I wanted to share an announcement about the upcoming Think Outside the Bomb National Conference, which will take place in Albuquerque, New Mexico this August 13-16. For five years, Think Outside the Bomb has brought young people together to share resources, strategize collaboratively, and build a widespread movement for nuclear disarmament. The conference aims to give youth not only the inspiration to work for a nuclear free future for the coming year, but the tools and skills to do that work and the opportunity and camaraderie to start this organizng.

Youth are invited to attend. Visit the Think Outside the Bomb website to learn more and apply online. Limited travel stipends are available.  Once in Albuquerque, room and board will be provided.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) had an excellent OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle today entitled “Russian nuclear agreement a good start.” Responding to President Obama’s negotiations with Russia, she applauds this initial step while highlighting the need to continue on a path forward to make the world safer from the dangers posed by nuclear weapons. Below are the beginning paragraphs. Click here to read the whole OpEd.

President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev reached preliminary agreement Monday for deep cuts to both nations’ deployed strategic nuclear arsenals – to as low as 1,500 warheads each. This is good news. It provides negotiators a framework for a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty by year’s end that would push our nuclear arsenals to the lowest levels of any U.S.-Russian arms control agreement. More broadly, it signals a thaw in the U.S.-Russian relationship and heralds a new era in arms control – one that could lead one day to a world free of nuclear weapons.

The G8 Summit taking place at L’Aquila, Italy has released a statement on nuclear weapons. As the US and Russia move forward on negotiations to reduce their nuclear weapons stockpiles, other countries are watching closely and agreeing that focusing on the threat of nuclear weapons is an urgent priority. The statement covered steps toward a nuclear weapons free world, strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, securing nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists, and further details about the Global Nuclear Summit President Obama announced in his April speech from Prague. Below are excerpts from two portions of the statement:

Moving Toward a World Without Nuclear Weapons

Big news today from the summit in Russia. Presidents Obama and Medvedev issued a “joint understanding” agreeing to reduce each countries’ strategic offensive nuclear weapons stockpile to below 1700 weapons in the next 7 years.

The BBC reports:

After three hours of talks at the Kremlin on Monday, Mr Obama and Mr Medvedev publicly signed a joint understanding to negotiate a new arms control treaty that would set lower levels of both nuclear warheads and delivery systems, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched missiles and bombers.

Under the 2002 Treaty of Moscow, each country is allowed between 1,700 and 2,200 deployed nuclear warheads and 1,600 delivery systems – meaning each side might only be required to decommission a further 25 warheads.