Voice of America News reports: “North Korea is escalating its war of words against the South Korean government over what the North perceives as insults by the South. Pyongyang is now threatening to turn the heated rhetoric into action, threatening to take ‘quick action’ against South Korea.

Senior newscaster Ri Chun Hee, interrupting regular programming on North Korea’s central television station early Monday afternoon, forcefully read an unusual announcement from a unit of the army’s supreme command.

The announcer said a special operation would reduce to ‘ashes in three or four minutes’ the supporters of South Korea’s president and their bases utilizing ‘unprecedented peculiar means and methods.’

Pyongyang blames President Lee Myung-bak for insulting the North at a time when the country was mourning its late leader, Kim Jong Il, who died in December, and then during this month’s celebrations marking the centennial of the birth of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung.

North Korea often uses belligerent language and threatens violence against South Korean leaders. But some analysts who closely monitor the North’s bombastic rhetoric say the latest message may presage some sort of attack…” (Matthew 24:6, 7; Matthew 13: 7, 8; Luke 2:9, and 27.)

Voice of America News reports: “North Korea’s army marked its 80th anniversary with a vow to retaliate against what its chief of staff terms the traitors in the South. The remarks are the latest in a series of harsh threats directed at Seoul in recent weeks.

North Korea is boasting of ‘powerful, modern weapons’ that can defeat in a single blow the United States which it accuses of plotting a war against it.

Chief of general staff, Ri Yong Ho, gave no further details about the weaponry in his speech to mark the North Korean army’s 80th anniversary.

His address, from Pyongyang’s House of Culture, was broadcast later in the day on North Korean television.

Vice Marshal Ri says the blood of North Korea’s military and civilians is boiling in anger with a desire for revenge against South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak. He reiterates a threat of ‘sacred war,’ transmitted earlier, to crush the bases of provocation in the South…” (Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall – Proverbs 16:18.)

BBC News reports: “Pakistan has test fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile, military officials say, less than a week after India also test-launched a long-range missile.

The military said the test of the Shaheen 1-A, an intermediate-range missile capable of reaching targets in India, was successful.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since 1947.

They conduct regular missile tests and inform each other in advance.

Both countries carried out nuclear weapons tests in 1998.

Defence experts say that while the exact range of the Pakistani missile has not been revealed, it is it capable of hitting targets up to 2,500 to 3,000km (1,550 to 1,850 miles) away – putting arch-rival India well within reach…” (Nuclear weaponry covering the next three reports – II Peter 3:10 – 12; Psalm 97:3; Isaiah 66:15; Ezekiel 20:47; 39:6; Joel 2:3; 30 and Revelation 9:18.)

SpaceDaily.com reports: “The failure of North Korea’s latest missile launch could prove to be a setback for Iran’s efforts to develop a missile that could threaten the United States and Europe.

The Islamic Republic’s aerospace industry has depended on North Korean — as well as Chinese and Russian — technology and expertise to develop its strategic missile force, generally seen as a means of delivering the nuclear warheads that the United States and its allies say Tehran is driving to produce.

The April 13 launch in North Korea of a long-range Unha-3 rocket ended when the much-hyped rocket crashed into the Yellow Sea shortly after launch.

That’s not likely to enhance Pyongyang’s reputation with the Iranians, who have had similar setbacks themselves in tests in the Dasht-e Kavir, the Great Salt Desert south of Tehran.

North Korea said the three-stage Unha was meant to put a communications satellite in orbit. But U.S., South Korean and Japanese officials said the launch was part of North Korea’s drive to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile…”

SpaceDaily.com reports: “Apparently new long-range ballistic missiles displayed at a North Korean military parade this month were mock-ups, according to two German experts who termed the exercise ‘a nice dog and pony show’.

One of the missiles on show in Kim Il-Sung Square on April 15 — transported on a launcher of apparent Chinese design — seemed to be a new addition to the nuclear-armed country’s long-range arsenal, according to analysts at the time.

But Markus Schiller and Robert H. Schmucker, of Schmucker Technologie, said all six of the road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) on show that day were models.

‘A closer look reveals that all of the presented missiles are mock-ups,’ they wrote in a report carried on the armscontrolwonk.com website.

‘There is still no evidence that North Korea actually has a functional ICBM,’ they said in the April 18 report.

Schiller and Schmucker said the surface structure of the warheads was undulated, while a real warhead would have to be designed to withstand atmospheric re-entry…”