North Korea

Another day, another jawboning escalation out of North Korea, which on Tuesday accused the US of pushing the Korean peninsula "to the brink of nuclear war" after two strategic U.S. bombers flew training drills with the South Korean and Japanese air forces in another show of strength. As Reuters reports, the two supersonic B-1B Lancer bombers were deployed amid rising tensions over North Korea's pursuit of its nuclear and missile programs.

Authored by Zainab Calcuttawala via OilPrice.com,

Chinese diplomatic analysts believe further nuclear tests by North Korea could push Beijing over the edge, prompting an oil embargo that would deal a devastating blow to Pyongyang’s stability.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Fox News that he had been informed that “China would be taking sanctions actions on their own,” should Pyongyang conduct another nuclear test.

With the North Korean situation tense after Friday's latest failed missile attempt, the South Korea's Korea Times reports that a Chinese town near the border with North Korea is "urgently" recruiting Korean-Chinese interpreters, "stirring speculation that China is bracing for an emergency situation involving its nuclear-armed neighbor."

North Korea's regime defied an increasingly broader chorus of voices, including the US, Japan, China, South Korea and Russia, saying on Monday that it will continue its nuclear weapons tests, and warned it would "speed up to the maximum” its measures for bolstering its nuclear deterrence in response to the U.S. increasing "aggression and hysteria" against the country, a North Korea Foreign Ministry spokesman says in statement distributed by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Authored by Harry Kazianis via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

If North Korea truly desires state of the art nuclear weapons and missiles - something that can deliver an atomic payload to say Los Angeles - then we are indeed in for some tense time ahead.