NORTH KOREA: U.S., South Korea sign contingency plan against attack, Mar 25, 2013

"The U.S. and South Korea signed a contingency plan of action against attacks from North Korea, which this month threatened preemptive nuclear strikes against the two allies. General James Thurman, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, signed the agreement on March 22 with South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Jung Seung Jo, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said on Monday in a statement on its website. The document outlines South Korean-led, U.S.-backed action against various scenarios from a North Korean provocation, the ministry said. The two militaries decided to draft a joint blueprint after North Korea shelled the South Korean border island of Yeonpyeong in November 2010."
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INDEPENDENT - Cyprus bailout: Large deposits will be seized and second-largest bank closed in €10bn EU bailout deal, Mar 25, 2013

"An 11th-hour deal with the EU, which has saved the Cypriot economy from the brink, will see investors with more than €100,000 in the nation’s largest banks forfeit a large chunk of their deposits. The punishing deal – which has been approved by the eurozone finance ministers – will allow the country to receive the €10bn (£8.5bn) bailout it needed before the European Central Bank pulled funding and sent the island on the path to bankruptcy and a possible exit from the single currency. Under the new agreement, all bank deposits under €100,000 will be secured and guaranteed by the state. The country's second-biggest bank, The Popular Bank of Cyprus – known as Laiki – will be closed whilst holders of deposits of more than €100,000 face big losses."
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TIME - Must-Reads from Around the World, Mar 25, 2013

 "Cyber Warriors — South Korea security experts believe North Korea has been training teams of tech-savvy “cyber warriors,” reports the Associated Press, as cyberspace becomes a heated battleground between the two countries. Students at North Korea’s top science schools are reportedly trained to become hackers, with some sent to study abroad in China and Russia. "
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TV 3 - Cyprus agree bailout deal, Mar 25, 2013

"Cyprus has been potentially saved from bankruptcy and the collapse of its financial system after a ten billion euro bailout was agreed. The president of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiade, helped secured the help of Eurozone finance ministers in Brussels this morning. In return for emergency funding, Cyprus is to wind up its second largest national bank and split it into a so called “good bank/bad bank.” Deposits below one hundred thousand euro will be guaranteed but above that sum depositors face significant losses. The finance minister says that the deal will held to remove the question marks which hang over the country’s future financial health."
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CYPRUS bailout lifts shares, euro, oil, Mar 25, 2013

"LONDON (Reuters) - European shares, the euro and oil rose, while safe-haven German government bonds and gold fell on Monday, after Cyprus agreed a bailout to save its banking system and keep it in the euro. In the early hours of Monday morning Cypriot policy-makers reached a deal with the

SCIENCE RECORDER - Nanowires increase limit of solar cell efficiency, say researchers, Mar 25, 2013

"Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, have discovered that nanowires increase the efficiency of solar cells. For example, a single nanowire is able to concentrate the sunlight that a solar cell is exposed to by up to a factor of 15. The researchers contend that their findings suggest that the likelihood of creating a new type of extremely efficient solar cell in the new future is very high. “Light management is of great importance in photovoltaic cells, as it determines the fraction of incident light entering the device,” write the researchers in the study’s abstract."
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INDIAN EXPRESS - Comet, not asteroid, wiped out dinosaurs? Mar 25, 2013

"A speeding comet, rather than an asteroid, slammed into the Earth 65 million years ago and sparked the extinction of the dinosaurs, scientists claim. Many scientists believe the 180 km Chicxulub crater in Mexico was made by the impact that caused the extinction of dinosaurs and about 70 per cent of all species on Earth. The crater was probably blasted out by a faster, smaller object than previously thought, according to the new study presented at the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas."
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