NORTH KOREA: North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and “pattern of provocations” are a serious threat to Asian and world security, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today.

North Korea released a statement later at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ annual conference in Cambodia saying Washington’s “never-ending nuclear threat” against the North has forced Pyongyang to build atomic weapons.

LAOS: Decades after the US gave Laos a horrific distinction as the world’s most heavily bombed nation per person, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged to help get rid of millions of unexploded bombs that still pockmark the impoverished country - and still kill.

The US dropped more than two million tons of bombs on the North Vietnamese ally during its “secret war” between 1964 and 1973 - about a ton of ordnance for each Laotian man, woman and child.

JAPAN: Heavy rain has triggered flash floods and mudslides in southern Japan, causing at least nine deaths and leaving 18 more people missing.

Television footage showed residents wading through muddy, hip-deep water on streets.

AMERICA: Bob Dylan and historians at PBS are in a dispute over the whereabouts of an electric guitar that the singer plugged in at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, quite possibly the most historic single instrument in rock ’n’ roll.

The New Jersey daughter of a pilot who flew Dylan to appearances in the 1960s says she has the guitar, which has spent much of the past 47 years in a family attic.

AMERICA: Maria Hawkins Cole, widow of Nat “King” Cole and mother of Natalie Cole, has died after a short battle with cancer. She was 89.

A representative of the family confirmed that she died on Tuesday at a Boca Raton hospice in Florida, surrounded by her family.

AMERICA: Pluto may have been kicked out of the planet club, but it has gained yet another companion.

Scientists announced the discovery of the smallest moon yet around the icy orb, bringing the count of its known moons to five.