PERTH NOW - Japan deploys Patriot missile interceptors around Tokyo to counter North Korean nuclear threat, Apr 09, 2013

"JAPAN has announced it is deploying Patriot missile interceptors around Tokyo as a precaution against North Korea's nuclear threats. Share on email Share on twitter Share on facebook Share on google_plusone_share Share on linkedin The Patriot missiles - an advanced version of the interceptor of Gulf War fame - are being moved to key locations around Japan's capital city, including the defense ministry headquarters. Other key military bases on the Japanese mainland are also taking similar precautionary measures, reports indicate. Japan's defense minister has also reportedly put destroyers with missile interception systems on alert in the Sea of Japan. Japan purchased the PAC-3 version of the Patriot missile launchers from the United States during the past decade to face just such a threat. While it has never attempted to shoot down North Korean ballistic missile tests which passed over its territory in the past, the military deployment suggests Japan is not taking any risks ahead of a possible missile launch by the rogue state."
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THE GUARDIAN - Margaret Thatcher: tributes pour in for groundbreaking but divisive leader, Apr 09, 2013

 "Lady Thatcher, Britain's first female prime minister and among the most influential and divisive political leaders the country has ever seen, died on Monday at the age of 87 after suffering a severe stroke. The former Conservative leader had been in ill health for more than a decade, and was staying in a suite at the Ritz hotel in London while recuperating from a minor operation. David Cameron, who was in Madrid on a European tour, immediately returned to Britain to announce parliament was being recalled from its Easter recess, describing her as Britain's "patriot prime minister"."
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MARS` atmosphere thinning but still active, Apr 09, 2013

"Washington: Recent findings from NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity indicate Mars has lost much of its original atmosphere, but what’s left remains quite active. Evidence has strengthened this month that Mars lost much of its original atmosphere by a process of gas escaping from the top of the atmosphere. Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument analyzed an atmosphere sample last week using a process that concentrates selected gases. The results provided the most precise measurements ever made of isotopes of argon in the Martian atmosphere. Isotopes are variants of the same element with different atomic weights. “We found arguably the clearest and most robust signature of atmospheric loss on Mars,” said Sushil Atreya, a SAM co-investigator at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "
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AAJ NEWS - US Navy readies ‘laser attack’ weapon in 2014, Apr 09, 2013

 "WASHINGTON- The US Navy said it is preparing to roll out a sea-based laser weapon capable of disabling small enemy vessels and shooting down surveillance drones. The laser system will be deployed in 2014, two years ahead of schedule, aboard the USS Ponce, an amphibious transport ship retrofitted as a waterborne staging base, the Navy said Monday. Chief of Naval Research Admiral Matthew Klunder said the cost of one blast of “directed energy” could be less than $1. “Compare that to the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to fire a missile, and you can begin to see the merits of this capability,” he said in a US Navy statement. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) and Naval Sea Systems Command successfully tested high-energy lasers against a moving target ship and a remotely piloted drone. “The future is here,” ONR official Peter Morrision said. “The solid-state laser is a big step forward to revolutionizing modern warfare with directed energy, just as gunpowder did in the era of knives and swords.”"
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MIAMI HERALD - South Korea: Factories that ran on Korean cooperation go silent, Apr 09, 2013

"BY YOUKYUNG LEE AND KIM YONG-HO ASSOCIATED PRESS PAJU, South Korea -- A factory complex that is North Korea's last major economic link with South Korea was a virtual ghost town Tuesday after Pyongyang suspended its operations and recalled all 53,000 of its workers as part of its recent war-like posturing. The work stoppage at the Kaesong industrial complex, the biggest employer in the North's third-biggest city and a source of much-needed hard currency, shows that Pyongyang is willing to hurt its own shaky economy in order to display its anger with South Korea and the United States. Only a few hundred South Korean managers remained at the facility, which has been run for the past decade with cheap North Korean labor and South Korean capital and know-how. The managers have not been forced to leave the complex, located just north of the Demilitarized Zone."
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DAWN - Disney child star, ‘beach’ movie star Funicello dies, Apr 09, 2013

 "LOS ANGELES: US actress Annette Funicello, who first gained fame as a “Mickey Mouse Club” member and later starred in 1960s “Beach Party” films, died on Monday aged 70, entertainment giant Disney announced. Funicello died of complications from multiple sclerosis, a disease she battled for over 25 years and whose sufferers she championed through charity work in later life. She was one of the original “Mouseketeers” on America’s “Mickey Mouse Club” variety television show in the 1950s, before growing into a star of the teen “Beach Party” movies in the 1960s."
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