AN editorial this week in the Wall Street Journal provided a frightening insight into US thinking about the behaviour of European governments in relation to extraordinary rendition.

FBI agents have documented more than two dozen incidents of possible mistreatment at the Guantanamo Bay military base, including a detainee whose head was wrapped in duct tape for chanting verses from the Koran.

THE alleged scheme to blow up passenger jets in mid-air was very close to execution and was “in some respects suggestive of an al-Qaida plot”, US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday.

A group of young men seized in a Miami warehouse have been charged in a federal indictment with conspiring with al-Qaida to commit acts of violence in the United States, including blowing up Chicago’s Sears Tower.

The Bush administration has a deliberate strategy of abusing terror suspects during interrogations, Human Rights Watch said today in its annual report on the treatment of prisoners.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller today gave prosecutors details of a previously undisclosed conversation she had with Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, adding a new dimension to the criminal investigation into the leak of a covert CIA officer’s identity.

US INVESTIGATORS, including CIA agents, will be allowed interrogate Irish citizens on Irish soil in total secrecy, under an agreement signed between Ireland and the US last week.

US Attorney Alberto Gonzales today confirmed the US Administration had agreed to delay plans requiring European Union countries and others to adopt new passports with fingerprint and iris scan information by the end of October.

Zacarias Moussaoui, the first person convicted in a US court over the 9/11 terror attacks, is facing the death penalty after admitting his part in the plot.

The man set to become the next US Attorney General vowed to abide by international treaties on prisoner treatment today.

President George Bush today proposed the first ever Hispanic Attorney General, nominating his long-time confidante Alberto Gonzales to replace John Ashcroft.

Attorney general John Ashcroft and commerce secretary Don Evans resigned today.

The Iraq prisoner abuse scandal shifted to the question of whether the Bush administration set up a legal foundation that opened the door for the mistreatment.

US President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney today answered questions for over three hours from September 11 commissioners trying to learn how followers of Osama bin Laden pulled off the worst terrorist attack in US history.

US President George W Bush has agreed to allow National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to appear before an independent panel investigating the September 11 terrorist attacks following weeks of insisting that she would not testify.

THE White House backed down yesterday and agreed to let National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice testify in public under oath before the commission investigating the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The White House backed down today and will allow National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify in public under oath before the commission investigating the failure to prevent the September 11 terrorist attacks.

White House staff have been given until Tuesday to turn in all documents that might aid investigators looking into who leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a columnist.