SAN NARCISO, Calif. -- Bank of America customers reported on Tuesday that the bank’s Web site, which controls the on-line banking platforms for millions of Americans, was completely down. Although the bank restored service for a brief time, the site became inoperative again in the afternoon. Bank of America spokespeople denied that the systems had been compromised, despite threats from Anonymous -- a “hacktivist” group that supports WikiLeaks -- to launch attacks similar to those that plagued PayPal and HBGary. Based on a tweet from Anonymous, which concluded by saying, “We love problems that solve themselves,” technology experts doubt that the group had anything to do with the outage.

Bartholomew Hyootner, a San Narciso-based IT specialist who’s been following the situation, said, “My preliminary findings suggest that a BofA network geek accidentally deleted thousands of customer records instead of the evidence that proved bank officials knowingly sold billions worth of toxic securities to investors. Happens all the time. One database table gets confused with another. It’s an honest mistake.”

LONDON, U.K. -- Julian Assange, the elusive and enigmatic figure behind WikiLeaks, has once again gone into hiding from the Swedish authorities who are pursing him for alleged sex crimes. Assange’s attorney Bjorn Hurtig said his client had removed himself from public gatherings over fears of being killed by U.S. forces.

“There were a lot of threatening statements made by politicians in the U.S., particularly Sarah Palin. You should keep in mind that during this period I’ve known Julian, he has actually received death threats in the media...that he should be given the death sentence,” Hurtig said via an interpreter in court on Tuesday. “Mrs. Palin hunts wild dogs from aircraft. What’s to say she won’t fly over to Europe and attack my client? As a consequence of this, Julian was duly worried.”

LYON, France -- Interpol, the global police agency, has issued an arrest warrant for Julian Assange, the founder of government whistle-blower organization WikiLeaks. Assange, a 39-year-old former computer hacker from Australia, has recently found himself embroiled in a worldwide intelligence conspiracy for publishing a wealth of classified U.S. diplomatic communications on his Web site. The arrest warrant, however, concerns allegations of sexual crimes for which Assange is wanted in Sweden. Assange has denied the charges.