Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Red Bull gives you more than just wings.

Red Bull has cocaine in it? Apparently. However, it's not enough to actually get you high.

Six German states have told retailers to stop selling Red Bull Cola energy drinks after a test found a trace amount of cocaine.

The bans started Friday after a sample test conducted by authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia state found 0.4 micrograms per liter in the drink.

Five other states also banned it from shops amid concerns over possible narcotics law violations.

Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment said Monday that the cocaine level was too low to pose a health risk. It planned to produce a more detailed report Wednesday.

Red Bull said its cola is "harmless and marketable in both the U.S. and Europe." It said similar coca leaf extracts are used worldwide as flavoring, and a test it commissioned itself found no cocaine traces.

- Source



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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Duke Nukem Foerever may be gone, but the hollowed out shell of 3D Realms will remain. To do nothing. Ever.

Seriously, what the shit is this? Okay, so 3D Realms has indeed canned Duke Nukem Forever due to lack of funding, but 3D Realms is still around? To do what? They couldn't even make Prey! It took 10 damn years and they still couldn't finish it so they handed it off to Human Head Studios. Valve spent 9 years doing Team Fortress 2, but in the end Valve actually did make the damn game! (and a mighty fine one at that!)

In light of recent press articles and statements by Take-Two (to the media and in a lawsuit), we want to set the record straight on some issues.

Despite rumors and statements to the contrary, 3D Realms (3DR) has not closed and is not closing. 3DR retains ownership of the Duke Nukem franchise. Due to lack of funding, however, we are saddened to confirm that we let the Duke Nukem Forever (DNF) development team go on May 6th, while we regroup as a company. While 3DR is a much smaller studio now, we will continue to operate as a company and continue to license and co-create games based upon the Duke Nukem franchise.

As some of you may know, Take-Two filed a lawsuit last week containing various accusations and claims against 3DR and the uncompleted DNF game. Take-Two never paid 3DR advances or any signing bonus or any other funds related to DNF, up until July 2008, at which time they paid $2.5m in connection with another agreement for an unannounced game. This is the sum total Take-Two has paid 3DR in connection with DNF. Take-Two claims that they paid $12m to GT Interactive/Infogrames to acquire the publishing rights for the DNF game. To be clear, 3DR was not a party to that transaction and did not receive any money from it. When the DNF game was originally signed with GT Interactive in 1998, GT paid 3DR a $400,000 signing bonus. Up until July 2008, this was the only publisher money we received for the DNF game. Meanwhile, 3DR put over $20m into the production of DNF.

Take-Two retains publishing rights for the DNF game, although 3DR retains certain rights to sell the game directly to the public. Late last year, 3DR began negotiations with Take-Two to provide funding to complete the DNF game. In the meantime, 3DR was hitting mutually-agreed milestones, despite not having a new agreement finalized. Take-Two was well aware that 3DR needed the funding to continue the DNF game development. Suddenly, after months of negotiations, Take-Two materially changed the parameters of the proposed funding agreement. 3DR informed Take-Two that it could not financially afford the changes Take-Two was suggesting and would be forced to release the team if an agreement was not reached. Take-Two made a last minute proposal to acquire the Duke Nukem franchise and the 3DR development team. Take-Two's proposal was unacceptable to 3DR for many reasons, including no upfront money, no guarantee minimum payment, and no guarantee to complete the DNF game. From 3DR's perspective, we viewed Take-Two as trying to acquire the Duke Nukem franchise in a "fire sale." Those negotiations fell through on May 4th, a deal never materialized, and the DNF team was sadly released a few days later.

Less than a week after the DNF team was released, Take-Two filed its lawsuit in New York, seeking immediate temporary injunctive relief. The court denied Take-Two's request for a temporary restraining order. While we cannot comment on the details of the ongoing lawsuit, we believe Take-Two's lawsuit is without merit and merely a bully tactic to obtain ownership of the Duke Nukem franchise. We will vigorously defend ourselves against this publisher.

- Source



Okay, so, 3DR spent $20 million making DNF, but they have no abandoned it. They still plan to make other games based on the Duke Nukem franchise, though. What the fuck kind of stupid shit is this? You ABANDONED a game that you spent $20 million on and spent 12 years making, but now you're going to focus instead on making newer, different games? I'm sorry, but something does not compute with that. Mainly, what fucking games are you going to make? iPhone apps?

Dude, do the honorable thing and just close shop. This is embarrassing and complete bullshit. You guys haven't made a game since 1997. Stop pretending like you have even a semblance of integrity or respect, because you don't. No publisher is goin to want to fund you. It's sad, yes, but it's time to move on.


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Monday, May 18, 2009

Why you don't let gamers have whatever they want.

This dillema has been around for ages. People on forums whine about a game and how awesome it would be to have bigger, better guns, more powers, etc, etc. The problem with these things is that they destroy all semblance of balance and fairness. A game needs to be somewhat challenging or else it will become boring.

It seems that MMO City of Heroes has just learned why you don't let users make their own quests.

Paranoia has gripped the streets amid a government crackdown that’s trampling due process and blurring the line between the innocent and the guilty.

It’s not Myanmar, but Paragon City, the hub of the massively multiplayer online game City of Heroes, where a bizarre McCarthy-like crisis has broken out among the virtual populace. Handed new tools to create their own missions, many of the metropolis’ caped crusaders have rushed to exploit loopholes that allow them to rack up massive experience points with minimal effort. In a desperate bid to restore balance, the game’s creators have threatened to revoke experience points and ban players for abuse without explanation, unleashing a furor of protest.

The future of a world may hang in the balance.

“Newsflash — your idea of fun isn’t everyone esles [sic],” one disgruntled subscriber remarked.

The face-off underscores an iron law of MMO play: Give participants the tools to mold a game into an ideal form, and they’ll quickly use them to generate so-called min-max exploits that produce the fastest possible experience or in-game wealth for the least effort possible.

Free to play the game as they like, players frequently make choices that ruin the fun. It’s an irony that can prove death to game publishers: Far from loving their liberty, players seem to quickly bore of the “ideal” games they’ve created for themselves and quit early.

“It may seem sad that giving the players what they want is detrimental to the player’s overall length of enjoyment of the game, but that’s the truth,” says Eric Heimburg, the lead engineer and producer on Asheron’s Call, and the systems designer for the upcoming Star Trek online MMO. “Once you reached that top of the hill, if there’s nothing left to do or see, players are likely to move on. Length of enjoyment (equals) amount of money earned, so developers have a strong incentive to keep players from gaining power and levels too quickly.”

As more and more game developers allow players to create their own levels, users are harnessing this power to game the system. In Sony’s LittleBigPlanet, for example, players unleashed “trophy farms” — hundreds of user-generated levels that exist only to rack up a player’s PlayStation 3 achievement list with minimal effort.

City of Heroes was originally released in 2004, but its current woes started with the Mission Architect feature released in April. Suddenly, players could design their own missions, and a new class of villain quickly vaulted to power: the Farmer.

With the Mission Architect, players are able to create quests that offer rewards in parity with the standard, developer-created content. Once they’ve played a user-generated mission, they can rate it.

Mission creators with popular levels receive Architect Tickets, which can be cashed in for rewards. This gives architects incentives to crank out the sorts of missions their peers are likely to enjoy. Some gamers want engaging stories, while others want fun challenges.

But the Farmer has something a bit different in mind: laying out hordes of powerful, reward-laden enemies with glaring weaknesses, packed like sheep for the slaughter. Weeks’ worth of tedious labor for experience points could now be completed in mere hours, and the unscrupulous Farmers grew fat off their misdeeds.

“I don’t think any developer should be surprised that people who enjoy these sorts of quests would be drawn to the fastest power-gathering mechanism available,” Heimburg says. “I don’t blame the players one bit for abusing the system.”

Not so the developers at Paragon Studios. Klaxons wailing, they sprang into action, striking down “exploitative” quests and threatening to do the same to players who abused the newly implemented system.

“In order to keep the game fair, balanced, and challenging, we have to maintain a risk/reward ratio,” City of Heroes lead designer Matt “Positron” Miller explained in a missive to the players.

But while the developer is removing missions it deems exploitative, there hasn’t been much information on what constitutes breaking the rules. In fact, according to Miller, such transparency is not likely to be effective and could even backfire.

“If we say that the definition (of abuse) is ‘you gained 4 levels in under 30 minutes’, then someone will make sure that they gain 4 levels in 31 minutes, so they can claim they were within the allowed limits and not abusing,” he wrote.

That’s left players sitting on pins and needles. Says City of Heroes player TaintedAngel: “If you could look at the servers and see 10 percent of people had been spanked somehow, a whole lot of people would be letting out a long-held breath.”

Of course, players could always vote with their wallets.

At the dawn of the MMO genre, EverQuest saw great success despite a penchant for game-balancing changes that flummoxed subscribers. Then the competition arrived, and many left for “fairer” options.

“City of Heroes’ decision to punish players for infractions the players cannot predict is rather unusual,” Heimburg remarks. “When competing superhero-based MMOs become available, that could be a problem.”

- Source



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Everyone knows witches hate brooms.

This is why I hate religion and all other types of superstitious voodoo bullshit.

Christian Eshiett was a rambunctious pre-teen who spent a lot of time cavorting with his friends in southern Nigeria. He would skip school and run away from home for days, frustrating his grandfather, who oversaw the boy's care.

"I beat him severely with canes until they broke, yet he never shed a tear," said Eshiett Nelson Eshiett, 76. "One day, I took a broom to hit him and he started crying. Then I knew he was possessed by demons. ... Nigerian witches are terrified of brooms."


From that day two years ago, Christian, now 14, was branded a witch. The abuse intensified.

"They would take my clothes off, tie me up and beat me," he told CNN in a telephone interview.

The teen is one of the so-called witch children in Eket, a city in oil-rich Akwa Ibom state of Nigeria.

They are blamed for causing illness, death and destruction, prompting some communities to put them through harrowing punishments to "cleanse" them of their supposed magical powers.

"Children accused of witchcraft are often incarcerated in churches for weeks on end and beaten, starved and tortured in order to extract a confession," said Gary Foxcroft, program director of Stepping Stones Nigeria, a nonprofit that helps alleged witch children in the region.

Many of those targeted have traits that make them stand out, including learning disabilities, stubbornness and ailments such as epilepsy, he added.

The issue of "child witches" is soaring in Nigeria and other parts of the world, Foxcroft said.

The states of Akwa Ibom and Cross River have about 15,000 children branded as witches, and most of them end up abandoned and abused on the streets, he said.

Christian ran away from home and wandered around for two years with other children similarly accused. He said they stole, begged for food and performed menial jobs to survive.

The plight of "child witches" is raising concern among aid organizations, including the United Nations.

"It is a growing issue worldwide, among not just African communities, but in countries such as Nepal as well," said Jeff Crisp, head of policy development and evaluation for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. "We are trying to see whether it is a neglected protected issue."

Belief in witchcraft thrives worldwide. About 1,000 people accused of being witches in Gambia were locked in detention centers in March and forced to drink a dangerous hallucinogenic potion, human rights organization Amnesty International said.

In 2005, relatives of an 8-year-old Angolan girl living in England were convicted of torturing her for being a "witch," according to the Times Online.

Pastors have been accused of worsening the problem by claiming to have powers to recognize and exorcise "child witches," sometimes for a fee, aid workers said.

But some are true believers, such as one minister in Lagos, Nigeria. He pinpoints children affected by witchcraft for free, he said.

"Sometimes, we get a dream that shows us a certain person is suffering from witchcraft," said the Rev. Albert Aina, a senior pastor at Four Square Gospel Church. "Sometimes, you have a child who has inexplicable body marks because of struggling in the night. They are easy to identify, but why charge when you have been given a gift by God?" Aina said.

Once a child is branded a witch, the stigma can last forever.

Christian was reunited with his grandfather, a former theater instructor at a university in Nigeria. Eshiett said he let his son's child return home because he loves him and he advocates for youth education.

But, he added, he does not think Christian has been or can be freed from witchcraft.

"When you are possessed, you are possessed; no one can deliver you from Satan," Eshiett said, adding that his grandson is a witch because he still exhibits unruly behavior and does not take education seriously.

Aid organizations acknowledge that the belief is acceptable and popular in some communities.

"It is not the belief in witchcraft that we are concerned about," Foxcroft said. "We acknowledge people's right to hold this belief on the condition that this does not lead to child abuse."

Foxcroft, whose documentary, "Saving Africa's Witch Children," was broadcast last year, spoke to a U.N. panel on the issue in April.

The aid worker said he is planning a global conference in 2010 and public awareness campaigns, including addressing the issue in Nigerian movies. The nation's film industry, dubbed Nollywood, is a popular form of entertainment in African countries.

Government officials also have joined the fight.

Akwa Ibom recently added a clause into the Child Rights Act, saying that anyone found guilty of branding a child a witch would get up to 12 years in prison.

"This is groundbreaking, and Stepping Stones Nigeria applauds the Akwa Ibom state government for this," Foxcroft said.

But, he added, there is more work to be done, and other groups, especially churches, have to team up to resolve the problem.

"The role of the international Christian community in this cannot be underestimated," Foxcroft said. "Unfortunately, the fact remains that this belief system is being spread by so-called Christians."

CNN's attempts to reach Akwa Ibom state officials through phone calls and e-mails were unsuccessful. A Nigerian federal communications official declined to comment.

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Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Why can't a "mistake" also be a "blessing"?

Bristol Palin was, apparently on the TODAY show. During her interview she said her son was "not a mistake at all. He’s a blessing."

Okay, we get it. All mothers think their kids are fucking mana from heaven. But why can't it be both? As in, "oops, I just made a mistake and put cayenne pepper in these cheese wafers instead of paprika! Oooh, but it tastes good... what a blessing!"

Believe it or not, getting knocked up most likely was a mistake. Did you plan to get pregnant? Was getting pregnant your end-goal in having sex? Did you actively seek out and prepare to get pregnant? Did you want to get pregnant? If not, then getting pregnant was a mistake. However, just because it was a mistake doesn't mean that it can't be a good, exciting, and beloved experience, or even "a blessing." The two are not mutually exclusive.

Article Here


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Apple in the game industry? Yeah, that'll go over well.

So, I saw this piece about how Apple should get into the gaming industry, and the whole thing is juts one giant collage of dumbfuckery. Apple does some things well. The iPod was great. Not because it's better hardware, but because it capitalized on its simple interface. When people want to listen to music in their car or while jogging, they don't want to navigate a lot of menus and stuff. They want to find their music quickly, easily, and be done with it.

Anyways, here's a direct rebuttal and reasons why Apple should not get into the gaming industry. I really do love this shit, playing the devil's advocate against those that really don't know what the fuck they're talking about when it comes ot game development.

Reports are swirling that Apple is considering a move into the gaming market via an acquisition of Electronic Arts (EA). And while those are currently just rumors, what is confirmed is that Apple has recently poached Microsoft's former head of Xbox strategy, Richard Teversham.


Okay, let's look at what Taversham did.

The exiting Microsoft executive, Richard Teversham, most recently ran Microsoft's Xbox business unit in Europe. He worked at Microsoft for 15 years and was senior director of business, insights and strategy for the Xbox business group. Teversham told MCV he will work in some type of "education-related role" at the Apple European office.
- Source


Wow, that's fucking awesome. If I was going to start up a games division I would totally be looking for bean counters first and foremost. Forget that Taversham said he was going into some educational area for Apple's EU division. Even if he were working on a gaming-related division at Apple, he would most likely be pushed into Apple's iPhone department. Considering he's a business guy, aka number crunching, he'd be a good person to look at pricing and sales volume. Not for, you know, the actually important shit like hardware and development-related issues.

1. Apple Is Due: Some of the Cupertino crew's competitors are already well established in the gaming market with their own consoles. Microsoft has the Xbox and Sony has the PlayStation. While Apple has spent much of the last decade remaking the mobile music industry, the time could now be right for a foray into gaming. The brand has exploded in popularity since the release of the iPod in October 2001 (the Microsoft Xbox, as a point of reference, was released in November 2001), and it's not hard to imagine fanboys lining up to purchase an Apple-branded gaming device.


Good fucking grief this is stupid. Okay, let's look at Apple's market share in the PC market. It's between 10%-13%. That's it. Now, if you look at Apple's MP3 market share, it's somewhere in the 40% range, which is good. However, a game console isn't a fucking MP3 player and people aren't going to buy a several hundred dollar console just because. There has to be games and there has to be decent hardware. No one wants to invest in a fucking paperweight console. Ask Atari how well jumping into the game console industry with their Jaguar did. Oh wait, Atari is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

2. iTunes Store: Apple already has a well-established and viable way of distributing games to customers via the Internet. Downloading a song or movie through the iTunes Store is becoming a standard skill for many people. An Apple gaming console, then, could function similarly to the Apple TV or Xbox Live store. Droves of people already have accounts, so if Apple can distribute games directly to the console via iTunes, customers wouldn't even need to leave the house to get their game on.


Are you fucking retarded? Do you have any fucking clue as to how big games are? And I don't mean "big" as in popularity, but as in filesize. Try 3-6 GB. To understand that, in "music" size, you're talking 1,000 to 2,000 songs. For one game. Not to mention that people would need to have the proper bandwidth for that, which most do not. The average connection in the USA is about 512 Kb. Which is not KB (KiloyBytes). It's less than that. (one KiloByte = 8 Kilobits)

Also, how well has Apple TV done? Oh, that's right, it fucking tanked because it sucked shit. It was horribly inferior to other products out there and it lacked numerous crucial features. Face it, the only thing Apple has going for it is its iPod.

3. The iPhone And iPod Touch: Apple's mainstay portable devices are already beginning to establish themselves as gaming platforms. A quick look through the Apple App Store reveals a plethora of games that range in price from free to a few dollars. EA, for example, just released "Need For Speed Undercover" for the iPhone, retailing at $10. Apple customers are already playing games on the iPhone and iPod Touch, so why not tie those devices to a gaming console?


Because shitty iPhone games do not equal real games? How well has N4S:U done on the iPhone? Because it got horrible reviews and was widely panned by gaming critics. Most of the Apple iPhone games are pure shit. They are half-assed, bullshit clones of games from the 80's. If you really think playing games on an iPhone is at all comparable to playing on a console, then you're absolutely insane and don't have a clue what you're talking about.

4. Synching Between Console And iPhone: This seems like a no-brainer. iPhone users already sync their smartphones to a laptop for updates and purchases, so why not do the same with a gaming console? Games could be developed with special add-ons designed specifically for the iPhone or iPod touch. That way when a gamer has to leave the house, these side missions can be synched onto the iPhone, expanding Apple's gaming reach. Instead of riding the subway and listening to music or surfing the Web, users could continue to play the game they started back at home.


WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND ABOUT THE iPHONE NOT BEING A FUCKING GAMING CONSOLE!? Do you have any idea how shitty an iPhone game would look on a regular 480x720 resolution TV screen, let alone a 720p one? It would look horrible! The hardware and control limitations between a console and a portable device like the iPhone are so vast that making the assumption that the two could in any way be linked is more than just asinine, it is borderline brain dead. Even if you try to make the link between the iPhone's motion control sand the Wii, it still doesn't fit. The Wii has a much richer control set feature than the iPhone.

This is seriously one of the most idiotic things I've ever heard. It would be like saying that an Etch-A-Sketch could potentially be used to write programming languages. It is so far fetched and unrealistic that it's baffling that anyone would even come up with it, let alone publish an article saying this.

5. Better Talent: An Apple-branded console would attract top-notch talent to develop games for the platform. Just look at the success the company has had with independent developers creating applications for the App Store. Face it, not every game needs to be another installment of the "Call Of Duty" series. Assuming the iTunes Store is used to distribute the games, the process of getting a product listed there should be similar to the existing policy -- perhaps even a little less draconian. For bigger releases, companies such as EA would be facing a tough crowd of Apple fans who would expect nothing but the highest quality in the games on the platform. That would challenge publishers to bring on smarter talent and create better games, further enriching the gaming community.


Holy fucking... Okay, how much money does Apple have? Not much. Really, not much. It's true, whether you want to believe it or not. They don't have shit compared to Microsoft or Sony. Even Microsoft has decided to stop having in-house developers. Sony has an incredibly small handful. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Polyphony Digital, the makers of Gran Turismo. I don't think this writer understands how much money it takes to make a game, let alone start a whole new development softhouse. Here's a hint: AAA titles typically have budgets between $10-$30 million. That's just for the games. That doesn't include starting up the studios and everything else.

The process that developers go through with the iPhone app store is nothing like what goes on with major developers. The app store process works like this. Some guys makes something, submits it to Apple, Aple approves it or not, and then it's placed for sale or rejected. Major developers require licensing, SDKs, marketing, contractual obligations that actually mean something, and they don't want to sign on for some normalized bullshit that's the same with everyone. Do you think EA gets the same kind of contract that Atari gets? Hell no they don't!

The best part is the complete about-face this article does. So, not every game needs be Call Of Duty (I'm assuming they're referring to CoD4:MW, and not CoD:W@W, which sucked shit), but then says that Apple would require "top talent" that would "further enrich" the gaming industry. So, which one is it? Has he even bothered to look at most of the apps that sell on the iPhone? They're fart apps and stupid bullshit like that. Wow, talk about enrichment. Maybe I can get a "Pull My Finger" game on a console. That's be fucking sweet.

Really, all of this is just pure bullshit. This article has no idea what the fuck goes into gaming, and I didn't even start to bring out a lot of the other hurdles, namely development costs. The PS3 is still losing money on every console sold. MS is just now breaking into the black, and their console is already starting to age. If Apple were to try to get into the game console market, they'd have to be prepared to throw in a few billion dollars and be willing to lose it all.

Not only is the market already highly competitive, but where would Apple carve their niche? The kids market? Yeah fucking right. Nintendo has that on lockdown. The hardcore market? Sony and MS are already very aggressively waging a war in that market, good look trying to topple either one of them.

Finally, Apple would need to develop an SDK, get hardware manufacturers to work on specialty chipsets, amd be able to court third party developers to actually develop for their system. It's not as easy as "build it and they will come" which this article seems to think is the case. Developers already have a hard enough time trying to develop modern games for 4 systems (360, Wii, PS3, and PC), and adding a fifth isn't going to make things any easier. Not only that, but what kind of middleware will Apple sue? OpenGL like OSX? Because OPenGL vs DirectX is why you already see so few games for Mac.

This entire piece is nothing more than a pipe-dream, and not even a well though out one, at that. It has no basis in reality and doesn't even offer up a plan to the slightest bit of scrutiny. If Apple really thinks any of these reasons are why they should get into the gaming business, Apple better be prepared to go bankrupt, again, and pray that Microsoft will bail them out of such bankruptcy, again.

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When will smugglers ever learn? Don't always just stuff shit down your pants.

Why is it that people seem to think, "shit, I gotta smuggle something. I'll stick it down my pants! No one will ever know..." Yeah, because the awkward bulges won't give you away at all. And saying you have elephantiasis of the balls is always a reasonable excuse.

A man was charged Tuesday with smuggling songbirds into the United States by hiding more than a dozen of them in an elaborate, custom-tailored pair of leggings during a flight from Vietnam to Los Angeles.

Sony Dong, 46, was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport in March after an inspector spotted bird feathers and droppings on his socks and tail feathers peeking out from under his pants, prosecutors said.

"He had fashioned these special cloth devices to hold the birds," said U.S. attorney spokesman Thom Mrozek. "They were secured by cloth wrappings and attached to his calves with buttons."


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Saturday, May 2, 2009

Good Christians = Torture Supportors?

According to a recent Pew survey, those who regularly attend church are more likely to support torture techniques. Guess they've been reading a lot of the Old Testament.


More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small.

The president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Leith Anderson, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The survey asked: "Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified?"

Roughly half of all respondents -- 49 percent -- said it is often or sometimes justified. A quarter said it never is.

The religious group most likely to say torture is never justified was Protestant denominations -- such as Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians -- categorized as "mainline" Protestants, in contrast to evangelicals. Just over three in 10 of them said torture is never justified. A quarter of the religiously unaffiliated said the same, compared with two in 10 white non-Hispanic Catholics and one in eight evangelicals.

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