By Alexander Smith, NBC News contributor

North Korea is improving one of its missile launch sites and may soon be able to fire rockets large enough to hit mainland United States, according to experts.

Recent satellite images appear to show that one of the country's launch stations has been modified to accommodate an intercontinental missile 25 percent larger than one it fired into space in Dec. 2012, according to a report by Johns Hopkins University’s U.S.-Korea Institute (USKI) published Wednesday

The report added that the launch pad, which could be ready as early as March, would allow for "a more robust rocket test program in the future involving larger space launch vehicles and road-mobile ballistic missiles able to attack targets in Northeast Asia and the United States."

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday that North Korea had gone through with its threat to continue its nuclear weapons program, posing “a serious threat to the United States and to the security environment in East Asia.”

By Kelsey Givens
Pahrump Valley Times
kgivens@pvtimes.com



A Nye County Sheriff’s sergeant was ensnared in a drug sting and arrested over the weekend after a subordinate became suspicious of the superior officer’s insistence that he be the one to book a bottle of pills into evidence.

The subordinate alerted narcotics officers to the sergeant’s demands on Friday. The narcotics officers were able to inventory the pills before the subordinate handed them over to Sgt. Michael Horn to be booked into evidence.

Once the sergeant booked the pills, narcotics officers took them from the evidence room and recounted them. A total of 60 15 milligram morphine pills were missing. Sheriff Tony DeMeo was alerted to the situation at 11:35 p.m. Friday. By Saturday, police had search warrants for Horn’s person, his patrol car and his home.

When the search warrants were served, Horn happened to have just come back from a call to service at an elderly woman’s home; the sergeant allegedly coerced the woman to give him her pain medication.