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ICYMI – Yonhap on North Korea’s up to 60 nuclear weapons & world’s third-largest stockpile of chemical weapons

Yonhap (South Korean media) cited a U.S. Department of the Army report, “North Korean tactics” published in July.

  • “Estimates for North Korean nuclear weapons range from 20-60 bombs, with the capability to produce 6 new devices each year” 
  • “North Korea sought nuclear weapons because its leaders thought the threat of a nuclear attack would prevent other countries from contemplating a regime change” 
ps. I am expecting something from NK today:
  • North Korea says it will convene a high level meeting on Wednesday – matter of ‘crucial significance’
Kim’s ‘Mission accomplished’ grin:
Yonhap (South Korean media) cited a U.S. Department of the Army report, "North Korean tactics" published in July. 

UN on reports that North Korea have developed nuclear warheads for ballistic missiles

Reuters siting a confidential UN sanctions monitor report they have sighted

  • North Korea continues to develop nuclear weapons program
  • Report says several countries assess North Korea has ‘probably developed miniaturized nuclear devices to fit into the warheads of its ballistic missiles’

News on escalations re NK are yen positive although the market has become a little complacent on such reports. Yen is not moving much on this report.

North Korea says it is able to immediately launch a nuclear attack

A piece in Korean media, Dong A Libo, reporting that North Korea had described plans to “put strategic armed forces on a high alert operation”

It means that North Korea is able to immediately launch a nuclear attack anywhere in Northeast Asia, stressing that it owns leadership for nuclear deterrent,” said Ryu Sung-yeob, a senior researcher at the Korea Research Institute for Military Affairs.
That does not sound too encouraging.
A piece in Korean media, Dong A Libo, reporting that North Korea had described plans to "put strategic armed forces on a high alert operation"

UN sec-gen ‘deeply concerned’ North Korea said it could resume weapons tests

Celebrated trolls of the year (2019 version) North Korea / Kim Jong Un are off to a lead position for 2020.

Kim Jong Un said earlier in the week that there are no longer grounds for him to be limited by his self-declared moratorium on intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear weapon testing & a “new strategic weapon” will be unveiled in the near future
Prompting United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to say (through a spokesperson) that he hopes there will no new tests.
The 2020 US election year will be, I suspect, very interesting indeed. In Chinese curse terms that is.

North Korea tests missiles a month ahead of deadline for US talks

Breaking a month-long lull in missile tests, North Korea fired two short range missiles into the sea off its east coast on Thursday in what appeared to be the latest try out of its new multiple rocket launchers, South Korea’s military said.

The test-firing came as the clock ticks down on the year-end deadline that Pyongyang had given the United States to restart stalled denuclearisation talks.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said the North fired the two missiles into the sea from launchers in the eastern coastal town of Yonpo at around 5 p.m. (0800 GMT).

The rockets travelled up to 380 kilometres (236 miles) and reached an altitude of 97 km (60 miles), the JCS said.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the launch was a threat to not only Japan but the region and beyond, though his defence ministry said the projectile did not enter Japanese airspace or its Exclusive Economic Zone.

“We will remain in close contact with the United States, South Korea and the international community to monitor the situation,” Abe told reporters. (more…)

The Probabilities Win Every Time

Columnist David Brooks wrote an interesting article in the New York Times on how to effectively use probabilities:

In 2006, Philip E. Tetlock published a landmark book called “Expert Political Judgment.” While his findings obviously don’t apply to me, Tetlock demonstrated that pundits and experts are terrible at making predictions.

But Tetlock is also interested in how people can get better at making forecasts. His subsequent work helped prompt people at one of the government’s most creative agencies, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, to hold a forecasting tournament to see if competition could spur better predictions.

In the fall of 2011, the agency asked a series of short-term questions about foreign affairs, such as whether certain countries will leave the euro, whether North Korea will re-enter arms talks, or whether Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev would switch jobs. They hired a consulting firm to run an experimental control group against which the competitors could be benchmarked. (more…)

More hungry in India than in Sudan

NEW DELHI: India dropped two ranks to 67th among 84 developing countries in the International Food Policy Research Institute’s annual “Global Hunger Index” for 2010. Even Sudan , North Korea and Pakistan rank higher than India.

While the report, released on Monday, shows that the proportion of undernourished in India is decreasing, the worsening ranking indicates that other developing countries have done better in tackling hunger. India is home to 42% of the underweight children under the age of five in the world.

The policymakers in India , who are are still fighting over the need to have an expansive National Food Security Act , should look at the following data more closely: in 2005-06 , about 44% of Indian children — below five years — were underweight, and nearly half — 48% — were stunted.

The food insecurity is so rampant across the country that India is clubbed with minor economies like Bangladesh, Timor-Leste and Yemen, recording the highest prevalence of underweight in children under five.

At the beginning of the liberalization era in the early 90s, 24% of the population was undernourished. The situation marginally improved to 22% between 2004 and 2006. Almost 60% of children below five were recorded as underweight in 1988-92. The condition has remained dismal as the latest figure shows 43.5% between 2003-08.

The GHI ranks countries on a scale of 100, with 0 being the best score (no hunger) and 100 the worst. It is composed of three equally weighted indicators: the proportion of undernourished in the population, the prevalence of those underweight in children under five and the under-five mortality rate.

The figures for India are 22% (as of 2004-6 ), 43.5% (2003-8 ) and 6.9% as of 2008, respectively. These give India a composite GHI of 24.1, which is classified as alarming in terms of the food security situation.

The strife-torn Democratic Republic of Congo ranks at the bottom of the list of 84 countries with significant levels of hunger. The data has been compiled for 122 countries in all; the remaining 38 countries have a GHI of less than 5 and are not included in the rankings. No data has been recorded for highly developed countries.

South Asia has the highest GHI for any region in the world, at 22.9. The region has, however, made greater progress since 1990 than sub-Saharan Africa, the report adds. India is ranked below all other major South Asian countries — Sri Lanka is ranked 39th, Pakistan 52nd and Nepal 56th.

India’s hunger is not purely a product of its middle-income status. While economic progress and hunger levels tend to be inversely correlated (countries with higher gross national income typically have lower GHI scores), some countries are exceptions to the norm. China has lower hunger levels than its GNI per capita would suggest, while India has higher hunger levels than would be expected from its income per capita, calculations made by the report’s authors show.

The 2010 report focuses on child malnutrition, which is the biggest component of hunger worldwide. In India, high 2010 GHI scores are driven by high levels of underweight children, resulting from the low nutritional and social status of women in the country, the report says.