Blog Heap of Links for the day 18 May 2009

terror groups were using popular social networking Web sites like Facebook to recruit, and possibly kidnap, Israeli citizens.

You can run, but you cannot hide ... and if you try, one push of a button will cause a lethal poison to immediately begin flowing through your body. That's the Orwellian future a Saudi inventor was seeking to bring to Germany until that nation's patent office announced last week it was rejecting his request to patent what has been dubbed the "Killer Chip."

A British tourist was recovering last night after being stung more than 500 times when a swarm of bees attacked visitors to an art gallery in France.

Authorities say a student shot himself in the head at a Louisiana middle school after firing a handgun in a student-filled classroom. There were conflicting reports about whether the student fired the .32-caliber handgun at a teacher.

According to a report, while recently attending the Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, an annual event where powerful politicians and media elite get a chance to cozy up to one another, Biden told his dinnermates about the existence of a secret bunker under the old U.S. Naval Observatory, which is now the home of the vice president. The bunker is believed to be the secure, undisclosed location former Vice President Dick Cheney remained under protection in secret after the 9/11 attacks.

Privacy advocates plan to call on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to suspend use of "whole-body imaging," the airport security technology that critics say performs "a virtual strip search" and produces "naked" pictures of passengers

The Belgian bodybuilding championship has been canceled after doping officials showed up and all the competitors fled

NBC has finalized a deal to bring Chuck back for a third season, multiple sources confirm. That's the good news. Here's the bad news: The 13-episode pickup came after Warner Bros. agreed to make significant budget concessions, including scaling back the number of episodes several members of the show's stellar supporting cast will appear in and, per one insider, possibly eliminating one actor altogether (R.I.P. Anna Wu?).

Drew Peterson pleaded not guilty Monday to a charge of first-degree murder in the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio.... Investigators have named Peterson as a suspect in the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson. His third wife's death was originally deemed an accident, but after the case of the fourth wife sparked new questions, Savio's body was exhumed and a grand jury indicted Peterson this month on a charge of first-degree murder in her death.

A millionaire is selling his £16 million country house hotel and donating the entire proceeds to a cancer charity after his wife survived the illness.

Tony Alleyne decided to turn his flat into a Star Trek spaceship after his wife left him. He now lives amid the transporter deck and LCARS control panels in Hinckley, Leicestershire.

"Star Trek" really is going to the final frontier. NASA astronaut Michael Barratt will watch the film while aboard the International Space Station, 220 miles above Earth, NASA said in a statement to Access Hollywood.

"I think that amount of time is excessive, but it's not up to me," U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel said

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors' case against medical marijuana reached a legal dead-end Monday. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from San Diego and San Bernardino counties, which sought a ruling on whether California's medical marijuana law trumps the federal controlled-substances law banning the drug's use. In reaction to the court's decision, the county's lead attorney said he will recommend the board approve giving the ID cards to patients at its meeting on June 16.

A revolutionary new search engine that computes answers rather than pointing to websites will be launched officially today amid heated talk that it could challenge the might of Google. WolframAlpha, named after Stephen Wolfram, the British-born computer scientist and inventor behind the project, takes a query and uses computational power to crunch through huge databases

"I feel at home here," said Barnouw, who turned 102 last month.

An Albuquerque archeologist and his team have returned with artifacts from a dig site near the Dead Sea which they believe reveals the lost city of Sodom. ...

Our first list on Historical Oddities was very popular, so we are now presenting you with a second list! Here are 20 strange facts of history that you are probably not aware of.

charges of evading police with disregard to public safety, driving with a suspended license, throwing objects from the vehicle while moving, driving under the influence, possession of a controlled substance, reckless driving, and felony hit and run.

DNA tests have revealed that a 13-year-old British boy who claimed to have fathered a child with his 15-year-old girlfriend was not the dad.... story... sparked claims from other boys who lived nearby that they could also be the father and social workers organised a DNA test. ... father was 15-year-old Tyler Barker, who lived on the same housing estate

An off-duty FDNY chief fought off a disturbed man who tried to snatch his son off a crowded Brooklyn street Sunday afternoon