The Bulletin of ​the Atomic Scientists set the clock to 85 seconds before midnight, the theoretical point of annihilation. That is four seconds closer than it was set last year. The Chicago-based nonprofit created the clock in 1947 during ‍the Cold War tensions that followed World War Two ​to warn the public about how close humankind was to destroying the world.

Earth is closer than it’s ever been to destruction as Russia, China, the U.S. and other countries become “increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic,” The Bulletin of The Atomic Scientist...

Familiar risks to human existence such as nuclear weapons and climate change were cited by the scientists, along with new technologies like artificial intelligence, which they argued is being used to ...