Chatter: US drones return to Pakistan

NEED TO KNOW

The drones did it. A US drone strike in Pakistan, the first since President Barack Obama announced the attacks would be scaled back, has killed the second-in-command of the Pakistani Taliban, according to reports.

Security officials say Wali-ur-Rehman, a senior commander tipped to take over as head of the Taliban in Pakistan, was one of seven people killed in today's strike in North Waziristan. There's no official word yet on his death, which if confirmed would be a major blow to the insurgent group. Regardless, Islamabad has condemned all drone strikes as an assault on Pakistan's sovereignty.

Britain's Guantanamo? The UK government has admitted that it is holding as many as 90 Afghans at a military camp in Afghanistan, in what lawyers say constitutes unlawful detention but London insists is perfectly legit. According to the UK's defense secretary, the men are suspected insurgents whom British forces plan to hand over to Afghan authorities as soon as they can be sure it is safe to do so.

owever, a British legal team representing eight of the detainees claims they have been held for up to 14 months without charge — about, oh, 13 months and 26 days longer than they are legally permitted to be — and has appealed to the UK's High Court to free them. A hearing is due in July.

WANT TO KNOW

Soldier stabbing arrest. French police have detained a man they suspect of stabbing an on-duty soldier in Paris last weekend. The unnamed 22-year-old, arrested just outside the capital this morning, is described as a follower of radical Islam whose "religious ideology" motivated him to stab a soldier in the neck.

What's still not clear, however, is whether the incident was linked to the grisly murder of an off-duty serviceman in London days earlier. The investigation continues.

Bachmann won't be back. Tea Partier Michele Bachmann says this term in Congress will be her last.

Bachmann, who has represented Minnesota's 6th district since 2007, says her decision not to run for re-election next year was not due to concerns over whether she'd win, nor a probe into the finances of her unsuccessful campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Just to be clear.

Un homme et… un homme. Today, for the first time ever, France will allow two men to marry. Grooms Vincent and Bruno plan to tie the knot in France's own San Francisco, Montpellier, surrounded by friends, family, gay rights activists, press — and riot police.

hose, for better or worse, are the guests you get when you're the first couple to take advantage of your country's new, bitterly disputed gay marriage law. Acceptance wasn't built in a (wedding) day.

STRANGE BUT TRUE

What, this old thing? That's just the world's oldest Torah, which professors at Italy's University of Bologna believe they have excavated from the deepest, darkest recesses of… the college library.

he most ancient known copy of Judaism's holy text had apparently been gathering dust on the shelves since at least 1889, when one of the university librarians mislabelled it as one of your garden-variety 17th-century Torahs. Carbon dating, however, now indicates that the scroll dates back to more than 850 years ago. Oy vey.