Domino’s to serve pizzas on the Moon !

 New York :Despite the fact that man has stopped going to the Moon, Domino’s Japan reckons this is a good time to plan an outlet there.

 

Dodgy-looking artist’s impressions of the dome restaurant abound at moon.dominos.jp, which is mostly in Japanese, apart from a video featuring Domino’s Japan president Scott K Oelkers announcing the project, wearing a full spacesuit with a lovely Domino’s patch.

“Perhaps you think we’re foolish to take on such a challenge, and maybe we are foolish, but we have a dream and that dream is to deliver our Domino’s pizza on the Moon,” he said, after the futuristic space music had faded.

“Right now, with the cooperation of businesses and enterprises that possess the technology, we are driving forward our project to open a store on the moon.”

The video also features some seriously strange motivational rhetoric about how good it is to have a dream and frequent references by Oelkers to his “fellow Earthlings”, leading to the suspicion that this may be one of those crazy marketing stunts Japanese companies are so fond of.

Domino’s Japan in particular seems to enjoy a good headline-grabbing stunt, having hired someone to deliver pizza for one hour last year at a salary of Y2.5 million (£20,092). Not to mention its Pizza Tracking Show, which let hungry customers register to see the progress of their pizza in real-time up to delivery.

However, legit or not, the plans are pretty elaborate, with the website’s construction section stamped by an actual company’s logo, Maeda Corp, and even estimates of how much the project is to cost, an impressive Y1.67 trillion (£13.4bn).

Around Y560bn (£4.5bn) will be need to carry 70 tonnes of construction materials and pizza-making equipment to the moon aboard 15 rockets, according to the Daily Telegraph, and the company will also try to keep costs down by using mineral deposits on the moon to make concrete at a cost of Y194bn (£1.5bn).

“We started thinking about this project last year, although we have not yet determined when the restaurant might open,” Tomohide Matsunaga, a spokesman for Domino’s Japan, said.

“In the future, we anticipate there will be many people living on the moon, astronauts who are working there and, in the future, citizens of the moon,” he added.

Domino’s UK press department thanked The Reg for its interest in the story and directed us firmly to Domino’s Japan and its moon website, while Domino’s US said it had no further information as “this is only taking place in Japan, not in the US.”

Libya’s new security head was CIA target

Tripoli : As the new head of  Tripoli’s security forces, Abdelhakim Belhaj represents hope for the future and the fear that religious extremists will poison the Libyan revolution.

This ability to split opinion is an old habit – Mr Belhaj has been both tortured and helped by the US – but now he is keen to ease fears that al-Qa’ida is ready to rise in Libya.

The Libyan rebels had “no connection whatever with al-Qa’ida and we have never, ever in our history had any connection with them”, he said at the weekend.

“We completely reject targeting of civilians and the killing of innocent people. The revolutionaries will answer directly to the National Transitional Council.”

A charismatic figure who dresses in camouflage uniform and wears a pistol on his hip, Mr Belhaj fought with the mujaheddin in Afghanistan, returning to Libya after the Soviets withdrew to found the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, the only organisation to oppose the now-ousted dictator Muammar Gaddafi on the ground. The group was banned by the UN and listed as a terrorist organisation by the US.

In 2004, Mr Belhaj was kidnapped while in Malaysia and, in an “extraordinary rendition”, taken to a secret CIA facility in Thailand, where he was tortured for two weeks.

He was injected with an unknown substance and immersed into an ice pool. It was in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US and Mr Belhaj’s role in Afghanistan had made him a CIA target. Washington fears he is an al-Qa’ida sympathiser.

It appears it was at Gaddafi’s urging that the CIA grabbed him and handed him over to the Libyan government, which imprisoned him.

When the Arab Spring uprising erupted in February, Mr Belhaj fought on the front lines, and was crucial in taking Tripoli.

He was asked by the National Transitional Council to take on the capital’s toughest job – bringing security to a city of almost two million that has no police force and is divided among militias and neighbourhood watch groups.

Mr Belhaj said on the weekend that he was confident Libya would not become “another Iraq.”

“Libya is very different from Iraq,” he said. “We don’t have all the political and religious sects of Iraq and we don’t have the foreign invaders of Iraq – all those things were precursors of the chaos.

“We don’t have (foreign) groundforces who invaded Iraq. This wasn’t a war per se, it was a revolution with the objective of making people free.”

Asked about the hunt for Gaddafi, Mr Belhaj said: “We consider Gaddafi to be a military target, he’s the most important military target and if NATO were to attempt to find him using their methods we welcome that. But Gaddafi’s end we hope will be at the hands of the revolutionaries.”

The rebels were receiving a range of informationabout Gaddafi’s whereabouts and believed he was between Bani Walid and Sabha. The rebels would try to make sure Gaddafi did not leave Libya, but “in the end he is a coward”.

Attack on Gaddafi bastion starts

Tripoli : Fighters for Libya’s new rulers began an assault on a bastion of Muammar Gaddafi yesterday, as secret files shed light on his fallen regime’s links to US and British spy agencies.

“We are preparing to enter Bani Walid and we will fight,” National Transitional Council spokesman Mahmud Abdel Aziz said in Shishan, north of Bani Walid.

A dozen vehicles, including utes mounted with heavy machineguns, were seen heading further south towards Bani Walid while a commander, Ossama Ghazi, also set off yesterday, saying: “There is fighting.”

Abdel Aziz said he expected Bani Walid to “fall within hours”.

Earlier, the deputy chief of the military council of the town of Tarhuna, further north, said fighters for Libya’s new leaders had given forces loyal to Gaddafi in Bani Walid until 6pm last night (AEST) to surrender.

Abdulrazzak Naduri said the ousted dictator ‘s son, Saadi Gaddafi, was still in Bani Walid, along with other regime cronies, while prominent son Saif al-Islam had fled the town.

Meanwhile, Gaddafi regime intelligence files appear to document deep co-operation between Western spy agencies, including the shipping of terrorist suspects for regime interrogation.

The cache of documents, originally obtained by Human Rights Watch from a Libyan security archive, includes blunt details about the secret 2004 seizure from Malaysia of an Islamic militant, who now commands the revolutionary forces in Tripoli.

The letters include an apparent CIA memo informing the Libyan authorities about the journey of “Abdullah al-Sadiq” and his pregnant wife from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok, where the US would “take control” of the pair and hand them over to the regime.

Sadiq, named as a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is said to be the nom de guerre of Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, who now leads the militia of Libya’s new rulers in Tripoli.

The documents show how the CIA, under the administration of US president George W. Bush, brought other terrorist suspects to Libya and suggested questions that Libyan interrogators should ask them.

British Security Service MI5 asked Gaddafi’s secret services for regular updates on what terrorist suspects were revealing under interrogation in Libyan prisons, where torture was routine.

MI5 also agreed to trade information with Libyan spymasters on 50 British-based Libyans judged to be a threat to Gaddafi’s regime. The disclosures come from secret intelligence documents left in the ruins of the British embassy in Tripoli.

They include an MI5 paper marked “UK/Libya Eyes Only Secret”, which shows the service provided Gaddafi’s spies with a trove of intelligence about Libyan dissidents in London, Cardiff, Birmingham and Manchester.

Other documents in the abandoned offices of British and Libyan officials reveal that the Ministry of Defence invited the dictator’s sons Saadi and Khamis Gaddafi to a combat display at SAS headquarters in Hereford and a dinner at the Cavalry and Guards Club in Mayfair.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair helped Saif Gaddafi with his PhD thesis, beginning a personal letter with the words “Dear Engineer Saif”, the files reveal.

The MI5 paper for Gaddafi’s security services contains detailed information about members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a militant dissident outfit with cells in Britain.

The document, prepared ahead of an MI5 visit to Tripoli in 2005, requested that Libyan intelligence should provide access to detainees held by secret police and to “timely debriefs” of interrogations.

It added: “The more timely (the) information, the better . . . Such intelligence is most valuable when it is current. It is notable that LIFG members in the UK become aware of the detention of members overseas within a relatively short period.”

The documents also reveal that the Gaddafi regime warned British officials that there would be “dire consequences” for relations between Britain and Libya if Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi died in his Scottish jail cell.

In one file, seen by The Mail on Sunday, senior Foreign Office official Robert Dixon wrote to then foreign secretary David Miliband in January 2009 that Gaddafi wanted Megrahi to return to Libya “at all costs”.

“Libyan officials and ministers have warned of dire consequences for the UK-Libya relationship and UK commercial operations in Libya in the event of Megrahi’s death in custody,” he wrote.

He added: “We believe Libya might seek to exact vengeance.”

Libyan Islamist says interim council should quit

BENGHAZI: A Libyan Islamist military commander who helped defend Benghazi against Muammar Gaddafi’s forces has called on the interim cabinet to resign because they are “remnants of the old regime”.

In an early sign of divisions among the victors in Libya’s six-month civil war, Ismail al-Salabi also took a swipe at secular groups he said were trying to give Islamists a bad name and create political strife that would only benefit Gaddafi.

Salabi leads the February 17 brigade which many Libyans credit with the successful last-ditch defence of Benghazi, where the uprising began on that date. Only later did NATO air power tip the balance in favour of the largely untrained rebel forces.

“The role of the executive committee is no longer required because they are remnants of the old regime. They should all resign, starting from the head of the pyramid all the way down,” Salabi told Reuters in the eastern city.

He was referring to the National Transitional Council’s de facto cabinet, which is headed by Mahmoud Jibril, who once headed Libya’s state economic think-tank under Gaddafi.

The 40-member NTC is a disparate mix of former officials in the Gaddafi administration, businessmen, academics, lawyers and exiles.

Salabi commands at least 3,000 fighters and reports to the interim interior ministry in Tripoli, according to an NTC spokesman. He accompanied NTC chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil to a NATO meeting in Doha last month and said he fully supports him.

Abdel Jalil resigned as Gaddafi’s justice minister after violence was used against the protests that erupted on February 17

Salabi once fought in Afghanistan but denies any links to Islamist groups outside Libya, such as the Taliban and al Qaeda. After the anti-Gaddafi revolt, his forces received arms from the Gulf Arab state of Qatar.

Without naming anyone, Salabi criticised those he said were trying to cast Libyan Islamist leaders as extremists.

“There are secularists who have their own private agenda and would like to portray us as extremist to alienate us from the international community and cause the division that will only serve the tyrant,” he said, referring to Gaddafi.

“Sometimes you wonder and ask, who are they serving?”

Israel will not apologise to Turkey: Netanyahu

Jerusalem: Israel today made it clear that it will not apologise to Turkey, amid the deepening diplomatic row with Ankara over the Israeli commando raid aboard flotilla Mavi Marmara last year in which nine Turkish nationals were killed, but hopes to find a way to “overcome the differences”.”We need not apologise for the fact that naval commandos defended their lives against an assault by violent IHT activists,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”We need not apologise for the fact that we acted to stop the smuggling of weapons to Hamas, a terrorist organisation that has already fired over 10,000 missiles, rockets and mortar rounds at our civilians”, the hardline leader said at a weekly cabinet meeting.Turkey expelled Israel”s ambassador yesterday and said that its effort to bring Israel before the International Court of Justice(ICJ) was moving ahead.Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told state-run news outlet TRT that the court”s decision was binding.”So we say, if you think this way, let the ICJ decide. We will initiate the legal procedure next week,” Davutoglu said.The Israeli Prime Minister made it clear that there was no case for apology for defending “our people, our children and our communities”.However, Netanyahu said Israel “regrets the loss of human life” and hopes “that the way will be found to overcome the differences with Turkey”.He said Israel “never wanted its relations with Turkey to deteriorate, nor does it want them to deteriorate right now”.The one-time close allies have been at odds since the deadly incident on May 31 last year when Israeli commandos boarded Mavi Marmara trying to break Israel”s blockade of Islamist Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.The Mavi Marmara had numerous Turks aboard and was part of a flotilla loaded with humanitarian aid.The Israeli commandos came under attack from the pro-Palestinian activists on boarding the ship and responded by firing at them, leaving nine dead and many wounded.

Louisiana coast braces for Tropical Storm Lee

Tropical Storm Lee threatened the Louisiana coast on Friday with torrential rains and flooding and shut nearly half of U.S. offshore crude oil production and a third of offshore gas production.

The slow-moving storm is expected to reach the Louisiana coast early on Sunday and bring 10-15 inches of rain to southeast Louisiana over the weekend, including low-lying New Orleans, battered by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Lee was about 185 miles southwest of the Mississippi River’s mouth, with maximum winds of 45 mph, the hurricane center said. Its heavy rain and gusty winds were already buffeting the Louisiana coast, it said.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal warned that heavy rains, substantial winds and tidal surges from the Gulf of Mexico could produce flash flooding in parts of New Orleans throughout the Labor Day holiday weekend.

“Get ready for the wind, get ready for the rain, it’s coming and it’s going to be here for a while,” Jindal said at a briefing in Baton Rouge. Jindal has declared a state of emergency for Louisiana, and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour made a similar ruling for seven coastal counties.

Lee has a 50-60 percent chance of reaching hurricane strength, AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Bernie Rayno told Reuters Insider

“The problem with this system is that it’s so slow-moving,” Rayno said. “The big story is going to be the flooding.”

Major offshore producers like Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp and BP Plc shut down platforms and evacuated staff earlier this week.

Israeli rabbis launch initiative to marry gay men to lesbian women ­

SHILO, West Bank :Rabbi Arele Harel offers an unconventional solution for Orthodox Jewish gay men who want to raise a conventional family: He fixes them up with Orthodox lesbians.

His matchmaking service, which has just gone online, has met criticism on opposing fronts. Orthodox Jewish rabbis say Harel should be doing more to encourage gays and lesbians to try to change their sexual orientation. Liberal religious gay groups see Harel’s approach as a ploy to suppress homosexuality.

The matchmaking presents an array of challenges. The relationship may be loveless. The partners may be tempted to seek sexual satisfaction outside the marriage. And the couple may need assistance to get pregnant. But Harel insists he just wants to help people have children, an important commandment of Jewish law.

“The main aspiration here is parenthood,” said Harel, 36, from his home in the Jewish West Bank settlement of Shilo. “It allows them to become parents in a way that is permitted by religious Jewish law and prevents a conflict between their religious world and their sexual world.”

Most rabbis encourage gays to suppress their attractions, abstain from gay sex or undergo therapy to try to go straight. Harel believes some gays can alter their sexual orientation through therapy, and insists many do. The American Psychological Association has declared no solid evidence exists that such change is likely.

Harel said his method is meant for those who can’t change, yet want to remain observant and have children.

Harel began matching lesbians and gay men six years ago, he said, because he recognized a “deep distress” among people “facing a dead end road.”

More recently, Kamoha, a religious gay group, began receiving inquiries from gay men and lesbian women about this approach. Kamoha linked up with Harel and last month began publicizing the initiative on its Web site.

Harel says he has wed 12 couples, and several have had children. More than 80 people expressed interest in the matchmaking service when it was publicized by word-of-mouth, and since it went online two weeks ago, Harel says he has received dozens of emails.

“Rabbi Harel introduced us and there was a good initial click,” wrote Sari and Avi, a couple Harel set up, in a testimonial on Kamoha’s site. “It’s not love. It’s chemistry, a sense of understanding and partnership, trust and appreciation.”

Harel was unable to persuade the couples he has already wed to speak to the media. But Kamoha referred The Associated Press to a man who has applied for Harel’s services, a 35-year-old Orthodox Jew in the closet.

He has had casual sex with men but desperately wants to raise a family. He said he has dated numerous straight women; none of the relationships led to marriage.

“It is a risky experiment but there is no other choice,” said the man, who refused to give his name because he is hiding his sexual identity.

He said he was willing to forgo love if it means being able to have children. He wants to try to refrain from seeing men when he is married but would discuss the issue with his wife if that changed, he said.

Harel said as long as both parties are aware the other is dating, it would not be adultery in such a union. He said the same would not be true for a straight couple because they are sexually compatible and have no reason to look elsewhere. Jewish law forbids adultery.

Harel contends that gay and lesbian partners learn to love each other once children arrive. “Their love is based on parenthood. Parenthood is the glue and it’s strong.”

Harel leaves it to the couple’s discretion whether to divulge their sexual identities to their children but he recommends they consult with a professional first.

Potential candidates email Harel, who meets with them to assess if they are emotionally ready to be fixed up. Harel then picks a suitable match and introduces the parties. They are put in touch with therapists who are to assist them in their new life. Once they are married, they each pay around $400 for Harel’s service.

Israel’s secular majority has largely embraced the Western gay rights movement that has led to six cities, among them New York, legalizing same-sex marriage.

There is no gay marriage in Israel primarily because there is no civil marriage and all weddings must be done through the Jewish rabbinate, which does not marry gays and considers homosexuality a sin and a violation of Jewish law.

Gay adoption is officially illegal but some couples get around the law and surrogacy is an option for many same-sex couples. The partner of a parent can adopt the child of his or her partner. There are campaigns to allow for civil marriage which could eventually pave the way for legalizing gay marriage but Israel is far from both.

Still, Tel Aviv is considered one of the most gay-friendly cities in the world, with annual pride parades filling streets and rocking into late hours.

Among Orthodox Jews, homosexuality generally is considered an abomination. Gay observant Jews may be ostracized by their families and many opt to hide their sexual orientation. Only the more liberal streams of Judaism embrace gay couples and even gay rabbis.

In recent years, a number of religious gay groups have emerged, joining pride parades and demanding to be accepted while not going so far as to ask for religious recognition for their relationships.

The liberal religious gay group Havruta opposes Harel’s approach, saying it seeks to “erase” homosexuals from the Orthodox community.

“They are saying, ‘Changing them isn’t possible, but how else can we hide their existence? If we can’t fix them then let’s set them up with lesbians,'” said the group’s spokesman, Daniel Jonas.

Yonatan Gher, the head of the Jerusalem Open House, a gay community center and advocacy group, said he doesn’t judge the lifestyle choice Harel advocates, but hopes young religious homosexuals don’t feel pressured into choosing it.

Rabbis have criticized Harel’s method because it doesn’t try to discourage gays and lesbians from seeking to change their sexual orientation.

“There is an alternative,” said Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, from the Jewish West Bank settlement of Beit El. “When people hear voices that say you won’t succeed (to change), they think, ‘Why bother trying?'”

 

US sends aid to flood-stricken North Korea

SEOUL, South Korea : The United States sent a plane loaded with a small but symbolic shipment of emergency aid that was due to arrive in flood-stricken North Korea on Saturday, in the latest sign of a thaw in relations between the countries.

A cargo plane departed Friday from the U.S. packed with $900,000 worth of food, medical aid, soap, blankets and cooking kits, according to the North Carolina-based aid group Samaritan’s Purse.

The shipment is to “let the North Koreans know that we are their friends,” Franklin Graham, president of the relief agency, said from an airfield in Charlotte, North Carolina, in a video clip posted on the group’s website. The clip showed tractors towing boxes to the plane, and the Boeing-747 taking off in a cloud of dust.

Samaritan’s Purse said it has pledged $1.2 million in addition to the $900,000 that the U.S. government has allocated for aid to North Korea through U.S.-based charities.

Ken Isaacs, a Samaritan’s Purse vice president, said the group has worked with the U.S. government and several other Christian organizations to send the aid as they try to “continue gaining humanitarian access into North Korea.”

The help comes after U.S. and North Korean officials met in New York in late July for talks seen as a sign of a thaw in relations between the wartime foes.

Officials say they discussed ways to restart nuclear disarmament negotiations that have been stalled for more than two years. Washington says Pyongyang must prove its commitment to dismantling its nuclear arms programs before the talks on providing aid in exchange for disarmament can resume.

North Korea and the U.S. signed a truce in 1953 to bring the Korean War to a close, but have not signed a peace treaty and do not have diplomatic relations. Pyongyang cites the U.S. military presence in South Korea as a main reason for the need to build atomic weapons.

North Korea has been reaching out recently for help in the wake of autumn flooding last year, an unusually harsh winter and more heavy rain this spring and summer.

Heavy rain and tropical storms have pounded North Korea in the past few months, displacing nearly 30,000 people and killing dozens, according to the International Federation of the Red Cross.

The World Food Program said earlier this year that an estimated 6 million of North Korea’s population of 24 million would go hungry without help from outside donors due to the impact on the harvest.

However, there are persistent concerns among some governments that aid to the North is routinely diverted to the powerful military.

Washington has not responded with food aid, but pledged to provide emergency help for the flooding.

The State Department said that providing humanitarian assistance is separate from political and security concerns. “This emergency relief demonstrates our continuing concern for the well-being of the North Korean people,” it said in a statement.

Even a small amount carries weight, one analyst said.

“However small they may be, aid offers and other developments enhance the mood for greater political cooperation,” said Kim Young-yoon, a senior researcher at the state-funded Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.

CIA close ties to Gadhafi spy unit ,Documents reveal

Documents found at the abandoned office of Libya’s former spymaster appear to provide new details of the close relations the Central Intelligence Agency shared with the Libyan intelligence service — most notably suggesting that the Americans sent terrorism suspects at least eight times for questioning in Libya despite that country’s reputation for torture.

Although it as been known that Western intelligence services began cooperating with Libya after it abandoned its program to build unconventional weapons in 2004, the files left behind as Tripoli fell to rebels show that the cooperation was much more extensive than generally known with both the C.I.A. and its British equivalent, MI-6.

Some documents indicate that the British agency was even willing to trace phone numbers for the Libyans, and another appears to be a proposed speech written by the Americans for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi about renouncing unconventional weapons.

The documents were discovered Friday by journalists and Human Rights Watch. There were at least three binders of English-language documents, one marked C.I.A. and the other two marked MI-6, among a larger stash of documents in Arabic.

It was impossible to verify their authenticity, and none of them were written on letterhead. But the binders included some documents that made specific reference to the C.I.A., and their details seem consistent with what is known about the transfer of terrorism suspects abroad for interrogation and with other agency practices.

And although the scope of prisoner transfers to Libya has not been made public, news media reports have sometimes mentioned it as one country that the United States used as part of its much criticized rendition program for terrorism suspects.

A C.I.A. spokeswoman, Jennifer Youngblood, declined to comment on Friday on the documents. But she added: “It can’t come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats.”

The British Foreign Office said, “It is the longstanding policy of the government not to comment on intelligence matters.”

While most of the renditions referred to in the documents appear to have been C.I.A. operations, at least one was claimed to have been carried out by MI-6.

“The rendition program was all about handing over these significant figures related to Al Qaeda so they could torture them and get the information they wanted,” said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, who studied the documents in the intelligence headquarters in downtown Tripoli.

The documents cover 2002 to 2007, with many of them concentrated in late 2003 and 2004, when Moussa Koussa was head of the External Security Organization. (Mr. Koussa was most recently Libya’s foreign minister.)

The speech that appears to have been drafted for Colonel Qaddafi was found in the C.I.A. folder and appears to have been sent just before Christmas in 2003. The one-page speech seems intended to depict the Libyan dictator in a positive light. It concluded, using the revolutionary name for the Libyan government: “At a time when the world is celebrating the birth of Jesus, and as a token of our contributions towards a world full of peace, security, stability and compassion, the Great Jamhariya presents its honest call for a W.M.D.-free zone in the Middle East,” referring to weapons of mass destruction.

The flurry of communications about renditions are dated after Libya’s renouncement of its weapons program. In several of the cases, the documents explicitly talked about having a friendly country arrest a suspect, and then suggested aircraft would be sent to pick the suspect up and deliver him to the Libyans for questioning. One document included a list of 89 questions for the Libyans to ask a suspect.

While some of the documents warned Libyan authorities to respect such detainees’ human rights, the C.I.A. nonetheless turned them over for interrogation to a Libyan service with a well-known history of brutality. 

One document in the C.I.A. binder said operatives were “in a position to deliver Shaykh Musa to your physical custody, similar to what we have done with other senior L.I.F.G. members in the recent past.” The reference was to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was dedicated to the overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi, and which American officials believed had ties to Al Qaeda.

When Libyans asked to be sent Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq, another member of the group, a case officer wrote back on March 4, 2004, that “we are committed to developing this relationship for the benefit of both our services,” and promised to do their best to locate him.

Two days later, an officer faxed the Libyans to say that Mr. Sadiq and his pregnant wife were planning to fly into Malaysia, and the authorities there agreed to put them on a British Airways flight to London that would stop in Bangkok. “We are planning to take control of the pair in Bangkok and place them on our aircraft for a flight to your country,” the case officer wrote.

Mr. Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch said he had learned from the documents that Sadiq was a nom de guerre for Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who is now a military leader for the rebels.

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Belhaj gave a detailed description of his incarceration that matched many of those in the documents. He also said that when he was held in Bangkok he was tortured by two people from the C.I.A.

 On one occasion, the Libyans tried to send their own plane to extradite a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Abu Munthir, and his wife and children, who were being held in Hong Kong because of passport irregularities.

The Libyan aircraft, however, was turned back, apparently because Hong Kong authorities were reluctant to let Libyan planes land. In a document labeled “Secret/ U.S. Only/ Except Libya,” the Libyans were advised to charter an aircraft from a third country. “If payment of a charter aircraft is an issue, our service would be willing to assist financially,” the document said.

While questioning alleged terror group members who plainly had value to Western intelligence, the cooperation went beyond that. In one case, for example, the Libyans asked operatives to trace a phone number for them, and a document that was in the MI-6 binder replied that it belonged to the Arab News Network in London. It is unclear why the Libyans sought who the phone number belonged to.

The document also suggested signs of agency rivalries for the Libyans’ affections. In the MI-6 binder, a document boasted of having turned over someone named Abu Abd Alla to the Libyans. “This was the least we could do for you to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over recent years,” an unsigned fax in 2004 said. “Amusingly, we got a request from the Americans to channel requests for information from Abu Abd through the Americans. I have no intention of doing any such thing.”

Half of America Downs One Sugary Drink Daily

Well, this could have something to do with why we’re fat: Half of Americans drink at least one soda or other sugary beverage per day, and one in 20 drinks the equivalent of four-plus cans. The alarming CDC report follows interviews conducted between 2005 and 2008 with more than 17,000 people, who were asked what they ate and drank the day before. Diet sodas, sweetened teas, flavored milks, and 100% fruit juice were not counted in the total figures.

The numbers will likely bolster a new plan by health advocates to push companies to stop selling or providing sugary drinks on their property. The new effort also includes ad campaigns; one will ask, “If you wouldn’t eat 22 packs of sugar, why are you drinking it?” The average can of sugared soda or juice includes a whopping 10 to 12 teaspoons of sugar, and health officials recommend that such beverages should only account for 64 of your daily calories—which happens to be less than half a 12-ounce can of regular, 140-calorie Coca-Cola.