North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons: Will it Ever Use Them?

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Photo Credit: NK NewsThis week 20 years ago the Agreed Framework between the United States and North Korea was signed, which suspended Pyongyang’s nuclear program in exchange for aid from Washington.

This deal, however, would collapse in the early part of the next decade, and North Korea has since conducted three nuclear tests, making them a de facto nuclear state despite a lack of international recognition. On the 20th anniversary of the Agreed Framework, experts on the North’s nuclear program thus see little reason to celebrate.

In part 4 of an NK News specialist opinion survey, a panel of North Korea watchers surveyed by NK News largely consider the North’s third nuclear test, conducted in early 2013 against the wishes of its long-time ally China, the most significant event on this front in recent years. There have also been, however, suspicious developments at the Yongbyon reactor – whose cooling tower was destroyed after an agreement with Washington in 2008, but whose activities were evidently relaunched in 2013 following an announcement from Pyongyang.

However, North Korea watchers are convinced that the odds of a nuclear attack by the rogue state against its antagonists – Seoul, Tokyo and Washington – remains unlikely even if the North develops the ability to do so. The risk, they said, remains in the potential for miscalculation given the North’s tense relationship with those states, particularly Seoul.

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George P. Bush Says Dad 'Moving Forward' On 2016

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Photo Credit: JEFFREY COLLINS / APFormer Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is “moving forward” on a potential 2016 White House run and it appears more likely he will enter the Republican field, according to his son, who’s running for office in Texas.

George P. Bush told ABC’s “This Week” that his father is “still assessing” a presidential bid, but suggested it was more likely that he would seek the White House this time. The ex-governor declined to run for president in 2012 despite encouragement from Republicans.

“I think it’s more than likely that he’s giving this a serious thought and moving — and moving forward,” said the younger Bush, who is running for Texas land commissioner.

Asked if that meant it was “more than likely that he’ll run,” George P. Bush responded: “That he’ll run. If you had asked me a few years back … I would have said it was less likely.”

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Elon Musk Says ‘We Are Summoning the Demon’ with Artificial Intelligence

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Photo Credit: ReutersElon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and founder of SpaceX, said Friday that artificial intelligence is probably the biggest threat to humans.

Musk, who addressed MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics department’s Centennial Symposium for about an hour, mulled international oversight to “make sure we don’t do something very foolish,” The Washington Post reported.

He was not specific about any particular threat, but appeared to theorize out loud.

“With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon,” he said. “In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like yeah he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn’t work out.”

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Evacuations Possible As Lava Continues To Flow From Hawaii Volcano

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Photo Credit: U.S. Geological Survey / APThe Puna region of Hawaii is under alert as lava continues to flow from the Kilauea volcano. The Associated Press reports:

Authorities on Sunday said lava flow on the Big Island of Hawaii had advanced about 250 yards since Saturday morning. The flow front had entered a cemetery and was about a half-mile from Pahoa Village Road, the town’s main street.

Residents in the flow path, in the mostly rural region of Puna, were told to complete all necessary preparations by Tuesday for a possible evacuation.

The lava flow now threatening Pahoa, the largest town in Puna, began in June.

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Worldwide Surge in 'Great' Earthquakes Seen in Past 10 Years

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Photo Credit: HARISH TYAGI / EPThe annual number of “great” earthquakes nearly tripled over the last decade, providing a reminder to Americans that unruptured faults like those in the northwest United States might be due for a Big One.

Between 2004 and 2014, 18 earthquakes with magnitudes of 8.0 or more rattled subduction zones around the globe. That’s an increase of 265 percent over the average rate of the previous century, which saw 71 great quakes, according to a report to the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America this week in Vancouver, British Columbia.

It’s clear that recent “great” earthquakes “triggered” related major quakes, says study author Thorne Lay, distinguished professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

“If we look at all earthquake magnitudes, the past 10 years is not unusual in terms of the rate of events; the rate increases are just seen for events with magnitudes larger than 7.5 or so,” he said. “This suggests that great events were ‘catching up’ on the plate boundary motions in several regions with fortuitous similar timing.”

And by fortuitous, Lay means that he thinks it’s just coincidence that all those big earthquakes happened over the last 10 years.

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Non-Citizens, Illegal Aliens May Determine Outcome of 2014 Elections

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Could control of the Senate in 2014 be decided by illegal votes cast by non-citizens? Some argue that incidents of voting by non-citizens are so rare as to be inconsequential, with efforts to block fraud a screen for an agenda to prevent poor and minority voters from exercising the franchise, while others define such incidents as a threat to democracy itself. Both sides depend more heavily on anecdotes than data.

In a forthcoming article in the journal Electoral Studies, we bring real data from big social science survey datasets to bear on the question of whether, to what extent, and for whom non-citizens vote in U.S. elections. Most non-citizens do not register, let alone vote. But enough do that their participation can change the outcome of close races.

Our data comes from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES). Its large number of observations (32,800 in 2008 and 55,400 in 2010) provide sufficient samples of the non-immigrant sub-population, with 339 non-citizen respondents in 2008 and 489 in 2010. For the 2008 CCES, we also attempted to match respondents to voter files so that we could verify whether they actually voted.

How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010.

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Finally . . . a Federal Judge Follows the Constitution, Upholds Traditional Marriage

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Photo Credit: BreitbartA federal judge has upheld Puerto Rico’s traditional marriage law, bucking the recent trend of federal courts to strike down state laws enshrining traditional marriage. District judge Juan M. Perez-Gimenez, a Carter appointee, delivered a ruling that relied on a conservative reading of the Constitution and legal precedent, and created the potential for a split among the U.S. circuits that could prod the Supreme Court to take up the question in future. . .

In an elegant decision handed down Tuesday, Perez-Gimenez relies on two basic arguments. First, he notes that the U.S. Constitution is silent on marriage, thus reserving authority over marriage to the states–and adds that a 1972 precedent to that effect in Baker v. Nelson, which other courts have considered void, still holds. Only the Supreme Court, Perez-Gimenez says, may overturn Baker–and to this date, he notes, it has declined to do so.

Second, Perez-Gimenez notes that last year’s twin rulings in the celebrated U.S. v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry do not actually void state powers to ban gay marriage. Hollingsworth v. Perry, he notes, was dealt with on procedural grounds, and though Windsor struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act, it “reaffirms the States’ authority over marriage, buttressing Baker’s conclusion that marriage is simply not a federal question.”

Judge Perez-Gimenez leaves substantive questions about marriage for his conclusion, which is likely to be the most controversial part of the decision, but presents the case for traditional marriage as well as it has been put forth anywhere in recent years. Perez-Gimenez notes the “centuries”-old principle that “the very survival of the political order depends upon the procreative potential embodied in traditional marriage”

Furthermore, Perez-Gimenez notes, gay marriage activists have not explained how their logic, using the Equal Protection Clause, would preclude polygamy or incest. Such questions do not arise from “cruel discrimination and ridicule,” he says, but are legitimate and demand that proponents of a “right” to gay marriage “render reasons justifying the change and articulate the principles that they claim will limit this newly fashioned right.”

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Climate Change PROVED to Be 'Nothing But a Lie', Says Top Meteorologist, Co-Founder at the 'Weather Channel'

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Photo Credit: APJohn Coleman, who co-founded the Weather Channel, shocked academics by insisting the theory of man-made climate change was no longer scientifically credible.

Instead, what ‘little evidence’ there is for rising global temperatures points to a ‘natural phenomenon’ within a developing eco-system.

In an open letter attacking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he wrote: “The ocean is not rising significantly.

“The polar ice is increasing, not melting away. Polar Bears are increasing in number.

“Heat waves have actually diminished, not increased. There is not an uptick in the number or strength of storms (in fact storms are diminishing). I have studied this topic seriously for years. It has become a political and environment agenda item, but the science is not valid.”

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Alleged Cop-Killer in NorCal Been Deported Twice

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Photo Credit: KCRAThe man accused of killing two Northern California sheriff’s deputies Friday was removed from the United States twice in the past, U.S. Immigration and Customs officials said in a statement issued Saturday.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Luis Enrique Monroy-Bracamonte, who also goes by Marcelo Marquez, was sent back to Mexico in 1997, and again in 2001.

Officials said Monroy-Bracamonte was removed by an immigration judge following a conviction in Arizona in 1997 on charges of possession of narcotics for sale.

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WATCH: 82-Year Old Black Grandmother is Done with the Democrat Party; Goes Off About Why

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This is incredible. It is precisely what the Restore the Dream 2014 movement is all about, changing minds and changing hearts while helping black people realize that the Democrat Party does not help, they damage on a consistent basis.

The woman called into C-Span during the time when Barack Obama was doing his early voting. She identified herself as Joyce and indicated that she is an 82-year old black grandmother who has been a Democrat her entire life, but voted straight down the Republican ticket this year. Her voice is filled with both anger and passion as she explains why she has left the Democrat Party.

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