Word: nuclearism
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...Last month, the news was filled with headlines about a large asteroid which might hit the Earth in 2036. Apophis, as it is called, is 390 meters wide. If it strikes the planet, it would release more than 100,000 times the energy than that of the nuclear blast over Hiroshima. The asteroid was a big story, but buried deep in the press reports about it was the fact that the odds of a collision are 1 in 5,500 based on current information...
...bets are off if climate change leads to the loss of the Himalayan glaciers whose seasonal melt provides water for billions in Asia. In fact, the history of cross-border water disputes has been surprisingly conciliatory so far. India and Pakistan have fought three wars and currently point nuclear weapons at each other, yet the Indus Waters Treaty - which divvies up the two countries' trans-boundary waterways, overseen by a joint commission - has survived for decades. And even though nations can be quite possessive over water (India and Bangladesh have skirmished repeatedly over the shared Mahananda River), they trade...
...days, when the Red Army's millions were spread across a vast swath of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. When the Soviet empire began collapsing in 1989, Russia lost the bulk of its foot soldiers, as well as several key defense-related industries, ranging from shipbuilding in Ukraine to nuclear enrichment in Kazakhstan, according to an analysis of Russia's military in February by Stratfor, a U.S. company. The upheaval also forced many of Russia's finest engineers to quit for better-paid jobs abroad. Defense factories across Russia lumbered through the 1990s, many of them barely seeing a splash...
...Complicating negotiations to let them go, of course, is the North's rocket launch on April 5 and the international censure it received. Infuriated by the United Nations' condemnation of the launch, which flew over Japan and fell into the Pacific Ocean, Pyongyang kicked out international monitors from its nuclear facilities on April 14, and has said since then that it would restart its nuclear program and quit the on-again off-again so-called six-party disarmament talks...
...many expect Pyongyang to use the jailed reporters as pawns in the stalemate, increasing pressure on the Obama administration to make North Korea a foreign policy priority earlier than planned. That means the White House could find itself revisiting topics from nuclear weapons to restarting food aid, suspended last March, sooner than it had planned. "North Korea is going to make them the most valuable bargaining chip as it can," says Kim Taewoo a North Korea expert at the Korea Institute For Defense Analysis. He expects their trial, the start date of which has yet to be announced...