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Doomsday Clock is now 89 seconds to midnight, what does that mean?

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Doomsday Clock is now 89 seconds to midnight, what does that mean?

The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic timepiece showing how close we are to ‘destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making’.

For the first time in three years, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) moved the Doomsday Clock forward by one second to 89 seconds before midnight, signalling a heightened risk of global catastrophe.

“It is the determination of the science and security board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that the world has not made sufficient progress on existential risks threatening all of humanity. We thus move the clock forward,” Daniel Holz, chair of the organisation’s science and security board, said during a livestreamed event on Tuesday.

Ongoing threats from nuclear weapons, climate change, bioweapons, infectious disease, and disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) have brought the clock to its latest time in 78 years.

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What is the Doomsday Clock?

The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic timepiece showing how close we are to “destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making”, according to BAS, a Chicago-based nonprofit organisation that controls the clock.

It describes it as “many things all at once: It’s a metaphor, it’s a logo, it’s a brand, and it’s one of the most recognisable symbols in the past 100 years.”

The closer it moves to midnight, the closer humanity is to the end of the world.

Apocalyptic threats could arise from political tensions, weapons, technology, climate change or pandemics.

How is the clock set?

The hands of the clock are moved closer to or farther away from midnight based on the scientists’ reading of existential threats at a particular time.

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BAS updates the time annually. A board of scientists and other experts in nuclear technology and climate science, including 10 Nobel laureates, discuss world events and determine where to place the hands of the clock each year.

“The Bulletin is a bit like a doctor making a diagnosis,” the BAS website says.

“We look at data, as physicians look at lab tests and x-rays, and also take harder-to-quantify factors into account, as physicians do when talking with patients and family members. We consider as many symptoms, measurements, and circumstances as we can. Then we come to a judgment that sums up what could happen if leaders and citizens don’t take action to treat the conditions,” it adds.

Has the clock ever turned back?

Yes, the most notable event was in 1991 when US President George HW Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) to reduce the number of their countries’ nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

This brought the clock back by seven seconds. The furthest the clock has been from midnight was 17 minutes.

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Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George Bush talk appear at a news conference in 1991
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George HW Bush laugh as there was a slight mix-up with the simultaneous translations during their news conference in London, July 17, 1991 [Boris Yurchenko/AP Photo]

When was the Doomsday Clock created?

The clock was created in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which was founded two years earlier by scientists Albert Einstein, J Robert Oppenheimer and Eugene Rabinowitch along with University of Chicago scholars.

During that time, the clock was set at seven minutes to midnight. But after the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, Rabinowitch, who was then the bulletin’s editor, moved the clock to three minutes to midnight.

According to the University of Chicago, until recently, the closest it had ever been set was at two minutes to midnight: in 1953 when the US and the Soviet Union tested thermonuclear weapons and in 2018 because of “a breakdown in the international order, of nuclear actors, as well as the continuing lack of action on climate change”.

The Doomsday Clock is placed in the BAS offices at the University of Chicago.

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Video: German Chancellor Accuses JD Vance of Election Interference

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Video: German Chancellor Accuses JD Vance of Election Interference

new video loaded: German Chancellor Accuses JD Vance of Election Interference

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German Chancellor Accuses JD Vance of Election Interference

At the Munich Security Conference, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rebuked U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s call for German leaders to allow the hard-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, to enter their government.

Well, thank you and thanks to all the gathered delegates. We really reject any idea of cooperation between parties, other parties and these extreme right parties. It is not others to give us the advice to cooperate with these parties, which we are not working with for good reasons, especially when looking to the history of our country.

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Sicilian mafia bosses complain on wiretaps about lack of quality recruits, reminisce about 'The Godfather'

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Sicilian mafia bosses complain on wiretaps about lack of quality recruits, reminisce about 'The Godfather'

What happened to never going against the family? 

Leaders within the Cosa Nostra, Sicily’s mafia, have reportedly complained that mob recruits aren’t what they used to be, as nearly 150 people associated with the group were arrested this week. 

“The level is low, today they arrest someone and if he becomes a turncoat they arrest another… wretched low-level,” former Cosa Nostra boss Giancarlo Romano said in a wiretapped conversation last year before he was killed in a shootout, according to BBC News. 

Romano also revealed that he was nostalgic for Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic “The Godfather,” about a fictional mob family in New York. 

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Carabinieri officers in Sicily.  (Valeria Ferraro/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“If you watch ‘The Godfather,’ the connections he had… he was very influential because of the power that he built at a political level,” Romano told his associate. 

He continued, “But us – what can we do? We’re on our knees, guys. We think we do business, but these days it’s others who do it. We used to be number one, now it’s others… we’re just gypsies.”

The mobsters also seem to like actor Robert De Niro, who played Vito Corleone in “The Godfather Part II,” and Spider-Man as other wiretaps revealed them as nicknames for each other, according to The Guardian. 

This week Sicilian officers conducted early morning raids, serving 183 arrest warrants on those believed to be associated with the Cosa Nostra for crimes ranging from mafia association to extortion and attempted murder. Of those, 36 were already in custody. 

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While raids like this week’s have weakened the Cosa Nostra, Italian officials warn they are still a threat. 

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“The investigations that led to Tuesday’s arrests demonstrate that Cosa Nostra is alive and present and communicates with completely new communication channels,” Maurizio de Lucia, chief prosecutor of Sicily’s capital of Palermo, said at a press conference, referencing the mafia’s use of encrypted apps to communicate with each other. “It is doing business and trying to rebuild its army.”

Domenico La Padula, with the  Italian Carabinieri police, told The New York Times this week that the Cosa Nostra “is far from dead.”

He said they have been able to survive by finding “new energy and new strength,” with new recruits and 21st-century criminal ventures like online gambling. 

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Palermo, Sicily

Palermo, Sicily’s capital.  (Frank Bienewald/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The Cosa Nostra has remained “strongly tied to the rules of its founding fathers and its ancient rituals,” the Carabinieri told The Times, adding that their use of encrypted devices has “limited the need for traditional meetings and gatherings to the bare minimum.”

John Dickie, who wrote “Mafia Republic: Italy’s Criminal Curse and Cosa Nostra, A History of the Sicilian Mafia,” told The Telegraph that Italian authorities have become “fantastic” at surveilling the mafia. 

“Mafia dons have been caught boasting how good their anti-bugging devices were, at the same time that they were being bugged,” he revealed.

Dickie also agreed that the Cosa Nostra appears to be “in decline.” 

“You only have to read the phone taps where the bosses are saying ‘it’s not like it used to be,’” he said. “This is about the fifth time that the bosses have tried to reorganise the cupola since the early 1990s. Every time they have been thwarted. The authorities were on to them.”

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He continued, “These arrests mean that Cosa Nostra has another big task to rebuild, and they show that the state is still stronger than the mafia.”

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23-year-old man stabs six people killing, one in Austria, police say

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23-year-old man stabs six people killing, one in Austria, police say

A 23-year-old man stabbed five passersby in southern Austria on Saturday, killing one 14-year-old child and injuring five others.

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A 14-year-old child was killed and four others were injured after in a random stabbing attack in the city of Villach in southern Austria on Saturday.

Police say the attacker – a 23-year-old man – is a Syrian national with legal residence in Austria. The attacker randomly started stabbing passerby on the street, according to the police.

Authorities are currently investigating the attacker’s personal background and are looking for clues to identify a motive behind the tragic incident.

The victims were all men, a 14-year-old boy who was killed and four other men who were injured, two of them sustained minor injuries while the other two suffered critical wounds.

The attack happened in the Austrian province of Carinthia. Governor Peter Kaiser expressed his condolences to the family of the 14-year-old victim.

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“This outrageous atrocity must be met with harsh consequences. I have always said with clarity and unambiguously: Those who live in Carinthia, in Austria, have to respect the law and adjust to our rules and values,” said Governor Kaiser.

Austria’s far-right leader Herbert Kickl took to social media platform X, formerly Twitter, to express his condolences to the family and underline what he believes is a pressing issue challenging Austrian society, immigration.

“I am angry, angry at those politicians who have allowed stabbings, rape, gang wars and other capital crimes to become the order of the day in Austria. This is a first-class failure of the system, for which a young man in Villach has now had to pay with his life”, said Kickl in a post on his party’s official page.

“We have described the complete change of system in our program for a “Fortress Austria”. We need rigorous action in the area of ​​asylum and must not continue to import conditions like those in Villach,” added Kickl.

Conservative party leader Christian Stocker said on X that the attacker “must be brought to justice and be punished with the full force of the law”.

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Stocker says that more political measures must be taken to avoid such horrific acts in the future and ensure a safe Austria.

Austria’s foreign ministry says almost 25,000 foreigners applied for asylum in 2024, with the largest group coming from Syria, followed by Afghanistan.

Asylum applications have dramatically decreased over the past two years. In 2022, Austria received just over 100,000 applications.

Several European countries, Austria among them, said in December that they’re suspending decisions on asylum claims by Syrian nationals because of the unclear political situation in their homeland following the toppling of longtime president Bashar al-Assad in December.

The issue of migration has taken centre stage across many European countries, leading to a rise in popularity of far-right parties, who’ve made significant inroads in elections.

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In Austria, migration was a prominent topic leading up to last year’s election, which resulted in the far-right Freedom Party security it first national election victory since World War II.

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