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CBS News In Focus: For Nearly 60 Years, Communist North Korea Has Shut Itself Off From the Rest of the World

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Yongbyon facility is far more advanced than anyone thought, say three Stanford scientists who recently visited.














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North Korea Ramps Up Rhetoric Over Planned U.S. and South Korea Military Drills as Clash Between Nations Builds   On Edge in Seoul

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Day Two of WikiLeaks Release Reveals Expectation for North Korea to Implode, China Accused of "No Will" to Use Leverage

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U.N. Schedules Closed-Door Meeting Sunday to Discuss Escalating Tension Between North and South Korea

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Following his visit to North Korea, an unofficial US envoy, Bill Richardson, said Pyongyang may be yielding to international pressure to have its nuclear facilities monitored by UN inspectors.

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Communist Regime Responds to Massive Military Drills Near Boarder with Dire Rhetoric, but No Military Action, Yet

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North Korea warns of war ahead of U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises.














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China has sent an envoy to Seoul in an effort to ease the tension on the Korean peninsula. Beijing wants an emergency meeting of the six nations involved in the North Korea disarmament talks.

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World Health Officials Debate Whether To Destroy Last Existing Samples of Smallpox

Humanitys worst scourge, the smallpox virus, may finally wind up on death row in May if health officials decide to destroy the last known samples. The virus was eliminated in human populations more than 30 years ago, but several international groups want to kill any remaining virus samples stored in test tubes on two continents.

Destruction of the smallpox virus, which was eradicated in the 1970s, has been mulled since 1980, but World Health Organization officials renewed debate about the matter earlier this year and will decide the viruses fate at an upcoming meeting.

Two labs possess the last known live samples of the variola virus - the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and a Russian facility in Siberia. Officials in developing nations, where smallpox is more likely to spread should it resurface, have been pushing for their destruction since 1980. The World Health Assembly decided to kill the samples in 1996, but they have been granted stays of execution in the decade and a half since, with the United States, Russia and others arguing the virus samples could seed new vaccines and potential treatments for infected patients.

In January, WHO officials again started discussions about whether to destroy the samples. The World Health Assembly will decide in May. LiveScience reviews the controversy here.

Epidemiologists believe smallpox has killed about one-third of those it has infected throughout history, accounting for hundreds of millions of victims dating back to ancient Egypt. A decade-long global vaccination effort eliminated the virus from human populations; the last natural case was found in October 1977 in Somalia. The elimination of Rinderpest, a cattle plague, will be only the second such disease eradication story in human history.

Officials in the U.S. and Russia have said they will fight efforts to set a destruction date, arguing the viruses are needed for research and to guard against bioterrorism. Some fear nations like North Korea or Iran may possess secret samples, although those countries deny it.

[LiveScience]

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