The U.S. Air Force's classified and unmanned X-37B spacecraft landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 1:16 a.m. PST. The spaceplane landed after a successful first flight that lasted over seven months.

The X-37B is a stubby-winged, robotic spacecraft that is in many ways similar to the space shuttle – except the fact that it is far smaller and needs no crew to operate. As with much everything else involving this flight – little information was given about the landing excluding some images and some infrared video showing the small spaceplane coming to a landing at the air base.

The Air Force has made sure to highlight the fact that the craft which launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida this past April was on a shake down flight meant to test out the viability of the craft’s design. When the X-37B did land, technicians swarmed over and ‘safed’ the vehicle – much in the same way as the space shuttle is handled post-flight.

Whether or not the craft carried anything in its payload bay – was not revealed. The Air Force did say that the X-37B completed all of its objectives successfully. It was also announced that the next X-37B could launch to orbit – as soon as next spring.

A STRONG 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck off Japan's southern Bonin Islands today.

The US Geological Survey said no tsunami was expected.

The quake caused the swaying of large buildings in the centre of Tokyo.

There are no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

At this stage there is no danger of a tsunami.

About 500 friends and family of the 29 men killed in a New Zealand mine explosion were taken to "say goodbye" at the remote colliery where they lie entombed.
Many carried flowers and photos of their loved ones as they were taken in a fleet of white buses to the Pike River mine, eight days after the disaster.
The visit, organised by the mining company, would help grieving families deal with the loss, said Laurie Drew, whose 21-year-old son Zen was killed.
"I went up there the other day and now my boys are going up, which is really good because it allows them to feel closer to their brother," Drew said.
"We just want closure... then everyone can move on."
Zen's mother said she found the visit "very healing" and it helped her to say goodbye.
"I felt close to my boy. I felt like I was able to say goodbye to him -- just directly from me," Leeza Verhoeven told NZPA.
"It just felt like we were able to relax with the spirits of the loved ones."
The families were kept away from the mine portal but were able to see the wall where the miners' name tags remain, according to industry tradition, to show they have started their shift and are still underground.
The group returned to the town of Greymouth, 50 kilometres (30 miles) away, in the late afternoon and attended a special church service in the evening.
The 29 men -- who included two Australians, two Britons and a South African -- were trapped 2.5 kilometres (1.5 miles) inside the mine by a gas explosion on November 19.
As anxious rescuers waited for gas levels to drop so they could mount a search operation, a second and more powerful explosion last Wednesday ended any hope of finding survivors.
Pike River Coal chief executive Peter Whittall said it could be weeks before the bodies are recovered as volatile gas levels remain dangerously high in the mine and a third blast rocked the site on Friday.
But Whittall said the firm remains determined to return the bodies to their families.
Tony Kokshoorn, mayor of the tight-knit Grey District on the west coast of New Zealand's South Island, said a permanent monument was planned to remember the tragedy, which left at least 13 children fatherless and was the country's worst mining disaster in almost a century.
"It's important that we have memorials of the loved ones and the children in the future can have something tangible to say: 'My father, he was part of that. It wasn't in vain and he was part of the west coast family'," he said.
"The west coast family is about coal running through the veins and a history of coal mining. And we have to accept a history of disasters that go with coal."
Messages of sympathy have poured in from around the world and the All Blacks were to wear white armbands on their black jerseys in their rugby union Test against Wales in Cardiff on Saturday.
Captain Richie McCaw said the players wanted to express their "sympathies and feelings".
"It's going to affect a hell of a lot of people right through the country, being a small country.
"The least we can do is to get out and have a good performance to at least try to put a bit of a smile on some people's faces, but it's still pretty tough I'm sure."
A minute's silence is due to be observed before kick-off and Wales assistant coach Rob Howley said: "With Wales being a mining country, I'm sure come the minute's silence on Saturday there will be many thoughts from the Welsh people going across to New Zealand."
New Zealand is to hold a national memorial service next Thursday at a racecourse overlooking the Paparoa Range where the mine is located.
"We want it there because we can include our miners in it," Kokshoorn said.

"Running dogs," "imperialist lackeys," "criminal gangs" and "brigandish moves" -- that sort of propaganda language died with the Cold War, except in the offices of the Korean Central News Agency.
The official mouthpiece of the North Korean government, KCNA is rarely at a loss for words. And it has never heeded the advice of Mark Twain: 'When you catch an adjective, kill it." But despite its often belligerent and always flowery rhetoric, it's also a (somewhat opaque) window on the thinking in Pyongyang.
KCNA was founded in 1946 and supplies the staple diet for all newspapers, radio and television in the country. At a pep talk in 1964, its workers received this advice from a senior party official: The agency "must pay serious attention to each word, to each dot of the writings it releases because they express the standpoint of our Party and the Government of our Republic."
As for an editorial line, the official went on: "So far we have slapped the enemy in the face. From now onwards we must strike at it with a heavy club."
The agency rarely refers to "South Korea" -- preferring terms such as "the South Korean puppet group." Sometimes it drops any reference to the South, opting for expressions like "the Lee Myung Bak group's treacherous and anti-reunification acts," referring to South Korea's current president. And it liberally uses quotation marks to imply illegitimacy.
The agency rarely refers to "South Korea" -- preferring terms such as "the South Korean puppet group."
In recent years, it has favored "brigandish" as the adjective of choice for the United States. Last year, it wrote that remarks by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were "brigandish sophism reminiscent of a thief crying 'Stop the thief!' " Clinton seems a favorite target. "Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping," KCNA opined in an editorial in July 2009.
It frequently warns that war is imminent, and the language is often recycled. This week, the wording is that the "Korean peninsula is inching closer to the brink of war due to the reckless plan of those trigger-happy elements." That's almost copied and pasted from June last year, when it wrote: "The situation is inching close to the brink of war due to the brigandish [that word again] moves of the U.S."
If Washington is often the villain, the hero is always the "dear leader" and "peerless patriot," Kim Jong Il. He has been variously credited with ensuring there is not a single case of HIV/AIDS in North Korea and dispensing vital advice to farmers.
The cult of personality is never far from KCNA's output. "Groups and centres for the study of Kimjongilism were formed and are active in many countries of the six continents, which is given attention as an expression of the unanimous aspiration and will of the progressive humankind," it wrote in 1997.

The mix of news on KCNA is often eclectic. On the day that North Korea carried out its first nuclear test in 2006, the agency reported "a great leap forward in the building of a great prosperous powerful socialist nation." But it also announced that commemorative stamps had been issued to mark the 80th anniversary of the Down-with-Imperialism Union (DIU) and that Kim had received a gift from a Nepalese library delegation.
Despite the verbiage, Korea analysts pore over the tone and content of KCNA's output. It's almost an anthropological exercise -- detecting the coded signals being sent to friend and foe and to the North Korean people.
Sometimes, those signals are hard to divine. In one dispatch earlier this year, KCNA lambasted the investigation that concluded the North was responsible for sinking a South Korean warship. "This is a natural product of the plot hatched by those who sought to gain something through a clumsy farce only to meet a fiasco," it fulminated.
But at other times, what is said -- or not said -- can be significant. On New Year's Day 2009, the annual policy message said North Korea would "develop relations with the countries friendly towards us." That and an absence of bellicose words directed at the United States was taken as a hint that the North was willing to work with the incoming Obama administration.
Similarly, when the West was awash with rumors about Kim's health last year, KCNA made a point of reporting that he had "granted a long audience to and had a cordial talk with Hyon Jong Un [Hyun Jeong-Eun], chairperson of the Hyundai Group."
And occasionally, the agency admits to problems at home -- alluding to food shortages last year when it said "a radical turn should be brought about in the efforts to improve the standard of people's living."
However outlandish some of KCNA's claims and reports may seem, its output is still unwelcome in the South. KCNA's English-language output (which is actually hosted by servers in Japan) is blocked in the South -- along with a number of other websites that have connections with North Korea.
So residents of Seoul were at least spared the news Friday that the armed forces of the North are "ready to give a shower of dreadful fire and blow up the bulwark of the enemies."

China's Foreign Ministry has begun working to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula, holding a series of talks with Washington, Seoul and Pyongyang.

Officials said their priority was to avoid a recurrence of Tuesday's violence, which saw North Korea fire artillery shells at a southern island.

The South responded with its own fire, and announced joint military exercises with US forces would begin on Sunday.

Pyongyang said the drills were pushing the region to "the brink of war".

The US and other powers have repeatedly urged Beijing - Pyongyang's only ally - to use its influence to defuse the crisis.

On Friday, China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi met the North's ambassador in person, and spoke on the phone to his US and South Korean counterparts, according to a statement carried by the state-run Xinhua news agency.

"The top priority now is to keep the situation under control and to ensure such events do not happen again," the statement said.

Few details of the conversations were released, and the US state department has not yet commented.

At least four South Koreans died on Tuesday when the North shelled the Southern island of Yeonpyeong.


The incident led to the South replacing its defence minister and evacuating most of the island's civilian population.

Another panic was sparked briefly on Friday afternoon when artillery fire was heard near the island, sending people running for shelters.

But the South's military later said the noises appeared to be a routine military exercise by the North.

The top US commander in South Korea, General Walter Sharp, was visiting Yeonpyeong during the brief alert.

Tuesday's barrage of shells was one of the North's most belligerent actions since the end of the 1950-53 war, which concluded without a peace treaty.

Continue reading the main story
North Korea: Timeline 2010

26 March: South Korean warship, Cheonan, sinks, killing 46 sailors

20 May: Panel says a North Korean torpedo sank the ship; Pyongyang denies involvement

July-September: South Korea and US hold military exercises; US places more sanctions on Pyongyang

29 September: North holds rare party congress seen as part of father-to-son succession move

29 October: Troops from North and South Korea exchange fire across the land border

12 November: North Korea shows US scientist new - undeclared - uranium enrichment facility

23 November: North shells island of Yeonpyeong, killing at least four South Koreans

The North's official KCNA news agency later warned against the planned military exercises on the weekend.

"The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching closer to the brink of war due to the reckless plan of those trigger-happy elements to stage again war exercises targeted against the [North]," a KCNA report stated.

The forthcoming four-day US-South Korea naval manoeuvres were organised well ahead of this week's attack, but they have angered both North Korea and China.

Beijing has warned against any infractions into its exclusive economic zone, which extends 320km (200 miles) from China's coast.

But the Pentagon insisted that China was kept informed about the naval exercises, and insisted that they were not directed at China.

"As with previous exercises in this series, these operations are defensive in nature and designed to strengthen deterrence against North Korea," the Pentagon said.

Meanwhile, South Korea has increased troop numbers on Yeonpyeong and says it will change its rules of engagement to allow it to respond more forcefully to similar incidents.

The cabinet decided that the old rules of engagement gave too much emphasis to preventing a military incident escalating.

source: bbc.co.uk

A presidential spokesman said the South would implement different levels of response in the future, depending on whether the North attacked military or civilian targets.

This week's tension comes as the North is undergoing an apparent transition of power from leader Kim Jong-il to his young son Kim Jong-un.