US plays tough with Karzai on Afghan troops

WASHINGTON: US officials plan a mix of hardball negotiating and flattery during a visit by Afghan President Hamid Karzai as President Barack Obama decides how deeply to cut forces in America's longest war.

Karzai will be Obama's first foreign visitor of 2013, with a White House meeting on Friday and State Department dinner on Thursday. The Afghan leader met Wednesday with senators including Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

The talks come as the freshly re-elected Obama charts out plans to pull most of the 68,000 US troops out of Afghanistan. The United States and its allies have already agreed to withdraw combat troops by the end of 2014 but questions remain on a US training and security role after that.

Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, told reporters Tuesday that Obama sought to prevent Al-Qaeda's return to Afghanistan but would not rule out any ideas including the so-called zero option -- leaving no US troops at all.

Afghanistan watchers in Washington largely saw the hints as a strategy aimed at Karzai, who has had a tumultuous relationship with the Obama administration and is seen as wanting US troops to stay as long as possible.

James Dobbins, a former US diplomat involved in the establishment of Karzai's government in 2001, called the airing of the zero option "a tactical move designed to indicate to Karzai that he has less leverage in this negotiation than he might otherwise."

Dobbins, who considered a Taliban return to power in post-2014 Afghanistan to be possible but unlikely, said troop levels would be determined by how much the United States was willing to spend after more than 11 years of war.

"My view is it's a straight cost/risk ratio. The more you're prepared to pay, the lower your risk; the higher your risk tolerance, the less you can get away with," Dobbins, now an expert at the Rand Corp., said at the Atlantic Council think tank.

News reports have said that some administration officials favour as few as several thousand troops in Afghanistan. Obama's nominees as his next secretary of state and defence secretary, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, are both seen as supportive of a wide-scale military drawdown.

Marvin Weinbaum of the Middle East Institute said he expected Karzai to press hardest during the White House meetings over what equipment, including air power, the United States would leave or provide Afghan forces.

"He doesn't want the US to pull out completely and he doesn't think the US wants to pull out completely. So that's the meeting point, but he wants to use that as leverage to extract as much as possible," Weinbaum said of Karzai.

Weinbaum said the visit was also aimed at preserving a friendly atmosphere with Karzai, who "is so thin-skinned, if you look at him the wrong way, he thinks you're plotting his demise."

"A lot of these meetings are just to try to keep the chemistry from getting too ugly," said Weinbaum, who believed the plentiful events for Karzai "improve the chances that maybe you can convince him that he's loved."

Tensions rose between the United States and Afghanistan after Karzai won presidential elections in 2009 despite widespread charges of irregularities.

The Obama administration has also pressed Karzai to curb corruption, considered by some US officials to be a major impediment to increasing the government's legitimacy in Afghan eyes.

Opinion polls for several years have shown that the US public is tired of the human and financial cost of the Afghanistan war, initially launched after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. US forces killed Osama bin Laden, the attack's mastermind, in Pakistan in 2011.

But neoconservative analysts Fred and Kimberly Kagan, writing in The Wall Street Journal, said that leaving only a tiny US military presence would impede operations against Al-Qaeda and risk a renewal of ethnic civil war.

"Those who say that Afghanistan can't get any worse than it is today lack both imagination and any knowledge of the country's recent history," they wrote.

- AFP/jc

Read More..

Verizon will be late to the HD Voice game

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam at his keynote presentation.

(Credit:
CNET)

LAS VEGAS--HD Voice has suddenly become a hot topic at this year's Consumer Electronic Show.

The feature, which significantly enhances call quality by improving voice clarity while blocking out background noise, has been long touted by the wireless carriers. Widely available in Europe for years, the U.S. carriers have lagged behind.

T-Mobile said yesterday that HD Voice was now available on select phones in its lineup. PC Mag reported that AT&T was shooting for a launch some time this year. Now Verizon has stepped in, and told CNET that it would offer the feature in 2014.

Verizon will wait until it moves its voice service to the LTE network, according to Mike Haberman. The company plans to have voice-over LTE by the end of the year or early 2014. Currently, data goes over LTE, while the voice call still runs over its 3G network. Haberman said the carrier would support its 3G network through the rest of the decade.

While one of the key benefits of voice-over LTE is a reduction in cost and traffic, Haberman said the company is more interested in the potential services that can be tied into voice with VoLTE.

As for HD Voice, he said Verizon wouldn't offer it until there was a consistent quality of service.

HD Voice continues to travel on a rocky road to the consumer. Sprint Nextel made it a focal point when it launched the feature in the Evo 4G LTE in April, even having actor Keifer Sutherland record a crystal-clear call in a demonstration. But since then, the initiative has sputtered.

Sprint told CNET that it has completed one trial market, and the users can see a few more markets open up in the coming months.

A key problem with HD Voice is the lack of adoption. HD Voice only works if both phones have the feature and are in an area where the network supports it. Miss one component, and the call goes through without any enhanced features.

So even if the Evo 4G LTE supports it, only other users with the same phone can access the feature, and they both have to be in the single trial market. That narrows down the user base considerably.

T-Mobile has said its HD Voice feature will run nationwide through its HSPA+ network. It's also available on three phones: the Samsung Galaxy S III, HTC One S, and Nokia Astound.

Verizon, however, isn't feeling any heat to bring out HD Voice.

Read More..

Embryonic Sharks Freeze to Avoid Detection

Jane J. Lee

Although shark pups are born with all the equipment they'll ever need to defend themselves and hunt down food, developing embryos still stuck in their egg cases are vulnerable to predators. But a new study finds that even these baby sharks can detect a potential predator, and play possum to avoid being eaten.

Every living thing gives off a weak electrical field. Sharks can sense this with a series of pores—called the ampullae of Lorenzini—on their heads and around their eyes, and some species rely on this electrosensory ability to find food buried in the seafloor. (See pictures of electroreceptive fish.)

Two previous studies on the spotted catshark (Scyliorhinus canicula) and the clearnose skate (Raja eglanteria)—a relative of sharks—found similar freezing behavior in their young. But new research by shark biologist and doctoral student Ryan Kempster at the University of Western Australia has given scientists a more thorough understanding of this behavior.

It all started because Kempster wanted to build a better shark repellent. Since he needed to know how sharks respond to electrical fields, Kempster decided to use embryos. "It's very hard to test this in the field because you need to get repeated responses," he said. And you can't always get the same shark to cooperate multiple times. "But we could use embryos because they're contained within an egg case."

Cloaking Themselves

So Kempster got his hands on 11 brownbanded bamboo shark (Chiloscyllium punctatum) embryos and tested their reactions to the simulated weak electrical field of a predator. (Popular pictures: Bamboo shark swallowed whole—by another shark.)

In a study published today in the journal PLoS One, Kempster and his colleagues report that all of the embryonic bamboo sharks, once they reached later stages of development, reacted to the electrical field by ceasing gill movements (essentially, holding their breath), curling their tails around their bodies, and freezing.

A bamboo shark embryo normally beats its tail to move fresh seawater in and out of its egg case. But that generates odor cues and small water currents that can give away its position. The beating of its gills as it breathes also generates an electrical field that predators can use to find it.

"So it cloaks itself," said neuroecologist Joseph Sisneros, at the University of Washington in Seattle, who was not involved in the study. "[The embryo] shuts down any odor cues, water movement, and its own electrical signal."

Sisneros, who conducted the previous clearnose skate work, is delighted to see that this shark species also reacts to external electrical fields and said it would be great to see whether this is something all shark, skate, and ray embryos do.

Marine biologist Stephen Kajiura, at Florida Atlantic University, is curious to know how well the simulated electrical fields compare to the bamboo shark's natural predators—the experimental field was on the higher end of the range normally given off.

"[But] they did a good job with [the study]," Kajiura said. "They certainly did a more thorough study than anyone else has done."

Electrifying Protection?

In addition to the freezing behavior he recorded in the bamboo shark embryos, Kempster found that the shark pups remembered the electrical field signal when it was presented again within 40 minutes and that they wouldn't respond as strongly to subsequent exposures as they did initially.

This is important for developing shark repellents, he said, since some of them use electrical fields to ward off the animals. "So if you were using a shark repellent, you would need to change the current over a 20- to 30-minute period so the shark doesn't get used to that field."

Kempster envisions using electrical fields to not only keep humans safe but to protect sharks as well. Shark populations have been on the decline for decades, due partly to ending up as bycatch, or accidental catches, in the nets and on the longlines of fishers targeting other animals.

A 2006 study estimated that as much as 70 percent of landings, by weight, in the Spanish surface longline fleet were sharks, while a 2007 report found that eight million sharks are hooked each year off the coast of southern Africa. (Read about the global fisheries crisis in National Geographic magazine.)

"If we can produce something effective, it could be used in the fishing industry to reduce shark bycatch," Kempster said. "In [America] at the moment, they're doing quite a lot of work trying to produce electromagnetic fish hooks." The eventual hope is that if these hooks repel the sharks, they won't accidentally end up on longlines.

Read More..

White House Won't Rule Out $1 Trillion Coin

(United States Mint/Wikimedia Commons)

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney today flatly ruled out any negotiations with Congress over raising the debt ceiling, but there’s one odd-ball solution he would not rule out:  minting trillion dollars coins to pay off the debt.

“There is no Plan B. There is no backup plan. There is Congress’s responsibility to pay the bills of the United States,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters at the daily White House briefing.

READ: $1-Trillion Coins: The Ultimate Debt Ceiling End-Around?

Asked if the administration would rule out minting trillion dollars coins if Congress fails to act, Carney deflected saying “you could speculate about a lot of things.”

“Nothing needs to come to these kinds of… speculative notions about how to deal with a problem that is easily resolved by Congress doing its job, very simply,” he added.

Pressed further on why they won’t offer a clear yes-or-no answer to the question, Carney referred questions to the Treasury Department.

“I answered it thoroughly,” he later joked. “And I have no coins in my pocket.”

Some have suggested the President could invoke the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution – which states, “the validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned” – and ignore the debt ceiling altogether.  On that question, Carney has offered a straight answer:  the 14 Amendment does not apply to the debt ceiling.

“We just don’t believe that it provides the authority that some believe it does,” Carney said.

The trillion-dollar-coin idea has been floated by, among others, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute.

Here’s our full Q and A:

KARL: I heard you unequivocally rule out using the 14th Amendment on the debt ceiling. I heard you unequivocally rule out negotiating with Congress. But you did not rule out this trillion-dollar coin idea. So can I ask you just a yes-or-no question? Does the White House rule out the idea of minting trillion-dollar coins as a way of dealing with the debt ceiling?

CARNEY: I would refer you to Treasury for the specifics of this question. I can tell you that the president does not believe that there is a backup plan or a plan B or an off-ramp. The only viable option here is Congress to fulfill its — that Congress fulfills its responsibility and ensures that the United States of America pays its bills, as it has always paid its bills throughout its history.

KARL: But why have we ruled out the 14th Amendment and not ruled out the trillion-dollar coin idea?

CARNEY: Again, I can tell you that there are no back-up plans. There are no plan B’s. I’d refer you to the Treasury.

–

KARL: Jay, the speaker of the House has made it perfectly clear that he is willing to increase the debt ceiling, but the principle is for every dollar the debt ceiling is increased, a dollar of spending must be cut. Given that you’re saying that the White House will not negotiate on raising the debt ceiling, are you willing to accept that principle from the speaker, a dollar in cuts for every dollar increase?

MR. CARNEY: I think the president’s been very clear that his absolute principle is that we need to reduce our deficit in a balanced way that does not shift all the burden, through cuts exclusively, on senior citizens, on families who have disabled children, on families who are trying to send their kids to school. That’s just unacceptable.

You know, one of the things we learned in the process that we just went through late in — late last year is that when it comes to specificity, we never saw any specificity from Republicans in terms of how exactly they would achieve the kind of sweeping cuts that they say they want and out of whose — you know, from whom would they demand that payment.

And what the president has been very clear about is he will not negotiate on Congress’ responsibility to pay its bills. He will negotiate and is willing to compromise, as he has demonstrated repeatedly, when it comes to moving forward in a balanced way to reduce our deficit. We have to deal with the sequester. We have to deal with a variety of budgetary and economic and fiscal challenges.

But he will not negotiate over the debt ceiling. And the threat itself is a problem, as we saw in the summer of 2011. The binary choice that Republicans seem to want to present to the American public is either we gut Medicare and Social Security or we tank the global economy. I’m not a communications director for the speaker of the House or the Senate minority leader, but I would think selling that would be very hard.

KARL: But help me understand how this works. You say you will not negotiate on this issue. They’ve put out a principle, so they produce something — and they say they will — that cuts a dollar for every dollar increase. And you’re saying you won’t negotiate on that?

MR. CARNEY: Have you seen that?

KARL: Well, this is what they say they are going to go forward.

MR. CARNEY: Well, I mean, you know –

KARL: So either –

MR. CARNEY: — words are not actions, and there has been, at — to this date, very little specificity, you know, since we — since the Ryan plan, which itself was lacking in specifics. And if their — if their position is we’re going to voucherize Medicare or tank the global economy, they should say so. That is unacceptable to the American people. It’s certainly unacceptable to the president.

Look, here’s the thing. Congress has the authority to authorize money, right, not the president. Congress racked up these bills. Congress has to pay these bills. We are very interested in a discussion and negotiation about getting our fiscal house in order. This president has already signed into law over $2 trillion in deficit reduction. He is eager to do more in a balanced way.

But it is not appropriate to — in this president’s view — to say that if I don’t get what I want, I’m not going to raise the debt limit. That is basically saying, I will abandon the history of the United States maintaining the full faith and credit of its currency and its — and its treasury by refusing to pay bills because I didn’t get what I want politically.

And that’s just not acceptable to the president.

KARL:  I’m not sure I understand how that works — you’re not going to negotiate at all? –

MR. CARNEY: We’re not going to negotiate. Congress has a — if Congress wants to give the president the responsibility to raise the debt ceiling, he would take it, as we saw when — in 2010 or — I forget, there have been so many of these confrontations — in — when — in 2011 when the so-called McConnell plan was adopted, you know. But they assigned themselves this responsibility. They need to be — the fact that they, you know, assigned it to them is something that they have to deal with. They assigned it to themselves, they need to act, and they need to, without drama or delay, raise the debt ceiling. We still have — there is plenty of opportunity outside of threatening the full faith and credit of the United States to debate fundamental differences over our economic and fiscal policy proposals, but it is not wise to do that around raising the debt ceiling, not wise to do it around the simple principle that we, the United States of America, pay our debts.

Read More..

Today on New Scientist: 8 January 2013

Mock Mars mission reveals salty surprise

Unexpected findings from the "crew members" of the Mars 500 experiment may overturn a common assumption about how our body stores and excretes dietary salt

'Exocomets' abound in alien solar systems

Planets around billions of stars may be getting pummelled by the icy dirt-balls in the same way that the young Earth once was

Australia faces another week of 'catastrophic' heat

A record-smashing "dome of heat" is causing the worst fire threat on record and forcing Australian meteorologists to add two colours to their heat maps

Black holes star in first images of high-energy cosmos

NASA's recently launched NuSTAR space telescope peers through the dust that blinds other craft to spot a supernova and two black holes

Another day at the office for NASA's robot astronaut

This fine figure of a robot is Robonaut 2 hard at work aboard the International Space Station last week

Into thin air: Storage salvation for green energy

If renewable energy is to succeed, we need to find a better way to store it. Liquid air batteries could be the answer, says Jim Giles

Tony Fadell: From iPhones to sexing up thermostats

After quitting Apple, the tech guru behind the iPod wanted to revolutionise our homes - starting with the humble thermostat

World's oldest pills treated sore eyes

Tablets found in an ancient shipwreck contain zinc carbonates - just like many of today's eye medications

Only the toughest would survive on Tatooine worlds

A new look at twin-star systems hints that life might thrive in more places than we thought, as long as it can adapt to wild climates

Read More..

Depardieu skips drink-drive court for Strauss-Kahn film

PODGORICA: Gerard Depardieu skipped a drink-driving court appearance in Paris on Tuesday to work on a film in Montenegro in which he will play Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but claimed he had told French officials he would be absent and the matter had been settled.

The "Cyrano de Bergerac", "Green Card" and "Asterix & Obelix" star, who has already pleaded guilty to driving his scooter while intoxicated, could not attend court because he was on a planned trip to Montenegro, Depardieu told reporters in Podgorica.

"I fled neither from the court, nor from justice," Depardieu said after meeting with Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic.

"I informed the court, I never fled.... I am ready to appear when they want, on the condition that I am there and that I can defend myself," the French star said.

But the no-show meant the hulking actor, embroiled in a bitter tax row that saw him take Russian nationality and angrily vow to quit France, risks being tried by a criminal court where he could face up to two years in jail.

The 64-year-old was in the Balkan nation to meet producers of the film in which he will play the disgraced ex-IMF boss Strauss-Kahn. A police official there told AFP that rumours he was seeking Montenegrin citizenship were false.

Depardieu has said he wants the role because he did not like Strauss-Kahn, who was tipped to be the next French president until a sordid US sex scandal ended his career, because he was "like all French people, a little arrogant".

The actor, whose highly-publicised flight into tax exile has embarrassed President Francois Hollande, was arrested in Paris in November after falling off a scooter he was riding while three times over the legal alcohol limit.

If he had turned up Tuesday in court he would have escaped with a small fine and penalty points on his licence. Now the rotund actor, whose many previous exploits include urinating in a bottle on a plane, could face criminal proceedings.

But Depardieu insisted the case has already been settled.

"The justice (system) in France and my lawyers have informed me that all is fine," he said.

He said he was not a "criminal, I've slipped with my scooter, I fell asleep, that's it.

"I had a low level of alcohol in (my) blood as I had a salad with a drop more of vinegar and it was over the limit," he said jokingly.

"This issue is settled, all is fine and I can return to France and there will be no problems."

Depardieu hit the headlines in December when he bought a house just over the border in Belgium after accusing the French Socialist government of punishing "success, creativity and talent" with allegedly excessive taxes.

That prompted Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault to brand his move as "shabby and unpatriotic" -- which in turn prompted the actor to threaten to give up his French citizenship.

The saga became ever more farcical when Russian President Vladimir Putin, eyeing a potential propaganda coup, offered the star Russian nationality.

Depardieu leapt at the chance, travelling last weekend to get his new passport and for some hugs and a meal with the Russian strongman in his sumptuous dacha in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

He was later given a hero's welcome -- and an offer of a free apartment and the job of culture minister -- in Mordovia, a Russian region best known for its Soviet-era gulags.

In the unlikely event that he spends at least six months of the year in Russia, he would benefit from a tax rate of just 13 per cent. His anger at the French government was focused on its planned 75 per cent tax on millionaires.

France's top constitutional authority, the Constitutional Council, struck down the proposed new tax rate on December 29, but the government has vowed to push ahead with it.

- AFP/jc

Read More..

Mauz goes all 'Minority Report' as a mouse replacement

Mauz is currently up as a Kickstarter project.

(Credit:
Amanda Kooser/CNET)

LAS VEGAS--We tech writers are constantly comparing real products to what we've seen in sci-fi movies. I'm still waiting for my Hoverboard, but at least we're inching a little closer to some "Minority Report"-style computer interfaces with the Mauz, a device that turns your iPhone into a mouse with special skills.

The hardware portion of Mauz is reasonably discreet. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit:
Amanda Kooser/CNET)

Mauz is like a combination of the
Wii remote, the Kinect, and a desktop mouse. It involves a small device that plugs into your iPhone and an app that makes the magic happen.

Visiting Mauz at
CES 2013, I caught the team looking pretty stressed as they struggled with getting Mauz to work over Wi-Fi at the same time 50 gajillion other exhibitors were weighing down the network. They did get it up and running to show off using the phone like a traditional mouse with touch-screen clicks; like a Wii by manipulating a 3D model on-screen by waving the iPhone in the air; and like a Kinect by switching between tabs on a browser by waving a hand in the air above it.

So how does this experience compare with Tom Cruise waving his hands around and getting things done in "Minority Report?" It's not really very close, but you can see the potential. Mauz uses the iPhone's front-facing camera to detect hand movement. That means you can wave your hand over it to change channels, for example. It's far away from the super-detailed work we saw Cruise do, but for right now, we'll take what we can get.

The Mauz demo I saw was conducted with a production-ready prototype. The electronic innards are all ready to go and the app is running. A freshly launched Kickstarter project is aiming to get the funding together to go into production. The early-bird pledge price for a Mauz is $45. The Mauz team estimates it will take about six months to get the device into production.

A lot of the potential for the Mauz centers around harnessing the capabilities of the iPhone. Users can set shortkeys and the app can could be extremely customized to work with specific devices and programs. It also frees you from the flat surface of your desk, giving you an opportunity for a more natural interface with your computer. Plus, you can pretend you're Tom Cruise if you're into that sort of thing.

Mauz works up in the air as well as down on a desk.

(Credit:
Amanda Kooser/CNET)

Read More..

Pictures: Wildfires Scorch Australia Amid Record Heat

Photograph by Jo Giuliani, European Pressphoto Agency

Smoke from a wildfire mushrooms over a beach in Forcett, Tasmania, on January 4. (See more wildfire pictures.)

Wildfires have engulfed southeastern Australia, including the island state of Tasmania, in recent days, fueled by dry conditions and temperatures as high as 113ºF (45ºC), the Associated Press reported. (Read "Australia's Dry Run" inNational Geographic magazine.)

No deaths have been reported, though a hundred people are unaccounted for in the town of Dunalley, where the blazes destroyed 90 homes.

"You don't get conditions worse than this," New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told the AP.

"We are at the catastrophic level, and clearly in those areas leaving early is your safest option."

Published January 8, 2013

Read More..

CIA Nominee May Have 'Zero Dark Thirty' Problem

Navy SEALs are seen fighting through a dust storm in the new thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow, "Zero Dark Thirty." (Columbia Pictures/AP Photo)

There’s only one White House staffer portrayed in the new movie “Zero Dark Thirty,” and it is someone described in the credits as “National Security Advisor.”

It’s a position that’s possibly filled in real life by John Brennan, the president’s counterterrorism advisor, who President Obama nominated Jan. 7 to be director of C.I.A.. The character in the movie, with references to the C.I.A’s involvement in the flawed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction that led the U.S. into war in Iraq, explains to a frustrated agency representative the difficulty of the president’s decision in acting on partial intelligence.

Spoiler alert: The president does ultimately act on that partial intelligence and Osama bin Laden is nabbed.

The character in real life – Brennan – has been opposed by some for his work at the C.I.A. under President Bush and the “enhanced interrogation” policies like waterboarding that also play a prominent role in the movie.

President Obama makes a cameo in the movie in the form of a “60 Minutes” interview in which he declares that, “America doesn’t torture, and I’m gonna make sure that we don’t torture.”

That declaration is viewed, in the film, by a table full of CIA agents in Pakistan who have been involved in “enhanced” interrogations.

The U.S. used waterboarding on three al Qaeda detainees at secret prisons run by the CIA.  It  ended the practice of using secret prisons in September of 2006 under President Bush and in 2009 President Obama signed executive orders in his first days in office that banned of the use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation” techniques.

But that was after the techniques had already scuttled Brennan’s first chance to head the CIA.  Brennan wasn’t nominated to be CIA director back in the early days of the Obama administration, but he was widely considered to be a front-runner for the job. ABC’s Jake Tapper reported at the time that Brennan withdrew his name for consideration and most of the opposition came as a result of his work at the C.I.A. when those techniques were in use.

And there is indication that they will make his nomination difficult this year.

“I appreciate John Brennan’s long record of service to our nation, but I have many questions and concerns about his nomination to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, especially what role he played in the so-called enhanced interrogation programs while serving at the CIA during the last administration, as well as his public defense of those programs,” said Sen. John McCain after Brennan was nominated Monday.  ”I plan to examine this aspect of Mr. Brennan’s record very closely as I consider his nomination.”

The movie has certainly brought “enhanced interrogation” – it’s critics call it torture – back into the conversation about the war on terror, as ABC’s Lee Ferran reported Monday:

Last week three high-powered senators, Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.), Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D.-Mich.) and 2008 Presidential candidate John McCain (R.-Ariz.), revealed they had written two letters to Morell in December demanding to know what impact the CIA may have had on the depiction of enhanced interrogation in the film and whether the agency “misled” the filmmakers into thinking the tactic was effective.

“As you know, the film depicts CIA officers repeatedly torturing detainees. The film then credits CIA detainees subjected to coercive interrogation techniques as providing critical lead information on the courier that led to the [bin Laden] compound,” one letter says. “The CIA cannot be held accountable for how the Agency and its activities are portrayed in film, but we are nonetheless concerned, given the CIA’s cooperation with the filmmakers and the narrative’s consistency with past public misstatements by former senior CIA officials, that the filmmakers could have been misled by information they were provided by the CIA.”

Brennan, for his part, has said he opposed torture techniques, as Jake Tapper reported back in 2008 when Brennan removed his name from consideration for the C.I.A. job in 2008.

In a letter released to the media, apparently by Brennan or someone operating on Brennan’s behalf, the former CIA official wrote, “It has been immaterial to the critics that I have been a strong opponent of many of the policies of the Bush Administration such as the preemptive war in Iraq and coercive interrogation tactics, too include waterboarding. The fact that I was not involved in the decision making process for any of these controversial policies and actions has been ignored. Indeed, my criticism of these policies within government circles why I was twice considered for more senior-level positions in the current Administration only to be rebuffed by the White House.”

But Brennan did defend the practice in news media interviews when he described the actions of C.I.A. director George Tenet. This is what Brennan told CBS’s Harry Smith about enhanced interrogation in 2007: “The CIA has acknowledged that it has detained about 100 terrorists since 9/11, and about a third of them have been subjected to what the CIA refers to as enhanced interrogation tactics, and only a small proportion of those have in fact been subjected to the most serious types of enhanced procedures….There have been a lot of information that has come out from these interrogation procedures that the agency has in fact used against the real hard-core terrorists. It has saved lives. And let’s not forget, these are hardened terrorists who have been responsible for 9/11, who have shown no remorse at all for the deaths of 3,000 innocents.”

Brennan has also spoken out in support of “rendition” – the practice where the U.S. government captures terror suspects in one country and relocates them to another. That’s a practice still employed by the Obama administration, according to a recent Washington Post investigation.

Related: Watch Martha Raddatz’s Nightline interview with ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Director Kathryn Bigelow:

Read More..

World's oldest pills treated sore eyes

In ancient Rome, physicians treated sore eyes with the same active ingredients as today. So suggests an analysis of pills found on the Relitto del Pozzino, a cargo ship wrecked off the Italian coast in around 140 BC.

"To our knowledge, these are the oldest medical tablets ever analysed," says Erika Ribechini of the University of Pisa in Italy, head of a team analysing the relics. She thinks the disc-shaped tablets, 4 centimetres across and a centimetre thick, were likely dipped in water and dabbed directly on the eyes.

The tablets were mainly made of the zinc carbonates hydrozincite and smithsonite, echoing the widespread use of zinc-based minerals in today's eye and skin medications. Ribechini says there is evidence that Pliny the Elder, the Roman physician, prescribed zinc compounds for these uses almost 250 years after the shipwreck in his seminal medical encyclopaedia, Naturalis Historia.

The tablets were also rich in plant and animal oils. Pollen grains from an olive tree suggest that olive oil was a key ingredient, just like it is today in many medical and beauty creams, says Ribechini.

The tablets were discovered in a sealed tin cylinder called a pyxis (see image above). The tin must have been airtight to protect its contents from oxygen corrosion.

"Findings of such ancient medicines are extremely rare, so preservation of the Pozzino tablets is a very lucky case," says Ribechini.

The cargo of the wreck, discovered in 1989, is rich in other medical equipment, including vials and special vessels for bloodletting. This suggests that one of the passengers may have been a physician.

Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1216776110

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.

Read More..