Senior Bush administration officials authorized aggressive interrogation techniques -- including forced nudity and waterboarding -- on suspected terrorists, despite concerns from military psychologists and attorneys, according to a Senate report released Tuesday. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees," said the report, which reveals new details about prisoner treatment at U.S. military ...

Right-wing extremist groups may be using the recession and the election of the nation's first African-American president to recruit members, a Department of Homeland Security report contends. Though the nine-page report said it has "no specific information that domestic right-wing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence," it said real-estate foreclosures, unemployment and tight credit "could create a fertile recruiting environment for right-wing extremists and even result in confrontations between such groups and government authorities similar to those in the ...

Asia's economic growth will tumble to the slowest pace since the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said in a report released Tuesday. "The short term outlook for the region is bleak as the full impact of the severe recession in industrialized economies is transmitted to emerging markets," said Jong-Wha Lee, acting chief economist for the ADB. The Asian Development Outlook 2009 forecasts that economic growth in developing Asia will slip to 3.4 percent in 2009, down ...

China's military is developing longer-range ballistic and anti-ship missiles that are "shifting the balance of power in the region" and could help Beijing secure resources or settle territorial disputes, a report released by the Pentagon said Wednesday. China also continues to build up short-range missiles and increase its "coercive capabilities" against Taiwan. The report suggests such moves constitute an effort to pressure Taiwan into settling the cross-strait dispute in favor of China, though tensions between the two countries have receded ...

The Israeli military's firing of white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas during the Gaza offensive "was indiscriminate and is evidence of war crimes," Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report on Wednesday. "In Gaza, the Israeli military didn't just use white phosphorus in open areas as a screen for its troops," said Fred Abrahams, a HRW senior emergencies researcher. "It fired white phosphorus repeatedly over densely populated areas, even when its troops weren't in the area and ...

Israeli soldiers routinely and intentionally put children in harm's way during their 22-day offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza, according to a United Nations report made public Monday. The report said a working group had documented and verified reports of violations "too numerous to list." For example, on January 15, in a town southwest of Gaza City, Israel Defense Forces soldiers ordered an 11-year-old boy to open Palestinians' packages, presumably so that the soldiers would not be hurt if they ...

2009 State of the News Media The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism The Gist: The American financial and auto industries aren't the only ones falling apart before the nation's eyes. "Imagine someone about to begin physical therapy following a stroke [and] suddenly contracting a debilitating secondary illness," researchers at the Project for Excellence in Journalism write about the news media's long-overdue embrace of the Internet in 2008, just as a global recession began wreaking havoc on the industry's ...

HIV/AIDS Epidemiology Update 2008 Washington, D.C., Department of Health 82 pages The Gist: There are few who still shrug off HIV and AIDS as exotic calamities that befall only specific segments of the world's population. But many of us are probably oblivious to just how badly the virus is ravaging our nation's capital. According to a city report, 3% of Washington, D.C., residents suffer from HIV or AIDS — a figure that ranks as the highest in the ...

HIV/AIDS Epidemiology Update 2008 Washington, D.C., Department of Health 82 pages The Gist: There are few who still shrug off HIV and AIDS as exotic calamities that befall only specific segments of the world's population. But many of us are probably oblivious to just how badly the virus is ravaging our nation's capital. According to a city report, 3% of Washington, D.C., residents suffer from HIV or AIDS — a figure that ranks as the highest in the ...

Ever since Josef Fritzl, the authoritarian patriarch of a sprawling family in the north Austrian town of Amstetten, was discovered to have imprisoned his daughter as a sex slave in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children with her, Austria has been locked in an emotional debate over what could cause such a crime. Some have claimed Fritzl's sadism to be a vestige of Nazism's moral corruption, others that the psychological strain of living for years under the ...