Russia this week vetoed the annual renewal of a panel of experts tasked with monitoring the enforcement of U.N. sanctions against North Korea for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Thirteen U.N. Security Council members voted in favor of extending the panel’s mandate for an additional year, while China abstained.
North Korea has been under sanctions for its ballistic missile and nuclear programs since 2006 and the vote does not affect the sanctions themselves.
The panel, made up of independent experts, has been conducting oversight for 15 years, reporting twice a year to the Security Council. Experts also provide recommendations on how to better implement measures.
Russia’s veto came amid allegations that North Korea has transferred weapons to Russia to use in its invasion of Ukraine. Both Russia and North Korea have denied the claims.
South Korea’s U.N. Ambassador Joonkook Hwang slammed the outcome of the vote.
“This is outrageous and makes no sense at all, given the continued and accelerated advancement of the North Korean nuclear and missile programs,” he said. “Pyongyang has been openly denouncing the authority of the Security Council and pursuing an increasingly dangerous and aggressive nuclear policy, in particular targeting the Republic of Korea.”
The panel’s current mandate expires on April 30. Their recent report, released this March, looked at alleged cyberattacks by North Korea to further bolster its nuclear weapons program.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia was not sold on the panel’s independence.
“Its work is increasingly being reduced to playing into the hands of Western approaches, reprinting biased information and analyzing newspaper headlines and poor quality photos,” Nebenzia said to the Security Council before the vote on Thursday, according to Reuters.
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UNITED NATIONS — A veto Thursday by Russia ended monitoring of U.N. sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear program, prompting Western accusations that Moscow is seeking to avoid scrutiny as it allegedly violates the sanctions to buy weapons from Pyongyang for its war in Ukraine.
Russia’s turnaround on the U.N. monitoring reflects how Moscow’s growing animosity with the United States and its Western allies since the start of the Ukraine war has made it difficult to reach consensus on even issues where there has been longstanding agreement.
The veto came during a vote on a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have extended the mandate of a panel of experts monitoring sanctions on North Korea for a year, but which will now halt its operation when its current mandate expires at the end of April.
The vote in the 15-member council, with 13 in favor, Russia against, and China abstaining, has no impact on the actual sanctions against North Korea, which remain in force.
Russia had never before tried to block the work of the panel of experts, which had been renewed annually by the U.N. Security Council for 14 years and reflected global opposition to North Korea’s expanding nuclear weapons program.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council before the vote that Western nations are trying to “strangle” North Korea and that sanctions are losing their “relevance” and are “detached from reality” in preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the country.
He accused the panel of experts of “increasingly being reduced to playing into the hands of Western approaches, reprinting biased information and analyzing newspaper headlines and poor quality photos.” Therefore, he said, it is “essentially conceding its inability to come up with sober assessments of the status of the sanctions regime.”
But U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood called the panel’s work essential and accused Russia of attempting to silence its “independent objective investigations” because it “began reporting in the last year on Russia’s blatant violations of the U.N. Security Council resolutions.”
He warned that Russia’s veto will embolden North Korea to continue jeopardizing global security through development “of long-range ballistic missiles and sanctions evasion efforts.”
White House national security spokesman John Kirby condemned Russia’s veto as a “reckless action” that undermines sanctions imposed on North Korea, while warning against the deepening cooperation between North Korea and Russia, particularly as North Korea continues to supply Russia with weapons as it wages its war in Ukraine.
“The international community should resolutely uphold the global nonproliferation regime and support the people of Ukraine as they defend their freedom and independence against Russia’s brutal aggression,” Kirby told reporters.
Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward said Russia’s veto follows arms deals between Russia and North Korea in violation of U.N. sanctions, including “the transfer of ballistic missiles, which Russia has then used in its illegal invasion of Ukraine since the early part of this year.”
“This veto does not demonstrate concern for the North Korean people or the efficacy of sanctions,” she said. “It is about Russia gaining the freedom to evade and breach sanctions in pursuit of weapons to be used against Ukraine.”
“This panel, through its work to expose sanctions non-compliance, was an inconvenience for Russia,” Woodward said.
France’s U.N. Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere added that “North Korea has been providing Russia with military material in support of its aggression against Ukraine, in violation of many resolutions which Russia voted in favor of.”
Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyansky responded, calling these “unfounded insinuations” that “only strengthened our conviction that we took the right decision to not support the extension of the panel of experts.”
The Security Council imposed sanctions after North Korea’s first nuclear test explosion in 2006 and tightened them over the years in a total of 10 resolutions seeking — so far unsuccessfully — to cut funds and curb its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
The last sanctions resolution was adopted by the council in December 2017. China and Russia vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution in May 2022 that would have imposed new sanctions over a spate of intercontinental ballistic missile launches.
The Security Council established a committee to monitor sanctions and the mandate for its panel of experts to investigate violations had been renewed for 14 years until Thursday.
An old news report about the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visiting Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of 240 million people, has resurfaced in misleading online posts. The video of IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi — which featured a “breaking news” banner — was originally broadcast by a local news outlet in 2023. In response to the posts, Pakistan’s foreign ministry said he did not visit the South Asian country in March 2024.
“Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi of the IAEA visited Pakistan, discussing nuclear cooperation and climate change mitigation,” read a caption alongside this video on Facebook published on March 15, 2024.
Featuring a logo for local news outlet GNN, the “breaking news” report shows the head of the UN nuclear agency shaking hands with former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.
The post continued: “Meetings with top officials focused on enhancing collaboration in peaceful nuclear technology. Grossi inaugurated various nuclear facilities and designated Pakistan as an IAEA Regional Center for cancer treatment.
“Highlighting nuclear energy’s role in combating climate change, his visit concluded with a dinner hosted by the Foreign Secretary.”
Screenshot of the misleading Facebook post, taken on March 21, 2024
The video was also shared elsewhere on Facebook here, here and here
A similar misleading claim was shared on social media platform X here and here.
In response to the misleading posts, Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry rebuffed suggestions Grossi visited the country in March this year.
“Any stories regarding the visit of a high-level IAEA delegation to Pakistan are fake news,” the ministry said in a statement on March 15, 2024 (archived link).
“No official from IAEA is currently visiting Pakistan, nor are any policy talks planned in the near future with IAEA. Director General IAEA visited Pakistan in February 2023.”
Old news clip
A keyword search on YouTube found the video shared in the posts was originally published here on GNN’s official channel on February 15, 2023 (archived link).
Its caption said: “FM Bilawal Bhutto Meets DG (IAEA) Rafael Mariano Grossi | Breaking News | GNN”.
When Grossi visited Pakistan, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was head of the South Asian country’s foreign ministry.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in one of the misleading posts (left) and the video published by GNN in 2023 (right):
A screenshots comparison of the misleading post (left) and the original video on YouTube (right):
According to the IAEA, Grossi discussed with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif how nuclear science could help mitigate the worsening effects of climate change in Pakistan. He also visited nuclear facilities across the country, the agency said in a press release on February 16, 2023 (archived link).
Grossi was in Japan the week of March 2024 when the misleading posts circulated, meeting with various leaders about the discharge of treated water from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, according to this IAEA report (archived link).
Shortly after the misleading posts circulated online, Pakistan’s foreign minister Ishaq Dar — who has held the position since March 11, 2024 — met with Grossi on the sidelines of the Nuclear Energy Summit in Brussels, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported (archived links here and here).
TOKYO (AP) — Nagasaki marked the 78th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of the city Wednesday with the mayor urging world powers to abolish nuclear weapons, saying nuclear deterrence also increases risks of nuclear war.
Shiro Suzuki made the remark after the Group of Seven industrial powers adopted a separate document on nuclear disarmament in May that called for using nuclear weapons as deterrence.
“Now is the time to show courage and make the decision to break free from dependence on nuclear deterrence,” Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki said in his peace declaration Wednesday, “As long as states are dependent on nuclear deterrence, we cannot realize a world without nuclear weapons.”
Russia’s nuclear threat has encouraged other nuclear states to accelerate their dependence on nuclear weapons or enhance capabilities, further increasing the risk of nuclear war, and that Russia is not the only one representing the risk of nuclear deterrence, Suzuki said.
The United States dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, destroying the city and killing 140,000 people. A second attack three days later on Nagasaki killed 70,000 more people. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, ending World War II and its nearly half-century of aggression in Asia.
At 11:02 a.m., the moment the bomb exploded above the southern Japanese city, participants at the ceremony observed a moment of silence with the sound of a peace bell.
Suzuki expressed concern about the tragedy being forgotten as time passed and memories fade. Survivors have expressed frustration about the slow progress of disarmament, while the reality of the atomic bombing and their ordeals are not yet widely shared around the world.
The concern comes after widespread reaction to social media posts about the “Barbenheimer” summer blitz of the “Barbie” and “Oppenhheimer” movies that triggered outrage in Japan.
The combination of “Barbie” and a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer — who helped develop the atomic bomb — sparked memes, including of mushroom clouds. The craze was seen as minimizing the ghastly toll of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings.
Suzuki, whose parents were hibakusha, or survivors of the Nagasaki attack, said knowing the reality of the atomic bombings is the starting point for achieving a world without nuclear weapons. He said the survivors’ testimonies are a true deterrence against nuclear weapons use.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who did not attend the memorial in person, acknowledged in his video message that the path toward a nuclear-free world has grown tougher because of rising tensions and conflicts, including Russia’s war on Ukraine. Also weighing on the disarmament movemement is a deeper division in the international community.
Kishida, who represents Hiroshima in parliament, has sought to showcase the G7 commitment to nuclear disarmament but has angered the survivors for justifying nuclear arms possession for deterrence and for refusing to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Suzuki demanded Kishida’s government and national lawmakers quickly sign and ratify the treaty and attend the upcoming meeting as an observer “to clearly show Japan’s resolve to abolish nuclear weapons.”
As Washington’s ally, Japan is under the U.S. nuclear umbrella and seeks stronger protection as the allies reinforce security cooperation to deal with threats from China and North Korea’s nuclear and missile advancement. Under its new national security strategy, Kishida’s government is pushing for a military buildup focusing on strike capability.
As of March, 113,649 survivors, whose average age is 85, are certified as hibakusha and eligible for government medical support, according to the Health and Welfare Ministry. Many others, including those known as victims of the “black rain” that fell outside the initially designated areas, are still without support.
Dmitry Medvedev is afraid. He’s afraid because his boss, Vladimir Putin, is also afraid.
Former Russian president Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s security council – which autocrat Putin chairs – is a useful mouthpiece for Putin. A proxy who’s just far enough removed from Putin to say things even Putin should not say, but close enough that we can sense Putin silently mouthing the words coming from Medvedev’s mouth.
So when Medvedev threatens for the umpteenth time to nuke Ukraine, we may as well attribute those words to Putin. And when we smell Medvedev’s fear – the feeling soaking every syllable of his apocalyptic utterances – we can whiff if wafting off Putin, too.
Medvedev is afraid. Two months into Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive, Ukrainian brigades have advanced only a few miles along three or four critical axes across Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts in southern and eastern Ukraine. And they’ve paid in blood for every yard.
But there’s a reason the Ukrainians are moving slowly. Kyiv’s fast-improving artillery corps, exquisitely supplied by NATO countries, is destroying three or four Russian howitzers for every one Ukrainian howitzer the Russians destroy. And, in stark defiance of history’s preference for defending armies, the attacking Ukrainian army is killing as many Russians as the Russians are killing Ukrainians.
Kyiv’s forces are moving slowly because they’re letting their artillery lead the way. And the big guns are working methodically, grinding up one Russian echelon at a time.
Medvedev is afraid because Putin is afraid. And Putin is afraid because, 18 months into Russia’s wider attack on Ukraine, his army of more than a million people still can’t beat the Ukrainian army, which is half that size and has fewer of everything.
It’s Putin’s fear that feeds his worst impulse: to threaten, through Medvedev, the nuclear annihilation of human civilization. The virtual destruction of the only sentient species we know to exist anywhere in the vast cosmos. Make no mistake, when Medvedev says Russia might use nuclear weapons – as he did again on July 30 – he’s saying that Putin is saying that ending everything is a better outcome, for Russia, than losing a regional war of choice.
“Imagine if the … offensive, which is backed by Nato, was a success and they tore off a part of our land,” Medvedev seethed on his official social media accounts. “Then we would be forced to use a nuclear weapon according to the rules of a decree from the president of Russia.”
“There would simply be no other option,” Medvedev said. “So our enemies should pray for our warriors. They are making sure that a global nuclear fire is not ignited.”
He’s bluffing. Because he and his boss are afraid and because the bluff is all they have left as Russia’s disastrous wider war grinds into its 18th month, with no sign that Ukraine or its allies are giving up. If he weren’t bluffing, we’d know. We’d know because we – well, a vanishing few of us, maybe – would already be living in an irradiated post-apocalyptic wasteland.
In the spring of 2022, Ukrainian brigades defeated Russia’s assault on Kyiv and forced the Russian survivors back to the fringes of eastern and southern Ukraine. Six months later, eager Ukrainian brigades exploited gaps in Russian lines and pushed back the Russians even farther. And eight months after that, the Ukrainians kicked off their current counteroffensive.
And all the while, Ukrainian rockets, drones, saboteurs and assassins have killed Russian officials, shot down Russian warplanes, sunk Russian warships and blown up military sites in Russian air space, in Russian waters and on Russian soil.
Putin didn’t trigger a nuke then. He won’t trigger a nuke now. Because even as wicked, craven and cruel as Putin is, he’s not insane. And he doesn’t want to die in the retaliatory nuclear strike that surely would follow any atomic attack on Ukraine.
And even if there’s an edge of insanity in Putin’s deepening desperation, the United States and its NATO allies shouldn’t bow to nuclear threats. If Putin could merely say, through Medvedev, the word “nuclear” and get his way, he would say “nuclear” all the time – and march his army across Eastern Europe, its troops shielded by their leaders’ atomic threats.
Medvedev is afraid. Because Putin is afraid. That fear makes them reckless with their words. But it doesn’t make them suicidal.
And if I’m wrong, it won’t matter. If I’m wrong, then Putin was ready to end the world after any defeat. And if that defeat didn’t come in Ukraine, it would eventually come somewhere else. Which means Armageddon has been inevitable since 1999.
(Reuters) – Russia on Tuesday aligned itself with its ally Iran in rejecting Western attempts to maintain curbs on Iran despite the collapse of a 2015 deal intended to restrain Tehran’s nuclear program in return for relief from sanctions.
After a meeting between respective deputy foreign ministers in Tehran, Russia’s foreign ministry said Moscow and Tehran were unanimous in believing that the failure to implement the deal stemmed from the “erroneous policy of ‘maximum pressure’ pursued by the United States and those who think similarly”.
Then-U.S. president Donald Trump quit the deal known as the JCPOA in 2018, leaving economic sanctions in place, and Iran’s relations with the West have been deteriorating ever since, as it has accelerated its nuclear programme.
But Russia, which signed the deal alongside the U.S., China, Britain, France, Germany and the European Union, has been deepening ties with Iran since its invasion of Ukraine.
The war, which Russia calls a “special military operation”, has driven its own relations with the West to their lowest level in decades.
Sources told Reuters in June that European diplomats had informed Iran they planned to join the U.S. in retaining sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile programme that are set to expire in October under the nuclear deal.
They gave three reasons: Russia’s use of Iranian drones against Ukraine; the possibility that Iran might transfer ballistic missiles to Russia; and depriving Iran of the benefits of the nuclear deal, which it violated after the U.S. withdrew.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov met Iranian counterparts Ali Bagheri Kani and Reza Najafi.
Russia’s foreign ministry said the meeting had emphasised “the unacceptability of any attempts on the part of the West to impose some new schemes and approaches to solving problems related to the JCPOA, which imply damage to legitimate and mutually beneficial Russian-Iranian cooperation in various fields”.
It said there was still “no reasonable alternative” to implementing the JCPOA, as approved by the U.N. Security Council.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Kevin Liffey; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
Ukrainian heavy artillery in action on the front line near Donetsk – Libkos/AP
Dmitry Medvedev is afraid. He’s afraid because his boss, Vladimir Putin, is also afraid.
Former Russian president Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s security council – which autocrat Putin chairs – is a useful mouthpiece for Putin. A proxy who’s just far enough removed from Putin to say things even Putin should not say, but close enough that we can sense Putin silently mouthing the words coming from Medvedev’s mouth.
So when Medvedev threatens for the umpteenth time to nuke Ukraine, we may as well attribute those words to Putin. And when we smell Medvedev’s fear – the feeling soaking every syllable of his apocalyptic utterances – we can whiff if wafting off Putin, too.
Medvedev is afraid. Two months into Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive, Ukrainian brigades have advanced only a few miles along three or four critical axes across Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts in southern and eastern Ukraine. And they’ve paid in blood for every yard.
But there’s a reason the Ukrainians are moving slowly. Kyiv’s fast-improving artillery corps, exquisitely supplied by NATO countries, is destroying three or four Russian howitzers for every one Ukrainian howitzer the Russians destroy. And, in stark defiance of history’s preference for defending armies, the attacking Ukrainian army is killing as many Russians as the Russians are killing Ukrainians.
Kyiv’s forces are moving slowly because they’re letting their artillery lead the way. And the big guns are working methodically, grinding up one Russian echelon at a time.
Medvedev is afraid because Putin is afraid. And Putin is afraid because, 18 months into Russia’s wider attack on Ukraine, his army of more than a million people still can’t beat the Ukrainian army, which is half that size and has fewer of everything.
It’s Putin’s fear that feeds his worst impulse: to threaten, through Medvedev, the nuclear annihilation of human civilization. The virtual destruction of the only sentient species we know to exist anywhere in the vast cosmos. Make no mistake, when Medvedev says Russia might use nuclear weapons – as he did again on July 30 – he’s saying that Putin is saying that ending everything is a better outcome, for Russia, than losing a regional war of choice.
“Imagine if the … offensive, which is backed by Nato, was a success and they tore off a part of our land,” Medvedev seethed on his official social media accounts. “Then we would be forced to use a nuclear weapon according to the rules of a decree from the president of Russia.”
“There would simply be no other option,” Medvedev said. “So our enemies should pray for our warriors. They are making sure that a global nuclear fire is not ignited.”
He’s bluffing. Because he and his boss are afraid and because the bluff is all they have left as Russia’s disastrous wider war grinds into its 18th month, with no sign that Ukraine or its allies are giving up. If he weren’t bluffing, we’d know. We’d know because we – well, a vanishing few of us, maybe – would already be living in an irradiated post-apocalyptic wasteland.
In the spring of 2022, Ukrainian brigades defeated Russia’s assault on Kyiv and forced the Russian survivors back to the fringes of eastern and southern Ukraine. Six months later, eager Ukrainian brigades exploited gaps in Russian lines and pushed back the Russians even farther. And eight months after that, the Ukrainians kicked off their current counteroffensive.
And all the while, Ukrainian rockets, drones, saboteurs and assassins have killed Russian officials, shot down Russian warplanes, sunk Russian warships and blown up military sites in Russian air space, in Russian waters and on Russian soil.
Putin didn’t trigger a nuke then. He won’t trigger a nuke now. Because even as wicked, craven and cruel as Putin is, he’s not insane. And he doesn’t want to die in the retaliatory nuclear strike that surely would follow any atomic attack on Ukraine.
And even if there’s an edge of insanity in Putin’s deepening desperation, the United States and its NATO allies shouldn’t bow to nuclear threats. If Putin could merely say, through Medvedev, the word “nuclear” and get his way, he would say “nuclear” all the time – and march his army across Eastern Europe, its troops shielded by their leaders’ atomic threats.
Medvedev is afraid. Because Putin is afraid. That fear makes them reckless with their words. But it doesn’t make them suicidal.
And if I’m wrong, it won’t matter. If I’m wrong, then Putin was ready to end the world after any defeat. And if that defeat didn’t come in Ukraine, it would eventually come somewhere else. Which means Armageddon has been inevitable since 1999.
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Washington — The Air Force has detected unsafe levels of a likely carcinogen at underground launch control centers at a Montana nuclear missile base where a striking number of men and women have reported cancer diagnoses.
A new cleanup effort has been ordered.
The discovery “is the first from an extensive sampling of active U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile bases to address specific cancer concerns raised by missile community members,” Air Force Global Strike Command said in a release Monday. In those samples, two launch facilities at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana showed PCB levels higher than the thresholds recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency.
In this image provided by the U.S. Air Force, Airman 1st Class Jackson Ligon, left, and Senior Airman Jonathan Marinaccio, 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron technicians, connect a re-entry system to a spacer on an intercontinental ballistic missile during a Simulated Electronic Launch-Minuteman test on Sept. 22, 2020, at a launch facility near Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Mont.
Senior Airman Daniel Brosam / U.S. Air Force via AP
PCBs are oily or waxy substances that have been identified as a likely carcinogen by the EPA. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is a blood cancer that uses the body’s infection-fighting lymph system to spread.
In response, Gen. Thomas Bussiere, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, has directed “immediate measures to begin the cleanup process for the affected facilities and mitigate exposure by our airmen and Guardians to potentially hazardous conditions.”
After a military briefing was obtained by The Associated Press in January showing that at least nine current or former missileers at Malmstrom were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a rare blood cancer, the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine launched a study to look at cancers among the entire missile community checking for the possibility of clusters of the disease.
And there could be hundreds more cancers of all types, based on new data from a grassroots group of former missile launch officers and their surviving family members.
According to the Torchlight Initiative, at least 268 troops who served at nuclear missile sites, or their surviving family members, have self-reported being diagnosed with cancer, blood diseases or other illnesses over the past several decades.
At least 217 of those reported cases are cancers, at least 33 of them non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
What’s notable about those reported numbers is that the missileer community is very small. Only a few hundred airmen serve as missileers at each of the country’s three silo-launched Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile bases any given year. There have been only about 21,000 missileers in total since the Minuteman operations began in the early 1960s, according to the Torchlight Initiative.
For some context, in the U.S. general population there are about 403 new cancer cases reported per 100,000 people each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma affects an estimated 19 of every 100,000 people annually, according to the American Cancer Society.
Minutemen III silo fields are based at Malmstrom, F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming and Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.
Missileers are male and female military officers who serve in underground launch control centers where they are responsible for monitoring, and if needed, launching fields of silo-based nuclear weapons. Two missileers spend sometimes days at a time on watch in underground bunkers, ready to turn the key and fire Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles if ordered to do so by the president.
The Minuteman III silos and underground control centers were built more than 60 years ago. Much of the electronics and infrastructure is decades old. Missileers have raised health concerns multiple times over the years about ventilation, water quality and potential toxins they can’t avoid as they spend 24 to 48 hours on duty underground.
The Air Force discovery of PCBs occurred as part of site visits by its bioenvironmental team from June 22 to June 29 in the Air Force’s ongoing larger investigation into the number of cancers reported among the missile community. During the site visits, a health assessment team collected water, soil, air and surface samples from each of the missile launch facilities.
At Malmstrom, of the 300 surface swipe samples, 21 detected PCBs. Of those, 19 were below levels set by the EPA requiring mitigation and two were above. No PCBs were detected in any of the 30 air samples. The Air Force is still waiting for test results from F.E. Warren and Minot for surface and air samples, and for all bases for the water and soil samples.
2nd nuclear fusion breakthrough could “pave way for future of clean power” – CBS News
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In December 2022, California scientists achieved a major breakthrough — a nuclear fusion reaction that produced more energy than was used to create it. Scientists have done it again and this time their results produced even more energy. Professor Peter Hosemann, chair of nuclear and mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, joins CBS News to discuss the implications of this accomplishment.
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TOKYO (AP) — Japan expressed concern on Monday over Iran’s advancing uranium enrichment program and the Middle East country’s suspected supplying of combat drones to Moscow for Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi raised the two issues during talks with his visiting Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amirabdollahian, the foreign ministry in Tokyo said. A statement from the ministry said Hayashi appealed for Iran to act constructively in the matter but did not elaborate.
Iranian drones have been a key element of Russia’s continued war on Ukraine. Tehran has offered conflicting accounts about the drones — first denying Iran has supplied them to Russia and later claiming the unmanned aircraft were only sold before the Russian invasion.
However, the number of Iranian-made drones used in the conflict shows a steady supply of the bomb-carrying weapons. In June, the White House said Iran was providing Russia with materials to build a drone manufacturing plant east of Moscow as the Kremlin looks to lock in a consistent stream of weapons.
As U.S. ally and a member of the Group of Seven advanced nations, Japan has joined sanctions against Moscow while providing Ukraine with humanitarian support and non-lethal defense equipment, largely because of fear that Russia’s invasion could embolden an already assertive China in Asia.
Iran’s state television said Amirabdollahian denied providing drones to Russia and insisted Tehran is focused on efforts for dialogue and finding a political solution to end the war. The report also quoted the top Iranian diplomat as saying the United States and the West should stop what he described as baseless accusations against Iran.
Hayashi also expressed serious concern about the expansion of Iran’s nuclear activities and urged Tehran’s full and unconditional cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the ministry added.
The ministry statement said Hayashi stressed Japan’s support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers that curbed Iran’s enrichment in return for halting economic sanctions on Iran. In 2018, then-President Donald Trump pulled America out of the nuclear deal and restored crushing sanctions.
Since then, Iran’s government has been galloping ahead with its nuclear program, openly exceeding the deal’s limits on uranium enrichment and stockpiling, and building a new nuclear facility so far underground as to likely be impervious to U.S. weapons.
Experts say Iran can now develop atomic bombs if it chooses to do so. A U.S. intelligence assessment released in July said Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons at the moment but has ramped up activities that could help it develop them.
In talks with Hayashi, Amirabdollahian said Iran is seeking ways to reactivate the nuclear agreement through negotiations and expressed appreciation for Japanese diplomatic efforts, the ministry also said.
___
Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
