BBC: The Doomsday Clock - a barometer of nuclear danger for the past 55 years - has been moved one minute further away from the "midnight hour".

The concept timepiece, devised by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) now stands at six minutes to the hour. The group said it made the decision to move the clock back because of a more 'hopeful state of world affairs'.

The clock was first featured by the magazine in 1947, shortly after the US dropped its A-bombs on Japan. The clock had been adjusted 18 times before today since its initial start at seven minutes to midnight.

Most recently, in January 2007, the clock moved to five minutes to midnight, when climate change was added to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind. The concerns then included Iran's nuclear ambitions and the inability to halt the international trafficking of nuclear materials such as highly enriched uranium and plutonium.

MOSCOW — The Russian Parliament on Friday reversed its longstanding opposition to reforms in the European Court of Human Rights, as part of a new push to smooth over differences with the country’s European partners.

Legislators in the lower house voted 392 to 56 to ratify the reforms, news agencies reported.

The international human rights court, based in Strasbourg, France, has been clogged in recent years with a backlog of complaints, nearly one-third of them filed against Russia. The reform plan, Protocol 14, aims to speed up the court’s work, in part by reducing the number of judges necessary to make major decisions.

Since 2006, Russia has been the only one of 47 participating states to refuse to ratify Protocol 14. Moscow’s opposition seemed colored by its overall suspicion of the court, which has found Russian officials guilty of corruption, torture and other misconduct.

But Dmitri F. Vyatkin, who serves on Parliament’s legislative committee, said European ministers had finally addressed Russian complaints about the proposals, in part by guaranteeing that Russian judges would be involved in reviewing complaints against Russia. He said the decision showed that Russia and the other European states were seeking common ground.