WASHINGTON, D.C.

CIA warning ignored, book says

A CIA analyst warned the Bush administration in 2002 that up to a third of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may have been imprisoned by mistake, but White House officials ignored the finding and insisted that all were “enemy combatants” subject to indefinite incarceration, according to a new book critical of the administration’s terrorism policies.

The CIA assessment directly challenged the administration’s claim that the detainees were all hardened terrorists – the “worst of the worst,” as then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at the time. But a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney shrugged off the report and quashed proposals for a quick review of the detainees’ cases, author Jane Mayer writes in “The Dark Side,” scheduled for release next week.

“There will be no review,” the book quotes Cheney staff director David Addington as saying. “The president has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it.”

Rangel defends his cheap rent

Rep. Charles Rangel defended living in three combined, rent-stabilized Harlem apartments as a legal benefit of long-term city residency, but said he may abandon a fourth apartment he uses for campaign work if it’s not allowed.

Rangel, 78, one of New York’s most influential politicians and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, held a news conference outside his apartment complex to respond to a report in the New York Times on his four below-market apartments.

Housing experts said Rangel’s living arrangement was legal. But some questioned whether the powerful congressman and champion of affordable housing initiatives was taking advantage in a market where low-income housing is disappearing.

Rangel, who earns $165,200 a year and has a time share in the Dominican Republic, pays a combined $3,894 a month for the four apartments, the Times reported. The rent is roughly half the market rates.

Abused maids get nearly $1 million

A federal judge has awarded almost $1 million in back wages to two Indonesian housekeepers who were virtually enslaved by a wealthy Long Island couple.

Judge Arthur Spatt said the maids were entitled to double their unpaid wages because they were abused while working around the clock for Varsha and Mahender Sabhnani.

The victims says they were beaten, slashed with knives and forced to take freezing showers for such misdeeds as sleeping late.

The judge awarded the housekeepers a total of more than $936,000 – at least $700,000 more than the Sabhnanis’ lawyers considered reasonable.

The Sabhnanis were convicted in December of charges including forced labor. Varsha Sabhnani has been sentenced to 11 years in prison, her husband to 3 1/3 years.

2 years later, still no lynx births

Wildlife managers monitoring the state’s lynx reintroduction program say they found no newborns for the second year in a row.

The state Division of Wildlife said that the news was disappointing but that the adult lynx population is stable and adapting well to Colorado.

The lack of lynx births may be related to a decline in the number of snowshoe hares, the primary prey of lynx, the division said. The lynx appear to be finding enough food to survive, but females may not be getting the nutrition they need to sustain pregnancy, division biologists said in Denver.

And they didn’t even take it all off

A Las Vegas man who devised a calendar that features shirtless Mormon missionaries is facing a disciplinary hearing and possible excommunication because of the project.

A lifetime member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Chad Hardy, was summoned by letter to a Sunday meeting with a council of elders to discuss his “conduct unbecoming a member of the church.”

A copy of the letter from Frank E. Davie, the senior leader over a group of Mormon congregations in the Las Vegas area, was sent early this week, days before the 2009 version of the “Men on a Mission” calendar went to press, Hardy said in a telephone interview.

A takeoff on calendars of firefighters and returned U.S. servicemen, Hardy’s project features 12 returned church missionaries in mostly modest poses, minus their trademark white shirts and ties.

It has sold nearly 10,000 copies.

From Times Wire Reports