When we shifted to New Delhi in the early 1980s, what struck us was the utter callousness of the male dominated society there compared to Bombay's. We would reach nowhere without being aggressive, whether using bus transport or shopping. Ladies used to be shoved away at bus stops by unruly men wanting priority boarding. The high footboards of Delhi vehicles were in marked contrast with Bombay buses with lower steps for easy boarding by ladies. Bus drivers were rash.

The battered credibility of the Guantanamo trials has been further dented by revelations of hidden microphones, intelligence service interference with court proceedings and protests from lawyers who say the US military is preventing a proper defence of the alleged organisers of the 9/11 attacks.

Ahead of the Academy Awards next Sunday, the ads and mailers for "Lincoln," "Argo" and "Silver Linings Playbook" resemble a political campaign. Then there's "Zero Dark Thirty." Nominated for best picture and in four other categories, the account of the manhunt for Osama bin Laden is caught in a real-life political storm.

Ever wonder what books terrorists like to read? Probably not, but it seems some like to read about themselves or alleged close pals. Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni who is accused of having helped and wanting to join the 9/11 terrorists - but was denied a visa four times - isn?t into snuggling up with what the others ensconced in Guantanamo Bay favored.

The use of waterboarding and other forms of torture in the decade-long hunt for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, as depicted by Academy-award runner film Zero Dark Thirty, is mere Hollywood fiction, according to Ali Soufan, former FBI agent.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - A pretrial hearing in the Sept. 11 war crimes case started Thursday with an angry outburst from one of the defendants complaining about searches of his cell by guards at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba - While the 9/11 accused were in court, prison camp guards seized from their cells a banned copy of a former FBI agent's memoirs, toilet paper with English words scrawled on it and a pen refill hidden inside the binding of a book belonging to alleged mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, a prison camps lawyer testified Thursday.

Defense lawyers for three of the accused in the military commission hearings for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-defendants claimed that their clients' legal materials had been "ransacked" while they were in the courtroom yesterday, and that some confidential legal materials were missing.

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency embarked on a highly classified program of secret detention and extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects. The program was designed to place detainee interrogations beyond the reach of law. Suspected terrorists were seized and secretly flown across national borders to be interrogated by foreign governments that used torture, or by the CIA itself in clandestine "black sites" using torture techniques.

Radical Islam in the Sahel has attracted mass international attention in recent weeks. Rebel groups, united by a shared fundamental religious ideology, are encroaching on the governments of Mali and Northern Nigeria.