Washington  - North Korea is loading a Taepodong missile onto a launch pad ahead of what Pyongyang said is a plan to place a satellite into space, a US official confirmed.

"It is out there," the counter-proliferation official said Wednesday. "It's the latest indication the North Koreans are moving forward with their announced plans to launch."

The official confirmed earlier Japanese media reports that the rocket was being moved onto the launch pad for North Korea's announced April 4-8 launch.

Washington, Mar 26 : By mapping the entire genome of a bacterium that infects a close relative of the fruit fly, scientists at Uppsala University have found that gene exchange is widespread among this sex-manipulating bacteria.

The finding paves the way for using sex-manipulating bacteria as environmentally friendly pesticides against harmful insects.

Washington, March 26 : In a new study, scientists have found that insects known as aphids can evade parasitic wasps by snuggling close to their dead comrades.

A parasitic wasp typically lays its eggs inside an aphid. After hatching, the young wasp eats the aphid from the inside out before breaking free and flying away.

Normally, when a non-predator, like a deer or a rabbit, encounters a bunch of dead animals, its instinct is to flee.

Washington, Mar 26 : A significant minority of psychotherapists are attempting to help "cure" gays and lesbians of their homosexuality without any evidence that such methods work, says a new research.

The research funded by the Wellcome Trust has been published in the open access journal BMC Psychiatry.

Washington, Mar 26 : Conservatives in America have embraced Louisiana's Indian origin Governor Bobby Jindal as their 2012 GOP hopeful, and he played to the gallery by warning at a Republican fund raising dinner that President Barack Obama is engaged in the greatest expansion of government.

Washington, March 26 : Scientists have solved the mystery of arsenic-poisoning crisis in Asia, by discovering how arsenic enters the groundwater below the Himalayas.

Thousands of people in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Myanmar and Vietnam die of cancer each year from chronic exposure to arsenic, according to the World Health Organization.