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treatment at secret CIA-run prisons under the Bush administration-era U.S. program of detention and rendition of terror suspects.
• The report also paints a more complete picture of Washington's close cooperation with the regime of Libya's former dictator Moammar Gadhafi in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. handed over to Libya the Islamist opponents of Gadhafi that it detained abroad with only thin "diplomatic assurances" that they would not be mistreated, and several of them were subsequently tortured in prison, Human Rights Watch said.
• The 154-page report features interviews by the New York-based group with 14 Libyan dissident exiles. They describe systematic abuses while they were held in U.S.-led detention centers in Afghanistan -- some as long as two years -- or in U.S.-led interrogations in Pakistan, Morocco, Thailand, Sudan and elsewhere before the Americans handed them over to Libya.
• "Not only did the U.S. deliver (Gadhafi) his enemies on a silver platter, but it seems the CIA tortured many of them first, said Laura Pitter, counterterrorism adviser at Human Rights Watch and author of the report.
• "The scope of the Bush administration abuse appears far broader than previously acknowledged," she said.
• ___

• TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- They are mere specks on the map. Many are uninhab

ited, and others sparsely so by fishermen and seasonal residents. Yet the disputed ownership of these tiny constellations of islands is inflaming nationalist fervor from the cold North Pacific to the tropical South China Sea.
• In recent weeks, these long-simmering tensions have returned to a boil, with violent protests in Chinese cities, a provocative island junket by South Korea's lame-duck president, and Japan's government reportedly planning to buy disputed islands from their private owners.
• The popular analysis is that the rising tensions are fueled by a regional power shift that has seen China become increasingly assertive with its neighbors in securing claims over potentially resource-rich waters to its south and east. But the growing acrimony may have at least as much to do with domestic political posturing.
• "Wrapping yourself up in the national flag gives a very convenient exit for people with other agendas to justify their positions," says political scientist Koichi Nakano of Tokyo's Sophia University.

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