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he top American military commander in South Korea said on Friday that he believed North Korea had most likely completed its yearslong quest to shrink a nuclear weapon to a size that could fit atop a ballistic missile

For years, American intelligence agencies have been scouring the evidence — from satellite photographs, human spies, intercepted calls and computer transmissions, and the tracking of nuclear suppliers — in an effort to assess when the North would be capable of marrying its nuclear and missile programs.

But even if General Scaparrotti is correct, it does not mean that the North is ready to threaten the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile

First, the resources. Pretty much all available energy on the earth comes from energy radiated by the sun.

The exceptions to the sunlight rule are: geothermal energy, which comes from the very hot core of the earth (often in the form of volcanoes); tidal energy, which is the result of water interacting with the gravity of the earth, moon, and sun; and nuclear energy

Some of these resources are renewable, but at the moment, the dominant suppliers of energy to human civilization (the fossil fuels) are not.

U.N. Toughens Sanctions on North Korea in Response to Its Nuclear Program

Exasperated with North Korea’s defiant testing of nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to severely toughen its penalties against the isolated country.

The 15-member Council approved a draft resolution, negotiated for weeks by American and Chinese officials, that called for inspecting all cargo going in and out of the country, banning all weapons trade and expanding the list of individuals facing sanctions.

The Monte Toledo oil tanker covered the uneventful voyage from Iran to Europe with a haul of one million barrels of crude in just 17 days, but its journey has been four years in the making.

On Sunday, the tanker became the first to deliver Iranian crude into Europe since mid-2012, when Brussels imposed an oil embargo in an attempt to force the Middle Eastern nation to negotiate the end of its nuclear program. The ban was lifted in January as part of a broader deal that ended a decade of sanctions.

In southern Spain, the tanker’s arrival was met with little fanfare. It was a quiet Sunday at the refinery, and for the workers, the Monte Toledo is just one of the eight or so vessels they expect to receive this month. By the time the refinery has taken in all the Iranian crude, another tanker from Algeria will be already waiting.

Temporary power supplier Aggreko (AGGK.L) has pulled out of a tender to provide generators to the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro next year, the spokesman for Rio 2016 told Reuters, dealing a major blow to organizers rushing to secure an energy source for the world's largest sporting event.

The temporary power contract is a vital part of Olympic preparations, guaranteeing a stable and secure energy supply for international broadcasters, the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as back-up electricity for the venues.

The most experienced bidder pulling out on such a crucial contract is a worrying sign for Olympic organizers who are under huge pressure to cut spending as Brazil languishes in its worst recession in 25 years. The government has already warned that there is no money to cover any cost overruns.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The International Space Station accepted its first U.S. shipment in more than half a year early Wednesday, receiving Christmas presents and much-needed groceries for the resident astronauts.

"There's much rejoicing on the ground," Mission Control radioed.

NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren (CHELL LEND-grin) used the space station's big robot arm to grab the capsule and its 3 ½ tons of cargo. The operation went smoothly, thanks to all the practice Lindgren put in. He operated the crane via joy sticks, joking earlier this week, "I knew those hours playing video games would come in handy!"

Russians Are Joining ISIS in Droves

Russia, with an estimated 2,400 fighters, is now believed to be the third biggest supplier of foreign fighters to radical Islamist groups fighting in Iraq and Syria,

In June 2014, it was estimated that Russia had around 800 foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria.

Peter Harf, who joined the company in 1981 and became chairman this year, and whose own father was a Nazi, said he never really bought the idea that the organization had nothing to hide.“I knew the stories they told,” he said. “It didn’t smell right.”

12, as JAB was acquiring high-profile coffee brands and drawing global attention, Mr. Harf pressed the family to open its archives to an independent scholar. By 2016, Paul Erker, an economic historian at the University of Munich, took on the task.

Only now, 74 years after World War II, are the family and the company grappling with their dark and complicated history.

the Business Roundtable, which represents the chief executives of 192 of the nation’s largest companies. Most of its members signed a statement declaring that making profits for shareholders isn’t a corporation’s sole responsibility. Instead, companies have a broader mission to serve customers, employees, suppliers and communities, too, the statement said.

Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase and chairman of the Business Roundtable, led the signers who agreed: “Many Americans are struggling. Too often hard work is not rewarded.” Dimon had warned earlier this year in his annual letter to his company’s shareholders that the American Dream was “fraying for many” because of stagnant wages and income inequality.

Corporate America fears the system is failing. As Dalio wrote, this is an “existential” moment. The guardians of capitalism seem to realize that they must respond to right-wing populists and left-wing progressives alike or face a worsening political crisis that is already hobbling the country.

Even at their most effective – and draconian – containment strategies have only slowed the spread of the respiratory disease Covid-19. With the World Health Organization finally declaring a pandemic, all eyes have turned to the prospect of a vaccine, because only a vaccine can prevent people from getting sick.

This unprecedented speed is thanks in large part to early Chinese efforts to sequence the genetic material of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. China shared that sequence in early January, allowing research groups around the world to grow the live virus and study how it invades human cells and makes people sick.

Coronaviruses have caused two other recent epidemics – severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in China in 2002-04, and Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), which started in Saudi Arabia in 2012. In both cases, work began on vaccines that were later shelved when the outbreaks were contained. One company, Maryland-based Novavax, has now repurposed those vaccines for Sars-CoV-2, and says it has several candidates ready to enter human trials this spring. Moderna, meanwhile, built on earlier work on the Mers virus conducted at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland.

Donald Trump has bowed to overwhelming pressure and invoked a national security law compelling General Motors to mass produce breathing equipment as the US becomes the first country to top 100,000 confirmed coronavirus cases.But at yet another turbulent press conference, the president continued to give conflicting signals, claiming that more than 100,000 ventilators would be produced quickly but then casually suggesting some could be donated to the UK and other countries.

For weeks the president seemed reluctant to enforce the Defense Production Act (DPA), which grants him power to require companies to expand industrial production of key materials or products.

But officials say he did use it on 18 March, when he signed an order prioritising contracts and allocating resources to the US health secretary, Alex Azar, and again on 23 March, when he signed an order to prevent people from hoarding health and medical resources.

Continuing pictures of empty shelves at UK supermarkets have sparked ongoing worries about food shortages.

The supermarkets are confident that they can cope, not least because there is a limit to how much people can sensibly stockpile. So they believe that shopping patterns should return to normal eventually.

Half of the food consumed in the UK comes from overseas, official figures show, with 30% coming from the European Union. Some basics like wheat to make flour for bread, or lamb chops, may well have come from the other side of the world.

England is in danger of experiencing droughts within 20 years unless action is taken to combat the impact of the climate crisis on water availability, the public spending watchdog says.

Water companies will have to reduce the quantity of water they take out of rivers, lakes and the ground by more than 1bn litres a day, creating huge shortfalls in the coming decades, the NAO warned.

The total supply is forecast to drop by 7% by 2045 because of the climate crisis and the need to scale back the amount of water taken out of England’s waterways and soils.

More than 20 experts in public health, medicine, epidemiology and history shared their thoughts on the future during in-depth interviews. When can we emerge from our homes? How long, realistically, before we have a treatment or vaccine? How will we keep the virus at bay

The path forward depends on factors that are certainly difficult but doable, they said: a carefully staggered approach to reopening, widespread testing and surveillance, a treatment that works, adequate resources for health care providers — and eventually an effective vaccine.

The scenario that Mr. Trump has been unrolling at his daily press briefings — that the lockdowns will end soon, that a protective pill is almost at hand, that football stadiums and restaurants will soon be full — is a fantasy, most experts said.

The human cost of China's coronavirus outbreak is tragic, mounting and already readily apparent. The cost to businesses around the world could also become severe in the coming weeks.

"It only takes one missing part to stop a line," said Mike Dunne, a consultant to the auto industry in Asia and the former head of GM's operations in Indonesia. He said there have been many examples in the past where problems like a fire or natural disaster shutting a single supplier plant can affect auto plants around the world. This could be far worse depending on how widespread the shutdown of plants due to the virus becomes.

"It's difficult to say when it will start to bite here," she said. "I would expect to see a cascading global impact by the end of February if Chinese production doesn't come back [this week]. All automakers have a supply chain war room going on right now to determine what they can be doing. But China is so huge, there is no way they cannot be impacted."

One person’s spending is another person’s income. That, in a single sentence, is what the $87 trillion global economy is.

That relationship, between spending and income, consumption and production, is at the core of how a capitalist economy works. It is the basis of a perpetual motion machine. We buy the things we want and need, and in exchange give money to the people who produced those things, who in turn use that money to buy the things they want and need, and so on, forever.

What is so deeply worrying about the potential economic ripple effects of the virus is that it requires this perpetual motion machine to come to a near-complete stop across large chunks of the economy, for an indeterminate period of time.

To stop the spread of the coronavirus, state and local governments have shut down as much of communal life as possible. People are also social distancing, staying out of public spaces to slow transmission of the disease. But this has destroyed demand for goods and services, putting the United States on the path to a recession that could easily become an outright depression.

policymakers have to go beyond stimulus or bailouts for select industries. They have to take responsibility for economic life on a scale not seen since the New Deal.

Bailouts are more controversial, but they could be worthwhile if the government offers cash with strings attached. To receive assistance, in Senator Elizabeth Warren’s view, companies would be forced to maintain their payrolls, provide a $15 minimum wage, bring worker representatives onto corporate boards and end share buybacks, among other requirements.

In another unsettling example, Inslee noted that he recently asked the CEO of a private company that is manufacturing the transport medium for tests if it could ramp up production with double shifts.

“I would have thought the federal government would have talked to every single manufacturer in the nation who either makes this, or could make this, by this point, and said, ‘Look, we’re going to finance a double shift,’” Inslee told me. “That hasn’t happened.

These problems appear to flow directly from a kind of schizophrenic approach adopted by the federal government. Trump initially told states they were mostly on their own, which led to a bidding war among states seeking supplies from a range of manufacturers and suppliers. Now the feds have sought to exert control over distribution, but it appears piecemeal and partial.

On March 3, Brian Kolfage tried to reach the U.S. government — through Instagram. The Air Force veteran, who’s best known for running the crowd-funded border wall project “We Build The Wall,” had stumbled into a new line of work: Medical supply middleman.

He’d posted a picture of a massive warehouse, filled with hundreds of boxes marked “3M.” They held 300 million N95 surgical masks, he wrote, just waiting to reach health professionals in need around the country.

In fact, the masks in the photo didn’t belong to Kolfage, and they weren’t for sale. Rather, they were sitting in a storehouse of supplies in Salt Lake City, part of a humanitarian shipment that, when photographed in January, was destined for a hospital in Shanghai

the German private laboratories that have been the engine of the country’s strategy to contain the spread of the virus are shifting to a new phase: antibody testing.

In recent days, the IFLb laboratory in Berlin began blood tests that can determine whether someone has had the virus and therefore has immunity against being reinfected. On Tuesday, the lab’s technicians processed 70 tests, in addition to the 500 regular coronavirus tests they complete each day to determine whether someone is infected.

Germany’s first test kit for mass coronavirus antibody screening was certified late last month. This comes as Britain, which lacks Germany’s laboratory capacity, acknowledged this week that none of the 17.5 million home test kits it has ordered from nine different suppliers are up to standards.