N. Korea out of reach for U.S. spies

I think it's, of course, one of the, if not the, most important issue for us Japan. :
(April 14, 2013. AFP-Jiji)
Conflicting accounts from U.S. intelligence about the status of North Korea's nuclear weapons development underscore just how difficult it is for American spy agencies to penetrate its inscrutable regime, officials and experts said.
   The world's most powerful intelligence apparatus is often left to guesswork when it comes to tracking a regime that has cut off its population from the outside world.
   "I also have to say that North Korea, of course, is now and always has been one of the, if not the, toughest intelligence targets," U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper told lawmakers at a hearing Thursday (April 11).
   The United States gleans most of its intelligence from satellites tracking North Korean military movements, as Western spies cannot operate effectively in such a tightly controlled dictatorship. "It is virtually impossible to run a human spy in the North and penetrate the Korean state," Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and fellow at the Brooking institution, said.
   The vexing challenge posed by Pyongyang was driven home when a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report came to light Thursday (April 11) that seemed to paint a more dangerous picture of North Korea's nuclear weapons, unlike previous accounts from American officials.
   The DIA report, revealed by a lawmaker from Colorado with a keen interest in missile defense funding, concluded that the North likely has succeeded in miniaturizing a nuclear warhead that could be placed onto a ballistic missile.

Prices outpace incomes as yen softens

How do you like Japan Up and/or Down ?  :
(April 12, 2013. JT)
Prices are rising before incomes are and thus consumers are feeling the pain of the yen's depreciation driven by "Abenomics." First affected are imports, but price hikes for daily necessities and power are looming. Credit for rising stocks and the yen's continued depreciation goes to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ultraloose economic policies and the Bank of Japan's massive monetary easing declared last week. The central bank's aggressive easing, orchestrated by BOJ Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda, has the dollar surging near the symbolic threshold of ￥100. Finance Minister Taro Aso has called the depreciation a "process of (the yen) being corrected" after touching highs below 76 to the dollar last summer.