The Commonwealth of the Bahamas announced this week that it has ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, according to a news release from the CTBT Organization in Vienna. The Treaty prohibits all nuclear explosions.
The ratification by the Bahamas brings the total number of Treaty ratifications to 141. But the Treaty cannot take effect until it is ratified by ten other states with nuclear programs, including China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran and the United States.
For related background, see “Nuclear Weapons: Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty” (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service, updated October 29, 2007.
No one will be surprised if we end up with a continuing resolution to push our shutdown deadline out past the midterms, so the real question is what else will they get done this summer?
Rebuilding public participation starts with something simple — treating the public not as a problem to manage, but as a source of ingenuity government cannot function without.
If the government wants a system of learning and adaptation that improves results in real time, it has to treat translation, utilization, and adaptation as core functions of governance rather than as afterthoughts.
Coordination among federal science agencies is essential to ensure government-wide alignment on R&D investment priorities. However, the federal R&D enterprise suffers from egregious siloization.