The New York Times' City Room blog March 27 notes the ruckus raised by NYC's tabloids upon hearing that the Port Authority has dropped the name "Freedom Tower" for the monstrosity going up at Ground Zero in favor of the more prosaic "World Trade Center 1" (NY Post front-page hed: FREE DUMB TOWER). Noted City Room:

This time it is none other than neocon whiz kid and former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith, along with Justin Polin, a sidekick from the Hudson Institute, who favorably invoke the Sufis in a New York Times op-ed about Pakistan March 30. How frustrating that the attack on sufism by Pakistan's neo-Taliban receives practically no coverage in the international media—until war propagandists seize on it for their own cynical purposes...

President Barack Obama says he won't consider speeding up the troop pullout from Iraq despite supposed improvements in security. "I think the plan that we put forward in Iraq is the right one," he told CBS TV's "Face the Nation," calling for "a very gradual withdrawal through the national elections in Iraq."

A US Army sergeant was convicted March 30 and sentenced to 35 years in prison for killing four unarmed Iraqi prisoners in 2007. Sgt. First Class Joseph Mayo, formerly of the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry and two other soldiers were charged in September with shooting the four bound and blindfolded prisoners and disposing of their bodies in a canal.

At least 20 people were killed early March 30 as gunmen stormed a Pakistani police training school near Lahore. The attackers remain in control of the complex, and are exchanging fire with security forces. The assailants apparently entered the complex dressed in police uniforms. (AFP, BBC World Service, March 30)

A hostage crisis involving three International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) workers may force agencies to stop bringing assistance to some areas of the Philippines, officials told the UN news agency IRIN. Stephen Anderson, the World Food Programme (WFP) country representative, said additional protection measures for his 60 local and foreign staff were paramount as the situation in Mindanao had become "dramatically more insecure".

Former US State Department lawyer Vijay Padmanabhan criticized the administration of former president George W. Bush for approving extreme interrogation techniques against terrorism suspects, in an interview with the Associated Press March 27. Padmanabhan, who now teaches at Cardozo School of Law in New York, served as the State Department's chief counsel on Guantánamo Bay and Iraq detentions. He said he believes the interrogation tactics used on some detainees constituted torture, and that the Bush administration was wrong to argue that the detainees were not protected by the Geneva Conventions.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) called March 29 for the US and Yemen to agree on a repatriation plan that provides "meaningful legal process" for the nearly 100 Yemeni detainees still at Guantánamo Bay. A new HRW report criticized any proposal involving indefinite suspension at a Yemeni facility and expressed fears of detainee mistreatment after repatriation.