Some Non-Pope News

Some Non-Pope News talks about a major issue that was either pushed to the back pages or pushed out the door.

"And 32 Nobel Prize-winners come out with a statement urging the members of the nuclear weapons club to take their lethal loads off of hair-trigger alert.
The statement, signed by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, among others, notes that "thousands of nuclear weapons in the US and Russia are on launch-on-warning status, and that the megatonnage involved remains more than enough to destroy civilization and perhaps the human race."
Launch on warning status means the weapons can be fired at a moment's notice. This leaves little time for reflection or assessment if one side believes there's an incoming missile. In fact, it leaves all of about fifteen minutes.
The statement notes that "there have been numerous incidents in which a nuclear exchange involving thousands of warheads could have taken place, and in which the fate of the earth has depended on the correct judgment of a single individual."
Is that the situation we really want to remain in, 14 years after the end of the Cold War?
The Nobel Prize-winners also called on India and Pakistan to put their weapons off of hairtrigger alert, and for all the nuclear powers, including Israel and North Korea, to move toward nuclear disarmament."