Midday Roundup: Sony pulls anti-North Korea film over threats, hacking

Off-screen drama. The United States has connected the North Korean government with cyberattacks against Sony Pictures, Fox News reported. Sony on Wednesday canceled the release of its new film The Interview after the cyberattacks and threats against any movie theater that screens the film. The comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco depicts two tabloid journalists recruited by the U.S. government to assassinate Kim Jong Un. Prior to the cancellation of the film’s New York premiere, Deputy New York Police Commissioner John Miller said it wasn’t clear whether the threats referenced a cyberattack or a physical attack.

Fracking forbidden. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday he supports a statewide ban on fracking for natural gas. The move would extend a ban temporarily put in place while state environmental and health officials reviewed the drilling technique. New York Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said fracking poses significant health risks to the public. The technique blasts high-pressure, chemically treated water into the ground to release gas from rock formations. Oil industry officials say fracking is safe and has been practiced in the United States for 65 years without negative effects on the public.

On the naughty list. The police have arrested two men in a toy-thieving scheme just as naughty but not as well-planned as the Grinch’s. The men entered a Walmart in Polk County, Fla., filled a shopping cart with a motorized Power Wheels Barbie car, a Leap Frog tablet, and a Barbie dollhouse. On the way out of the store, one of the men faked a heart attack, causing a diversion while the other quietly slipped out without paying for the toys. Once his friend had loaded the toys in the car and pulled up to the front of the store, but heart-attack faker just got up and walked out. Sheriff’s deputies caught up with them not long after that.

Presidential roadblock. A defeated Democrat in Kentucky has vowed to fight Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s future political ambitions. Paul is up for reelection to his Senate seat in 2016, but has also expressed an interest in running for president. Kentucky law doesn’t allow a candidate to be on the ballot for two different offices in the same election. Republicans had hoped to change that law, but they failed during the November election to garner enough seats in the state legislature to do so. Allison Lundergan Grimes, who ran for Senate against Republican Mitch McConnell and lost, is the secretary of state and in charge of elections. Grimes told local media there’s no way she would let Paul bend the rules, vowing to take the senator to court if she had to.

A measured response. A digital billboard in northwest Arkansas is flashing alternating ads by a church and an atheist group. The billboard along Interstate 49, sponsored by American Atheists, shows a young girl writing Santa that all she wants for the holidays is to miss church because she’s too old for fairy tales. Grace Church in Alma, Ark., bought an ad that appears seconds later, reading, “Questions, doubts, curiosity? All welcome at Grace Church, Alma.”

WORLD Radio’s Kent Covington and Steve Coleman contributed to this report.