New York Times Top Online Stories: Tue 11/30/10

The New York Times lead headline online early Tuesday morning says "Leaked Cables Depict a World Guessing About North Korea." The paper says the cables on North Korea are long on guesses and short on facts, even when conveying thoughts of diplomats from China, the North’s ally.

It says some world leaders expressed anger on Monday over the disclosures in confidential American diplomatic cables, even as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she was confident that the administration’s diplomatic relationships would withstand the upheaval.

The paper says State Department cables show the efforts by the United States to reduce the population of the Guantánamo prison so it can eventually close.

The Times says experts convened by the Institute of Medicine said that most people do not need additional calcium or vitamin D, and that too much of the supplements could cause harm.

It says the United States, South Korea and Japan are all balking at China’s request for emergency talks with North Korea over the crisis on the Korean Peninsula, as high-profile military exercises between South Korea and the United States in the Yellow Sea continued on Monday in a show of force.

And the most popular story says a cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at back-room bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats.