Disaster

Having repeatedly threatened the annihilation of its neightbor to the south, and most recently warning of a "super-mighty preemptive strike" against the US, one day after it emerged that Pyongyang appeared to have resumed activity at its Punggye-ri Nuclear test site, North Korea asked China not to step up anti-North sanctions, warning of "catastrophic consequences" in their bilateral relations.

Pyongyang issued the warning through commentary written by a person named Jong Phil on its official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), which was released Saturday.

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

The U.S. power grid appears to have been hit with multiple power outages affecting San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles.

Officials report that business, traffic and day-to-day life has come to a standstill in San Francisco, reportedly the worst hit of the three major cities currently experiencing outages.

Power companies in all three regions have yet to elaborate on the cause, though a fire at a substation was the original reason given by San Francisco officials.

With the USS Carl Vinson finally on its way to North Korea after some initial "miscommunications" between the White House and the Pentagon, on Friday the aircraft carrier suffered another embarrassing moment when a F-18 pilot was forced to eject during an attempted landing on the deck of the Vinson in the Celebes Sea, south of the Philippines, the US Navy said in a statement. The pilot was recovered safely.

In response to a U.S. navy battle group being sent toward the Korean peninsula at the weekend, Pyongyang has responded with a warning of "catastrophic consequences”, adding that North Korea is "ready to react to any mode of war desired by the U.S." With China supposedly agreeing that some form of action now has to be taken on its ally, Statista's Martin Armstrong looks at the countries with the largest amount of active-duty troops in the world.

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Authored by E.W. Niedermeyer via NewCartographer.com,