'Erroneous rendition'

SMH article:

Daniel Coats informed Otto Schily that the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned a German citizen, Khaled Masri, for five months and would soon release him. There was also a request: that the German Government not disclose what it had been told even if Mr Masri went public. The US feared exposure of a covert action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and transfer them among countries, and possible legal challenges to the CIA from Mr Masri and others with similar allegations...

The CIA inspector-general is investigating a growing number of what the agency calls "erroneous renditions".

One intelligence official said about three dozen names fall in that category; others believe it is fewer. The list includes several people whose identities were offered by al-Qaeda figures during CIA interrogations. One turned out to be an innocent college professor who had given the al-Qaeda member a bad grade...

Mr Masri was held for five months largely because the head of the CIA's Counter-terrorist Centre's al-Qaeda unit "just had a hunch" he was someone else, one former CIA official said.

Progress report

Today I convolved some data. For the uninitiated, this is pretty much the signals-processing equivalent of sex, only uncomplicated by other people.

Then later on, I deconvolved some other data. I'm not sure what this is the signals-processing equivalent of.

And yesterday I finished painting a figure I've spent ages on (Sir Stephen Swift, to those following the Aramia game; he makes an appearance in edward_dujean's imminent summary). I'm very pleased with how he came out. The face and eyes (always fiddly) turned out well, with very little effort on my part; the blacklining, shading & highlighting on his armour came up very nicely, and the basing isn't too shabby. I'm tempted to enter this fellow next time there's a novice contest; I can see one or two spots where he'll lose marks (I didn't entirely succeed in getting all the casting lines off, and my freehand on his shield is a bit wobbly), but I'd be interested in commentary on the rest of it. One of these days I will get a camera with a decent macro mode so I can bore you all with my miniatures in better focus.

Incidentally, it is entirely a coincidence that one of the major ethnic groups in my setting just happens to have the same rather dark skin that I've found easiest to paint ;-)