In this morning's New York Times, Eric Schmitt has "Army, in Manual, Limiting Tactics in Interrogation:"
The new manual, the first revision in 13 years, will specifically prohibit practices like stripping prisoners, keeping them in stressful positions for a long time, imposing dietary restrictions, employing police dogs to intimidate prisoners and using sleep deprivation as a tool to get them to talk, the officials said.
Those practices were not included in the manual in use when the bulk of the abuses occurred at Abu Ghraib in Iraq in the fall of 2003, but neither were they specifically banned.
[. . .]
The new manual would not govern interrogations by the Central Intelligence Agency at its detention sites. But in a change, it expressly prohibits the C.I.A. from keeping unregistered prisoners, called "ghost detainees," at Army prisons like Abu Ghraib.
Rob e-mails to note Douglas Jehl's "White House Firm on Bolton Despite Inquiry:"
As for the widening inquiry by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, those to be interviewed include a former deputy director of central intelligence and a former assistant secretary of state. The two officials, John E. McLaughlin and John S. Wolf respectively, have not spoken publicly about Mr. Bolton's nomination, but both have been described by others as having clashed with him on personnel matters related to intelligence.
The list, which Democratic officials said on Tuesday had been broadly endorsed by Republican panel members, also included Thomas Hubbard, a former ambassador to South Korea who clashed with Mr. Bolton over a speech on North Korea.
Erika e-mails to note Carl Hulse's "House Overturns New Ethics Rule as Republican Leadership Yields:"
After a closed-door meeting with House Republicans, Mr. Hastert indicated that the reversal was primarily motivated by a need to resolve the torrent of questions surrounding the conduct of Representative Tom DeLay, the majority leader.
Mr. Hastert's relenting to Democrats' demands marked a startling turn as Republicans confronted the fallout from a stalled ethics process that Democrats said was rigged to protect Mr. DeLay, who was admonished three times by the ethics committee last year. The Republican majority has also come under increasing criticism for the rule changes, which their opponents said would render the committee impotent to pursue wrongdoing by members.
One of the most immediate effects of the House's reverting to the old rules will be the opening of an investigation into persistent questions about Mr. DeLay's overseas travel and his relationships with prominent lobbyists. His fund-raising operations are under investigation by a grand jury in Texas, and some of the lobbyists' roles have come under increasing scrutiny by federal investigators in recent months. While Mr. DeLay has not been named as a target of those investigations, the attention paid to his troubles has proven disruptive in the House.
KeShawn e-mails to note Ginger Thompson's "Pursuer of Mexican Leader's Opponent Quits Under Fire:"
The legal proceedings that threatened to knock Mexico's most popular politician off next year's presidential ballot and to plunge this country into turmoil seemed to come to a sudden end on Wednesday night, when a beleaguered President Vicente Fox announced the resignation of his attorney general and a review of the government's case against the politician.
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