NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Israel has never confirmed nor denied the existence of a nuclear weapons program

North Korea wants a second round of dialogue with the United States, possibly next month, as part of renewed efforts to restart talks on disabling the its nuclear weapons program, a South Korean official said Thursday.

China urged regional powers on Monday to restart moribund nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea, with its foreign minister Yang Jiechi defending Beijing as an honest broker seeking to defuse confrontation with Pyongyang.

Terming the dialogue initiated by the British government with Colonel Gaddafi in 2003 as right decision, the former MI5 chief Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller today acknowledged that though it was difficult, but the decision to engage in dialogue with Gaddafi in 2003 was right.

In France, a nuclear explosion has killed one and injured four more. The event comes on the heels of a re-investment in nuclear energy by President Nicolas Sarkozy.

An explosion at France's Marcoule nuclear plant on Monday has left at least one dead and three injured. As of 2 p.m. local time, there had been no radioactive leak, but there is a leak risk and authorities have set up a protective perimeter around the plant.

The day is almost half-way over as the sun slowly fades in brightness over Hongdae, where hundreds of restaurants, bars, night clubs, and shops cover the streets and become an important center for night life in Seoul, South Korea.

Documents found in the abandoned Tripoli office of Muammar Gaddafi's intelligence chief indicate the U.S. and British spy agencies helped the fallen strongman persecute Libyan dissidents, Human Rights Watch said on Saturday.

A day before the release of Dick Cheney's memoir, In My Time, Former Secretary of State Collin Powell said some of the ex-vice president's revelations are nonsense.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il told his neighbor and biggest patron China on Friday that he was willing to return to stalled nuclear talks without precondition, China's Xinhua news agency reported, following a similar pledge to Russia.

A research center near Tripoli has stocks of nuclear material that could be used to make a dirty bomb, a former senior U.N. inspector said on Wednesday, warning of possible looting during turmoil in Libya.

A research center near Tripoli stocks uranium and other material that could be used to make a nuclear dirty bomb and Libya's rebels will need to secure it, a former U.N. inspector said Wednesday.

Russia pitched on Wednesday a proposal to Iran's foreign minister which it hopes could bring a breakthrough in a confrontation over Tehran's nuclear programme, despite doubts in the West that the plan can make much headway.

James P. Zumwalt became the first American representative to attend the memorial service on the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug. 9, 1945.

August 6th marks the 66th anniversary of the world's first atomic bombing in Hiroshima, which cost an estimate of 140,000 lives by the end of 1945.Naoto Kan, Japanese Prime Minister, attended the anniversary in Hiroshima and reaffirmed the urgency to reduce Japan's dependence on nuclear energy.

The attacks ? the only time nuclear weapons have ever been used in world history to date ? killed tens of thousands of people and shocked the planet with the scale of their destruction.

Ashton Carter nominated by Obama as new deputy secretary of defense.

Isolated North Korea said on Monday it had agreed to further dialogue with the United States, and repeated it was willing to resume regional nuclear disarmament talks at an early date, without preconditions.

Sends him a link to Rick Astley video

The phone-hacking scandal that has engulfed the British media empire of Rupert Murdoch may become the biggest political imbroglio in the UK in many years … but it remains rather tame compared to the Profumo, affair which exploded in the country almost 50 years ago.

On Monday, Team Inj3ct0r (1337day) claimed to hack Apache Tomcat Version 5.5.9 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), reported the Hacker News.