TOP NEWS Russia Says U.S. Is Hiding Nuclear Weapons: ‘That Is A Serious Problem’ Newsweek US Still Discussing Nuclear Technology Sales with Saudi Arabia Financial Times Are the Rules Which Have Stopped Nuclear War Broken? BBC News East Asia North Korea’s Fissile Material Production: How to Know It’s All Gone 38 North3/13/2019 As nuclear weapons experts appreciate, testing is one of the last steps in a complex industrial program to build bombs and their delivery systems. And once testing has proven design concepts, its value diminishes. To limit North Korea’s true nuclear weapons capacity, there has to be a verifiable end to its fissile material production—the weapons-grade enriched uranium and plutonium whose atoms split apart in the process of fission, releasing the tremendous amounts of energy in nuclear weapons. Russia/FSU/Europe Russia Says U.S. Is Hiding Nuclear Weapons: ‘That Is A Serious Problem’ Newsweek3/13/2019 Russia has accused the United States of quietly reclassifying nuclear weapons systems in a potential bid to hide the true scale of its strategic arsenal, which is limited by a treaty between the two leading powers. Middle East US Still Discussing Nuclear Technology Sales with Saudi Arabia Financial Times3/12/2019 The US is still in talks with Saudi Arabia about a possible deal to sell it civil nuclear technology, as part of a strategy to boost US exports while helping to curb greenhouse gas emissions, energy secretary Rick Perry has said. U.S. Nuclear Policy U.S. Military to Test Missiles Banned Under Faltering Nuclear Pact with Russia Washington Post3/13/2019 The U.S. military plans to test a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of about 600 miles in August and a midrange ballistic missile with a range of about 1,800 to 2,500 miles in November, according to senior U.S. defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters. US Plans Tests This Year of Long-Banned Types Of Missiles AP3/13/2019 The Pentagon plans to begin flight tests this year of two types of missiles that have been banned for more than 30 years by a treaty from which both the United States and Russia are expected to withdraw in August, defense officials said Wednesday. Armed Services Chair Plots Move ‘To Kill’ Trump’s Plan For Low-Yield Nuke The Hill3/12/2019 The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday he plans to try to block funding for President Trump’s low-yield nuclear weapon program as part of this year’s defense policy bill. “I would like to kill the low-yield nuclear weapon, I don’t think it’s a good idea, and we’re going to try to do that,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said at the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference. Opinion and Analysis Banking on the Cold War Boston Review3/14/2019 On September 21, 1945—five months after Franklin Roosevelt’s death—President Harry Truman assembled his cabinet for a meeting that one historian has called “a turning point in the American century.” The purpose of the meeting was to discuss Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s proposal to share atomic bomb information with the Soviets. Stimson, who had directed the Manhattan Project, maintained that the only way to make the Soviets trustworthy was to trust them. Are the Rules Which Have Stopped Nuclear War Broken? BBC News3/14/2019 “We are moving in a minefield, and we don’t know from where the explosion will come.” A warning from former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov delivered at this week’s influential Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference in Washington DC.