Speaking publicly for the first time, Muslim cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr said Thursday that he was tortured by Egyptian officials during his four-year detention in Egypt following an alleged 2003 kidnapping and extraordinary rendition from Milan. Nasr, who has been at the heart of Italian judicial proceedings against US and Italian intelligence agents implicated in his alleged kidnapping, spoke to reporters outside the unrelated trial of 22-year-old Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil in Alexandria. Released from prison early last week, Nasr says he was tortured after being grabbed off a street in Milan and ultimately sent to Egypt. Late last week Italian Judge Caterina Interlandi issued indictments for 31 US and Italian intelligence agents for their alleged role in the abduction.

Testimony during the Italian proceedings leading up to the indictments disclosed that the CIA had contacted Italian intelligence about the possibility of performing extraordinary renditions in the days following the September 11 attacks. Also last week, officials in Switzerland announced that they were launching a criminal probe into the alleged unlawful use of Swiss airspace by US agents to transport Nasr from Milan to Germany. Milan prosecutor Armando Spataro has said he will likely try the US agents in absentia, as the US is not expected to turn them over for trial.

Dennis Rodriguez of El Paso, Texas, pleaded guilty today to criminal environmental crimes related to the operation of his company, North American Waste Assistance, LLC (NAWA), also located in El Paso. Under the plea agreement, entered in federal district court for the Western District of Texas, Rodriguez admitted to making a material false statement or representations in a manifest used to transport hazardous waste and to two counts of transporting hazardous waste to a facility that did not have a permit issued pursuant to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).

Both Rodriguez and his company were indicted in November 2005 for violations related to the handling and transportation of hazardous waste. According to the indictment, Rodriguez and NAWA were hired to dispose of over of 155 gallon drums of construction-related waste. Approximately 75 of the drums contained expired petroleum-based concrete curing compound, which is an ignitable hazardous waste when disposal becomes necessary.

The indictment alleged that on or about March 27, 2002, Rodriguez and NAWA transported the drums using several Uniform Hazardous Waste Manifests that stated that the drums contained “Non-RCRA, Non-Regulated” waste. Rodriguez then made arrangements to transport the drums, for disposal, to landfills in Avalon, Texas, and Walterboro, S.C. that were not permitted under RCRA to accept hazardous waste. The drums of hazardous waster were then disposed of at unauthorized facilities.

Rodriguez faces a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison and a total maximum fine of $250,000 per count.

This case was investigated by Special Agents of the EPA, with the assistance of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and is being prosecuted by the Justice Department’s Environmental Crimes Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas.

The Family Justice Center of St. Joseph County opened its doors today, the Justice Department and the City of South Bend announced. The center, located in South Bend, Ind., is the final center to be opened under President Bush’s Family Justice Center Initiative, and is located in one of 15 communities chosen under the President’s Initiative to prevent and respond to violence against women.

The President’s Family Justice Center Initiative, which was unveiled by President Bush in October 2003 and funded by the Justice Department, is an unprecedented pilot program designed to make a victim’s search for assistance more effective by bringing the necessary services together under one roof. The Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) has guided this pilot program with the goal of using these centers as models for how communities should provide coordinated domestic violence services across the country.

“Offering coordinated and centralized services for domestic violence victims is how our communities can better respond to violence against women,” said Mary Beth Buchanan, Acting Director of the Office on Violence Against Women. “We hope that these centers will serve as models for other communities to duplicate across the country.”

The services in communities designed to help victims of domestic violence are often fragmented and uncoordinated. Centers like the Family Justice Center of St. Joseph County are designed to bring together various components, including victim advocates, law enforcement officers, prosecutors, probation officers, forensic medical professionals, civil legal attorneys, chaplains, and representatives from community-based organizations into one centralized location to better serve victims of abuse.

Through the President’s Intiative, the Family Justice Center of St. Joseph County received extensive technical assistance from the original family justice center based in San Diego, Cailf., to aid in the comprehensive development. Additional technical assistance was provided by centers in Indianapolis, Ind. and Hennepin County, Minn. Additionally, the National Network to End Domestic Violence provided the Family Justice Center of St. Joseph County with assistance in technology and victim safety.

Cisco has held the trademark "iPhone" since the year 2000. Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled Apple's cellular iPhone at a San Francisco tradeshow in January, despite not having agreed to the terms proposed by Cisco for use of the name. The two companies had been negotiating terms of a deal for several years, and were close to agreeing on terms as late as a few hours before Jobs made his announcement. The lack of an agreement before Apple's unveiling prompted Cisco's suit. Apple argued that Cisco's iPhone, which does not operate on cellular networks, but instead operates over the Internet, was materially different from their own.

Light, sweet crude for April delivery rose 30 cents to $60.37 a barrel in morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Crude inventories rose by 3.7 million barrels to 327.6 million barrels in the week ending Feb. 16, the Energy Information Administration said Thursday. But gasoline inventories fell by 3.1 million barrels to 222.1 million barrels, and distillates, which include heating oil and diesel, fell by 5.0 million barrels to 128.3 million barrels. Most of the drop in distillates was due to diminishing heating oil supplies.

Analysts were expecting, on average, a modest rise in crude oil and gasoline inventories and a smaller drop in distillates.

Heating oil futures rose more than 2 cents to $1.7030 a gallon; gasoline futures rose 3 cents to $1.7350 a gallon; and natural gas prices dropped 6 cents to $7.65 per 1,000 cubic feet.

The EIA also reported Thursday that natural gas in storage fell by 223 billion cubic feet to 1.865 trillion cubic feet, around what the market was expecting.

Meanwhile Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, was expected to report that Iran -- OPEC's No. 2 exporter -- is still enriching uranium, which could trigger harsher U.N. sanctions.

On Wednesday, Iran called for talks with the U.S. regarding its uranium enrichment activities, but showed no signs of halting its program.

Light sweet crude rose 2.1 percent on Wednesday to settle above $60 a barrel on the Nymex for the first time this year following increasing tensions over Iran's uranium enrichment program and shutdowns of a pipeline and an oil field.

However, the effects of the two shutdowns should be short-lived. TEPPCO Partners LP said its refined products pipeline, which had a leak in Indiana, should restart in two days, while BP PLC said its Northstar oil field should resume operations next week, according to Dow Jones Newswires.

In a report written by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency also said that the Islamic republic continues construction of a reactor that will use heavy water and a heavy water production plant - also in defiance of the Security Council.

Both enriched uranium and plutonium produced by heavy water reactors can produce the fissile material used in nuclear warheads. Iran denies such intentions, saying it needs the heavy water reactor to produce radioactive isotopes for medical and other peaceful purposes and enrichment to generate energy.

The six-page report obtained by The Associated Press also said that agency experts remain "unable ... to make further progress in its efforts to verify fully the past development of Iran's nuclear program" due to lack of Iranian cooperation. That, too, put it in violation of the Security Council, which on Dec. 23 told Teheran to "provide such access and cooperation as the agency requests to be able to verify ... all outstanding issues" within 60 days.