Today on the Hotplate

• A parade of 'bizarre' toys
• Colombia asks world for cash to disarm militias
• Abu Ghraib: the rule, not the exception
• Emerging writers try oratory
• BOUTROS Boutros-Ghali to be invested into the Order of Canada
• 'New and Selected Poems, 1974-2004': Poet on Main Street
• There followed other evidently language-using apes, including Nim Chimpsky (named after linguist Noam Chomsky)
• War criminals' poems uncovered
• Poets discover a rhythm method
• Democracy far off in dissidents' eyes
• Birth Rights
• The Misery Index is Rising
• Poster poems from EU's new members
• US soldier pleads guilty to abuse in Abu Ghraib prison scandal
• Environment row as Jakarta fish die
• Group: Three dissidents sentenced in Cuba
• Many artists live in survival mode, reports agency head
• The Cruelest (and Coolest) Month
• 'The libertarian experiment has failed; abstinence is the way forward'