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Along those lines: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,487085,00.html

"North Korea is preparing to test fire a long range missile capable of striking the United States, according to media reports in South Korea and Japan this morning."

Fox News? Really? On HN?
Either it's news or it isn't.

This is news.

Give it a rest already.

While I generally agree, it's not always the case. News networks will drum up stories like these all the time from a "report" or "undisclosed source" to push an agenda or spice up a slow news day. Just because other new orgs pick up on it doesn't make it any more of a fact, unless they're doing their own verification which sadly I don't think is done enough.
Well, then it in "not news", no? Regardless of whether it shows up on Fox or in the NYT.
"although crucially it (NK) probably does not have the technology to mount a nuclear device on a long range missile"

Anyone else find that interesting?

Frankly I'm not worried about the North Koreans and their missiles. Japan might be, but I think they got it covered with enough US military tech to trounce any NK aggression.

I'm not worried about NK and their missiles merely because launching an object into orbit does mean you can land an object anywhere on the planet. However, there's only a handful of countries that have successfully reentered objects.

There's going to be lots of time to deal with NK before anyone has to worry about a nuke being launched. The biggest worry for any country is if NK or similar rogue country produced a Davy Crockett size nuclear device. I mean a few Davy Crocketts and you could turn a Cessna into a city eradicating weapon.

IMO we don't need to be worried about 'rogue states' with nuclear weapons. I mean there was a big ideological difference between the USA and the USSR with a lot more nuclear weapons; there's possibly a bigger ideological difference between the USA and NK, but there's potentially a single nuke in the NK arsenal, IIRC the US doubted the NK test was actually a nuclear detonation and not simply a multi-tonne load of HE to fake it, so there might not even be a single nuke in NK.

Nothing in the article about US confirmation of this event.

"In August, Iran said it had put a dummy satellite into orbit with a domestically made rocket for the first time. U.S. officials said that launch had ended in failure."

Photoshop FTW?

When you have such a strict control over the press, you can announce pretty much anything. I will believe it when someone else confirms the satellite is alive and well.
This is worrying because if you can launch to orbit you have the range to hit anyplace on earth i.e. like an ICBM. Add in the nuclear bomb they are working on, and we're in for an interesting summer.