North Korea’s nuclear bomb test reverberates

GlobalPost

North Korea has admitted carrying out a third nuclear test, hours after US seismologists detected a 4.9-magnitude earthquake in the hermit kingdom.

According to monitors at the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation in Vienna, the resulting blast was twice as powerful as North Korea's last nuclear test in 2009.

"This is the wrong step in the wrong direction," Tibor Toth, the executive secretary of the CNTBTO, told Reuters. "This is a challenge to this norm observed by the international community of not carrying out nuclear weapons explosions."

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