North Korea, which has been firing missiles and spewing threats against the United States, was identified by South Korea’s main spy agency Wednesday as a suspect in the cyber attacks targeting government and other Web sites in the U.S. and South Korea.
North Korea is not known for its computing prowess, but experts said such attacks would be easy — and cheap — to mount by hiring outside help.
via winstonwolfe
Officials in China’s Xinjiang province imposed a curfew in a continued crackdown on protesters as Han Chinese clashed with Uighurs in the provincial capital on Tuesday.
After bringing in riot police to break up multiple protests on Tuesday, the Xinjiang regional government announced that a curfew would be imposed for the evening hours.
Riot police using loudspeakers appealed to about 300 marchers to stop their destructive behaviour as they threw rocks, smashed shop windows and knocked down food stalls run by ethnic Uighurs in Urumqi on Tuesday.
Drew, 50, was accused of participating in a cyberbullying scheme against 13-year-old Megan Meier who later committed suicide. The case against Drew hinged on the government’s novel argument that violating MySpace’s terms of service was the legal equivalent of computer hacking. But U.S. District Judge George Wu found the premise troubling.
“It basically leaves it up to a website owner to determine what is a crime,” said Wu on Thursday, echoing what critics of the case have been saying for months. “And therefore it criminalizes what would be a breach of contract.”
A top Indian court has issued a landmark ruling decriminalising gay sex between consenting adults, overturning colonial-era legislation that outlawed homosexuality.
The New Delhi High Court ruled that an existing statute prohibiting homosexual acts was discriminatory and therefore a “violation of fundamental rights” accorded under the constitution.
The statute in question is a British colonial-era law outlawing “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” Conviction carried a fine and a maximum 10-year jail sentence.
A US judge has banned publication of a book promoted as a sequel to JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.
US District Judge Deborah Batts ruled that Swedish author Fredrik Colting’s novel too closely mirrored Mr Salinger’s 1951 classic.
Mr Salinger brought the lawsuit against Mr Colting, with his lawyers calling the book a “rip-off pure and simple”.
Federal drug regulators warned Wednesday that patients taking two popular stop-smoking drugs should be watched closely for signs of serious mental illness, as reported suicides among the drugs’ users mount.
But officials emphasized that patients should not be scared away from taking the smoking-cessation medicines, Chantix, made by Pfizer, and Zyban, made by GlaxoSmithKline.
“Stopping smoking is a goal we should all be working towards,” said Dr. Curt Rosebraugh, director of a drug evaluation office at the F.D.A. “We don’t want to scare people off from trying a medication that could help them achieve this goal. You should just be careful.”
The F.D.A. required Pfizer and Glaxo to place so-called black box warnings — the agency’s most serious caution — on the prescribing information for both drugs. Both companies will be required to conduct clinical trials to assess the mental health risks associated with the drugs’ uses.
Finally, and only eight months late. To the best of my knowledge, Franken is the first former-member of Saturday Night Live to join the ranks of federal politics.
There are reports of other survivors, including the Captain, but so far this is the only one officials are confirming.
US troops are withdrawing from towns and cities in Iraq, six years after the invasion, having formally handed over security duties to new Iraqi forces.
A public holiday - National Sovereignty Day - has been declared, and the capital, Baghdad, threw a giant party to mark the eve of the changeover.
US-led combat operations are due to end by September 2010, with all troops gone from Iraq by the end of 2011.
Iraqi troops are on the alert for insurgent attacks during the handover.
Despite the pullback from cities and towns, due to be completed on Tuesday, US troops will still be embedded with Iraqi forces.
