NUCLEAR/NATIONAL SECURITY: "Donald Trump’s comments as a candidate and president-elect about the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal and nuclear proliferation had long rattled arms-control advocates about how his administration might change half a century of policy and posture.
On Thursday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists weighed in with its annual assessment of the Doomsday Clock, a metaphorical measure of how close the world is to 'midnight,' or a worldwide catastrophe.
The group, started by physicists who built the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project, moved the clock ahead by 30 seconds, to just 2½ minutes before midnight. It’s the closest the clock has been to midnight since 1953, when the U.S. and Soviet Union were in the early days of above-ground hydrogen bomb testing."
– “Scientists move Doomsday Clock closer to ‘midnight.’ Trump’s comments on nuclear weapons are a big reason why,” The Los Angeles Times online, Jan. 27, 2017, W.J. Hennigan and Tracy Wilkinson, 1/27/2017