Weird Links

Ever since Pyongyang in 1993 declared it would leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the White House has wrestled how to deal with the challenge posed by North Korea, as a nuclear armed state that would threaten not only America's close ally South Korea, where up to 37,000 US troops are based, and whose new weapons would raise the spectre of a wider nuclear arms race in east Asia.

It was a poker night with a difference. Renowned Australian cricketer Shane Warne teamed up with millionaire ecologist Zac Goldsmith to entice the rich and famous to pay £10,000 a head to play cards at an exclusive London members' club...But today The Observer can reveal that the event was actually planned by Goldsmith in part to raise thousands of pounds for the Conservative party through a company run by his cousin Alex.

According to Nintendo, the DS browser gives a customized Web experience by utilizing the screens for surfing as well as the unique touch capabilities of the popular gaming device. European users can access all their favorite Web sites from Wi-Fi environments at home, at any one of Nintendo's free Wi-Fi Connection Hotspots and public access Hotspots.

The exploit reportedly caused a stack overflow by merely including a small snippet of JavaScript code on a webpage. Except it doesn't.

John Reid, the home secretary, is preparing a new anti-terror law that would sideline human rights legislation protecting suspects from torture if ministers ruled there were “overriding considerations of national security”.

The move is aimed at foreign terrorist suspects, including 32 detained in prison without charge or being monitored on strict bail conditions.

Israel has withdrawn the bulk of its troops from Lebanon, fulfilling a key condition of the UN ceasefire that ended its war with Hezbollah.

About 200 soldiers crossed into Israel after midnight, the army said...Some Israeli troops remain on the Lebanese side of the divided border village of Ghajar.

Included in the bill, passed by Republican majorities in the Senate yesterday and the House on Wednesday, are unique rules that bar terrorism suspects from challenging their detention or treatment through traditional habeas corpus petitions. They allow prosecutors, under certain conditions, to use evidence collected through hearsay or coercion to seek criminal convictions.

The bill rejects the right to a speedy trial and limits the traditional right to self-representation by requiring that defendants accept military defense attorneys. Panels of military officers need not reach unanimous agreement to win convictions, except in death penalty cases, and appeals must go through a second military panel before reaching a federal civilian court.

By writing into law for the first time the definition of an "unlawful enemy combatant," the bill empowers the executive branch to detain indefinitely anyone it determines to have "purposefully and materially" supported anti-U.S. hostilities. Only foreign nationals among those detainees can be tried by the military commissions, as they are known, and sentenced to decades in jail or put to death.

At the same time, the bill immunizes U.S. officials from prosecution for cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees who the military and the CIA captured before the end of last year. It gives the president a dominant but not exclusive role in setting the rules for future interrogations of terrorism suspects.

Russia will ship fuel to a nuclear power plant it is building in Iran by March under an agreement signed by the two countries on Tuesday, Russian news agencies reported.

Former Minnesota Governor, actor and wrestling star Jesse Ventura has publicly questioned the official version of events behind 9/11 and gone further than ever before in citing Operation Northwoods and the Gulf of Tonkin as examples of how the government has planned and carried out staged war provocations in the past.

DARPA is providing a $7.6 million grant into research looking to give humans the salamader-like ability to regrow severed limbs.