Serious drug addicts, psychiatric patients and people with severe mental handicaps could be made to use contraception to stop them abusing their children, the former head of the national safety council says in television show Zembla, which will be broadcast on Friday evening.

Every year, an estimated 50 children in the Netherlands die at the hands of abusive parents and this would be one way of reducing the total, Pieter van Vollenhoven tells the show.

At the moment, the most far-reaching step social workers can take is to place a serious addict in care once her pregnancy has reached 24 weeks. As soon as the baby is born, it can then be placed with foster parents.

Like any state legislature dealing with 8 percent unemployment and thousands of its residents facing disenfranchisement, the Tennessee Senate is targeting the menace of underage hand-holding.

Last week, the Senate passed SB 3310, a bill to update the state's abstinence-based sex education curriculum to define holding hands and kissing as "gateway sexual activities." Just one senator voted against the legislation; 28 voted in favor.

Since the bill specifically bans teachers from "demonstrating gateway sexual activity", educators would be prohibited from even demonstrating what hand-holding is. Breaking these laws could result in a lawsuit, as Hunter from Daily Kos notes:

Still, this anti-hand-holding push may only be the second-worst bill passed in Tennessee this month. Nearly a century after the Volunteer State played host to the Scopes Monkey Trial, the legislature has now enacted a new law allowing educators to teach creationism alongside evolution.

"First, we would confirm that the contemplated activity is authorized by the President in the exercise of his powers under Article II of the U.S. Constitution, for example, the President's responsibility as Chief Executive and Commander-in-Chief to protect the country from an imminent threat of violent attack. This would not be just a one-time check for legal authority at the outset. Our hypothetical program would be engineered so as to ensure that, through careful review and senior-level decision-making, each individual action is linked to the imminent threat justification.

ÒHere, the Agency would implement its authorities in a manner consistent with the four basic principles in the law of armed conflict governing the use of force: Necessity, Distinction, Proportionality, and Humanity. Great care would be taken in the planning and execution of actions to satisfy these four principles and, in the process, to minimize civilian casualties.Ó

A specific congressional authorization might also provide an independent basis for the use of force under U.S. law.

In addition, we would make sure that the contemplated activity is authorized by the President in accordance with the covert action procedures of the National Security Act of 1947, such that Congress is properly notified by means of a Presidential Finding."

Central business district police officers are close to resolving the apparent theft of an unmanned, non-military issue drone airplane from a high-tech business Thursday afternoon.

According to a Dayton police report, a former employee who had been fired from his job Monday entered UA Vision, 711 E. Monument Ave., about 4 p.m. and walked out with the remote airplane.

The small aircraft is worth approximately $10,000, according to the report.

Mali's new interim leader Dioncounda Traore, who was sworn in on Thursday, has pledged to fight Tuareg rebels and outlaws who have taken over the north of the country.

Dioncounda Traore, Mali's new interim leader, was sworn into office on Thursday, vowing to master the chaos his country is in after the military staged a coup and Tuareg rebels took over the north of the country.

Dioncounda Traore, who has been head of the country's parliament since 2007, will serve as Mali's president for 40 days following an agreement between West African regional mediators and the leader of the junta that seized power last month.

"We won't hesitate to wage a total, relentless war to regain our territorial integrity and also to kick out of our country all these invaders who bring despair and misery," Traore said, also saying he was determined "never to negotiate about the partition of Mali."

In the north of the country, secular and Islamist rebel factions are vying for control. The Tuareg rebels have unilaterally declared an independent state, which they refer to as "Azawad," while northern Islamists say they are looking to introduce sharia law across all of Mali. Among them are militants from al Qaeda in the Maghreb.

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Ronald Kessler, a former Post reporter and the author of a book about the Secret Service, told the Post that he had learned that 12 agents were involved, several of them married.

It is thought that the agents at the heart of the allegations were staying at Cartagena's Hotel Caribe.

Reports from an anonymous hotel employee claimed that the agents arrived at the beachfront hotel around a week ago and that they were drinking heavily during their stay.

A number of the White House staff and traveling press corps were also staying at the hotel.

Although prostitution is legal in parts of Colombia, the Secret Service is said to consider solicitation inappropriate behaviour for its agents.

The incident threatened to overshadow Obama's economic and trade agenda at the summit and embarrass the U.S. The White House had no comment.

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President Obama will highlight trade and business opportunities in Latin America at a regional summit in Colombia this weekend, but other leaders may upstage him by pushing to legalize marijuana and other illicit drugs in a bid to stem rampant trafficking.

Obama, who opposes decriminalization, is expected to face a rocky reception in this Caribbean resort city, which otherwise forms a friendly backdrop for a U.S. president courting Latino voters in an election year. But the American demand for illegal drugs has caused fierce bloodshed, plus political and economic turmoil, across much of the region.

Colombia's president, Juan Manuel Santos, wants the 33 leaders at the Summit of the Americas to consider whether the solution should include regulating marijuana, and perhaps cocaine, the way alcohol and tobacco are. Other member states also are calling for that dialogue despite the political discomfort it may cause Obama back home.

"You haven't had this pressure from the region before," said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank in Washington. "I think the [Obama] administration is willing to entertain the discussion, but hoping it doesn't turn into a critique of the U.S. and put the U.S. on the defensive."

Obama also is expected to take flak from leaders frustrated by the lack of U.S. movement on two other troublesome issues, immigration reform and the long-standing embargo of Cuba. Cuban leaders are not participating in the summit, but many regional governments oppose the U.S. policy of embargo.

President Barack Obama said the media often ignores progress made at international summits in favor of more "flashy" news, as the Summit of the Americas was overshadowed by allegations of misconduct by his Secret Service agents.

Obama said more cooperation is needed among the Americas on energy and education, such as exchanges on science and engineering and computer sciences.

ÒWeÕve got to up our game,Ó he said. ÒWeÕve never felt more excited about prospects of working as equal partners with our brothers and sisters in Latin America and the Caribbean.Ó

The more than 330 business executives that were scheduled to attend included Rollin Ford, executive vice president and chief administrative officer at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT); Luis Montoya, president of Latin America Beverages for PepsiCo Inc.; Rocky Becker, vice president of the Americas for Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), and Luis Carlos Villegas, president of ANDI, ColombiaÕs largest business association.

"Oftentimes in the press the attention for summits like this ends up focusing on, where are the controversies?" the president said during a meeting with executives of U.S. and South American companies on the sidelines of the summit in Cartagena, Colombia. "Sometimes those controversies date back to before I was born."

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At the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, President Dmitry Medvedev renewed the offer to make Russian rail lines available for the transportation of non-military material from Europe to Afghanistan and vice versa.On 5 April 2012, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko, soon to become Russian Ambassador to NATO, said in an interview with Ria Novosti that the cargo will be governed by a new protocol. Under this agreement, it will be subject to searches by Russian drug control services.Afghan heroin use has become a major public health problem in Europe, in general, and Russia, in particular. This country has become the world's largest consumer. To date, two million Russians between the ages of 18 and 39 years are regular users. The drug causes over 30,000 deaths per year and promotes the spread of HIV at a rate the country has never seen before, according to a UNODC report [1].In the past, top Russian officials in the fight against drug trafficking explicitly pointed the finger at NATO's responsibility in the heroin trade from Afghanistan, having gone so far as to take the matter to the UN Security Council [2].

Alexander Grushko's announcement and his appointment as Permanent Representative to NATO mark Vladimir Putin's official return to the helm. The President-elect considers that Russian is the target of a true "heroin aggression" and has included the fight against this scourge among the priorities of his new presidential term.

At the time the rail transportation agreement was signed, officials close to Putin had indicated off microphone that in exchange for the right of passage for NATO cargoes, Medvedev was being paid a bribe of 1 billion dollars per year, financed with money from Afghan drugs

At his first Summit of the Americas three years ago, Obama offered a different vision of American leadership in a region where, for decades, its economic policy and political preferences often left leaders and electorates angry at their powerful northern neighbor. Obama promised an equal partnership.

When he arrives in Cartagena, Colombia, where 33 of the hemisphere's 35 leaders will gather for the summit, Obama will find himself on much more equal terms with his neighbors -- for better or worse.

1) Bill Clinton and his dark cabal cronies have allegedly bought an island in the Bahamas and building a city. This is to be a refuge from international forces trying to arrest them. Security is allegedly being provided by Moss ad, French and US Navy Seals.

2) All the world's central banks controlled by Rothschild s have been served papers for genocide yesterday and have been instructed to close down. Rothschild bankers and associates are being hunted down and arrested worldwide.

Every quarter the Office of the Currency Comptroller releases its report on Bank Derivative Activities, and every quarter we find that the Too Big To Fail get Too Bigger To Fail. To wit: in Q4 2011, of the total $230.8 trillion in US outstanding derivatives, the Top 5 banks (JPM, BofA, Morgan Stanley, Goldman and HSBC) accounted for 95.7% of all Derivatives. In some respects this is good news: in Q2, the Top 5 banks held 95.9% of the $250 trillion in derivatives.

"New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called for the nationwide reform or repeal of Stand Your Ground laws today at an event in Washington D.C. to announce the Second Chance on Shoot First campaign," ABC News reported yesterday.

"Let's call that by its real name, vigilantism," the mayor told the National Press Club, adding "The NRA should be ashamed of themselves. This has nothing to do with gun owners rights. It has nothing to do with the second amendment."

"NYC mayor, civil rights groups target gun laws," Reuters said about the same media event, curiously giving that appellation to groups that are working to curb rights.

But there's a major problem with this line of argument: It just isn't true. The founding fathers, it turns out, passed several mandates of their own. In 1790, the very first Congress--which incidentally included 20 framers--passed a law that included a mandate: namely, a requirement that ship owners buy medical insurance for their seamen. This law was then signed by another framer: President George Washington. That's right, the father of our country had no difficulty imposing a health insurance mandate.

That's not all. In 1792, a Congress with 17 framers passed another statute that required all able-bodied men to buy firearms. Yes, we used to have not only a right to bear arms, but a federal duty to buy them. Four framers voted against this bill, but the others did not, and it was also signed by Washington. Some tried to repeal this gun purchase mandate on the grounds it was too onerous, but only one framer voted to repeal it.

Six years later, in 1798, Congress addressed the problem that the employer mandate to buy medical insurance for seamen covered drugs and physician services but not hospital stays. And you know what this Congress, with five framers serving in it, did? It enacted a federal law requiring the seamen to buy hospital insurance for themselves. That's right, Congress enacted an individual mandate requiring the purchase of health insurance. And this act was signed by another founder, President John Adams.

Sec. 1. Be it enacted . . . That each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states, resident therein, who is or shall be of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia . . . . That every citizen so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball: or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder. . . .

While big-box retailers might offer the lowest prices, they also may be altering a community's social and economic fabric enough to promote the creation of hate groups, new research shows.

According to the study by professors at Penn State University, New Mexico State University and Michigan State University, the number of Wal-Mart stores in a county correlates significantly with the number of hate groups in the area.

The amount of Wal-Mart stores in a county was more statistically significant than other factors commonly regarded as important to hate group participation, such as the unemployment rate, high crime rates and low education, the research found.

"Wal-Mart has clearly done good things in these communities, especially in terms of lowering prices," said Stephan Goetz, a Penn State University professor who also serves as the director of the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development. "But there may be indirect costs that are not as obvious as other effects."

A philanthropic movement wants to create a Swiss Utopia by ensuring that every citizen receives an "unconditional base income" of 2,500 francs ($2,729).

Supporters are currently trying to raise 100,000 signatures to trigger a referendum. The ideais backed by artists, therapists, filmmakers and socialist politicians, such as former Vice-Chancellor Oswald Sigg,and National Councillor for Basel, Sylvia Schenker, online news site Le Matin reported.

The initiative is also supported by a Geneva-based organisation, BIEN, which stands for Basic Income Earth Network. The group was formed in 2001 by like-minded individuals, who strongly believe in the benefits of providing a base income for all.

The idea for unconditional base income derives originally from Thomas More's Utopia. It has been placed before the Chambers on previous occasions but never succeeded.

This is awesome. It shows when the people DO STAND UP they have more power and win against the corrupt bankers and politicians of a country. Iceland is forgiving and erasing the mortgage debt of the population. They are putting the bankers and politicians on the "Bench of the Accused." Which means I assume they are putting them on trial for corruption.

Now the rest of people of the world need to start doing the same thing. We all need to stand up and against all the corruption and fraud of the banks and politicians that are puppets of the banks and corporations.

It was long thought that the North Sea was not tsunami territory. But researchers in Germany have recently come across documentation of a giant wave that crashed onto northern European shores in 1858. The phenomenon could reoccur at any time.

Cigarette packets could be stripped of all branding following a consultation beginning on Monday, the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, has revealed.

The minister told the Times that he was "open minded" about putting the idea of plain cigarette packaging to the public, but added: "We don't work in partnership with the tobacco companies because we are trying to arrive at a point where they have no business in this country."

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of the campaigning charity Action on Smoking and Health, said on Thursday night: "The consultation is just the first step, putting us in pole position to be the first European nation to put tobacco in plain, standardised packs.

The Transportation Security Administration keeps getting hit with scandal after scandal -- from thieving agents to employees with ridiculous demands, or those who leave creepy notes in passengers' bags. And now, in an even ickier development, a TSA agent who worked at Boston's Logan International Airport has been nabbed as part of a sweeping child pornography crackdown.

The Boston Herald says the man was one of 55 Massachusetts people snared in the effort. He was suspended from his job when his employers became aware of charges against him for the possession and sharing of pornographic images of children.

"TSA has been cooperating fully with our law enforcement partners during the investigation into this matter," TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis said. "Upon learning of these charges, TSA took immediate action and the individual is not working at the airport."

The agent's name came up after representatives of more than 20 Bay State police departments announced the arrest of 32 men in Operation Corral, a weeklong roundup of child pornography suspects across the state. The man wasn't one of those arrested, but he has been charged.

"This is just a drop in the bucket," said state police Sgt. Michael Hill of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

He's not the only TSA agent to have sex charges leveled against him recently, notes the Boston Herald, which raises questions about the TSA's screening methods for its employees. Not to mention all that thieving and creepy note-leaving.

Researchers at Lawrenceville Plasma Physics in Middlesex, NJ have published the results of their recent work in the Physics of Plasmas journal last week, and expect one of their next rounds of testing to finally tackle an issue of energy procurement that would rival anything already available. In their latest breakthrough, fusion researchers at the lab say that they've successfully heated and confined an ionized gas at record temperatures which would be high enough to allow for the nuclear fusion of certain elements, including hydrogen and boron. Those elements double as aneutronic fuels -- that is, they produce no neutrons during the fusion process -- and could thus be quickly converted to electricity without using the expensive and dangerous conversion measures currently available. Scientists say they believe they are close to a breakthrough that will allow them to harness energy from the elements and thus work with an energy source more marketable than anything now available.

The Keshe Foundation is an independent non-profit and non-religious organization founded by nuclear engineer M.T. Keshe aiming to bring about new scientific knowledge, technologies and new solutions for the major global problems like famine, water shortage, shortage of electrical power supply, climate change, illnesses, where at the same time by the use of new types of plasma reactors giving the Man the real freedom of travel in deep Space.

Firstly, the immediate impact of a carbon tax will be felt by charitable organisations. The Salvation Army, one of Australia's largest charitable organisations, has revealed that a carbon tax will cost them an additional $3.5 million dollars and that this could impact on the services they provide to about 300,000 people a year of which includes emergency accommodation and drug and alcohol counselling.

Secondly, to make matters even worse for charitable organisations and ordinary Australians, electricity companies are refusing to tell struggling families and businesses exactly how much the carbon tax will add to their power bills.

The Australian federal government estimates electricity prices will increase by up to 10 per cent when the tax kicks in on July 1 2012, however there have been reports that electricity prices will in fact increase by up to 20% and more. In Canberra, the cost of electricity is set to increase by about $244 per household, or almost 20 per cent, with the Federal Government's carbon tax making up more than 75 per cent of the jump.

Does it seem to you like there has been an unusual amount of seismic activity around the world lately? Well, it isn't just your imagination. The Ring of Fire is roaring to life and that is really bad news for the west coast of the United States.

Approximately 90 percent of all earthquakes and approximately 75 percent of all volcanic eruptions occur along the Ring of Fire.

In the wake of Sen. Rick Santorum's departure from the presidential race there are signs that some evangelical leaders are refusing to jump on board the Mitt Romney bandwagon and are turning to Congressman Ron Paul instead, reports Newsmax.

This is a huge voting block.

"I have one question for you," one of the ministers reportedly said in a private meeting last night with Ron Paul, report sDoug Wead a presidential historian and a senior adviser to the Ron Paul campaign, "Are you going to drop out? Orwill you stay in all the way to Tampa?"

"I'm in," Dr. Paul reportedley replied.

"That's all I need to know," the minister said.

The evangelical community began reaching out to Paul almost immediately after Sen. Rick Santorum dropped out of the presidential race, says Wead.

Yesterday, Pastor Steven Andrew of USA Christian Ministries announced his support, calling for a day of prayer and fasting. Andrew released a statement saying that, "After Santorum, Ron Paul is the most God-fearing presidential candidate [and] the Republican Party should endorse him." Andrew said that "If Republicans don't give a Christian candidate, Christians should look elsewhere -- even to a third party."

Christian Newswire ran an article yesterday saying that Christians like the fact that Ron Paul "opposes tyranny, would cut the deficit and is prolife."

Davis believes people are not being told the truth and said so in a detailed report that he wrote after returning from his second tour of duty in the country. He had been rocketed, mortared and had stepped on an improvised explosive device that failed to explode. Soldiers he had met were killed and he was certain that a bloody disaster was unfolding. So he spoke out. "It's like I see in slow motion men dying for nothing and I can't stop it," he said. "It is consuming me from the inside. It is eating me alive."

Davis, 48, drew up two reports containing research and observations garnered from his last tour. He was not short of material. As part of his job he had criss-crossed the country, travelling 9,000 miles and talking to more than 250 people. He had built up a picture of a hopeless cause; a country where Afghan soldiers were incapable of holding on to American gains. US soldiers would fight and die for territory and then see Afghan troops let it fall to the Taliban. Often the Afghans actively worked with the Taliban or simply refused to fight. One Afghan police officer laughed in Davis's face when asked if he ever tried to fight the enemy. "That would be dangerous!" the man said.

The MoD said the Typhoons, from the Quick Reaction Alert (QRA), based at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire, were scrambled and authorised to go supersonic after the small civilian helicopter had emitted an emergency signal.

A spokesman said the frequency was only used when an aircraft was in particular trouble, such as a hijacking.

He said the aircraft were already on their way to the helicopter by the time the helicopter pilot realised he was transmitting on the wrong frequency and switched to the correct one.

"There was no actual threat to the civilian aircraft and they soon rectified their mistake," the MoD spokesman added.

Richard Coglan, who was in Bath at the time of the incident, said: We saw the Eurofighter [Typhoon] circle the helicopter at very slow speed using full thrust just to stay up.

"The helicopter was a small one and totally dwarfed by the typhoon we thought it was filming the Typhoon."

The international hacking scandal that disrupted Rupert Murdoch's media empire and ended his trademark paper The News of the World is officially coming to America. A prominent British lawyer has confirmed he will be filing related charges in the US.

Attorney Mark Lewis has revealed that he will seek legal action on behalf of three American clients that he believes were targeted in the hacking scandal that almost collapsed Murdoch's News Corporation last year. The lawyer is slated to arrive in the US on Saturday and the UK's Guardian has confirmed that he will begin talking to parties in New York next week as he works to bring charges against Murdoch's group domestically.

Michael Sands, an effusive Hollywood publicist, has died after a bizarre accident in the deli section of an upscale supermarket in Century City, where he choked to death on a sample of meat.

Sands frequently handed out trinkets from the FBI, CIA and the U.S. Navy and Air Force. Beautiful models and actresses and even secretaries were frequent recipients of official pens, shirts and even dental floss.

The AP's Deutsch claimed Sands was legitimate. ÒHe was very tied into the military,Ó she told TheWrap, pointing to a court martial case at Camp Pendleton where he gained her access to military sources. ÒHe was very effective because he know what I needed.Ó

And in her book ÒThe CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television," Texas Christian University professor Tricia Jenkins reported that Sands supported the CIA in establishing a presence in Hollywood in the mid-1990s.

Best known as the brains behind Mr. Blackwell's annual Worst Dressed List, Sands also was an inveterate self-promoter who claimed to be an undercover CIA operative who may have helped in the capture of Abu Abbas, the terrorist behind the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985.

He was 66.

"He was eating a beef sample, and since he has narrow airways due to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, it got stuck," his son Nick told TheWrap.

Hey now,

Being a 150 plus show vet of Grateful Dead show's, spinners made up at least 30% of the crowd. They usually congregated behind the tapers section, which was behind the sound board,

Or in the rafters or hallways, more room to spin, and generally consisted of hippie chicks with long hair and skirts to match. I often wished to have such a thing for my living room, especially the ones with the oversized hoola-hoops, slowing revolving around their hips! Unfortunalty, about 10% consited of dudes with long hair and skirts to match, which wasn't apparent, until the beard came into view!

This country would be better off with kids that took drugs to make them spin, than kids taking drugs to make them stop spinning!

Electric kool-aid drinker and spinner veteran,

JimO NoBo

More and more pediatricians are asking families to leave their practice as a result of vaccine refusal; a recently published study of Connecticut pediatricians reported that 30 percent of 133 doctors had asked a family to leave their practice when parents refused vaccines for their children. This is a drastic increase from 2006, when the American Academy of Pediatrics reported that 16 percent of pediatricians reported sometimes dismissing families for vaccine refusal. This is a worrisome trend because it can result in children missing out on lifesaving vaccines and receiving inconsistent health care during critical development periods.

It is time for the United States to mandate a strict nationwide vaccine policy, with stringent guidelines to obtain religious exemptions and no room for philosophical exemptions. The recommended vaccination schedule issued annually by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is no longer sufficient. Although parental autonomy should be respected in many situations, vaccine-preventable illnesses are a public health issue, and parents do not have the right to gamble with their children's lives. Furthermore, they do not have the right to gamble with the lives of other children who may be infected by a child whose parents chose not to vaccinate.

Boys should have access to free HPV immunization, currently only for girls, in order to protect more people against cancer, a growing chorus of Canadian doctors say.

The fastest way to protect females from cervical cancer is to offer HPV vaccination to boys in addition to girls, some doctors say.The fastest way to protect females from cervical cancer is to offer HPV vaccination to boys in addition to girls, some doctors say. (Charles Buchanan/Daily Free Press/Associated Press)

The human papilloma virus, or HPV, causes disease and death from cancer in both men and women. For nearly five years, girls have been offered the HPV vaccine for free at vaccination clinics and schools across the country, to protect them from cervical cancer.

Two Merck drugs for treating male baldness and enlarged prostate will now carry extended labels to add more possible sexual side effects, US regulators said.

The changes involve Propecia and Proscar, both of which contain the active ingredient finasteride, after patients reported additional adverse effects that were not apparent at the time of the drugs' approval, the US Food and Drug Administration said Friday.

The new Propecia label will include "libido disorders, ejaculation disorders, and orgasm disorders that continued after discontinuation of the drug," the FDA said. Propecia is a drug to treat male baldness.

Proscar, which treats symptoms of enlarged prostate, will now have a label that adds "decreased libido that continued after discontinuation of the drug."

North Korea attempted to launch a long-range rocket on Friday, but it instead malfunctioned and broke apart before even escaping Earth's atmosphere.

"This was supposed to be associated with (Kim Jong Un's) ascension to power. So for this thing to fail ... is incredibly embarrassing," said Victor Cha, former director of Asian affairs for the U.S. National Security Council and now a Georgetown University professor.