Police: Ore. mall shooter didn't know his victims

PORTLAND, Ore. A gunman who opened fire on shoppers at a Portland mall had no connection to the two people he fatally shot and wanted to kill as many people as possible, police said Wednesday.

The shooter, who wore a mask, was a young man who fired randomly, investigators said. The only person wounded was a young woman, Kristina Shevchenko, whose age could not be confirmed. She was in serious condition at Oregon Health and Science University Hospital in Portland.

Police said they had tentatively identified the gunman but would not release his name or give any information on a possible motive.

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Ore. mall chaos: Gunman kills two, then shoots himself

"It really was a killing of total strangers, to my knowledge at this point and time. He was really trying to kill as many people as possible," Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts told ABC's "Good Morning America."

People at the mall were heroic in helping get shoppers out of the building, including off-duty emergency room nurses who rendered aid, Roberts said.

In response to previous mass shootings elsewhere, the first arriving officers were trained to form teams and go inside instead of waiting for SWAT. Employees at the mall also received training to handle such a situation.

CBS News senior correspondent John Miller, a former deputy director of the FBI, said it was "pretty miraculous" that more people were not shot during the incident.

"He fired 'countless rounds' ... he reloaded," Miller said, before adding, "Given the amount of rounds he fired, he hit a fairly small number of people, so this could have been much worse."

The first 911 call came at 3:29 p.m. Tuesday. The first officers arrived a minute later. By 3:51 p.m., all the victims and the gunman and rifle had been found. Four SWAT teams spent hours clearing the 1.4 million square-foot mall, leaving shoppers and workers to hide in fear.

The mall Santa, Brance Wilson, was waiting for the next child's Christmas wish when shots rang out, causing the mall to erupt into chaos.

About to invite a child to hop onto his lap, Wilson instead dove for the floor and kept his head down as he heard shots being fired upstairs in the mall.

"I heard two shots and got out of the chair. I thought a red suit was a pretty good target," said Wilson, 68. Families waiting for Santa scattered. More shots followed, and Wilson crept away for better cover.

Witnesses said the gunman fired several times near the mall food court until the rifle jammed and he dropped a magazine onto the floor, then ran into the Macy's store.

Witnesses heard the gunman saying, "I am the shooter," as he fired rounds from a semi-automatic rifle inside the Clackamas Town Center, a popular suburban mall several miles from downtown Portland.

Some were close enough to the shooter to feel the percussion of his gun.

Police rapid-response teams came into the mall with guns drawn, telling everyone to leave. Shoppers and mall employees who were hiding stayed in touch with loved ones with cellphones and texting.

Kayla Sprint, 18, was interviewing for a job at a clothing store when she heard shots.

"We heard people running back here screaming, yelling '911,'" she told The Associated Press.

Sprint barricaded herself in the store's back room until the coast was clear.

Jason DeCosta, a manager of a window-tinting company that has a display on the mall's ground floor, said when he arrived to relieve his co-worker, he heard shots ring out upstairs.

DeCosta ran up an escalator, past people who had dropped for cover and glass littering the floor.

"I figure if he's shooting a gun, he's gonna run out of bullets," DeCosta said, "and I'm gonna take him."

DeCosta said when he got to the food court, "I saw a gentleman face down, obviously shot in the head."

"A lot of blood," DeCosta said. "You could tell there was nothing you could do for him."

He said he also saw a woman on the floor who had been shot in the chest.

Austin Patty, 20, who works at Macy's, said he saw a man in a white mask carrying a rifle and wearing a bulletproof vest. There was a series of rapid-fire shots in short succession as Christmas music played. Patty said he dove for the floor and then ran.

His Macy's co-worker, Pam Moore, told the AP the gunman was short, with dark hair.

Kira Rowland told KGW-TV that she was shopping at Macy's with her infant son when the shots started.

"All of a sudden you hear two shots, which sounded like balloons popping," Rowland told the station. "Everybody got on the ground. I grabbed the baby from the stroller and got on the ground."

Rowland said she heard people screaming and crying.

"I put the baby back in the stroller and ran," Rowland said.

Kaelynn Keelin was working two stores down from Macy's when the gunfire began. She watched windows of another store get shot out. She and her co-workers ran to get customers inside their own store to take shelter.

"If we would have run out, we would have run right into it," she said.

Shaun Wik, 20, was Christmas shopping with his girlfriend and opened a fortune cookie at the food court. Inside was written: "Live for today. Remember yesterday. Think of tomorrow."

As he read it, he heard three shots. He heard a man he believes was the gunman shout, "Get down!" but Wik and his girlfriend ran. He heard seven or eight more shots. He didn't turn around.

"If I had looked back, I might not be standing here," Wik said. "I might have been one of the ones who got hit."

Clackamas Town Center is one of the Portland area's biggest and busiest malls, with 185 stores and a 20-screen movie theater.

Holli Bautista, 28, was shopping at Macy's for a Christmas dress for her daughter when she heard pops that sounded like firecrackers. "I heard people running and screaming and saying 'Get out, there's somebody shooting,'" she told the AP.

She said hundreds of shoppers and mall employees started running, and she and dozens of other people were trying to escape through a department store exit.

Tiffany Turgetto and her husband were leaving Macy's through the first floor when they heard gunshots coming from the second floor of the mall. They were able to leave quickly through a Barnes and Noble bookstore before the police locked down the mall.

"I had left my phone at home. I was telling people to call 911. Surprisingly, people are around me, no one was calling 911. I think people were in shock," she said.

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North Korea launches rocket , raising nuclear arms stakes

SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea successfully launched a rocket on Wednesday, boosting the credentials of its new leader and stepping up the threat the isolated and impoverished state poses to opponents.

The rocket, which North Korea says put a weather satellite into orbit, has been labeled by the United States, South Korea and Japan as a test of technology that could one day deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting targets as far away as the continental United States.

"The satellite has entered the planned orbit," a North Korean television news reader clad in traditional Korean garb announced, after which the station played patriotic songs with the lyrics "Chosun (Korea) does what it says".

The rocket was launched just before 10 a.m. (0100 GMT), according to defense officials in South Korea and Japan, and was more successful than a rocket launched in April that flew for less than two minutes.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said that it "deployed an object that appeared to achieve orbit", the first time an independent body has verified North Korean claims.

North Korea followed what it said was a similar successful launch in 2009 with a nuclear test that prompted the U.N. Security Council to stiffen sanctions that it originally imposed in 2006 after the North's first nuclear test.

North Korea is banned from developing nuclear and missile-related technology under U.N. resolutions, although Kim Jong-un, the youthful head of state who took power a year ago, is believed to have continued the state's "military first" programs put in place by his late father, Kim Jong-Il.

North Korea hailed the launch as celebrating the prowess of all three members of the Kim family to rule since it was founded in 1948.

"At a time when great yearnings and reverence for Kim Jong-il pervade the whole country, its scientists and technicians brilliantly carried out his behests to launch a scientific and technological satellite in 2012, the year marking the 100th birth anniversary of President Kim Il Sung," its KCNA news agency said. Kim Il Sung, the current leader's grandfather, was North Korea's first leader.

The United States condemned the launch as "provocative" and a breach of U.N. rules, while Japan's U.N. envoy called for a Security Council meeting. However, diplomats say further tough sanctions are unlikely from the Security Council as China, the North's only major ally, will oppose them.

"The international community must work in a concerted fashion to send North Korea a clear message that its violations of United Nations Security Council resolutions have consequences," the White House said in a statement.

U.S. intelligence has linked North Korea with missile shipments to Iran. Newspapers in Japan and South Korea have reported that Iranian observers were in the North for the launch, something Iran has denied.

Japan's likely next prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who is leading in opinion polls ahead of an election on Sunday and who is known as a hawk on North Korea, called on the United Nations to adopt a resolution "strongly criticizing" Pyongyang.

A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman reiterated that the rocket was a "peaceful project".

"The attempt to see our satellite launch as a long-range missile launch for military purposes comes from hostile perception that tries to designate us a cause for security tension," KCNA cited the spokesman as saying.

"STUMBLING BLOCK"

China had expressed "deep concern" prior to the launch which was announced a day after a top politburo member, representing new Chinese leader Xi Jinping, met Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang.

On Wednesday, its tone was measured, regretting the launch but calling for restraint on any counter-measures, in line with a policy of effectively vetoing tougher sanctions.

"China believes the Security Council's response should be cautious and moderate, protect the overall peaceful and stable situation on the Korean peninsula, and avoid an escalation," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told journalists.

Bruce Klingner, a Korea expert at the Heritage Foundation, said: "China has been the stumbling block to firmer U.N. action and we'll have to see if the new leadership is any different than its predecessors."

A senior adviser to South Korea's president said last week it was unlikely there would be action from the United Nations and Seoul would expect its allies to tighten sanctions unilaterally.

Kim Jong-un, believed to be 29 years old, took power when his father died on December 17 last year and experts believe the launch was intended to commemorate the first anniversary of his death. The April launch was timed for the centennial of the birth of Kim Il Sung.

Wednesday's success puts the North ahead of the South which has not managed to get a rocket off the ground.

"This is a considerable boost in establishing the rule of Kim Jong-un," said Cho Min, an expert at the Korea Institute of National Unification.

There have been few indications the secretive and impoverished state, where the United Nations estimates a third of people are malnourished, has made any advances in opening up economically over the past year.

North Korea remains reliant on minerals exports to China and remittances from tens of thousands of its workers overseas.

Many of its 22 million people need handouts from defectors, who have escaped to South Korea, for basic medicines.

Given the puny size of its economy - per capita income is less than $2,000 a year - one of the few ways the North can attract world attention is by emphasizing its military threat.

It wants the United States to resume aid and to recognize it diplomatically, although the April launch scuppered a planned food deal.

The North is believed to be some years away from developing a functioning nuclear warhead although it may have enough plutonium for about half a dozen nuclear bombs, according to nuclear experts.

It has also been enriching uranium, which would give it a second path to nuclear weapons as it sits on big natural uranium reserves.

"A successful launch puts North Korea closer to the capability to deploy a weaponized missile," said Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii.

"But this would still require fitting a weapon to the missile and ensuring a reasonable degree of accuracy. The North Koreans probably do not yet have a nuclear weapon small enough for a missile to carry."

The North says its work is part of a civil nuclear program although it has also boasted of it being a "nuclear weapons power".

(Additional reporting by Jumin Park and Yoo Choonsik in SEOUL; David Alexander, Matt Spetalnick and Paul Eckert in WASHINGTON; Linda Sieg in TOKYO, Sui-Lee Wee and Michael Martina in BEIJING,; Rosmarie Francisco in MANILA; Writing by David Chance; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Robert Birsel)

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Masagos Zulkifli hosts breakfast meeting with Perlis Prince

SINGAPORE: Senior Minister of State for Home and Foreign Affairs Masagos Zulkifli hosted breakfast for Perlis Prince Syed Faizuddin at Hyatt Hotel on Wednesday.

The Prince, who is also the Chancellor of Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP), was leading a delegation of UniMAP officials for exchanges with Singapore universities.

During the breakfast, Mr Masagos and Prince Syed Faizuddin discussed Singapore-Perlis relations and the importance of strengthening bilateral education exchanges.

- CNA/lp

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A modern take on 'Seinfeld' racks up Twitter followers

What if "Seinfeld" was still on the air?

(Credit:
Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

The hit sitcom "Seinfeld" might have gone off the air long before some of the technology we enjoy today was invented, but that hasn't stopped one person from taking to Twitter and guessing at what the modern-day "Seinfeld" would look like.

On Sunday, BuzzFeed sports editor Jack Moore opened a Twitter account, called @SeinfeldToday, where he shares storylines that could have been produced if the show was airing today. The tweets center on scenarios in which Jerry, George, Kramer, or Elaine interact with today's technologies.

"Jerry joints Twitter only to find that a Jerry parody account has 50k followers," one tweet reads. "It's run by Bania, who will stop if Jerry buys him dinner."

The new Modern Seinfeld account has already been a popular addition to Twitter. Although it only started on Sunday, it already has over 120,000 followers.

So, why did Moore decide to start the account? He might just be one of the biggest "Seinfeld" fans out there:

"I'm pretty much constantly watching episodes in the background while I'm doing anything," he told The Atlantic Wire in an interview. "I have a thumb drive with the whole series on it that I keep in my bag pretty much all the time."

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Ecuador leader: Hugo Chavez undergoing surgery

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez blows a goodbye kiss prior to boarding his plane at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Maiquetia, Venezuela, Dec. 10, 2012, in this picture released by Miraflores Press Office. / AP Photo/Miraflores Press Office

Updated at 11:55 a.m. ET

QUITO, Ecuador Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is undergoing cancer surgery in Cuba, Ecuador's president said Tuesday.

"Commander Hugo Chavez is being operated on at this moment. It's a very delicate operation," Correa said at an event in the Ecuadorean city of Tulcan.

"At this time he's passing through one of the hardest moments of his life. Our heart and our solidarity go out to a historic president," he said. Correa, a close ally of the Venezuelan leader, traveled to Cuba on Monday and met with Chavez.

Chavez announced on Saturday that he needed to undergo a third cancer-related surgery in about a year and a half after tests showed that "some malignant cells" had reappeared in the same area where tumors were previously removed.

Chavez also said for the first time that if his illness cuts short his presidency, Vice President Nicolas Maduro should take his place and should be elected president to lead his leftist movement.

The operation aims to remove cancerous tissue from Chavez's pelvic area. An initial surgery for a pelvic abscess in June 2011 helped reveal he had cancer.

Chavez has also undergone chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

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Royal Hoax: Station to Give $500K to Nurse's Family

The Australian radio station that employed the DJs who prank-called the London hospital where Kate Middleton was being treated has cancelled their show and will donate at least $500,000 to the grieving husband and children of the nurse who took the call and later apparently killed herself.

Australia's 2Day FM released a statement today saying it hopes to "help [Jacintha] Saldanha's family with the support they need at this very difficult time."

After days of suspended advertising, the radio station at the center of a global firestorm announced it will resume airing commercials Thursday. All its profits for the rest of the year will go directly to the family of the unsuspecting nurse at the center of that joke.

The Sydney-based station also issued a company-wide suspension of prank calls after the nurse who initially answered the hospital call was found dead.

Saldanha's husband and two teenage children met with officials at the hospital Monday, and spoke publicly for the first time, although via a member of the British Parliament.

Royal Hospital Hoax: End to Shock-Jock Pranks? Watch Video

Australian DJs Apologize in Wake of Nurse's Suicide Watch Video

"This is a close family," Keith Vaz said. "They are devastated by what has happened. They miss her every moment of every day.

Although radio pranks have been a staple of shock DJs for years, DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian of Australia's 2Day FM might have crossed the line last week when they pranked the hospital, prompting the question of whether this is the end for radio pranking.

"Entertainers try to use real-life everyday circumstances and try to find humor in them," Radio DJ J Niice of B96 in Chicago, who does regular pranks on his show, told ABC News.

DJ Niice says his station has no intentions of pulling the plug on prank calls because it doesn't need to.

Based on U.S. law, such calls only become problematic when any resulting damage or injury could have been foreseen.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was famously pranked while running for vice president by a notorious Montreal-based comedy duo, who pretended to be then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

"You know, I see you as a president one day," one of them told Palin, to which she replied with a giggle, "Maybe in eight years.'"

A prank caller even managed to make his way through security to speak to Tony Blair while he was still British prime minister. But it was no laughing matter in 1998 when Opie and Anthony, DJs from a Boston radio station, were fired for telling listeners on April Fools' Day that the city's mayor had died in a car accident.

While the Australian DJs' show has been terminated, it's still unclear whether they will be.

They could face criminal charges if police determine their call was illegally recorded. And the same joke at which they initially laughed is now the reason for their tears.

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IMF loan to Egypt delayed amid political turmoil

CAIRO (Reuters) - A vital $4.8 billion International Monetary Fund loan to Egypt will be delayed until next month, its finance minister said on Tuesday, intensifying the political crisis gripping the Arab world's most populous nation.

As rival factions gathered in Cairo and Alexandria for a new round of demonstrations, Finance Minister Mumtaz al-Said said the delay in the loan agreement was intended to allow time to explain a heavily criticised package of economic austerity measures to the Egyptian people.

The announcement came after President Mohamed Mursi on Monday backed down on planned tax increases, seen as key for the loan to go ahead. Opposition groups had greeted the tax package, which had included duties on alcoholic drinks, cigarettes and a range of goods and services, with furious criticism.

"Of course the delay will have some economic impact, but we are discussing necessary measures (to address that) during the coming period," the minister told Reuters, adding: "I am optimistic ... everything will be well, God willing."

Prime Minister Hisham Kandil said Egypt had requested that the loan be delayed by a month.

"The challenges are economic not political and must be dealt with aside from politics," he told a news conference.

Kandil said the reforms would not hurt the poor. Bread sugar and rice would not be touched, but cigarettes and cooking oil would go up and fines would be imposed for public littering. In a bid to rebuild consensus, he said there would be a national dialogue about the economic program next week.

In Washington, the IMF said Egypt had asked for the loan to be postponed "in light of the unfolding developments on the ground". The Fund stood ready to consult with Egypt on resuming discussions on the stand-by loan, a spokeswoman said.

GUNMEN OPEN FIRE

On the streets of the capital, tensions ran high after nine people were hurt when gunmen fired at protesters camping in Tahrir Square, according to witnesses and Egyptian media.

The opposition has called for a major demonstration it hopes will force Mursi to postpone a referendum on a new constitution.

Outside the presidential palace, dozens of protesters succeeded in pushing down two giant concrete blocks forming a small part of a wall blocking access to the site.

Thousands of flag-waving Islamist Mursi supporters, who want the vote to go ahead as planned on Saturday, assembled at a nearby mosque, setting the stage for further street confrontations in a crisis that has divided the nation of 83 million.

In Egypt's second city of Alexandria, thousands of rival demonstrators gathered at separate venues. Mursi's backers chanted: "The people want implementation of Islamic law," while his opponents shouted: "The people want to bring down the regime."

The upheaval following the fall of Hosni Mubarak last year is causing concern in the West, in particular the United States, which has given Cairo billions of dollars in military and other aid since Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979.

The turmoil has also placed a big strain on the economy, sending foreign currency reserves down to about $15 billion, less than half what they were before the revolt two years ago as the government has sought to defend the pound.

"Given the current policy environment, it's hardly a surprise that there's been a delay, but it is imperative that the delay is brief," said Simon Williams, HSBC economist in Dubai. "Egypt urgently needs that IMF accord, both for the funding it brings and the policy anchor it affords."

The IMF deal had been seen as giving a seal of approval to investors and donors about the government's economic plans, vital for drawing more cash into the economy to ease a crushing budget deficit and stave off a balance of payments crisis.

MASKED ATTACKERS

In central Cairo, police cars surrounded Tahrir Square in central Cairo, the first time they had appeared in the area since November 23, shortly after a decree by Mursi awarding himself sweeping temporary powers that touched off widespread protests.

The attackers, some masked, also threw petrol bombs that started a small fire, witnesses said.

"The masked men came suddenly and attacked the protesters in Tahrir. The attack was meant to deter us and prevent us from protesting today. We oppose these terror tactics and will stage the biggest protest possible today," said John Gerges, a Christian Egyptian who described himself as a socialist.

The latest bout of unrest has so far claimed seven lives in clashes between the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and opponents who are also gathering outside Mursi's presidential palace.

The elite Republican Guard which protects the palace has yet to use force to keep protesters away from the graffiti-daubed building, now ringed with tanks, barbed wire and concrete barricades.

The army has told all sides to resolve their differences through dialogue, saying it would not allow Egypt to enter a "dark tunnel". For the period of the referendum, the army has been granted police powers by Mursi, allowing it to arrest civilians.

The army has portrayed itself as the guarantor of the nation's security, but so far it has shown no appetite for a return to the bruising front-line political role it played after the fall of Mubarak, which severely damaged its standing.

OPPOSITION MARCHES

Leftists, liberals and other opposition groups called for marches say the hastily arranged constitutional referendum is polarizing the country and could put it in a religious straightjacket.

Mohamed ElBaradei, a prominent opposition leader and Nobel prize winner, said the referendum should be postponed for a couple of months due to the chaotic situation.

"This revolution was not staged to replace one dictator with another," he said in an interview with CNN.

Opposition leaders want the referendum to be delayed and hope they can get sufficiently large numbers of protesters on the streets to change Mursi's mind.

Islamists, who dominated the body that drew up the constitution, have urged their followers to turn out to show support for the president and for a referendum they feel sure of winning.

The opposition says the draft constitution fails to embrace the diversity of the population, a tenth of which is Christian, and invites Muslim clerics to influence lawmaking.

(Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Peter Graff and Will Waterman)

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Injured Navy serviceman expected to be in ICU for a few days: CGH

SINGAPORE: Changi General Hospital (CGH) said on Tuesday that Navy serviceman ME2 Jason Chee Weng Fai is still in critical condition and is expected to be in the Intensive Care Unit for a few days.

The hospital says Mr Chee has undergone surgery and is in the process of recovery.

The Weapon Systems Supervisor was injured on Monday when he got caught between a motorised winch and a rope on the Landing Ship Tank RSS Endeavour.

The serviceman was checking on a berthing rope that was being tightened when the incident happened.

The Singapore Armed Forces has said that it is investigating the cause of the incident.

- CNA/jc

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Looks like dismal voter turnout to end Facebook's quasi democracy

So much for a quasi-democratic Facebook. So far, the social network's users haven't cast anywhere near enough votes to preserve users' ability to veto Facebook's policy changes.

Facebook users have until noon today to vote on Facebook's recently proposed policy changes relating to data use and privacy. Unless at least 30 percent of Facebook's membership -- or around 300 million users -- cast ballots, Facebook said it will abolish voting altogether. So far, only 600,000 users have voted. So unless there's a surge between now and noon -- or the independent auditor hired to double-check the count finds an extra 2.4 million votes somewhere -- the Facebook  vote will be history.

Facebook developed the voting model in 2009 to solicit feedback from users about the network's frequent changes. But, Facebook argues, it's outgrown that system -- it's now a publicly traded company that has to answer to a range of regulatory issues.

Facebook made some efforts to promote the vote. The company enabled users to share their vote with their friends in hopes of getting more people to vote, and held a live Q&A session with Facebook's privacy team to answer questions (one user who submitted a question didn't event know there was a vote going on).

Despite those efforts, it seems most users still don't know, or care, about the vote.

Here are some of the policy changes voters are considering:

• New tools for managing your Facebook Messages -- replacing the "Who can send you Facebook messages" setting with new filters for managing incoming messages.


• Changes to how Facebook refers to certain products, like instant personalization.


• Reminders about what's visible to other people on Facebook. For instance, when you hide things from your timeline, those posts are visible elsewhere, like in news feed, on other people's timelines, or in search results.


• Tips on managing your timeline. For example, you can use tools on your timeline or activity log to delete your own posts, or you can ask someone else to delete a post in which you're tagged.

If you do care and just missed out the hubbub, you can cast your vote here.

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N. Korea extends rocket launch window a week

SEOUL, South Korea North Korea on Monday extended the launch period for a controversial long-range rocket by another week, until Dec. 29, citing technical problems.

An unidentified spokesman for the North's Korean Committee of Space Technology told state media scientists found a "technical deficiency in the first-stage control engine module of the rocket." The statement didn't elaborate, but said technicians were "pushing forward" with final preparations for the launch.

North Korea is making its second attempt of the year to launch a rocket that the United Nations, Washington, Seoul and others call a cover meant to test technology for missiles that could be used to strike the United States. They have warned North Korea to cancel the launch or face a new wave of sanctions.

The North Koreans call the launch a peaceful bid to advance their space program, and a last wish of late leader Kim Jong Il, who died a year ago, on Dec. 17. North Korea is also celebrating the centennial this year of the birth of national founder Kim Il Sung, current leader Kim Jong Un's grandfather. An April launch broke apart seconds after liftoff.

The announcement of the planned rocket launch has sparked worry because of the timing: South Korea and Japan hold key elections this month, President Obama begins his second term in January, and China has just formed a new leadership.

The North had originally set up a 13-day launch window, starting Monday, but it announced early Sunday that it may delay the liftoff for unspecified reasons.

Experts in Seoul and Tokyo had speculated that technical glitches may have forced scientists to postpone the launch of the finicky three-stage rocket, its fifth attempt since 1998.

Temperatures in the border city of Sinuiju, near the launch site, dropped to 8.6 degrees Fahrenheit Monday morning, and the Korean Peninsula has been seized by early winter storms and unusually cold weather, the Korea Meteorological Administration said in Seoul.

Engineers can launch a rocket when it's snowing, but lightning, strong wind and freezing temperatures have the potential to stall liftoff, said Lee Chang-jin, an aerospace professor at Seoul's Konkuk University.

Snow covered the North's launch site last week, according to commercial satellite imagery taken by GeoEye on Dec. 4 and shared with The Associated Press by the 38 North and North Korea Tech websites. The road from the main assembly building to the launch pad showed no fresh tracks, indicating that the snowfall may have stalled the preparations.

Still, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Monday that his government would maintain vigilance. Tokyo has mobilized its military to intercept any debris from the rocket.

"At this moment, we are keeping our guard up," Defense Minister Satoshi Morimoto told reporters Monday. "We have not seen any objective indication that would cause us to make any change to our preparedness."

In addition to four failed launches, North Korea has unveiled missiles designed to target U.S. soil and has tested two atomic devices in recent years. It has not yet proven to have mastered the technology for mounting a nuclear warhead to a long-range missile, however.

A successful launch would mean North Korea could develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the U.S. mainland within two to three years, said Chong Chol-Ho, a weapons of mass destruction expert at the private Sejong Institute near Seoul.

Six-nation negotiations to offer North Korea much-needed aid in exchange for nuclear disarmament have been stalled since early 2009.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Washington was deeply concerned, and urged foreign ministers from NATO and Russia to demand that Pyongyang cancel its plans. Moscow joined calls on Pyongyang to reconsider.

China, North Korea's main ally and aid provider, also noted its concern, acknowledging North Korea's right to develop its space program but urging Pyongyang to harmonize the bid with restrictions, including those set by the U.N. Security Council.

International pressure and the prospect of dialogue may be a factor in the delay, analysts in Seoul said.

China must have sent a "very strong" message calling for the North to cancel the launch plans, said analyst Baek Seung-joo of the South Korean state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.

North Korea may also be holding off if the U.S., its longtime Korean War foe, actively engages Pyongyang in dialogue, said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of North Korean studies at Seoul's Dongguk University.

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