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tory can't be excluded."
• But the Foreign Ministry insisted in a statement Friday that Bogdanov only was referring to the claims of the "Syrian opposition and its foreign sponsors forecasting their quick victory over the regime in Damascus."
• "In that context, Bogdanov again confirmed Russia's principled stance that a political settlement in Syria has no alternative," the ministry's spokesman, Alexander Lukashevich said in the statement.
• Bogdanov was speaking before the Public Chamber, a Kremlin advisory body. His statement quoted by Russian news agencies marked the first official acknowledgment from Moscow that Assad's regime may fall and was certain to be seen as a betrayal by the Syrian ruler, further eroding his grip on power amid the opposition successes on the ground and a recognition of the Syrian opposition by the United States and other leading world powers.
• ___

• PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) -- A triumphant North Korea staged a mass rally of soldiers and civilians Friday to glorify the country's young ruler, who took a big gamble this week in sending a satellite into orbit in defiance of international warnings.
• Wednesday's rocket launch came just eight months after a similar attempt ended in an embarrassing public failure, and just under a year after Kim Jong Un inherited power following the death of his father.
• The surprising success of the launch may have earned Kim global condemnation, but at home, the gamble paid off, at least in the short term, projecting the 20-something Kim to his people as powerful, capable and determined.
• Pyongyang says the rocket put a crop and weather monitoring satellite into orbit. The rest of the world, however, sees it as a thinly-disguised test of banned long-range missile technology. And the fresh round of U.N. sanctions it could bring would increase his country's international isolation and potentially strengthen the hand of the only entity that poses a threat to his rule: the military.
• To his people, the launch's success, 14 years after North Korea's first attempt, shows more than a little of the gambling spirit in the third Kim to rule North Korea since it became a country in 1948.
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