"Super notes" -- forged U.S. dollars of such high quality that even experts have trouble detecting them -- have taken on an almost mythic status among national security watchers. Supposedly, they're part of a plot to undermine confidence in the U.S. economy, and at times they've been called an act of war.

Their origins have tended to shift with the political winds; it was said that they originate in Iran, some have speculated that they come from the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon (where they were supposedly produced by Syria) and lately the consensus has been that they're part of a sinister North Korean plan. Others have accused Israel of printing them.

President Barack Obama said Wednesday he had decided not to reinstate nuclear-armed North Korea to a list of countries that the United States considers state sponsors of terrorism.

Obama made the determination in a letter sent to leaders of the U.S. Congress that accompanied a classified report on the conduct of North Korea between June 26, 2008, and Nov. 16, 2009.

The North Korean government informed the State Department on Friday that it is holding a second American citizen who the North Koreans say entered the country from China, a State Department spokesman said.

The American, who has not been identified, was detained Monday for trespassing on North Korea's border with China, state-run Korea Central News Agency reported Thursday. The incident is under investigation, according to the agency's report.

North Korea fired artillery and South Korea responded with warning shots along their disputed western sea border Wednesday, but there were no immediate reports of casualties and the North later said its barrage was part of a continuing military drill.

North Korea on Sunday accused the South of declaring war by warning earlier this month that it would launch a preemptive strike if it thought its impoverished neighbor was preparing a nuclear attack.

The angry retort from Pyongyang is the latest in what have become increasingly brittle relations between the two Koreas just as the international community tries to lure the North back to nuclear disarmament talks.

South Korea and the United States will not give in to North Korea's demands in order to resume negotiations on ending the North's nuclear ambition, saying that this time, they will try to "break" the communist nation's pattern of brinkmanship, a foreign ministry official said Tuesday.

State Department Officials Slam Idea of Ending 60 Years of War.

United States President Barack Obama set off a wave of speculation in the South Korean capital when he declaimed before American troops at Osan Air Base, south of Seoul, last month that "many of you served in Iraq", "others served in Afghanistan", "others among you may deploy yet again" - and "every American appreciates what you are trying to do".

The troops, gathered in a large warehouse facility at the end of Obama's recent swing through Northeast Asia, cheered at the tributes to service in the Middle East, but remained politely silent at the mention of deploying "yet again".

North Korea's military was on guard as public anger grew over the communist country's shock currency revaluation, reports said Thursday.

They said the North had tightened security against possible agitation, with a curfew reportedly imposed in a border region and shops closed across the country during the changeover period to a new currency, which ends Sunday.

Analysts said the move, still not announced by official media, appears aimed at clamping down on burgeoning free markets in an attempt to reassert the regime's control.

Shops and markets in North Korea have been closed and all cash transactions frozen after the Government’s shock announcement of a devaluation of its currency in an effort to crack down on the country’s burgeoning free-market economy.

There were reports of public outrage and confusion after the announcement of the measure, which requires North Koreans to swap existing won notes for new ones at an exchange rate of one to 100 — effectively knocking two zeroes off their value. Because of a cap of 100,000 won per family (£475 at the official exchange rate), anyone with significant holdings of cash will have their savings wiped out.

Monday's devaluation of Pyongyang's nearly worthless currency from 100 to a single won has wiped out the savings of impoverished North Koreans and generated a scramble for dollars and Chinese yuan, say sources behind the bamboo curtain.

North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future despite the upcoming talks with Washington, a former senior US diplomat who recently visited Pyongyang said Monday.

David Straub, once head of the State Department's Korea desk, gave his views as Washington prepares to send an envoy to the North for discussions on reviving the stalled six-nation nuclear disarmament talks.

"I see no indication that North Korea, in the foreseeable future, is prepared to give up its nuclear weapons programmes on terms that the US will find politically acceptable," Straub told a Seoul seminar, according to Yonhap news agency.

People no longer trust Congress, the President, the courts, the media, corporations, political parties, and other institutions of society. People even doubt science and medicine.

In a letter to the head of the UN Security Council, North Korea said it was "prepared for both dialogue and sanctions," but warned that if sanctions stayed in place, it would "respond with bolstering our nuclear deterrence."

The United States and South Korea on Saturday held top-level talks to discuss ways to press North Korea to return to disarmament talks, a day after the communist state's renewed nuclear sabre-rattling.

In a defiant response to tougher UN sanctions imposed after the nuclear test, North Korea said Friday it was building more plutonium-based atomic weapons and had made progress on enriching uranium.

The United States on Friday vowed to keep up its tough sanctions regime on North Korea after Pyongyang said it had reached the final stage of enriching uranium.

"We continue to be committed to ensuring that North Korea upholds its international obligations and we continue to strongly implement the sanctions that were approved," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

North Korea said Friday it has entered the final phase of uranium enrichment for nuclear weapons and is also building more bombs with spent reactor fuel rods.

After the United Nations imposed tougher sanctions in June following its May 25 nuclear test, the North vowed to start such a programme and to extract plutonium from fuel rods.

The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship illegally carrying embargoed North Korean weapons bound for Iran, diplomatic sources at the UN have said.

The UK-based Financial Times reported earlier on Friday that the ship was seized "some weeks ago".

One thing is for sure: The US gave NK some significant concession in return for the release of the reporters. My best guess would be that it involved loosening the financial and banking sanctions imposed on NK because these could be undone without the rest of the world knowing.

The reason for all the denials and secrecy is that Obama has made a big issue of the fact that the former US secret policy of rewarding NK for its continual violation of agreements would stop with his administration--though it clearly hasn't. So the administration has to go to extensive lengths to avoid the appearance of being permissive with NK.

Former US president George W. Bush said Saturday the five nations involved in nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea must send a unified warning against Pyongyang's continued defiance.

Former US president Bill Clinton arrived in North Korea on Tuesday on a surprise mission to free two jailed US journalists, in what was the highest-profile visit by an American to Pyongyang for nearly a decade.

“Our interest is the successful completion of this issue and to confirm the safe return of the two journalists,” a US official travelling separately with the ex-president’s wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, told reporters.

The latest US missile defence test, conducted last night in Hawaii waters, was deemed a success as tensions continue with North Korea over that country's missile programme.

There had been speculation North Korea would launch a missile toward Hawaii - about 4,500 miles away - to coincide with the July 4 Independence Day holiday in the US.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that North Korea had "no friends left" to defend it from nuclear sanctions, triggering vitriolic defiance from the Stalinist regime.

Pyongyang hurled invective at "schoolgirl" Clinton and declared disarmament talks dead, as she told Asia's largest security forum that international efforts to squeeze the North over its atomic programme were paying off.

Fears about military cooperation between the two isolated states escalated after a US Navy destroyer last month began tracking a suspect North Korean ship that was reportedly heading for Myanmar

US officials said a key thrust of Clinton's debut at the forum would be to crank up pressure on North Korea to return to multilateral nuclear disarmament talks after its recent missile and nuclear weapons tests.

Bkis Security has just disclosed analysis showing that 166,908 botted PCs from 74 countries were used in the attacks. Commands were routed through eight control servers, tied into a master server located in the United Kingdom and running the Windows Server 2003 operating system, says Bkis research director Nguyen Minh Duc.

The countries include South Korea, the United States, Japan and Guatemala, Chung Chin-sup, a member of the parliamentary intelligence committee, told reporters.

But the spy agency cautioned it was too early to conclude that North Korea was responsible as the investigations were still under way, according to Park Young-sun, another member of the intelligence committee.

In a reversal of the usual pattern, South Korea is now warning North Korea that it is developing a first-strike capacity against the communist country.

A South Korean defense reform plan, reported on by the Korea Times, describes the country’s plans for a defense network that would link surveillance satellites, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft and early-warning radar in an effort “to remove North Korea’s asymmetrical military threat of nuclear and missile programs.”

At the time of the resolution, which the White House touted as a “strong and united international response,” many analysts had noted that the provisions were ultimately unenforceable. It seems that in its pursuit of the ship based on its suspicions, the US has ultimately proved that analysis accurate.

The South Korean military plans to speed up efforts to deploy ground, air and naval weapons systems for use in strikes against key facilities in North Korea in the event of war, the Ministry of National Defense said Friday.

The updated plan is focused on securing independent capabilities to remove North Korea's asymmetrical military threat of nuclear and missile programs by deploying sophisticated surveillance, reconnaissance and striking assets.

In the case of an emergency, the military could conduct pre-emptive strikes against nuclear and missile facilities, an official at the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said

Gen. Walter "Skip" Sharp said that means the South Korean military should prepare by conducting as much realistic training as possible – likely with the aid of the US.

"I believe we will face IEDs and insurgent forces in addition to large conventional attacks," said General Sharp in remarks there Tuesday. "We must immediately begin preparing both ROK [Republic of Korea] and US forces to improve our capabilities in these areas." Sharp didn't mention the "thinking enemy" by name until the end of his prepared remarks. "North Korea is watching and I am convinced that discussing and demonstrating the strength, capabilities, and leadership of the ROK army is the best deterrence."

The United States needs to "figure out some way" to board and search North Korean ships suspected of carrying weapons or nuclear know-how, a senior US lawmaker said Thursday.

North Korea accused Washington of seeking to "provoke a second Korean War" as the regime prepared to hold maritime military exercises off the eastern coast. U.S. and regional authorities were watching closely for signs that North Korea might fire short- or mid-range missiles during the June 25 to July 10 timeframe cited in a no-sail ban for military drills sent to Japan's Coast Guard.

An impending missile test threatened by North Korea is expected to launch short- to medium-range missiles rather than a long-range missile fired in the direction of Hawaii, according to U.S. intelligence reports.

They say that history repeats, and therein lies a motive for the US Government to want a new war. after all, the US Government got out of the depression that resulted from the crash of 1904 by getting into WWI. The US Government got out of the depression that resulted from the crash of 1929 by getting into WWII. Now we are seeing the aftermath of the crash of 2008. If you see an obvious pattern here, rest assured, so does the US Government, which has a long history of using wars to correct, or at least to distract the people from , economic turmoil. From the point of view of Washington DC, it is far better that the taxpayers believe Iran and North Korea are the threat to our way of life, rather than Wall Street and of course, Washington DC itself.

In a first official response to last week’s US-South Korean summit, the state-run weekly Tongil Sinbo said in its Saturday edition Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak “are trying to ignite a nuclear war”.

After being victims of multiple false and propagandistic media campaigns one would think that we would be able to read between the lines when our mainstream media sources act in lockstep with one another in marketing the agenda du jour.

Have we already forgotten the “flowers and candy” which the gracious Iraqi people were going to greet us with? You know, as “Liberators.” The weapons of mass destruction? The fear campaign waged against us to surrender our national treasure to a few Wall Street firms? When the mainstream media moves together in uniform, repeating the same talking points, it’s time to get suspicious, not complacent.

First came the attempted launch in April. Then, last month, Pyongyang detonated a test nuclear device, which may or may not have worked as planned. Now the Norks are threatening to launch another Taepodong-2 missile, with a 4,000-mile range, towards Hawaii — and Gates is pulling out all the stops, to prepare for an intercept.

That means sending Army Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense missile systems, still in development, to the islands, and deploying the SBX radar. Joint Chiefs vice chairman General James Cartwright said he was “90-plus percent” sure the U.S. could intercept a Nork missile, in the unlikely event it overflew U.S. territory.

Apart from anger at Pyongyang's disobedience - and fears that its nuke program could endanger China - Beijing is worried that the latest development would hand a pretext to countries including South Korea and Japan to procure or produce more sophisticated weapons. Former senior director of the US National Security Council Dennis Wilder pointed out that Kim's nuclearization gambit could be "a game-changer in Northeast Asia security dynamics".

Mr. Gates told reporters that the U.S. is positioning a sophisticated floating radar array in the ocean around Hawaii to track an incoming missile. The U.S. is also deploying missile-defense weapons to Hawaii that would theoretically be capable of shooting down a North Korean missile, should such an order be given, he said.

North Korea indicated during the second government-level talks Friday that it was willing to completely lift restrictions on inter-Korean boarder-crossings imposed last December in a bid to help solve problems at companies operating in the Gaeseong Industrial Complex.

The U.S. military is planning to intercept a flagged North Korean ship suspected of proliferating weapons material in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution passed last Friday, FOX News has learned.

The USS John McCain, a navy destroyer, will intercept the ship Kang Nam as soon as it leaves the vicinity off the coast of China, according to a senior U.S. defense official. The order to inderdict has not been given yet, but the ship is getting into position.

Russian military says its reconnaissance units are relaying 'relevant information' on potential missile launches by North Korea.

On Friday, a senior Russian military official said the country's armed forces had alerted its entire surveillance squad to the possibility of a Pyongyang-led ballistic missile launch, Interfax reported.

NORTH and South Korea have resumed talks on the fate of their last remaining reconciliation project as the US moved to defend itself in the event of a North Korean missile strike on Hawaii.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he has ordered the U.S. military to take defensive measures should North Korea attempt to fire a ballistic missile toward Hawaii.

North Korea has accused the South of escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula to the brink of war.

Rodong Sinmun, the official daily of the North’s ruling communist party, said the United States and its allies had launched a smear campaign against Pyongyang at the UN Security Council and drastically raised the danger of invading the North.

“The situation on the Korean peninsula is more tense than ever,” the daily said.

The U.S. military is tracking a flagged North Korean ship suspected of proliferating weapons material in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution passed last Friday, FOX News has learned.

The ship, Kang Nam, left a port in North Korea Wednesday and could be carrying weaponry, missile parts or nuclear materials.

US excoriates North Korea's nuclear defiance, urges Pyongyang to return to negotiating table.

The Obama administration wants help from U.S. allies and possibly China to cut off North Korean shipments that may be carrying nuclear technology or other weapons.

While the newspaper speculated the Taepodong-2 could fly over Japan and toward Hawaii, it said the missile would not be able to hit Hawaii's main islands, which are about 4,500 miles (7,200 kilometers) from the Korean peninsula.

"North Korea has abandoned its own commitments and violated international law," Obama said, alongside Lee during his first appearance in the White House Rose Garden with a foreign leader.

"Its nuclear and ballistic missile programs pose a grave threat to (the) peace and security of Asia and to the world."

"Under the present situation where the Korean People's Army (KPA) is technically at war with the U.S. imperialists, and as the Armistice Agreement has lost its legal binding force, the KPA will promptly exercise the right to a pre-emptive strike to beat back the enemies' slightest provocation," Pak said.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak is traveling to the United States for talks with President Obama, as tensions on the Korean Peninsula reached a new high today. North Korea has responded to US plans to stop its ships under a new UN resolution by threatening war in that event. The nation also appears to be raising the specter of a nuclear war.