North Korea issues unusually specific threat

By Dylan Stableford | The Envoy

North Korea's military vowed a new and unusually specific threat to its neighbors, saying it would reduce South Korea "to ashes" in less than four minutes.

The statement, released Monday when programming was interrupted on North Korea's state TV by a special report, comes amid rising tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Earlier this month, North Korea was unsuccessful in a long-range missile launch, prompting worries that North Korea may conduct another nuclear test. South Korean officials say new satellite images show that North Korea has been digging a tunnel in what appears to be preparation for a third atomic test.

According to the Associated Press, the statement from North Korea was unusual in promising something soon and in describing a specific period of time.

The North Korean military threatened to "reduce all the rat-like groups and the bases for provocations to ashes in three or four minutes, (or) in much shorter time, by unprecedented peculiar means and methods of our own style."

For months the North has castigated South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and the conservative administration for insulting their leadership and criticizing a new cruise missile capable of striking anywhere in the south.

South Korean officials responded, urging North Korea to end the threats. "We urge North Korea to immediately stop this practice," Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk said, according to the Associated Press. "We express deep concern that the North's threats and accusations have worsened inter-Korean ties and heightened tensions."

Meanwhile, in a meeting Sunday with a North Korean delegation in Beijing, China's senior official on foreign policy praised the leadership shown by North Korea's new young leader, Kim Jong Un.

The meeting follows the April 13 launch of what the United States called a disguised ballistic missile test by North Korea. The rocket disintegrated minutes after launch.

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It's already been a very record-breaking hot year

By SETH BORENSTEIN | Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's been so warm in the United States this year, especially in March, that national records weren't just broken, they were deep-fried.

Temperatures in the lower 48 states were 8.6 degrees above normal for March and 6 degrees higher than average for the first three months of the year, according to calculations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That far exceeds the old records.

The magnitude of how unusual the year has been in the U.S. has alarmed some meteorologists who have warned about global warming. One climate scientist said it's the weather equivalent of a baseball player on steroids, with old records obliterated.

"Everybody has this uneasy feeling. This is weird. This is not good," said Jerry Meehl, a climate scientist who specializes in extreme weather at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "It's a guilty pleasure. You're out enjoying this nice March weather, but you know it's not a good thing."

It's not just March.

"It's been ongoing for several months," said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Ashville, N.C.

Meteorologists say an unusual confluence of several weather patterns, including La Nina, was the direct cause of the warm start to 2012. While individual events can't be blamed on global warming, Couch said this is like the extremes that are supposed to get more frequent because of manmade climate change from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

It's important to note that this unusual winter heat is mostly a North America phenomenon. Much of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere has been cold, said NOAA meteorologist Martin Hoerling.

The first quarter of 2012 broke the January-March record by 1.4 degrees. Usually records are broken by just one- or two-tenths of a degree. U.S. temperature records date to 1895.

The atypical heat goes back even further. The U.S. winter of 2010-2011 was slightly cooler than normal and one of the snowiest in recent years, but after that things started heating up. The summer of 2011 was the second warmest summer on record.

The winter that just ended, which in some places was called the year without winter, was the fourth warmest on record. Since last April, it's been the hottest 12-month stretch on record, Crouch said.

But the month where the warmth turned especially weird was March.

Normally, March averages 42.5 degrees across the country. This year, the average was 51.1, which is closer to the average for April. Only one other time — in January 2006 — was the country as a whole that much hotter than normal for an entire month.

The "icebox of America," International Falls, Minn., saw temperatures in the 70s for five days in March, and there were only three days of below zero temperatures all month.

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