While North Koreans celebrated the birthday of their country’s founder this weekend, South Korean warships searched for debris from Pyongyang’s failed rocket launch. Doualy Xaykaothao has more.

 

About ten naval ships are out in the Yellow Sea, trying to locate broken parts from North Korea’s Unha-3 rocket. An official with South Korea’s Defense Ministry said at least one corvette is using sonar or radar to recover parts. US Navy minesweepers were also expected to be helping in the search. In Pyongyang, tens of thousands of North Koreans gathered in a stadium for a rally to honor the 100th birthday of North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung. His grandson, Kim Jong-un,  waved to the crowd as a sea of people applauded. The audience later chanted his name and in unison said “defend him to the death.” For NPR News, I’m Doualy Xaykaothao in Seoul.

 

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says neither the economy nor the financial system have fully recovered from the collapse of the housing market. Steve Becker of Market News International has details on the chairman’s latest comments.

 

Though unsound mortgages triggered the crisis, Bernanke says it was rooted in structural problems with the financial system and its regulation. To avoid or at least mitigate future panics, he says, the vulnerabilities that underlay the recent crisis must be fully addressed. The Fed is best-known for setting interest rates and controlling the money supply. But the 2010 Dodd-Frank law gives the Fed expanded responsibility to supervise the biggest financial firms and oversea risk taking throughout the system, and Bernanke says that process is well underway. He says the Fed is now putting a promotional financial stability on an equal footing with monetary policy. For NPR News, I’m Steve Becker.

 

At the Summit of the Americas in Colombia, President Obama says there’s reason for hemispheric optimism.

 

“It is remarkable to see the changes that had been taking place in a relatively short period of time in Latin and Central America and in the Caribbean.”

 

Trade is a major focus this weekend.

 

This is NPR News.

 

A US bankruptcy judge has approved the sale of the Los Angeles Dodgers to a group led by former NBA basketball star Magic Johnson. As NPR’s John Burnett reports, the selling price is 2.1 billion dollars.

 

With the sale approval, the team can finally leave Chapter 11 bankruptcy and its creditors can be paid. The steep price includes the baseball team, Dodgers Stadium and the land underneath it. A lawyer for Major League Baseball, however, expressed disapproval of the deal and asked the Delaware-based judge to allow the league to stop the transaction. The Dodgers entered bankruptcy last June, the time when outgoing Dodgers owner Frank McCourt had been arguing with the league over a new television deal. The sale has to close by the end of this month, when McCourt has to meet a deadline to pay his ex-wife 130 million dollars. John Burnett, NPR News.

 

On both sides in the Atlantic and on the North Atlantic in between, there are commemorations of the sinking of the Titanic 100 years ago on this date. On board, the Balmoral, a liner retracing the course of the Titanic and carrying history buffs and descendants of Titanic passengers, Captain Robert Bamberg kept passengers abreast of the ship’s progress.

 

“A very good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, Captain speaking. Time has just gone 12 o'clock onboard. Balmoral’s en route to the Titanic wreckage site.”

 

Meanwhile, onboard passengers dressed in Edwardian fashions attended a gala dinner. Fifteen hundred people died when the Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank to the ocean floor.

 

I’m Louise Schiavone, NPR News Washington.