World/Nation

Report: Medical specialists aided CIA interrogations

WASHINGTON - From the early stages of the CIA's coercive interrogations of terror detainees, the agency's health professionals were intimately involved.

Front-line medics and psychologists monitored and advised on abusive tactics, even as they sometimes complained about the ethical dilemmas gnawing at them, according to this week's Senate intelligence committee report. Senior CIA medical officials helped the agency and the White House under President George W. Bush.

The report describes rare moments when CIA health professionals openly balked and objected. But for four years, until Bush shuttered the CIA prison program in 2006, medical teams at each "black site" observed almost every step of procedures that President Barack Obama now calls torture.

They oversaw water dousing to ensure detainees suffered but did not drown. They inserted feeding tubes and improvised enemas. They took notes when detainees were body-slammed and forced to stand for hours - intervening only to ensure that the brutal measures were not crippling enough to prevent the next round of interrogations.

Movement of police protests lacks leadership

WASHINGTON - Who, if anyone, is leading the emerging movement around the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner - younger activists or legacy civil rights groups?

Established civil rights organizations - the National Action Network, the NAACP, the National Urban League - last week called for people to gather in Washington today for a national march with the families of the two unarmed black men who died at the hands of white police officers. Grand juries declined to indict the officers.

In the past, calls like that would have brought activists from around the nation to the capital. But groups like Ferguson Action are instead sponsoring their own actions in cities around the nation, calling for a "National Day of Resistance" in such places as Sioux Falls, S.D.; Bloomington, Ind., and Bend, Ore.

"There are many ways to take action in this impactful moment," said Phil Agnew, executive director of the group Dream Defenders. "This Saturday we will be where we have been, and will continue to be - building a movement in the streets of our communities."

A major march in New York City had already been planned when the Washington march was declared last week, said Ferguson Action's Mervyn Marcano.

Bill Cosby pushes on with stand-up comedy tour

LOS ANGELES - For five decades, Bill Cosby maintained a busy stand-up career even as his TV visibility rose and fell and new generations of comedians took center stage.

But the renewal of sexual assault claims that have soured TV and other comeback deals for Cosby are undermining the live performances that represent his direct avenue to fans and a semblance of business as usual.

The 77-year-old comedian's ambitious tour schedule that has him crisscrossing the U.S. and into Canada this winter and spring has been whittled by cancellations and indefinite postponements of about 10 concerts in as many states.

"The venues are getting cold feet. Everyone is worried about protesters," said Gary Bongiovanni, editor of Pollstar, a concert industry trade publication. "If I was advising him, I would tell him to cancel everything and lie low for a while."

Oregon school shooting sends three to hospital

PORTLAND, Ore. - A suspected gang member opened fire on a group outside an alternative high school Friday, sending three young people to the hospital in what Portland police said appeared to be a gang-related shooting.

The victims are students at Rosemary Anderson High School or in affiliated job training programs, police Sgt. Pete Simpson said. A 16-year-old girl was in critical condition, and two males - ages 17 and 20 - were in fair condition, police said. A fourth person - a 17-year-old girl - was grazed by a bullet but not hospitalized.

Witnesses told police there may have been a dispute outside the school before the shooting occurred at a street corner.

The assailant and two other people fled, and the wounded students went to the school for help, the spokesman said.

"Based on the investigation thus far, the shooting appears to be gang-related," Simpson said Friday night in a statement.

That gang link was stronger than police suggested earlier in the day.

Police gang investigators "feel comfortable saying this is a gang-related shooting based on some of the people involved," Simpson said in an interview. He declined to say which victims might be related to gangs.

"There was some kind of dispute between the shooter and some people," Simpson said. "We don't know if it was (with) all the victims or one of the victims."

- The Associated Press