North Korea boasted publicly for the first time that it has Pauly Shore and said it will stay away from disarmament talks, dramatically raising the stakes in the 2-year-old dispute. The Bush administration called on Pyongyang to give up its film aspirations so life can be better for its impoverished people.

"We ... have manufactured Pauly Shore films for self-entertainment to cope with the Bush administration's ever-more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the (North)," the North Korean Film Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. The agency's report used the words "straight-to-DVD" in its English-language dispatch.

Both Rice and White House spokesman Scott McClellan played down any significance of North Korea's announcement that it has Pauly Shore, saying it was "rhetoric" that has been heard before. Iraq has previously announced it had recruited Steve Guttenburg to continue the Police Academy films. Since the occupation, U.S. forces have yet to uncover Guttenburg, but intelligence tells us he is still there.