North Korea promised a "preemptive nuclear strike" prior to a UN vote on new sanctions. Despite the threat, the sanctions were unanimously approved. North Korea has responded by killing a Red Cross hotline with Seoul and claims that it has canceled the 1953 Armistice although the UN notes this cannot be done unilaterally (North Korea attempted the same thing in 2003 and 2009).

Beijing has reportedly refused to confiscate these funds despite voting for the very UN resolutions sanctioning North Korea

In a dramatic call for action directly prompted by 114,000 signatures on a "We the People" petition, the Obama Administration moments ago pledged to overturn a federal regulatory decision that had rendered the act of unlocking a cell phone illegal.

The White House agrees with the 114,000+ of you who believe that consumers should be able to unlock their cell phones without risking criminal or other penalties. In fact, we believe the same principle should also apply to tablets, which are increasingly similar to smart phones. And if you have paid for your mobile device, and aren't bound by a service agreement or other obligation, you should be able to use it on another network.

US President Obama has unveiled the most sweeping gun control proposals in two decades, setting up a showdown with firearms rights advocates.

The US has one of the highest rates of civilian gun ownership in the world. The second amendment of the US constitution states that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed".

In the last days of November, Israel’s top military commanders called the Pentagon to discuss troubling intelligence that was showing up on satellite imagery: Syrian troops appeared to be mixing chemicals at two storage sites, probably the deadly nerve gas sarin, and filling dozens of 500-pounds bombs that could be loaded on airplanes.

While chemical weapons are technically considered a “weapon of mass destruction” — along with biological and nuclear weapons — in fact they are hard to use and hard to deliver.

The folks over at the CATO Institute have put together a short five minute video on the rush by the federal government to renew the FISA Amendments Act, with no changes, which effectively has sanctioned warrantless wiretapping on millions of Americans.

It seems likely that the NSA, in particular, has used this bill and its secret interpretation to sweep up huge databases of information about Americans, even as most people (including many in Congress) believe the bill only is used to spy on foreigners.

The NSA claims that it must keep secret whether or not it even has an estimate of how many Americans' have had their data sucked up by this secret program because of, well, a secret reason.

In an open letter, he said he loved Russia, calling it "a great democracy".

Mr Depardieu had recently announced he would give up his French passport after the government criticised his decision to move abroad to avoid higher taxes.

Mr Depardieu's highly publicised tax row began last year after Mr Hollande said he would raise taxes to 75% for those earning more than 1m euros.

Mr Depardieu, described by Mr Putin as a successful businessman and friend, has developed close ties with Russia, which has a flat 13% personal income tax rate.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) has introduced one of Congress' first pieces of legislation related to the tragedy in Newtown, Conn.: a bill to study the impact of violent video games on children.

Other lawmakers, such as Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), have also expressed support for scrutinizing the content of video games.

Hours earlier, former Prime Minister Mr Berlusconi said he will run for office again next year.

Mr Berlusconi said he felt a "responsibility" to step back into the arena because of the severity of the country's economic problems.

The BBC's Alan Johnston in Rome says that Mr Berlusconi's critics will argue he is only interested in being in a powerful enough position to protect his own business and other interests.

Just after noon Damascus time on Thursday, the government-owned Syrian Telecommunications Establishment essentially deleted the whole country from the Internet's routing tables, blocking all inbound and outbound network traffic. Rather than the result of terrorist attacks, as the government claimed on state television, the blackout was a well-rehearsed and deliberate act intended to deny connection to Syria's citizens and the opposition forces currently trying to topple the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad.

That means that citizens trying to circumvent the blackout—whether the government admits to it being under their control or not—may place themselves at even greater risk of surveillance and detection. As the pressure on the Assad regime builds, that risk may be more than most citizens—no matter what their status or wealth—are willing to take on.

During last night’s presidential debate between President Obama and GOP candidate Mitt Romney, the Mittster said he would tighten Washington’s belt by making cuts to federal programs, including subsidies to PBS, which airs Big Bird’s show Sesame Street.

On Thursday, PBS issued a statement about Romney’s remarks, saying that the publicly funded network was “very disappointed” to have been drawn into the presidential debate, defending the Sesame Street character, and noting that the federal outlay for public broadcasting was “one one-hundredth of one percent” of the nation’s budget.