Release of torture report expected today
WASHINGTON — American embassies, military units and other U.S. interests are bracing for possible security threats related to today’s planned release of a report on the CIA’s harsh interrogation techniques, the White House says.
The report from the Senate Intelligence Committee will be the first public accounting of the CIA’s use of torture on al-Qaida detainees held in secret facilities in Europe and Asia in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The committee is expected to release a 480-page executive summary of the more than 6,000-page report compiled by Democrats on the panel.
According to many U.S. officials who have read it, the document alleges that the harsh interrogations failed to produce unique and life-saving intelligence. And it asserts that the CIA lied about the covert program to officials at the White House, the Justice Department and congressional oversight committees.
Religious nonprofits challenge health law
DENVER — In the latest religious challenge to the federal health care law, faith-based organizations that object to covering birth control in their employee health plans argued in federal appeals court Monday that the government hasn’t gone far enough to ensure they don’t have to violate their beliefs.
Plaintiffs including a group of Colorado nuns and four Christian colleges in Oklahoma argued in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver that a federal exemption for groups that oppose contraceptives, including the morning-after pill, violates their beliefs.
The groups don’t have to cover such contraceptives, as most insurers must. But they have to tell the government they object on religious grounds in order to get an exemption. They argued Monday that because they must sign away coverage to another party, the exemption makes them complicit in providing contraceptives.
Woman, 2 sons killed in Md. home hit by jet
GAITHERSBURG, Md. — A small, private jet slammed into a house Monday, killing a woman and her young sons inside the home and three people on the aircraft, authorities said.
The jet crashed around 10:45 a.m. in Gaithersburg, a Washington, D.C., suburb, Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Chief Steve Lohr said during a news conference.
Authorities quickly said all three people in the plane had been killed, but it took hours for fire crews to sweep the home and confirm that three people were inside. They were identified as 36-year-old Marie Gemmell and her two sons, 3-year-old Cole and a 1-month-old Devon, police said.
They were found in a second-floor bathroom. Gemmell was lying on top of her young sons in an apparent effort to shield them from the smoke and fire, said police Capt. Paul Starks. Her husband and a school-age daughter were not home and were accounted for, police said.
The fuselage of the jet crashed into the front lawn of an adjacent home, which was heavily damaged by fire, and investigators believe one of its wings, which had fuel inside, was sheared off and tore through the front of the Gemmell home, said Robert Sumwalt, a National Transportation Safety Board member. Witnesses reported seeing and hearing a secondary explosion after the plane hit the ground.
US end war-fighting mission in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan — American and NATO troops closed their operational command in Afghanistan on Monday, lowering flags in a ceremony to mark the formal end of their combat mission in a country still mired in war 13 years after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime for harboring those responsible for 9/11.
The closing of the command, which oversaw the day-to-day operations of coalition combat forces, is one of the final steps in a transition to a support and training role that begins Jan. 1. But with President Barack Obama’s recent move authorizing U.S. forces in Afghanistan to carry out military operations against Taliban and al-Qaida targets, America’s longest war will in fact continue for at least another two years.
Obama’s decision to give American forces a more active role than previously envisioned suggests the U.S. is still concerned about the Afghan government’s ability to fight. And agreements signed by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to allow U.S. and NATO troops to remain in the country are seen as a red line by the Taliban, further narrowing any hope of peace talks.
Museum lifts lid on coffin of 2,500-year-old
CHICAGO — Not until the lid was off the wood coffin — exposing the 2,500-year-old mummified remains of a 14-year-old Egyptian boy — could J.P. Brown relax.
The conservator at Chicago’s Field Museum and three other scientists had just employed specially created clamps as a cradle to raise the fragile coffin lid. Wearing blue surgical gloves, they lifted the contraption and delicately walked it to safe spot on a table in a humidity-controlled lab.
“Sweet!” Brown said after helping set the lid down, before later acknowledging the stress. “Oh yeah, god, I was nervous.”
The much-planned procedure Friday at the museum, revealing the burial mask and blackened toes of Minirdis, the son of a priest, will allow museum conservators to stabilize the mummy so it can travel in an upcoming exhibit.
“Mummies: Images of the Afterlife” is expected to premier in September at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, then travel to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in fall 2016.
Kate tours child center, William meets Obama
NEW YORK — Britain’s Prince William sat down with President Barack Obama in Washington on Monday and unveiled an effort to curtail illegal wildlife trading while his wife, Kate, made an impression of a down-to-earth duchess on preschoolers and prominent British expats in New York.
In the first full — very full — day of the popular royal couple’s first visit to either place, William went to the White House and spoke at a World Bank conference. Kate wrapped Christmas gifts and helped children decorate picture frames while touring a child development center with New York City’s first lady, then talked technology, theater and more with a British-success-story guest list at a lunch at the consul general’s home.
The Associated Press