons program as a "grave threat" to Japan. World affairs editor, Julian Borger, says the test indicates a greater level of ambition in Pyongyang than might not have been assumed before.

North Korea accused of 'maniacal recklessness' after new nuclear test

The last line of defense in a forgotten corner of rural Louisiana

As the only public defender for the 20th judicial district of Louisiana, Rhonda Covington is short on time. In part three of a series reported in partnership with the Marshall Project, we look at the Louisiana public defense system spiraling into fiscal ruin – and how defenders like Covington struggle to keep it going at all. At any given moment, she could be investigating cases, calling witnesses, scouring through evidence, taking photos at crime scenes (with her own camera), meeting with her clients' families, writing motions, typing up pleadings ... And that's just the start of it. "There are days," she says, "when I feel that I could literally scream to the top of my lungs for 10 minutes."

For Louisiana's defenseless poor, it's one for all

9/11, 15 years on: Hillary Clinton's day on the 'pile'

It was 26 August 2003, almost two years after 9/11, and the sickening plume of smoke that hung over Ground Zero in lower Manhattan had long since dissipated. "I don't think any of us expected that our government would knowingly deceive us about something as sacred as the air we breathe," then- junior senator from New York Hillary Clinton told WYNC public radio. She had just learned that the Bush administration instructed officials of the federal Environmental Protection Agency to reassure New Yorkers after 9/11 that the toxic pall that had hung over Ground Zero in the days after 9/11 was safe. Rarely has Clinton sounded so impassioned. "I am outraged," Clinton went on. "In the immediate aftermath, the first couple of days, nobody could know. But a week later? Two weeks later? Two months later? Six months later? Give me a break!"

9/11 tapes reveal raw and emotional Hillary Clinton

Nasa to attempt 'smash-and-grab' on speeding asteroid

Nasa has launched Osiris-Rex, a spacecraft destined to land on the asteroid Bennu, to scoop up samples with a robotic arm and return to Earth. The 7-year mission blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, into clear dusk skies. Following the explosion of a SpaceX rocket and its payload last week, engineers went through the Atlas rocket with extra care. Principal investigator Dante Lauretta said the mission fit Nasa's broader quest to answer "the big questions: where do we come from, what is our future, and really, are we alone in the universe?"

Nasa launches spacecraft to 'high-five' asteroid and capture debris

How JonBenét Ramsey changed the online face of crime

It was a crime puzzle whose pieces never fit together and the tabloids were obsessed. But online, an even more exhaustive revolution was brewing. One visitor to the discussion forum Usenet wrote: "I am at the point of abandoning it, because it is *very* difficult to locate anything that is not a Ramsey post, and frankly, I am sick of this morbid crime and speculation." Michelle Dean reviews how the killing of a six-year-old beauty queen became America's first crowd-sourced murder mystery.
A phenomenon that continues 20 years later

Facebook's 'editor-in-chief' under attack

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been criticised by a Norwegian newspaper after the social media giant censored The Terror of War, a Pulitzer prize-winning photograph by Nick Ut that showed children – including the naked nine-year-old Kim PhĂșc – running from a napalm attack during the Vietnam war. Espen Egil Hansen, the editor-in-chief and CEO of Aftenposten, Norway's largest newspaper, accused Zuckerberg of thoughtlessly "abusing your power". Hansen called on Zuckerberg to recognize and live up to his role as "the world's most powerful editor". A notice from Facebook explained: "Any photographs of people displaying fully nude genitalia or buttocks, or fully nude female breast, will be removed."

Zuckerberg accused of abusing power after Facebook deletes 'napalm girl' post

In case you missed it ...

The first international beauty contest judged by "machines" was supposed to use objective factors such as facial symmetry and wrinkles to identify the most attractive contestants. After Beauty.AI launched this year, roughly 6,000 people from more than 100 countries submitted photos in the hopes that artificial intelligence would determine their faces most closely resembled "human beauty". Out of 44 winners, nearly all were white, a handful were Asian, and only one had dark skin. It's not the first time computers have expressed prejudice: In March, a "millennial" chatbot named Tay used racist language and promoted neo-Nazi views on Twitter.

A beauty contest was judged by AI and the robots didn't like dark skin

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