People were jolted out of bed by an early morning earthquake in Japan’s “Second City”;  US Secretary of State John Kerry is in South Korea to work on resolving the current tensions on the peninsula;  Women want to pray at the Western Wall, Israeli cops stop them; And a legendary comedian is dead.

A magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck off of Osaka, Japan on Awaji Island, the same place as the killer 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake.  Folks are still walking up there, and the damage is still being assessed.  Japan’s national broadcaster NHK has shown images of damage to older buildings on Awaji Island, such as traditional clay tiles knocked off the roofs.

US Secretary of State John Kerry is warning North Korea not to launch any missiles, and is pressing China to use its influence to defuse the tension with Pyongyang.  Kerry spoke in Seoul where he is working directly with his South Korean counterpart and next heads to Beijing.  A White House spokesman denied earlier reports that North Korea has the capability to mount a nuclear weapon onto a missile.

The Eurozone is giving Ireland and Portugal an extra seven years to repay their bailout loans.  The extensions are intended to ease financial pressure on the countries, helping them resume long-term bond sales when their bailout loans run dry in the coming months.

Israeli police arrested five women in prayer shawls at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, where the Orthodox practice of “No Girls Allowed” is enforced.  This comes a day after Israeli officials began considering a groundbreaking plan to allow non-Orthodox services to be held there.  Detentions of women in prayer shawls in recent months have enflamed American Jews, who’ve responded by putting pressure onto Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow equality at the wall.

Eleven people are dead after a series of bomb blasts at Sunni Muslim Mosques in Iraq.  It happened as worshippers were leaving after Friday prayers.  Tensions are high between the Sunni and Shia in advance of some regional elections on 20 April.

The family of Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda agreed to send his remains to a laboratory in the United States for toxicology tests.  Neruda’s body was exhumed on Monday.  A former aide is claiming that Neruda was killed by a lethal injection ordered by the fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet, instead of the officially accepted cause of death of prostate cancer.

The legendary American comedian Jonathan Winters died in his home in Southern California.  He appeared in numerous movies and TV shows from the 1950s well past 2000, playing eccentric characters such as Maude Frickert.  He was 87 years old.

The BBC either wimped out, took the high road, or found a suitable compromise.  Instead of playing the full version of “Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead”, a five second clip of the song will be played on Sunday’s pop music shows.  The old song was lifted into the top ten download charts by Brits who weren’t exactly saddened by the death of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.  It pits those who think the shows shouldn’t be hijacked by politics against those who believe the music marketplace should be respected.