The Doomsday Clock was reset to two minutes to midnight, "the closest to the symbolic point of annihilation that the Clock has been since 1953 at the height of the Cold War,” according to a statement from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS), whose Science and Security Board "sets” the clock at the beginning of each year. The statement highlighted North Korea's progress on nuclear weapons during 2017 and the "hyperbolic rhetoric and provocative actions” by leaders in Pyongyang and Washington, DC (p4). It also cited a lack of progress in greenhouse gas reductions. The clock was moved forward by 30 seconds from its January 2017 setting when the BAS board was "for the first time ... influenced by statements from an incoming US president, Donald Trump, regarding the proliferation and the prospect of actually using nuclear weapons, as well as statements made in opposition to US commitments regarding climate change.” This year the Doomsday statement noted "a breakdown in the international order that has been dangerously exacerbated by recent US actions.”
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