North Korea vowed on Wednesday to accelerate its weapons programmes in response to the "evil" sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council following its latest and most powerful nuclear test.The respected 38 North website in the US raised its estimate for the yield from the kaboom, which Pyongyang says was a hydrogen bomb small enough to fit onto a missile, to around 250 kilotons ‐ more than 16 times the size of the device that devastated Hiroshima in 1945.
The detonation, Pyongyang's sixth nuclear blast, prompted global condemnation and came after it carried out two intercontinental ballistic missile launches in July that appeared to bring much of the US into range.