YouTube has shut down two North Korean propaganda channels that academics use to monitor and assess the regime’s missile programs. Stimmekoreas, the number one YouTube channel on North Korea with more than 20,000 subscribers, and Uriminzokkiri, which had more than 18,000 subscribers, regularly posted of videos of state TV news clips and other footage, attracting millions of views.

Is anybody home, Pyongyang? The North Korean capital looks positively post-apocalyptic in aerial footage that emerged this week. Aram Pan, 41, a Singaporean pilot, took the video for a project called DPRK360, meant to show the hermit kingdom “from a different perspective.”

North Korea said the U.S. will “pay dearly” after its United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley said the isolated nation was “begging for war,” again ratcheting up tensions as world leaders consider a fresh round of sanctions. Describing Haley’s comments to the UN this week as a “hysteric fit,” a commentary by the state-run Korean Central News Agency on Friday warned the U.S. of unspecified retribution. North Korea detonated its sixth and most powerful nuclear bomb on Sunday...

The nuclear strategy of weaker powers.

Israel and North Korea are on opposite sides of the Asian landmass, separated by 5,000 miles as the ICBM flies. But Israelis feels close to the nuclear standoff between Washington and Pyongyang. They have faced this sort of crisis before, and may again. Some history: In the mid-1970s, it became clear to Israel that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was working on acquiring nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. Saddam had already demonstrated an uninhibited brutality in dealing with his internal enemies and his neighbors. He aspired to be the leader of the Arab world. Defeating Israel was at the top of his to-do list.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he would prefer not to use military action against North Korea to counter its nuclear and missile threat but that if he did it would be a “very sad day” for the leadership in Pyongyang. Trump again pointedly declined to rule out a U.S. military response following North Korea’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test as his administration seeks increased economic sanctions, saying Pyongyang was “behaving badly and it’s got to stop.”

South Korea's nuclear safety agency said Wednesday it has detected no traces of radioactive materials, including xenon gas, following North Korea's latest nuclear test. Defying international warnings, North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test Sunday, claiming it was a hydrogen bomb that can be loaded onto a long-range missile.

China is likely to support tougher sanctions against North Korea, including cutting crude oil exports, but Beijing will not completely sever the energy exports to ensure the regime of its ally did not collapse, according to Chinese diplomatic analysts. The assessment came after North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test and claimed it had detonated a hydrogen bomb on Sunday, overshadowing a summit of emerging market economies summit held in China.

New sanctions against North Korea would be "useless" and "ineffective", Vladimir Putin has said. The Russian President said imposing tougher sanctions on the regime of Kim Jong Un over its nuclear missile programme would not change the leadership in Pyongyang, but could lead to large-scale human suffering. Speaking after a BRICS summit in China, Mr Putin, while condemning North Korea's actions as "provocative", also warned against further ramping up military hysteria, saying it could lead to "global catastrophe".

An Iranian lawmaker says Tehran is principally against any nuke test by any country, including North Korea, but Pyongyang’s test of nuclear weapons is a response to the US threatening behaviour in the Far East.

North Korea has long boasted about its ability to bring down the United State’s financial systems and transport networks with a series of EMP attacks. Politicians in the US are said to be alarmed by the growing threat of a high-altitude nuclear blast and the resulting electromagnetic pulse. An EMP attack would fry the circuitry of mobile phones and wipe out online banking, food resources and the USA’s financial systems, resulting in a global financial crash, claimed Simpson.

Chinese censors appear to be stifling online discussion of North Korea's latest missile launch, a move apparently linked to China's hosting of this week's Brics summit. Posts on the popular microblogging network Sina Weibo and the mobile messenger WeChat which highlight or make jokes about the bomb test coinciding with the summit have been censored.

North Korea has been seen moving what appears to be an intercontinental ballistic missile towards its west coast, a report says. South Korea's Asia Business Daily cited an intelligence source as saying that the rocket was spotted moving on Monday, the day after Pyongyang's sixth and largest nuclear test.

Japan is planning for a possible mass evacuation of the nearly 60,000 Japanese citizens currently living in or visiting South Korea in the wake of North Korea’s latest nuclear weapons test. “There is a possibility of further provocations,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe warned Monday at a meeting with lawmakers, the Nikkei Asian Review reported.

If mountain under which last five bombs were ‘almost certainly’ detonated crumbles, radiation would leak across region, expert warns

North Korea has become a "global threat" after its latest nuclear test, the UN's nuclear watchdog has said. The North's claim it had tested a hydrogen bomb represents a "new dimension of threat," Yukiya Amano, director general the International Atomic Energy Authority, told CNN. "I think the North Korean threat is a global one now. In the past people believed it was a regional one, that's no longer the case," Mr Amano said.

The United States, Britain, France, Japan and South Korea requested the urgent meeting after North Korea on Sunday detonated what it described as a hydrogen bomb designed for a long-range missile. US Ambassador Nikki Haley urged the council to impose the "strongest possible measures" against North Korea. "Only the strongest sanctions will enable us to resolve this problem through diplomacy," she said.

U.S. United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley said Monday that North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, is "begging for war" with his "abusive use of missiles." During an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, Haley said "enough is enough," comments which come after North Korea said Sunday that it has successfully tested a miniaturized hydrogen bomb that can be placed an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster told his Japanese counterpart on Sunday that Washington is firmly committed to defending Japan, including with its nuclear deterrent, following North Korea’s latest nuclear test. McMaster made the assurance during a telephone call to Shotarou Taniuchi, the Director-General of the Japanese National Security Council, according to a government statement.

Russia is ready to take part in talks to try to solve the North Korean issue but has yet to see any positive impact from sanctions against Pyongyang, a Kremlin spokesman said on Sunday. The United Nations Security Council unanimously imposed new sanctions on North Korea in early July over its two intercontinental ballistic missile tests. The sanctions were said to have the potential to cut the Asian state’s $3 billion annual export revenue by a third, but Russia questions their effectiveness.