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February, are ready to launch a medium-range missile.
• North Korea's own media gave little indication Monday of how high the tensions are.
• ___

• BAGHDAD (AP) -- A series of attacks across Iraq killed 27 people and wounded well over 100 on Monday morning, officials said.
• The attacks, many involving car bombs, took place less than a week before Iraqis in much of the country are scheduled to vote in the country's first elections since the 2011 U.S. troop withdrawal. The vote will be a key test of security forces' ability to keep voters safe.
• There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but coordinated attacks are a favorite tactic of al-Qaida's Iraq branch.
• Iraqi officials believe the insurgent group is growing stronger and increasingly coordinating with allies fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad across the border. They say rising lawlessness on the Syria-Iraq frontier and cross-border cooperation with the Syrian militant group Nusra Front has improved the militants' supply of weapons and foreign fighters.
• Nearly all of the deadly attacks reported by police officials were bombings, which struck Baghdad, in the western city of Fallujah, the contested northern city of Kirkuk and towns south of the capital. Another 100 people were wounded.
• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- DNA may be the building block of life, but can something taken from it also be the building block of a multimillion-dollar medical monopoly?
• The Supreme Court grapples Monday with the question of whether human genes can be patented. Its ultimate answer could reshape U.S. medical research, the fight against diseases like breast and ovarian cancer and the multi-billion dollar medical and biotechnology business.
• "The intellectual framework that comes out of the decision could have a significant impact on other patents -- for antibiotics, vaccines, hormones, stem cells and diagnostics on infectious microbes that are found in nature," Robert Cook-Deegan,

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