SPB News for Thursday.

McCain Adviser Won't Fight Obama — ABC News' Teddy Davis Reports: A top adviser to John McCain said Wednesday that he will step down from the Arizona senator's presidential campaign if the presumed GOP nominee faces Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in the general election

Court strikes down Texas ban on sex toys — Federal appeals court says law violates right to privacy. — A federal appeals court has struck down a seldom-enforced Texas law making it a crime to promote or sell sex toys. — The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling in a case originally filed …

Cuba demands US gives back Guantanamo Bay Cuba has demanded the US return Guantanamo Bay to the island nation and denounced the "war on terror" prison, where six prisoners could face the death penalty. Cuba's Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque claimed today that suspects held in the US naval base in the southeastern tip of Cuba have been subjected to torture and face unfair legal treatment.

Diplomats advised to compare 9/11 cases to Nazi war crime trials Anticipating international criticism over plans to seek the death penalty for accused September 11, 2001, terrorists, the State Department is advising U.S. diplomats to point out that Nazis were executed after their war crime trials.

Army quietly changed rules in '06 to allow military executions at 'other locations' --Muslim section of cemetery at Guantanamo has been dedicated by Islamic cultural adviser If six suspected terrorists are sentenced to death at Guantanamo Bay for the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. Army regulations that were quietly amended two years ago open the possibility of execution by lethal injection at the military base in Cuba, experts said Tuesday. Until recently, experts on military law said, it was understood that military regulations required executions to be carried out by lethal injection at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. But in January 2006, the Army changed its procedures for military executions, allowing "other locations" [such as KBR detention centers] to be used. The new regulations say that only the president can approve an execution and that the secretary of the Army will authorize the location. [The Army quietly changed its regulations to allow military executions at 'other locations' in January 2006. Guess who got a multi-year, no-bid $385 million contract to construct detention centers on US soil, the same month and year? See: KBR Awarded U.S. Department of Homeland Security Contingency Support Project For Emergency Support Services - KBR Press Release, 24 January 2006. --LRP]

'I spent two years in a metal cage at Guantanamo Bay' --Hooded and kneeling on the cold cell floor, his wrists and ankles strapped behind his back, a young father-of-three from Birmingham was kicked and beaten from every side. Moazzam Begg was arrested in Pakistan by the CIA in 2002 and became a prisoner of the US military for three years. He was held first at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan - where he says he was beaten and tortured - and then for the final two years in a small metal cage at the notorious prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

Depression risk might force U.S. to buy assets Fear that Bush may set off another Great Depression could force the U.S. government and Federal Reserve to take the unprecedented step of buying a broad range of assets, including stocks, according to one of the most bearish market analysts.