CIA chief decries torture in Osama bin Laden hunt movie

WASHINGTON: Acting CIA director Michael Morell said that "Zero Dark Thirty," the Hollywood take on the hunt for Osama bin Laden, exaggerates the importance of information obtained by harsh interrogations.

The movie by Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow tells the story of the decade-long search after September 11, 2001 that climaxed in last year's dramatic and deadly raid in May on the Al-Qaeda terror leader's hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The film shows US personnel using harsh interrogation techniques like water-boarding -- a method widely seen as torture -- to force captives to speak. The information obtained was crucial, according to the movie, in piecing together the trail that eventually led to bin Laden.

Not so, Morell said in a message to Central Intelligence Agency employees released to AFP on Saturday.

The movie "creates the strong impression that the enhanced interrogation techniques that were part of our former detention and interrogation program were the key to finding bin Laden. That impression is false."

Morell's message, sent to the employees on Friday, states that "multiple streams of intelligence" led CIA analysts to conclude that bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad.

He acknowledged that "some" of the information "came from detainees subjected to enhanced techniques. But there were many other sources as well."

The controversial techniques were banned in 2009 by President Barack Obama.

Morell said that "whether enhanced interrogation techniques were the only timely and effective way to obtain information from those detainees, as the film suggests, is a matter of debate that cannot and never will be definitively resolved."

Morell is widely believed to be a top candidate for the job of CIA director after the resignation of David Petreaus, America's most celebrated military leader in a generation. Petreaus stepped down in November after admitting to an extra-marital affair with his biographer.

Morell's message, first reported by The New York Times, echoes a statement decrying the "Zero Dark Thirty" interrogation scenes signed by three senators, including Republican John McCain, himself a prisoner of war and torture victim during the Vietnam War.

In a letter to the head of Sony Pictures, McCain -- the 2008 Republican presidential candidate -- and Democratic senators Diane Feinstein and Carl Levin wrote that the movie "clearly implies that the CIA's coercive interrogation techniques were effective" in obtaining information that would lead to bin Laden.

"We have reviewed CIA records and know that this is incorrect," the senators wrote. "We believe that you have an obligation to state that the role of torture in the hunt for (Bin Laden) is not based on the facts, but rather part of the film's fictional narrative."

However two CIA officials active when suspects were tortured disputed those assertions.

Jose Rodriguez, who oversaw the CIA's counterterrorism operations when "harsh interrogation" methods were in use, wrote in the Washington Post in April that the path leading to bin Laden "started in a CIA black site ... and stemmed from information obtained from hardened terrorists who agreed to tell us some (but not all) of what they knew after undergoing harsh but legal interrogation methods."

And former CIA director Michael Hayden wrote in a Wall Street Journal in June 2011 that a "crucial component" of information that eventually led to bin Laden came from three CIA prisoners, "all of whom had been subjected to some form of enhanced interrogation."

Hayden claimed that he learned the information when, in 2007, he was first briefed about pursuing bin Laden through his courier network.

But interim CIA director Morell emphasized the film, a likely Oscar contender, "takes significant artistic licence, while portraying itself as being historically accurate."

"What I want you to know is that Zero Dark Thirty is a dramatization, not a realistic portrayal of the facts.

"CIA interacted with the filmmakers through our Office of Public Affairs but, as is true with any entertainment project with which we interact, we do not control the final product."

- AFP/jc

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No change in Modi visa policy: US

AHMEDABAD: Observing that Gujarat remains an important state for its investment, the United States on Saturday, said it would continue to engage with the state across a broad range of issues including trade, investment, university linkages and peopleto-people exchanges.

However, it refrained from making any comment on the Assembly elections in the state, terming it domestic Indian politics, and also on the issue of a visa to chief minister Narendra Modi, saying there has been no change on its policy in this regard.

"Gujarat remains an important state for American investment, and has shown itself to be a very welcoming environment where American businesses flourish," a State Department spokesperson said. "We continue to promote and encourage investment there, and we continue to engage with Gujarat across a broad range of issues: trade, investment, energy, university linkages, and people-to-people exchanges," the spokesperson said.

Describing it as a matter of "domestic Indian politics" the spokesperson refused to entertain any question on the just concluded Assembly elections in Gujarat.Next month, a large American delegation led by US India Business Council (USIBC) is travelling to Ahmedabad to attend the "Vibrant Gujarat" summit. The delegation is likely to meet the chief minister. Meanwhile, prominent American newspapers reported results of the Gujarat Assembly elections, something rarely done by US dailies.

"Modi wins 3rd term as state leader, setting stage for prime ministerial bid" headlined The Washington Post article. The paper said that by this win Modi bolstered his chances of leading the country's main opposition party in the national elections scheduled for 2014.

"Hailed for his pro-business image and for successfully inviting global corporations such as General Motors and Ford to set up large factories in Gujarat, in western India, Modi has delivered impressive economic growth in the state, averaging about 10% a year. He has never faced allegations of corruption, a rarity among Indian politicians," the daily reported."Resounding Victory in Indian Vote Nudges Polarizing Figure Closer to a Larger Race," said the headline of the article in The New York Times.

"The polarizing leader of the western state of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, inched closer to becoming the leading political challenger to India's dominant Gandhi family by winning a resounding re-election as chief minister," it said.

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Pictures: Fungi Get Into the Holiday Spirit

Photograph courtesy Stephanie Mounaud, J. Craig Venter Institute

Mounaud combined different fungi to create a Santa hat and spell out a holiday message.

Different fungal grow at different rates, so Mounaud's artwork rarely lasts for long. There's only a short window of time when they actually look like what they're suppose to.

"You do have to keep that in perspective when you're making these creations," she said.

For example, the A. flavus fungi that she used to write this message from Santa grows very quickly. "The next day, after looking at this plate, it didn't say 'Ho Ho Ho.' It said 'blah blah blah,'" Mounaud said.

The message also eventually turned green, which was the color she was initially after. "It was a really nice green, which is what I was hoping for. But yellow will do," she said.

The hat was particularly challenging. The fungus used to create it "was troubling because at different temperatures it grows differently. The pigment in this one forms at room temperature but this type of growth needed higher temperatures," Mounaud said.

Not all fungus will grow nicely together. For example, in the hat, "N. fischeri [the brim and ball] did not want to play nice with the P. marneffei [red part of hat] ... so they remained slightly separated."

Published December 21, 2012

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Urban Advocates Say New Gun Control Talk Overdue

For years, voices have cried in the urban wilderness: We need to talk about gun control.

Yet the guns blazed on.

It took a small-town slaughter for gun control to become a political priority. Now, decades' worth of big-city arguments against easy access to guns are finally being heard, because an unstable young man invaded an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., with a military-style assault rifle and 30-bullet magazines. Twenty young children and six adults were slain.

President Barack Obama called the tragedy a "wake-up call." Vice President Joe Biden met Thursday with Obama's cabinet and law-enforcement officers from around the country to launch a task force on reducing gun violence. Lawmakers who have long resisted gun control are saying something must be done.

Such action is energizing those who have sought to reduce urban gun violence. Donations are up in some places; other leaders have been working overtime due to this unprecedented moment.

The moment also is causing some to reflect on the sudden change of heart. Why now? Why weren't we moved to act by the killing of so many other children, albeit one by one, in urban areas?

Certainly, Newtown is a special case, 6- and 7-year-olds riddled with bullets inside the sanctuary of a classroom. Even in a nation rife with violence, where there have been three other mass slayings since July and millions enjoy virtual killing via video games, the nature of this tragedy is shocking.

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But still: "There's a lot of talk now about we have to protect our children. We have to protect all of our children, not just the ones living in the suburbs," said Tammerlin Drummond, a columnist for the Oakland Tribune.

In her column Monday, Drummond wrote about 7-year-old Heaven Sutton of Chicago, who was standing next to her mother selling candy when she was killed in the crossfire of a gang shootout. Also in Chicago, which has been plagued by a recent spike in gun violence: 6-year-old Aaliyah Shell was caught in a drive-by while standing on her front porch; and 13-year-old Tyquan Tyler was killed when a someone in a car shot into a group of youths outside a party.

Wrote Drummond: "It has taken the murders of 20 babies and six adults in an upper-middle class neighborhood in Connecticut to achieve what thousands of gun fatalities in urban communities all over this country could not."

So again: What took so long? The answers are complicated by many factors: resignation to urban violence, even among some of those who live there; the assumption that cities are dangerous and small towns safe; the idea that some urban victims place themselves in harm's way.

In March, the Children's Defense Fund issued a report titled "Protect Children, Not Guns 2012." It analyzed the latest federal data and counted 299 children under age 10 killed by guns in 2008 and 2009. That figure included 173 preschool-age children.

Black children and teens accounted for 45 percent of all child and teen gun deaths, even though they were only 15 percent of the child/teen population.

"Every child's life is sacred and it is long past time that we protect it," said CDF president Marian Wright Edelman in the report.

It got almost no press coverage — until nine months later, when Newtown happened.

Tim Stevens, founder and chairman of the Black Political Empowerment Project in Pittsburgh, has been focusing on urban gun violence since 2007, when he said Pennsylvania was declared the worst state for black-on-black violence.

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Strong 6.8 quake strikes off Vanuatu: USGS

SYDNEY: A strong 6.8-magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of the South Pacific island of Vanuatu on Saturday, the US Geological Survey said, but no immediate tsunami warning was issued.

The quake struck at a depth of more than 200 kilometres around 2230 GMT Friday some 130 kilometres north of Santo, USGS said.

"It's quite deep ... so there's no tsunami," said David Jepsen, a seismologist with Geoscience Australia which measured the quake at 6.6 magnitude.

"I think it's well away from (the capital) Port Vila... but it's closer to some of the islands further to the northwest, but they would have had some moderate shaking really," he told AFP.

The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said a destructive tsunami was not generated, based on the earthquake and historical tsunami data.

Vanuatu lies on the so-called "Pacific Ring of Fire", a zone of frequent seismic activity caused by friction between shifting tectonic plates.

It has been rocked by several large quakes in recent years, averaging about three magnitude 7.0 or above incidents every year without any major damage.

- AFP/jc

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Enormous impact of Food Security Bill on farm sector: Panel

NEW DELHI: The National Food Security Bill (NFSB), in its present form, throws up major operational and financial challenges and would have enormous ramifications on the cereal economy, markets and the farm sector, a government paper has said.

The discussion paper by the commission for agricultural costs and prices (CACP) said the long-term feasibility of the strategy under NFSB needed to be carefully analyzed and debated in the national interest.

The CACP is an entity under the ministry of agriculture which advises the government on price policy for major farm commodities.

The paper comes at a time when Congress president Sonia Gandhi has said that the food security bill would be brought to Parliament soon.

"It is imperative that a holistic approach is adopted while analyzing the entire system of food production, food procurement and distribution of food for achieving food security on sustainable basis," the paper authored by CACP chairman Ashok Gulati and six others drawn from various fields including CACP said.

The authors said the discussion paper series by CACP was an attempt to encourage unbiased discussion on critical issues affecting the agricultural sector and food security. However, they made it clear that the views belonged purely to the authors and did not reflect the views of the organizations they belonged to.

The paper said it was important to ensure adequate availability of grain with the public authorities to fulfill the underlying obligation in the bill.

"Given the current trends and volatility in rates of growth in food grain production and yields, the growing pressures on land and water in the wake of climate change, dependence on monsoon rains — there is a possibility that food grain availability on sustainable and stable basis would require lot of government intervention in augmenting production, enhancing procurement, and stocking large amounts of grains to meet the commitments of food distribution," the paper said, adding that this may have several undesirable side effects.

It said that any further procurement by the state would crowd out private sector operations and this would have an adverse effect on overall efficiency of procurement and storage operations, as well as on magnitude of food subsidies and open market prices.

The government already procures one-third of the cereals production (which amounts to almost half of marketed surplus of wheat and rice).

"This would also slow down or even regress the process of overall diversification in agriculture, and go contrary to the emerging demand patterns in the country," the paper said, referring to any fresh increase in procurement.

It said the food subsidy in coming years will balloon due to the lower central issue price of grain, a significant rise in the number of entitled beneficiaries and the need to keep raising the minimum support price (MSP) to cover the rising costs of production and to incentivize farmers to increase production of cereals.

The document said the existing food security complex of procurement, stocking and distribution would further expand and increase the operational expenditure of the scheme given its creaking infrastructure, leakages (which amount to about 40%) and inefficient governance.

"This raises not only the issue of sustainability of the financial obligations entailed in NFSB, but also its efficacy in trying to extend food security," the paper said.

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Pictures: Fungi Get Into the Holiday Spirit

Photograph courtesy Stephanie Mounaud, J. Craig Venter Institute

Mounaud combined different fungi to create a Santa hat and spell out a holiday message.

Different fungal grow at different rates, so Mounaud's artwork rarely lasts for long. There's only a short window of time when they actually look like what they're suppose to.

"You do have to keep that in perspective when you're making these creations," she said.

For example, the A. flavus fungi that she used to write this message from Santa grows very quickly. "The next day, after looking at this plate, it didn't say 'Ho Ho Ho.' It said 'blah blah blah,'" Mounaud said.

The message also eventually turned green, which was the color she was initially after. "It was a really nice green, which is what I was hoping for. But yellow will do," she said.

The hat was particularly challenging. The fungus used to create it "was troubling because at different temperatures it grows differently. The pigment in this one forms at room temperature but this type of growth needed higher temperatures," Mounaud said.

Not all fungus will grow nicely together. For example, in the hat, "N. fischeri [the brim and ball] did not want to play nice with the P. marneffei [red part of hat] ... so they remained slightly separated."

Published December 21, 2012

Read More..

Obama Says He Is 'Ready and Willing' to Get Deal

President Barack Obama says he is "ready and willing" to get a big package done to deal with the "fiscal cliff" and says there's no reason not to protect middle-class Americans from tax increases.

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

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Obama says he spoke Friday with House Speaker John Boehner and met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He says Congress should pass a plan to extend tax breaks for the middle class and extend unemployment benefits.

Obama says no one can get 100 percent of what they want and there are "real consequences" to how they deal with the across-the-board tax increases and steep spending cuts scheduled to kick in Jan. 1. Economists fear the combination could deliver a blow to the U.S. economy.

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Dollar steady as investors await fiscal cliff sign

WASHINGTON: The dollar lost a little bit of ground against the euro and was largely flat against the yen in quiet trade on Thursday as investors awaited a clear sign from US "fiscal cliff" talks.

The euro stood at $1.3241 towards 2200 GMT, up from $1.3226 late Wednesday. It also rose against the Japanese yen, reaching 111.72 yen compared to 111.59 yen a day earlier.

The dollar held steady against the yen, after reaching its highest level against the currency since April 2011 on Wednesday.

On Thursday, the greenback edged lower to 84.38 yen towards 2200 GMT from 84.39 yen a day earlier.

Japan's central bank unveiled more huge monetary easing earlier on Thursday in the wake of a weekend election won by the Liberal Democratic Party.

With an end-of-year deadline approaching, the markets are watching whether Washington can avert the so-called fiscal cliff, a mix of tax hikes and spending cuts set to take effect in January that could plunge the world's biggest economy back into recession.

Analysts said remarks by top Republican John Boehner had sparked slight optimism, increasing investors' appetite for risk, for the euro among other things.

Talks between President Barack Obama and Boehner on averting the "fiscal cliff" have stalled amid accusations of political grandstanding on both sides.

In other currencies, the dollar slipped to 0.9115 Swiss francs, while the pound rose to $1.6280.

- AFP/fa

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Kerala high court permits naval guards to visit Italy for Christmas

KOCHI: The Kerala high court on Thursday allowed the two Italian naval guards, accused of fatally shooting two Indian fishermen close to the coast in the Arabian Sea on February 15, to visit Italy to be with their families for Christmas on a bank guarantee of Rs 6 crore (around $1.1 million). The shooting had triggered a major diplomatic stand-off between Indian and Italy, with the police beginning a murder inquiry against the two sailors who were part of the crew of oil tanker, MV Enrica Lexie.

Justice P Bhavadasan, who considered the petition by Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, held that it would be improper of the court to reject their petition after the Central government informed the court that undertakings given by the Italian ambassador and consul general may be given due consideration.

Italy's ambassador to India Giacomo Sanfelice and consul general Giampaolo Cutillo had provided sworn affidavits ensuring return of the naval guards after a two-week visit to Italy. The government also gave a letter to the court from the foreign minister of Italy, certifying that the two officials were authorized to provide such an undertaking.

Allowing the petition, the court held: "Denial of relief to the petitioners is easy. But this court must remind itself of the whole issue. If the Union of India is of the view that after considering the various aspects and interests involved, the undertakings given to this court are sufficient guarantee to ensure that the petitioners will return to India as directed by this court, it may not be proper for this court to hold otherwise."

Dismissing the state government's contention that the motive of the petitioners was suspect, the court noted that it is for the Union of India to consider the acceptability and reliability of the undertakings and it will not be proper for the court to impose its view as those aspects fall within the realm of executive function. The case is not just regarding the presence of the naval guards for trial but, crucially, the relationship between two nations, the judge observed.

The court has asked the Italian government to furnish a bank guarantee of Rs 6 crore and as well as provide undertakings by the ambassador and consul general to ensure return of the naval guards on January 10 next year. The court also asked the Centre to issue the necessary travel documents if the undertakings were satisfactory to them.

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