"North Korea launched a rocket at approximately 10:39 p.m. ET, a State Department official told ABC News tonight. "

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=7256465&page=1

One one side, every nation has every right to perform a launch in order to place a satellite in orbit. On the other hand, N. Korea is not exactly on the friendly list and any potential "satellite" launch can in actuality be a test for a long-range ballistic missile. This requires walking a fine line. I'm genuinely curious how this administration will handle the issue. How are they going to protect our safety without walking all over the liberties of other nations?

North Korea.

In this country, we take all people not to be equal. Some, can have the most powerful of all weapons ever devised, and never ask anyone before developing yet more powerful ones, while the others, while being laughed at as the ones living in the stone age, are presumed to be required to ask a permission even to launch a simple missile.

i really dont see the problem,once its out in space we could take it out and claim it was space debri..whose gonna know its not like there will be any witnesses and all the evidence will burn up on re-entry... ..all in the timing ..the perfect crime..muaha haha..hahaha...

Excellent question Andrew, would like to know exactly the same. I am sure that NKorea isn't going to show us what they are actually launching, but if I were NKorea, I would show them so that they don't shoot it down and waste millions of dollars. I hope this doesn't start another major incident.

I think we're past the point of not being a major incident if it's completely successful. Now it's all about damage control.

Just nuke em now and get it over with.Drop a few on Iran too!

Um....no. You cannot win a fight with N. Korea with China's backing. Firm diplomacy is our only course of action.

It's worse. They're also going to capture the moon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZIgda01k6o

They sure are spending alot of money of these things when so many of their people are hungry and living in poverty.

Sounds like the USA.

Learn something about your country before you bash it.

PRIVATE American citizens donated almost 15 times more to the developing world than their European counterparts, research reveals this weekend ahead of the G8 summit. Private US donors also handed over far more aid than the federal government in Washington, revealing that America is much more generous to Africa and poor countries than is claimed by the Make Poverty History and Live 8 campaigns.

Church collections, philanthropists and company-giving amounted to $22bn a year, according to a study by the Hudson Institute think-tank, easily more than the $16.3bn in overseas development sent by the US government. American churches, synagogues and mosques alone gave $7.5bn in 2003 - a figure which exceeds the government totals for France ($7.2bn) and Britain ($6.3bn) - according to numbers from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development which deal a blow to those who claim moral superiority over the US on aid.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1435600/posts

Seems to be alot of that going around..............

As the late great Paul Harvey would say........ and now the rest of the story.....Western Europe has universal health care and a far more equal society hence they do not depend on chairity to fill in the gaps. I wonder how much these corpo-rats would donate if it were not a tax deduction. hmmmm

Are the prophecies of Nostradamus true?
Many years ago he prophecied a third world war in or around 1997.
He stated that the conflct would begin in an Eastern nation.
Admittedly, on some of his predictions, he was a few years out, but it makes you think, doesn't it?

They're literally dying over there. They spend the majority of their money towards military projects that deprive their people.

Our Leaders are doing the same. 600,000+ unemployed here. You reckon there might be some going without and are really going to starve to death. You won't see it in Main Stream Media. They don't want Obama to look bad.
Back to N. Korea. They may have only sent a satellite up. Perhaps, all they want is Satellite TV.

I think they call it self defence. The capitalsitic nations have allways forced them to do this depriveing them of spending money on their people. It seems we will never know if communism or socialism is actualy viable as long as rescourses are spent on arms and defence.