Yet More News

South Korea may have been alerted to a North Korean suicide attack which destroyed the Cheonan in March:

Military intelligence officers warned earlier this year that North Korea was preparing a suicide submarine attack on a South Korean vessel in retaliation for an earlier defeat in a sea battle, a newspaper said Thursday.

There has been growing speculation that North Korea was behind the March 26 explosion that split the 1,200-ton Cheonan in two and sank it, killing at least 39 people and leaving seven missing.

Seoul has not directly blamed Pyongyang for the blast, and the North has denied involvement, but suspicion remains given the country's history of provocation and attacks on the South.

On Thursday, the mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported the Korea Defense Intelligence Command alerted the navy weeks ahead of the ship sinking that North Korea was preparing underwater suicide teams in mini-submarines to attack the South.

These "human torpedo" squads were said to involve small submarines navigated so close to the target that their torpedoes or explosives blow up both target and the attackers, or are timed to explode while the attackers escape from the vehicle, the report said.

The attack preparations were aimed at retaliating against the South over its defeat in a naval skirmish in November, the paper said. The site of the sinking is near where the rival Koreas fought three times since 1999, most recently a November clash that left one North Korean soldier dead and three others wounded....

Yonhap, citing an unidentified military source, said the assessment was submitted to the presidential Blue House shortly after the warship sank. The Blue House, however, denied it has received such an intelligence report.

In other news, two North Korean agents have been arrested in the attempted assassination of North Korean defector Hwang Jang-Yop:

South Korean authorities said Wednesday they had arrested two North Korean agents sent to South Korea was to assassinate Mr. Hwang, the highest-ranking North Korean official to defect. Hwang was a former top secretary of the North’s ruling Workers Party and architect of the North’s version of communist ideology....

The two were formally charged after giving themselves away under the intense questioning by South Korean security, a process that all defectors undergo after getting to the South. They had crossed the Tumen River border into China and gone to Yangji, a major city near the border. The made their way to South Korea via Thailand, a customary defectors’ route. There have been other reported attempts by the North to assassinate Hwang, including a similar case in 2008, when a North Korean defector was arrested, apparently in the hunt for Hwang.

Mr. Hwang is not the only one facing death threats:

A radical Muslim group has warned the creators of "South Park" that they could face violent retribution for depicting the prophet Mohammed in a bear suit during last week's episode.

The website RevolutionMuslim.com has since been taken down, but a cached version shows the message to "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The article's author, Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, said the men "outright insulted" the religious leader.

The posting showed a gruesome picture of Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who was shot and stabbed to death in an Amsterdam street in 2004 by a fanatic angered by his film about Muslim women. The film was written by a Muslim woman who rejected the Prophet Mohammed as a guide for today's morality.

"We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show," Al-Amrikee wrote. "This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them."

This is actually old news. Where haven't we seen this kind of fanaticism?

Dalton McGunity blinked (emphasis mine):

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty backed off Thursday from a controversial plan to alter the province's sex-education curriculum after publicly funded Catholic schools said they wouldn't implement the changes.

Saying the strategy needed a "serious rethink," McGuinty told reporters at a London,Ont., news conference that the current curriculum would remain in place for now while the proposed plan, which would introduce lessons on parts of the body in Grade 1, lessons on homosexuality in Grade 3, and discussion of vaginal and anal intercourse in Grade 7 would be "put back on the shelf."

"It's become pretty obvious to us that we need to give this a serious rethink," McGuinty said.

Yeah, I'll say.

Before I'm clobbered with some accusations that I am antedeluvian, let me point out that this program isn't even remotely age-appropriate, will not be monitored or held to account, comes at a considerable cost to the taxpayer in a have-not province and also in a province where autistic children get next to no support. One would think more resources would go into making sure students excel in their studies, not point out how groovy homosexuality is.

Tiny silk brain implants could aid in the treatment of epilepsy and spinal cord injuries:

"These implants have the potential to maximize the contact between electrodes and brain tissue, while minimizing damage to the brain," said Dr. Walter Koroshetz of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health, which helped pay for the study.

"They could provide a platform for a range of devices with applications in epilepsy, spinal cord injuries and other neurological disorders."

For instance, such a sensitive electrode could detect a seizure as it starts and deliver pulses to counter it. Brain signals might be routed to prosthetics for people with spinal cord and other injuries.

Silk is also transparent, strong and flexible, and it is possible to control the rate at which it dissolves.

Now, to end on a high note, Iron Man actually makes a chick flick worth watching: