Authorities Expecting The Sixth Seal? (Revelation 6:12)

US Raises Threat of Quake but Lowers Risk for Towers

New York Times

Earthquake!

By SAM ROBERTS

JULY 17, 2014

Here is another reason to buy a mega-million-dollar apartment in a Manhattan high-rise: Earthquake forecast maps for New York City that a federal agency issued on Thursday indicate “a slightly lower hazard for tall buildings than previously thought.”

The agency, the United States Geodetic Survey, tempered its latest quake prediction with a big caveat.

“The eastern U.S. has the potential for larger and more damaging earthquakes than considered in previous maps and assessments,” the agency said, citing the magnitude 5.8 quake that struck Virginia in 2011.

Federal seismologists based their projections of a lower hazard for tall buildings — “but still a hazard nonetheless,” they cautioned — on a lower likelihood of slow shaking from an earthquake occurring near the city, the type of shaking that typically causes more damage to taller structures.

“The tall buildings in Manhattan are not where you should be focusing,” said John Armbruster, a seismologist with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. “They resonate with long period waves. They are designed and engineered to ride out an earthquake. Where you should really be worried in New York City is the common brownstone and apartment building and buildings that are poorly maintained.”

Mr. Armbruster was not involved in the federal forecast, but was an author of an earlier study that suggested that “a pattern of subtle but active faults makes the risk of earthquakes to the New York City area substantially greater than formerly believed.”

He noted that barely a day goes by without a New York City building’s being declared unsafe, without an earthquake. “If you had 30, 40, 50 at one time, responders would be overloaded,” he said.

The city does have an earthquake building code that went into effect in 1996, and that applies primarily to new construction.

A well-maintained building would probably survive a magnitude 5 earthquake fairly well, he said. The last magnitude 5 earthquake in the city struck in 1884. Another is not necessarily inevitable; faults are more random and move more slowly than they do in, say, California. But he said the latest federal estimate was probably raised because of the magnitude of the Virginia quake.

“Could there be a magnitude 6 in New York?” Mr. Armbruster said. “In Virginia, in a 300 year history, 4.8 was the biggest, and then you have a 5.8. So in New York, I wouldn’t say a 6 is impossible.”

Mr. Armbruster said the Geodetic Survey forecast would not affect his daily lifestyle. “I live in a wood-frame building with a brick chimney and I’m not alarmed sitting up at night worried about it,” he said. “But society’s leaders need to take some responsibility.”

South Korea Soon To Be A Nuclear Horn

Pentagon chief says he was asked about reintroducing tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, left, accompanied by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, speaks to media members at the White House on Sept. 3. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis acknowledged Monday that his South Korean counterpart inquired recently about reintroducing tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula, a move that could take tensions with North Korea to a new high.

Mattis, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, confirmed that he and Defense Minister Song Young-moo discussed the weapons during an Aug. 30 visit in Washington. The Pentagon chief did not say whether he’d support such an idea, however. Song has advocated for the move, calling it an “alternative worth a full review.”

[South Korea’s defense minister suggests bringing back tactical U.S. nuclear weapons]

Asked about the exchange, Mattis said that “we discussed the option,” but he declined to elaborate.

“We have open dialogue with our allies on any issue they want to bring up,” Mattis said.

The United States maintained nuclear weapons in South Korea during much of the Cold War, but President George H.W. Bush ordered their removal after the Soviet Union’s fall in 1991. At the time, Bush saw it as a way of bolstering demands that North Korea not pursue its own nuclear weapons.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has said several times that he is against the return of nuclear weapons, but he faces opposition on that point from many conservative leaders in his country. Tactical nuclear weapons, sometimes called nonstrategic nukes, are designed to strike military targets such as bunkers and tunnels but are still considered immensely powerful in their own right and a potential gateway to larger nuclear attacks.

Some senior U.S. military officials, such as Air Force Gen. Paul J. Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have advocated generally for more “small-yield” nuclear weapons, arguing that the United States needs the ability to respond to an attack using a smaller nuclear bomb with something of similar size.

But Air Force Gen. John Hyten, who oversees U.S. nuclear weapons as the chief of U.S. Strategic Command, took exception Thursday to calling even smaller nuclear weapons tactical. Speaking with reporters at his headquarters in Nebraska, he called the phrase a misnomer and “actually a very dangerous term” because there are significant consequences to using nuclear weapons in any format.

“To call it a tactical weapon brings into the possibility that there could be a nuclear weapon employed on a battlefield for a tactical effect,” Hyten said. “It’s a not a tactical effect, and if somebody employs what is a nonstrategic or tactical nuclear weapon, the United States will respond strategically, not tactically, because they have now crossed a line, a line that has not been crossed since 1945.”

Mattis said last week that he would not discuss whether he is looking at reintroducing nuclear weapons in South Korea.

“It’s simply a longstanding policy so the enemy … our adversaries never know where they’re at,” he said. “It’s part of the deterrent that they cannot target them all. There’s always a great big question mark.”

Iranian Horn Will Rise Against Babylon the Great

Iran’s Khamenei: Tehran will not bow to US bullying | News

Iran will not give in to US “bullying” as Washington attempts to undermine Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers, the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said.

“Iran, which is a powerful nation, will not give in to pressure and will not bow,” Khamenei said in an address to police officers in Tehran on Sunday.

“The corrupt, lying, deceitful US officials insolently accuse the nation of Iran … of lying, whereas the nation of Iran has acted honestly and will continue on this path until the end in an honest manner,” said Khamenei.

President Hassan Rouhani left on Sunday for the UN General Assembly in New York, where he is set to hold crucial talks on the 2015 nuclear deal, which eased international sanctions in exchange for curbs to Iran’s atomic programme.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to tear up the deal and his administration has been looking for grounds to declare Iran in non-compliance, despite repeated UN declarations that Tehran has stuck to its commitments.

Trump must make a decision by mid-October whether to certify that Iran is complying with the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). If he does not, Congress has 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions waived under the deal.

Khamenei said in his speech that “US bullying will not work on the Islamic Republic.”

“You are the liars. The nation of Iran is standing firm and any wrong move … will face a reaction by the Islamic Republic,” said the supreme leader.

Iran’s warning

Iran said last month it could abandon the nuclear agreement “within hours” if the US imposes any new penalties, after Washington ordered unilateral sanctions over Tehran’s ballistic missile tests.

Rouhani, speaking on Sunday before leaving for New York, said the US should join the countries that continue to support the nuclear deal.

The US imposed unilateral sanctions in July, saying Tehran’s ballistic missile tests violated a UN resolution that endorsed the nuclear deal, and called upon Tehran not to undertake activities related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

It stopped short of explicitly barring such activity.

Iran denies its missile development breaches the resolution, saying its missiles are not designed to carry nuclear weapons.

Source: News agencies

Of course IAEA has not accessed all Iran nuclear sites

IAEA has not accessed all Iran nuclear sites, Israel claims

Iran has refused IAEA access and UN officials have been “reluctant” to confront Iran on the issue

Gulf News
12:35 September 17, 2017

Dubai: Suspected Iranian nuclear sites have remained largely off limits to IAEA inspectors tasked with measuring Tehran’s compliance with a nuclear accord it reached with world powers under the Obama administration.

A report in the Israeli daily, Haaretz said that In 2016, a few months after the nuclear agreement with Iran went into effect, a Western entity gave the International Atomic Energy Agency information regarding sites Tehran did not report as part of its nuclear programme and where, according to suspicions, forbidden nuclear military research and development activity was being conducted.

The Western entity also shared the information with a number of the six world powers who were party to the nuclear agreement, unnamed Israeli officials said.

Iran has refused the IAEA access and UN officials have been “reluctant” to confront Iran on the issue, the officials added.

The issue of Iran’s nuclear programme is expected to figure prominently during a one on one meeting between Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Monday.

The nuclear agreement between Iran and the world powers included an oversight mechanism for a list of sites officially identified as part of Iran’s nuclear programme which include uranium enrichment plants in Natanz and Qom, as well as other sites like uranium mines and facilities for the production of centrifuges and a heavy water facility in Arak.

But Israel and some Western countries fear Tehran has hidden

However, one of the issues Israel and the West are concerned about regarding the Iranian nuclear programme regards the sites Tehran did not reveal, where there is suspected research and development for a military nuclear programme.