Cheat Sheet

The Pentagon will overhaul the American-run prison system in Afghanistan in addition to the jail and judicial systems because of worries that prison abuses are fueling the Taliban insurgency. In one prison that has become a symbol of the abuse, two Afghan detainees died in 2002 after American soldiers beat them and hung them by their arms from the ceiling. Even as American-run prisons improved, the overcrowded Afghan-run prison system worsened. The Pentagon's new approach suggests building a new prison just for extremist prisoners so they are no longer mixed together with more moderate prisoners. In another effort to acknowledge that Afghanistan cannot only be won from the Taliban by force, the U.S. military is sending Drug Enforcement Agency officials to target drug-trafficking kingpins, who are handing over hundreds of millions of dollars to the Taliban every year, according to some estimates. The DEA teams will also train Afghan anti-narcotics police.

In a detailed and harrowing account, the Washington Post tells the story of Abu Zubaida's 2002 interrogation, a key event in the White House's decision to abandon traditional restrictions on torture techniques and one that divided anti-torture intelligence officials over its effectiveness and morality. According to the Post, the point man for devising elaborate "enhanced" interrogation techniques was James Mitchell, a retired clinical psychologist for the Air Force. After becoming unsatisfied with intelligence gathering by FBI agents, Mitchell gained authorization over the agents' objections to use escalating techniques, beginning with sleep deprivation and loud music and moving on to extreme temperatures, slamming the prisoner into plywood walls, and placing him in a small box. Eventually he was waterboarded 83 times. While one of the FBI agents, Ali Soufan, has testified that the techniques produced little intelligence, the Post cites officials who claim that Zubaida gave up information on Jose Padilla, convicted of aiding Al Qaeda, and on Al Qaeda member Ramzi Binalshibh, that could not have been obtained otherwise.

CIT Group, a commercial lender that finances about one million businesses, has received $3 billion in rescue financing from a bondholder group in a tentative deal, reports Reuters. The bondholder group will provide financing for two and half years, following the U.S. government's rejection of a second bailout for CIT. The deal will most likely be announced Monday and is part of a larger restructuring plan to save the company, which has suffered big losses from home mortgages and student loans. CIT has about $76 billion in assets and, if it folded, would be the largest bank failure since Washington Mutual in September.

On the anniversary weekend of the moon launch, astronauts on the International Space Station might have to revert to Apollo 11-era tactics of waste collection. One of two toilets flooded on the station, and it could take days to fix. Astronaut Hal Getzelman told the crew to "put an out-of-service note" on the bathroom, and to use the "Russian toilet" for now. There are a record 13 people in the station, all of whom are being told to space out their bathroom breaks by at least six minutes and periodically allow a 30-minute "cooldown" period. If the bathroom fails, the astronauts will have to use waste-collection bags similar to those used 40 years ago, when there were no toilets in the lunar modules.

About 100 gay activists staged a mass "kiss in" protest near a Mormon church where two gay men were cited for trespassing and handled roughly after kissing each other a few weeks ago. The protest, where gay and straight partners kissed each other, started a shouting match between the activists and the Mormons, who were carrying signs denouncing homosexuality. Matt Aune and his partner Derek Jones said they stumbled into the area by the church after a concert and exchanged a modest kiss before both were handcuffed by a church guard. One was pinned to the ground and both were cited for tresspassing. "They engaged in passionate kissing, groping, profane and lewd language, and had obviously been using alcohol," a church spokeswoman said.

A civilian helicopter crashed at a NATO base in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing 16 people and wounding five others. There was no enemy involvement in the crash, which took place as the helicopter was taking off, a NATO spokesman said. The Mi-8 helicopter, which was operated by a Russian firm, was carrying 17 passengers and three crew, according to Russia's Interfax news agency. The nationalities of those killed have not been revealed. It was the second time a Soviet-era helicopter crashed in a week; on Tuesday, six Ukrainian crew members were killed when an Mi-26 transport helicopter crashed in Helmand. The accident raised the death toll in the multi-national effort to eradicate the Taliban, adding to pressure on Washington and London. July has become the deadliest month of the 8-year-old war in Afghanistan for foreign troops.

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Paula Abdul is issuing fiery condemnations of American Idol via her manager, who says the star will not return for the show's ninth season because she hasn't been asked back."I find it under these circumstances particularly unusual; I think unnecessarily hurtful," he said of the contract delay. "I find it kind of unconscionable and certainly rude and disrespectful." Idol's host Ryan Seacrest is back on a three-year, $45 million contract that dwarfs his earlier pay of $5 million a year, while judge Randy Jackson is also returning through 2011. Cantankerous judge Simon Cowell reportedly asked for $100 million a year, though it's unclear if he'll be returning.

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Welcome to Mark Sanford's apology tour, take three. This time the governor has taken to the op-ed pages to level with South Carolinians about his mysterious disappearance last month and subsequent disclosure that he had an affair with his "soul mate" in Argentina. “It is true that I did wrong and failed at the largest of levels, but equally true is the fact that God can make good of our respective wrongs in life,” Sanford wrote in a column submitted to local South Carolina papers. “In this vein, while none of us has the chance to attend our own funeral, in many ways I feel like I was at my own in the past weeks, and surprisingly I am thankful for the perspective it has afforded.” He added: “It's in the spirit of making good from bad that I am committing to you and the larger family of South Carolinians to use this experience to both trust God in his larger work of changing me, and from my end, to work to becoming a better and more effective leader.”

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Tom Watson, at 59 years old, nearly became the oldest player in golf history to win a major tournament this afternoon after a dramatic day in Scotland culminated on a four-hole playoff against Stewart Cink, who took home the Claret Jug in his first major victory. After bogeying the final hole, Watson entered the playoff, where he rescued par at six but double-bogeyed the 17th hole. Watson’s last major win was in 1983 and he is a five-time Open champion. Previously, the oldest golfer to win a major was Julius Boros, who was 48 when he took the 1968 PGA Championship.

The Taliban has released a 28-minute video of an American soldier captured three weeks ago in Afghanistan, after he was lagging behind on a patrol. The video appeared on the Internet yesterday; it shows an emotional man with his head shaved, who has now been identified as 23-year-old Bowe Berdaghl of Ketchum, Idaho, pleading for American troops to return home. Berdaghl's voice becomes strained when he discusses his personal life. "I'm scared, scared I won't be able to go home. It is very unnerving to be a prisoner," he says. A U.S. military official condemned the video as propaganda and a breach of the rules of war.

It seems we can add marriage broker to the list of recession-proof jobs. According to the New York Post, with the help of these yentes, "a slew of Russian immigrants are entering into sham marriages in the States to obtain green cards" or money—and they're doing it right in front of officials' eyes. The unions bring together an Eastern European-American citizen looking for fast cash and an immigrant hoping to become legal. "I get calls asking me to marry one of these girls every other week," a Ukrainian immigrant and U.S. citizen told the paper. "It's easy money," he said. "And the girls are really hot." He said he knows "half a dozen men who married young Russian and Polish women for cash." The couples manage to dupe both city officials, who grant them marriage licenses, and Citizenship and Immigration Services, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security. "It's a big business," said a federal law-enforcement source. "It's really prevalent among that community."

Another great leap for mankind? In celebration of the momentous 1969 mission to the moon, the original audio feed between mission control and the Apollo 11 spacecraft is being streamed on Wechoosethemoon.org, a presentation of AOL and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum. NASA's Web site is also streaming a simulcast of the mission. On both sites, the 109 hours of audio began on Thursday and will continue until Monday night. The audio stream—which features astronauts discussing spacecraft maneuvers, sightings of Earth and even coffee breaks—is the first of its kind, and made possible by the continued digitization of NASA’s audio records. It's one part of a larger tribute to the mission's 40th anniversary happening this week.

Leonardo DiCaprio, are you looking for a new summer film project—a sequel, perhaps? An autistic teenager managed to fake his way into meetings with air industry bosses after pretending that he had a private fleet offering low-rate flights. Using the pseudonym Adam Tait and a convincing smattering of air industry jargon, fake e-mail addresses for nonexistent staffers, and the requisite charm, the boy kept up the ruse for six months before being exposed by an industry magazine, Airliner World. “He has been passionate about aeroplanes for about two years and his whole bedroom is plastered with them,” the unidentified boy's father told The Times of London.