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Barack Obama today released four top secret memos that allowed the CIA under the Bush administration to torture al-Qaida and other suspects held at Guantánamo and secret detention centres round the world.

in an accompanying statement, Obama ruled out prosecutions against those who had been involved. It is a "time for reflection, not retribution," he said.

The techniques were applied to at least 14 suspects.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has opened the country's first nuclear fuel production plant.

Mr Ahmadinejad said Iran was open to an offer of fresh talks with world powers if they were based on "justice" and "respect".

Mr Ahmadinejad also announced that Iran had tested two new types of centrifuge with higher capacities at a uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Meanwhile, nuclear chief Gholam Reza Aghazadeh says Iran has increased the number of centrifuges it is running at the plant to 7,000. In February, Iran said it had 6,000 centrifuges running.

Pirates have used rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons to attack another US merchant ship off the coast of Somalia. The pirates damaged the Liberty Sun, which was carrying a cargo of food aid, but were not able to board it.

Pirates have vowed to avenge the deaths of those killed in recent rescue operations by US and French forces.

Somali pirate leaders - who have generally treated captives well in the hope of winning big ransom payouts - said they would avenge the deaths.

North Korea said today it will boycott international talks on its atomic weapons programme in protest at the UN security council's condemnation of the country's rocket launch.

The country also said it would restart nuclear facilities it had begun to dismantle under an international deal.

"We have no choice but to further strengthen our nuclear deterrent to cope with additional military threats by hostile forces," the statement said

Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials.

The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, these officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls. The intruders haven't sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war.

Many of the intrusions were detected not by the companies in charge of the infrastructure but by U.S. intelligence agencies, officials said. Intelligence officials worry about cyber attackers taking control of electrical facilities, a nuclear power plant or financial networks via the Internet.

the United States and its allies have had serious disagreements over North Korea. Japan is prepared to obstruct negotiations until Pyongyang comes clean on the handful of Japanese kidnapped by the North some 30 years ago. The Chinese have wanted to moderate and ultimately change North Korea through reform and sizable economic support, but have little to show for it. Many of the cognoscenti see China as the ultimate arbiter compelling North Korean cooperation. That, of course, has not happened. China has its own interest -- keeping North Korea afloat -- and that's not likely to change. The U.S. and Chinese economies are now so enmeshed that U.S. leverage on China is very limited. South Korea's "sunshine policy," which provided large-scale aid in hopes of ultimately seducing North Korea, was despised by the Bush administration. (Ironically, a new South Korean government abandoned the policy just as the United States was softening its approach to the North.)

The U.S. administration seems content to resume six-party talks where they left off: completing the "phase two" agreement, exchanging fuel oil for disablement of the North's plutonium facilities, and an agreement on verification, the sticking point precipitating the breakdown of negotiations. Preventing North Korea from producing more fissile material makes sense. From there, the going gets increasingly tough.

The weight of evidence suggests that North Korea will be unwilling to give up its nuclear weapons for a long time, if ever. The apparent North Korean interest in trading the dismantling of its plutonium facilities for light water reactors will not likely go down well in Washington. It is not much of a deal.

A controversial UN conference on racism has begun in Geneva, amid concern it could become an anti-Semitic forum. Several countries - including the US, Australia and Germany - are boycotting it but France and the UK are attending.

Iran's president, who has denied the Holocaust, is to address the meeting, a follow-up to a 2001 UN forum in Durban that ended in acrimony.

many Western countries are uncomfortable with the address by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the only major leader to accept an invitation to the forum.

Despite his hard-line and inflammatory rhetoric, however, Lieberman may be a pragmatist. Unlike many on Israel's right — including Netanyahu — Lieberman supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In a Ha'aretz interview after taking office, Lieberman said Israel should abide by the 2002 Roadmap, which calls for a Palestinian state.

The Roadmap obliges the Palestinians to stop violence and dismantle the capabilities of terror organizations, and reform their political institutions, before any movement toward the creation of a Palestinian state. But, in the same phase, it obliges Israel to freeze settlement construction and dismantle all settlement outposts built since March 2001.

Lieberman appears to recognize those obligations, and in the Ha'aretz interview, he mocked Olmert and his team as hypocrites who advocated peace but did little to achieve it. "How many outposts did Olmert, Barak and Livni evacuate?" he said.