South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted official sources as saying Tuesday’s missile may have exploded on its mobile launcher.

- Dialogue offer -

“The explosion is presumed to have inflicted serious injuries on personnel in the immediate vicinity,” Yonhap said.

During the party congress, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un personally extended an offer of military dialogue with the South aimed at easing tensions.

The proposal was repeated several times by the North’s military, but Seoul dismissed all the overtures as insincere “posturing” given Kim’s vow at the same congress to push ahead with the country’s nuclear weapons programme.

Following Tuesday’s attempted missile test, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said Pyongyang was wilfully defying the warnings of the international community.

“North Korea will face even stronger sanctions and isolation if it doesn’t end its provocations,” spokesman Cho June-Hyuck told reporters.

“The government will review necessary countermeasures through talks with our allies,” he added.

The UN Security Council imposed its toughest sanctions to date on the North following the January nuclear test.

In recent months, North Korea has claimed a series of technical breakthroughs in developing what it sees as the ultimate goal of its nuclear weapons programme – an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to targets across the continental United States.

The claimed achievements included miniaturising a nuclear warhead to fit on a missile, developing a warhead that can withstand atmospheric re-entry and building a solid-fuel missile engine.

The North also hailed the successful test of an engine specifically designed for an ICBM that would “guarantee” an eventual nuclear strike on the US mainland.

Outside experts have treated a number of the claims with scepticism, while acknowledging that the North has made significant strides in upgrading its nuclear arsenal.

(Yahoo News)

• By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Israeli ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman said he supports a two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians after he was sworn in as defense minister on Monday.

Lieberman is a West Bank settler and one of Israel's most polarizing politicians. He has stoked controversy in the past with incendiary remarks about the Palestinians and Israel's Arab minority.

But in a statement to reporters after parliament approved his appointment, Lieberman said he supports "two states for two peoples."

The defense portfolio was previously held by former military chief Moshe Yaalon, who resigned last week following talks to expand the government by adding Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party.

The move solidifies Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's parliamentary majority but comes at the risk of antagonizing the international community and the Israeli military. His Cabinet is dominated by religious and nationalist hard-liners opposed to Palestinian statehood.

In his own remarks after Lieberman was sworn in, Netanyahu said a 2002 initiative by Arab states that promised peace and recognition of Israel in exchange for the creation of a Palestinian state "includes positive elements that can help revive constructive negotiations with the Palestinians."

Netanyahu said Israel is "willing to negotiate with the Arab states with revisions to that initiative so that it reflects the dramatic changes in the region" since it was presented. He said it would include the "goal of two states for two peoples."

Lieberman said he agreed with Netanyahu that there are some "very positive" elements in the initiative that could make for a "serious dialogue with all the neighbors in the region."

(abc News)

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the activist group GLAAD gave Disney, Paramount and Warner Bros. failing grades as a GLAAD spokeswoman was quoted as saying "Hollywood's films lag far behind any other form of media when it comes to portrayals of LGBT characters."

Matt Philbin with the Media Research Center tells OneNewsNow that GLAAD is working hard to normalize homosexuality – and they know where to go to do it.

"What happens on the screen has a huge impact," he explains, "and that's why the lefties in Hollywood and the radical groups are going to keep pushing and keep pushing: they understand the power they have."

By pressuring Disney, Philbin argues that GLAAD is targeting kids.

"They're talking about Disney's bread and butter," notes the MRC spokesman. "They're talking about kids' movies and they're talking about normalizing homosexuality for children as young as 3 or 4 years old in such a way that, yes, this becomes something they see on the screen, something that they are told by the media is normal, everyday behavior."

For example, the Disney hit Frozen has been the focus of a Twitter campaign pushing the media giant to "give Elsa [the lead character] a girlfriend." And another hit film – Captain America: Civil War (Marvel Studios) – hasdrawn the ire of a Vanity Fair writer for the lead character's "heterosexual virility."

Philbin says the problem with groups like GLADD is that they will never stop pushing its agenda. "It will never be enough and there will always be more that they demand," he adds.

(onenewsnow.com)

Pictures and videos show that most of the 1,400 hectares lake Riesco have disappear overnight near Aysen, Patagonia, Chile.

Nobody knows what’s happening over there. The lack of information from any official teams increases the mystery. Sinkhole? Geological fault? Or lack of rain?

Lake Riesco, or Lago Riesco in spanish, has almost completely disappeared from maps and nobody knows why!

The lake is, or was, located 27 kilometers from Puerto Aysén, in the Chilean Patagonia.

This video from Miriam Henriquez, a resident of Aysen shows shocking and dramatic pictures of the dessicated and drying lake:

Now people want to know what happened to their Lago Riesco. But officials take long to answer!

The Liquiñe-Ofqui Fault

The monumental Liquiñe-Ofqui fault is a major geological fault that extends over 1,200 kilometers along the south of Chile from the area of the Liquiñe in Valdivia to the Gulf of Penas.

This major geological fault runs from north to south on one of the lakeshore and thus may have drained large volume of lake water. If this is the case, there will important manifestations of this change. This was the case in Iceland when a lake disappeared along a large fault and re-appeared years later.

The region around Lake Riesco has a temperate maritime climate with annual rainfall of the order of 3,000 millimeters. The other cause of the mysterious water disappearance could be related to a decrease of this rainfall due to the extreme El Niño phenomenon.

Finally, a sinkhole or a giant crack formed in the middle of the lake could be another origin for the drainage of the lake. In China, a sinkhole has swallowed a pond and 25 tons of fish and in Mexico, where The Atoyac river disappeared overnight!

The sudden water disappearance supports the geological hypotheses. Great video about the changes that occurred in this once beautiful lake in the pristine Chilean Patagonia: