Little Kim Shouts out to Manhattan
North Korea claimed Sunday that it could wipe out Manhattan by sending a hydrogen bomb on a ballistic missile to the heart of New York City, the latest in a string of brazen threats.
Although there are many reasons to believe that Kim Jong Un’s regime is exaggerating its technical capabilities, the near-daily drumbeat of boasts and warnings from North Korea underlines its anger at efforts to thwart its ambitions.
“Our hydrogen bomb is much bigger than the one developed by the Soviet Union,”DPRK Today, a state-run outlet, reported Sunday. DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name.
“If this H-bomb were to be mounted on an intercontinental ballistic missile and fall on Manhattan in New York City, all the people there would be killed immediately and the city would burn down to ashes,” the report said, citing a nuclear scientist named Cho Hyong Il.
The website is a strange choice for making such a claim, given that it also carries reports about such topics as rabbit farming and domestically made school backpacks.
North Korea’s newly developed hydrogen bomb “surpasses our imagination,” Cho is quoted as saying.
“The H-bomb developed by the Soviet Union in the past was able to smash windows of buildings 1,000 kms away and the heat was strong enough to cause third-degree burns 100 kms away,” the report continued. (A thousand kilometers is about 625 miles; 100 kilometers, about 62.5 miles.)
[Punishing North Korea: A rundown on current sanctions]
Kim in January ordered North Korea’s fourth nuclear test and claimed that it was ahydrogen bomb, not a simple atomic one. But most experts are skeptical of the claim, saying the seismic waves caused by the blast were similar to those produced by the North’s three previous tests.
Then in February, Kim oversaw the launch of what North Korea said was arocket that put a satellite into orbit, a move widely considered part of a long-range-ballistic-missile program.
North Korea has made advances in its intercontinental-ballistic-missile program, and though experts generally conclude that the United States’ West Coast could be within reach, there has been no suggestion that the North would be able to hit the East Coast.
Many experts are also skeptical of the “miniaturized warhead” that Kim showed off last week during a visit to a nuclear weapons plant.
But Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, warned against dismissing the claim too soon.
“It does not look like U.S. devices, to be sure, but it is hard to know if aspects of the model are truly implausible or simply that North Korean nuclear weapons look different than their Soviet and American cousins,” Lewis wrote in an analysis for38 North, a website devoted to North Korea. “The size, however, is consistent with my expectations for North Korea.”
As international condemnation of the North’s acts mounted, culminating this month in the United Nations’ toughestsanctions yet against Pyongyang, Kim’s regime has become increasingly belligerent, firing missiles into the Sea of Japan — also known as the East Sea — and issuing a new threat or denunciation almost every day.
The sanctions coincide with annual spring drills between the U.S. and South Korean militaries, which Pyongyang considers a rehearsal for an invasion. The ongoing exercises are viewed as particularly antagonistic because special forces are practicing “decapitation strikes” that target Northern leaders and the destruction of Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile sites.
[In drills, U.S., South Korea practice striking North’s nuclear plants, leaders]
On Friday, North Korea’s state media reported that Kim ordered more nuclear tests, while the North’s Korean People’s Army warned in a statement Saturday that it would counter the drills by “liberat[ing] the whole of South Korea including Seoul . . . with an ultra-precision blitzkrieg strike of the Korean style.”
South Korea’s Defense Ministry urged Pyongyang to stop its threats and provocations.
“If the North continues to make provocations despite the stern warnings made by our military, it is inevitable for us to roll out a strict response that may lead to the destruction of the Pyongyang regime,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement, according to the Yonhap News Agency.
Miss Step and Fetch Prepares Public for Hillary Clearance
It increasingly appears that theFBI investigationinto former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal private email server to send, receive and store official classified documents is drawing near a close, and it seems likely the FBI will recommend criminal charges
However, there remain many who are skeptical that President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice will pursue those charges, essentially shielding the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee from being held accountable for her actions.
Attorney General Loretta Lynchdid little to assuage the fears of those skeptics during testimony at a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, claiming she is not required by law to pursue any recommendations from the FBI, according to theWashington Examiner.
Lynch was asked by Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn, “If the FBI were to make a referral to the Department of Justice to pursue a case by way of indictment and to convene a grand jury for that purpose, the Department of Justice is not required by law to do so, are they — are you?”
Studiously avoiding a direct answer to Cornyn’s question, Lynch replied, “It would not be an operation of law, it would be an operation of procedures,” adding that any pursuit of a criminal case would be “done in conjunction with the agents” involved in the investigation, and that she wouldn’t want to “cut them out of the process.”
Lynch also carefully dodged a question regarding the recent offer of immunity to former State Department IT specialistBrian Pagliano, who was believed to have been the individual responsible for setting up the private server on Hillary’s behalf.
“If in fact this was immunity granted by a court, that had to be done under the auspices and with the approval of the Department of Justice, which you head,” Cornyn asked Lynch directly.
Lynch merely replied, “We don’t discuss the specifics of any ongoing investigation. With respect to the procedure relating to any specific witness, I would not be able to comment.”
She then added, “With respect to Mr. Pagliano or anyone who has been identified as a potential witness in any case, I’m not able to comment on the specifics.”
While these carefully scripted non-answers have come to be standard fare from political appointees on both sides of the aisle, but particularly from the “most transparent administration in history,” they could also have been deliberately devised as a softening blow for the potentially bombshell announcement that Obama’s DOJ will refuse to pursue recommended criminal charges against Hillary Clinton.
Should that eventuality come to pass, it will merely serve as a signal that the final nail has been driven into the coffin of the rule of law and equality under the law in the United States of America,courtesy of President Barack Obama, hammer (and sickle?) in hand.
Obama Signs Act to Take Over the USA
Last week, President Barrack Obama signed the “Patriot Defense of Liberty Enabler Act” which is his latest in a series of Executive Orders to bring the U.S. in “compliance with the United Nations Agenda 21”
The President says that this plan will allow the Federal Government to “assume control of all Federal territoryin case of a National Emergency or Civil Disobedience”. In addition, this act will allow the U.N. Troops to assist U.S. Forces when needed on domestic soil.
CIA Agent Assassinated by Blowing up Plane
Federal Security Service (FSB) interim report to the Ministry of Emergency Situations (EMERCOM) and Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) circulating in the Kremlin today states that it has confirmed from their initial investigation of the list of passengers and crew aboard FlyDubai Flight FZ981, that exploded early this morning in Rostov-on-Don, that this place was carrying a “high level” American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official who was travelling on a forged British passport using the name of Larisa Allen—and that aboard this plane too was an estimated US$27 million in currency.
According to this report, this FlyDubai Boeing 737-800 aircraft that had taken off from Dubai Airport exploded this morning atabout 03:50 Moscow time (00:50 GMT) while landing at Rostov Airport killing all 55 passengers and seven crew members aboard.
Flights from Dubai to the Federation are common, this report says, as many young Russian females work is this most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as “dancers” (i.e. prostitutes) with many companies advertising their “services”.
With organized crime elements within the Federation (Russian Mafia) controlling the bulk of these “dancers”, and with Dubai having become a global centre for terror funding, money-laundering, drug money and mafia cash, this report continues, CIA fears that terrorist funds were being diverted to Russia provides the most likely explanation as to why one of their “high level” officials was on board this plane.
As to how the estimated US$27 million in currency came to be aboard this plane packed into the cargo hold in “metal/aluminum” containers, this report notes, is currently being suspected by the FSB to have been “caused/effectuated” by the Cypriot pilot of this plane as the links between Cypress banks and Federation organized crime have long been known.
With the IAC issuing a public statement that they have now taken control of this investigation, this report concludes, and due to the death of this “high level” CIA official, along with the millions-of-dollars found aboard this exploded plane, President Putin, who had previously expressed his condolences towards this tragedy, has authorized US, French and Dubai intelligence agencies to join it too.
A Universe of Minimal Genome
Scientists have deleted nearly half the genes of a microbe, creating a stripped-down version that still functions, an achievement that might reveal secrets of how life works.
It may also help researchers create new bacteria tailored for pumping out medicines and other valuable substances.
The newly created bacterium has a smaller genetic code than does any natural free-living counterpart, with 531,000 DNA building blocks containing 473 genes. (Humans have more than 3 billion building blocks and more than 20,000 genes).
But even this stripped-down organism is full of mystery. Scientists say they have little to no idea what a third of its genes actually do.
"We're showing how complex life is, even in the simplest of organisms," researcher J. Craig Venter told reporters. "These findings are very humbling."
Some of the mystery genes may be clues to discovering unknown fundamental processes of life, his colleague Clyde Hutchison III said in an interview. Both researchers, from the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, California, are among the authors of a paper on the project released Thursday by the journal Science.
The DNA code, or genome, is contained in a brand-new bacterium dubbed JCVI-syn3.0.
The genome is not some one-and-only minimal set of genes needed for life itself. For one thing, if the researchers had pared DNA from a different bacterium they would probably have ended up with a different set of genes. For another, the minimum genome an organism needs depends on the environment in which it lives.
And the new genome includes genes that are not absolutely essential to life, because they help the bacterial populations grow fast enough to be practical for lab work.
The genome is "as small as we can get it and still have an organism that is ... useful," Hutchison said.
One goal of such work is to understand what each gene in a living cell does, which would lead to a deep understanding of how cells work, he said. With the new bacterium, "we're closer to that than we are for any other cell," he said.
Another goal is to use such minimal-DNA microbes as a chassis for adding genes to make the organisms produce medicines, fuels and other substances for uses like nutrition and agriculture, said study co-author Daniel Gibson of Synthetic Genomics in La Jolla.
The work began with a manmade version of a microbe that normally lives in sheep, called M. mycoides (my-KOY'-deez). It has about 900 genes. The scientists identified 428 nonessential genes, built their new genome without them, and showed that it was complete enough to let a bacterium survive.
Experts not involved with the work were impressed.
"I find this paper really ground breaking," said Jorg Stulke of the University of Goettingen in Germany, who is working on a similar project with a different bacterium. In an email, he said the researchers seem to have gotten at least very close to a minimum genome for M. mycoides.
Ferren Isaacs of Yale University called the work "an impressive tour de force," one that may begin to identify "a universe of minimal genomes."
The Moon is 125 Miles out of Place
The moon's axis is believed to have shifted because of lunar volcanoes more than three million years ago, moving it about 125 miles from its original location, suggests new research in the journal Nature.
Researchers theorize that the moon had once tilted differently after examining its current north and south poles, and finding lunar ice in places they did not expect, according to The Guardian.