GCR News Summary April 2016

Post Date May 03, 2016
Comments Comments Closed
Author
Category news summary

Alpha Centauri and Southern Cross image courtesy of Claus Madsen/ESO, CC BY 4.0

John Kerry became the first US Secretary of State to visit the site of the US nuclear attack on Hiroshima. Kerry wrote in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial guest book that the site was “a stark, harsh, compelling reminder not only of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate all our effort to avoid war itself.” William J. Broad and David E. Sanger wrote in The New York Times …

Read More »

GCR News Summary March 2016

Post Date April 04, 2016
Comments Comments Closed
Author
Category news summary

Go game image courtesy of Jaro Larnnos under a Creative Commons license

Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo computer program beat 9-dan professional go player Lee Se-dol 4-1 in a five-game match. Lee has won 18 international titles and is widely regarded as one of the best Go players in the world. AlphaGo made a number of decisive moves that the human players found completely surprising and “beautiful”. The South Korean Go Association granted AlphaGo an honorary 9-dan ranking for its “sincere efforts” to master the game at a level approaching …

Read More »

GCR News Summary February 2016

Post Date March 02, 2016
Comments Comments Closed
Author
Category news summary

Stop Trident demonstration in London image courtesy of David Holt under a Creative Commons license

Tens of thousands of people gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square to protest the renewal of Britain’s Trident nuclear submarine program. It was the largest anti-nuclear demonstration in England since 1983, when several hundred thousand people demonstrated against the deployment of cruise missiles at Greenham Common. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told the protesters they should not forget that a nuclear war would mean “absolute destruction on both sides” and said that he …

Read More »

GCR News Summary July 2015

Post Date August 04, 2015
Comments Comments Closed
Author
Category news summary

Arecibo Observatory image courtesy of H. Schweiker/WIYN and NOAO/AURA/NSF

Iran reached an agreement with the P5+1 countries—the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany—to limit Iran’s nuclear program. The deal requires Iran to reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98% for 15 years. Iran also agreed to cut the number of centrifuges it currently uses to enrich uranium roughly in half and to enrich uranium to no more than 3.7% U-235 (the isotope that powers both nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons). Nuclear …

Read More »

GCR News Summary May 2015

Post Date June 01, 2015
Comments Comments Closed
Author
Category news summary

MQ-1 Predator unmanned aircraft image courtesy of the US Air Force/Lt. Col. Leslie Pratt

China has converted some of its long-range missiles to carry multiple warheads. China’s decision to retrofit its missiles with “multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles” (MIRVs) appears to be at least in part a response to the US expanding its missile defense in the Pacific. The US, the UK, France, and Russia already have missiles equipped with MIRVs. The New York Times noted in an editorial that because MIRVs can overwhelm missile defense systems, they increase …

Read More »

GCR News Summary April 2015

Post Date May 12, 2015
Comments Comments Closed
Author
Category news summary

US Secretary of State John Kerry addressing the Non-Proliferation Review Conference image courtesy of the US State Department

Angela Kane, the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, warned that the nuclear powers’ lack of meaningful progress toward disarmament could undermine the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). US Secretary of State John Kerry said at the NPT Review Conference that as of September, 2014 the US had 4,717 nuclear warheads—87 fewer than the year before. Kerry said that the US planned to accelerate dismantling its approximately 2,500 retired warheads by …

Read More »

GCR News Summary November 2014

Post Date December 01, 2014
Comments Comments Closed
Author
Category news summary

Barack Obama and Xi Jinping in Beijing, November 12, 2014 image courtesy of The Whitehouse/Pete Souza

The US and China announced a major agreement to reduce carbon emissions. The US agreed to reduce emissions 26-28% from 2005 levels by 2025, while China pledged that its emissions would peak by 2030. Chinese President Xi Jinping also said that 20% of China’s energy production would be from clean energy sources by that date. At the end of October, the EU had said it would cut …

Read More »

GCR News Summary July 2014

Post Date July 30, 2014
Comments Comments Closed
Author
Category news summary

Boy with smallpox image courtesy of the CDC Public Health Image Library

Workers found vials containing the smallpox virus in a storage room at a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) laboratory at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, Maryland. The vials appear to have been in the laboratory since the 1950s. They were moved to a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) containment laboratory shortly after they were discovered. The CDC said that there was no sign the vials …

Read More »

GCR News Summary October 2013

Post Date October 31, 2013
Comments 1 Comment
Author
Category news summary

Indian flying fox image courtesy of Fritz Geller-Grimm under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 Generic license.

The US federal government shut down for 16 days when Congress failed to authorize funds for the 2014 fiscal year. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) furloughed two-thirds of its employees, which left it without enough staff to monitor safety procedures at high-security biolabs, watch for outbreaks of potential pandemics, or respond to a major public health emergency. During the shutdown 338 people in 18 …

Read More »

GCR News Summary August 2013

Post Date August 31, 2013
Comments 8 Comments
Author
Category news summary

California Rim Fire image courtesy of the USDA.

California governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for San Francisco County when a large wildfire on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains threatened to disrupt public utilities. Two of the three hydroelectric power stations in the region were forced to shut down. San Francisco also gets 85% of its water from the nearby Hetch Hetchy reservoir. Most of the western US is in drought and the recent increase in the number …

Read More »
« Older Entries